[ WP ] You have the rising suspicion that the house next door is in fact , not really there .

The ball came to a stop at the white picket fence next door. Lucy picked it up and scrunched her nose at the beautiful yellow brick house with gardens overflowing with flowers and bees. She was a five year old of the precocious sort, which was the worst kind of five year old if the house had anything to say about it. 
 
 Since houses generally do not speak, it had nothing to say about little children. The house may or may not have been there for a few centuries, but the historical significance of a building did n't tend to be interesting to a child. No, Lucy was interested in an anomaly. 
 
 Besides never having seen or heard of her neighbors, she had started to believe the house was n't actually there. After all, she knew every other child on the whole block. Even the old woman who had no children, but gave her a doll every few months. Which Lucy regarded as being that's'-ist word that her mom was always going on about, but that did n't matter much. 
 
 Lucy was sure the house could n't possibly be there. She decided to test her theory by throwing a ball at the fence. It bounced back, as a normal fence would, but she'd still been suspicious. She'd tried climbing it, but it had only given her splinters. It was the first fence Lucy had ever been thwarted by and she'd counted it against the house's existence. 
 
 She thought about going through the front gate, but detectives just did n't *do* that sort of thing as far as old movies had informed her. So, instead, she stared at it from the sidewalk, ball in hand, and tried to think of how to prove the house did or did not exist. 
 
 Well, she thought, people exist. If you kick a person, they say'ow'. She had started to run out of idea, so taking out a little frustration seemed appealing. 
 
 So, Lucy kicked the front gate as hard as she could. 
 
 The house seemed to jump back as if surprised. `` Ow,'' it said. 
 
 It only took Lucy five seconds of shocked silence before she ran back into her house, screaming for her mommy.
