Читать книгу Ghost Fever - Joe Hayes - Страница 8
ОглавлениеCOLE CASH was a sharp operator. He made a lot of money renting houses across the tracks. But he made a big mistake on one house he bought. No one had lived in that old house for a long time—and for a reason. You could ask anyone in that part of town about the house and they would tell you, “Es una casa embrujada. Hay un ánima que anda penando en esa casa.” They would tell you it was haunted, that there was a soul suffering in that house.
But Cole Cash didn’t ask why the house had been empty for so long and so no one told him. Or maybe they did and he just didn’t believe in such things.
Whatever the case, he bought that old house. All he did was hire old Louie Samaniego to slap a coat of white paint on the outside of the house, and then he tried to rent it out to some family.
No one would take the house. He started lowering and lowering the rent he was asking, but still no one wanted it. When the neighbors saw the FOR RENT sign in the front yard, they just shook their heads and said to one another, “Ni dada querría vivir en esa casa. I wouldn’t want to live in that house even if it was given to me for free.”
And free rent is exactly the offer Cole Cash made. He tacked a little card to the stick that held up the FOR RENT sign. It said: Seis meses gratis…Llama a 4948. Six Months for Free…Call 4948. And he hung up notices at a few other strategic places around town, like the pool hall and the barber shop.
The notices said that if a family would sign a lease for one year and move into the old house, he would give them the first six months rent free. He probably figured that as soon as a family started to live in the house, all the talk in the neighborhood about souls and spirits and ghosts—ánimas, espíritus, fantasmas—would just sort of dry up and disappear.
But still no one would take the house. When they said they didn’t even want it for free, they meant it.
