Gumdrop City

Sampson lived at the end of the block nearest the forest on a quaint, picturesque, dead-end road. It was his habit to greet all the people on the block, by a nod of his scraggly head, an unseemly smile, a tip of his rag-tag "Rex Harrison" hat, and proffering the odd salutation of: "Tis a Black day-- without mornin", even more oddly, in a strange, seemingly Transylvanian accent.

All the people in the neighborhood simply brushed Sampson's oddness off to his obviously foreign beginnings. This was lent singular credence by his peculiar accent, one that no one had ever been able to place. The words were Irish in nature, but the accent itself, seemed to be Slavic in origin, though, with an almost African slant to it. It simply did not fit any normal accent that could be discerned. Sampson seemed an amiable enough fellow, odd though he was, in his mid to late 50's, typically wearing a tattered tweed sports coat, and save for his acrimonious habit of saying the wrong thing on nearly every occasion, always proffering a bright and deceivingly indecorous smile.

No one seemed to know exactly where Sampson had come from. Or, "Sompt-Son" as he pronounced his own name. Long before every other family had moved into the area, Sampson was there. Except for Sampson's house, this had been a recently renovated area and every family along the street was newly transplanted.

Sampson seemed to have no job. He seemed to have no family, friends, or even visitor's. No solicitors, nor agents frequented his porch. He seemed also to have no real purpose, unless it were simply to devalue the general properties of the neighborhood.

David Panik's first meeting with Sampson had thankfully been a brief one, and apparently, to no purpose. As David was putting out the garbage one bright summer morning, Sampson had casually passed him by on the street. Quite unintentionally, they locked eyes. David felt as if he could fall forever in to those empty, deep set eyes. They gave him the ambiguous feeling of warm ice.

"Tis a black day-- without mornin." Sampson said, through his ubiquitous three day old growth of beard.

Surprised, David simply nodded and nervously set down the trash can. Sampson roughly scrapped some dried mucous from the leathery flesh of his vein spotted nose, put his hand in his jacket pocket, and continued directly on his way. David watched him walk off and wondered where it was that he went every day with such purpose. No one he had talked to had ever seen Sampson anywhere, except coming and going from his house.

The field leading to the forest near Sampson's home was rumored to be owned by him and was never traversed by any of the neighborhood children or pets. No warning to stay away had been necessary. They simply felt that something was not quite right about the field.

Something unmentionable dwelt there for them. And so, it was never mentioned. The old man's house was a pathetic wreck of a place. The straw like substance growing out of the front yard, Sampson probably considered his lawn. The junk scattered indiscriminately around, he undoubtedly thought of as some kind of art. The peeling paint, the broken windows, all gave the place an air of a structure long abandoned, or at least, one that had been condemned.

One of the neighbor's nearest to this house had a dog named Bambi who had taken to sporadically barking at Sampson's house, but never at Sampson himself. Her barking always took place, not in front of his house, but from the safety of her own yard. Of late, several other dogs on the street had taken to the raucous behavior whenever the wind would change, bringing them the moist odors that secretly emanated from the old man's dwelling. Most of the neighborhood had simply tried to ignore it.