The Tenth House

On Cooper Court, a cul-de-sac in Levittown's Crabtree Hollow section, nine houses hand out candy every Halloween. The tenth house does not exist on any map. The county tax map shows nine lots and an empty parcel at the end of the court. But every kid in the neighborhood insists they have been to the tenth house, and they all describe the same things: a yellow door, an amber porch light, a ceramic pumpkin candy bowl, and a woman who knows each child's name and hands out full-size bars. Karen Doyle, a divorced mother of two, has always filed it under kid games and suburban myth. Then her eight-year-old daughter Lucy starts sleepwalking toward the empty lot, her twelve-year-old son Ben admits he visited the tenth house years ago and the candy tasted like pennies, and Karen finds a 1952 Levitt plat map showing ten lots on Cooper Court, with the tenth inked in a different hand. The deed trail leads to a woman named Agnes Bell, who bought the lot in 1953 and then vanishes from every record after 1954. On Halloween night, Karen walks to the end of the court to prove the tenth house is a prank. The house is there. It has been waiting for a mother from the court, and it has been waiting specifically for her.