The Magic Mansion  Lates t story >>>The Magic Mansion (http://neuage.org/MM/ Maggie and Mabel's Magic Mansion will take them wherever they wish to go. The house used for this story is a model made by my father-in-law after visiting our house in Round Lake, New York and upon return to Australia he built this model based on his memory of our house. The page for this house is at http://neuage.org/house/ As of October 2015 there are three chapters and an introduction to these adventures.

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Leigh Neuage (July 6 1983 - August 16 2003) --

 

Text Box: Lost Ball - Broken Window	Terrell Adsit-NeuageIt was a hard hit ball. Probably the longest hit that Leigh had ever hit. The ball lifted higher and higher then cleared the bushes at the end of the park by several metres.

"Wow", yelled Leigh.   The other children just stood and stared in disbelief, as the ball went farther and farther.

'CRASH' went the sound of breaking glass - somewhere on the other side of the bushes.

The children ran to the bushes. They could see the old hotel not far away. A window at the end of the building on the third floor was broken. How could a ball hit by an eight year old travel so far? It was like a gust of wind had carried it to the hotel, or a big vacuum had sucked it streight to the window. But there was no wind and nobody

.~~

believed in giant vacuums. Or for that matter - in black holes inside of abandoned hotels that would drawt ngs to

Y

it.

No one wanted to go to the old hotel to recover the ball. The place looked spooky. People had not stayed there for a very long time. The front and back doors were boarded over and had several 'no trespassing' signs nailed on them. The old hotel had a very unkept look to it~ The grounds around the place were overgrown. The grass had not been mowed + or

years. Bushes, that had not been trimmed for decades spread .  ^`

out in several directions - with most of them growing in a snarled form together - that at. night gave the appearance of men fighting one another. A stone wall that surrounded the hotel was crumbling. People              stayed away from there.


Text Box: .	Lost Ball - Broken Window	Terrell Adsit-Neuage F'. 2Possums and birds lived in the roof. The animals all looked busy - the birds flying back and forth with sticks to build nests, and possums carrying food to holes in the roof. The children had seen bats before - flying in and out of the hotel through holes in the side of the upstair's walls.

People in town had said that the old hotel was haunted. Ghosts had been seen and noises like gun shots and crying had been heard. The local police had investigated but never found anything to explain the reported noises and sightings.

The children discussed a resuce attempt for their ball. None of them had any money to buy another one - and they all lived a long ways from a sports store even if they did have the money for another ball.

One of the children, Sacha, Leigh's older brother - said that he thought he had heard someone say, "ouch" when the ball went crashing through the window. Other children, including Leigh said they had heard the "ouch" too but didn't want to say anything because the others would have thought that they sounded nuts. And besides, the stories about the hotel being haunted were just made up by adults to keep children away. Or were they?

After much discussion - and even arguments - about how to retrieve the lost ball, everyone, except Sacha and Leigh, said they had to go home and could not go looking for a ball. Sacha and Leigh went home too, but just to get their dog - Shaga, and a torch. After all, the ball belonged to them --and Leigh had hit it, so it was pretty much their responsibility to get it.


Text Box: Lost Ball - Broken Window	Terrell Adsit-Neuage p. 3Text Box: CWhen the children got home they found their father in his office working at his desk. He was a writer of science fiction books. They told him that they had lost their ball and now were going to look for it over at the old hotel. Their father told them to be careful and then laughingly said.

"It's haunted you know?"

But the children didn't want to hear that - so they basically didn't, though they probably did some where in their mind. Their father was a writer of make-believe worlds. What did he know about reality?

The children with their dog next to them walked the two blocks back to the park where they had been playing ball. They walked around the park, climbed through an opening in the bushes and went over the crumbling walls that surrounded the almost jungle-like gardens and lawns of the old hotel. They both shivered, even though it was a hot day as they walked around the hotel looking for the best way to get in. The downstair's doors were boarded up and so were the windows. They started wondering if it was worth getting their ball.

In the back of the old hotel, which was named The Crown, before it finally closed thirty years earlier, there were stairs that led to the third floor. The stairs looked very old and dangerous. Some of the steps were missing and the old wooden frame looked as if it would collapse with even the slightest gust of wind. Luckily, for now anyway, there was no wind - and it appeared that there was none in the near future either.


Text Box: Lost Ball - Broken Window	Terrell Adsit-Neuage p. 4It was a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon. A sort of day that one would rather be at the beach than in some dumpy old building looking for a ball that was not worth much more than a week's allowance - or twenty-five empty one-litre soda bottles returned to the deli.

Suddenly, Shaga ran up the stairs and disappeared at the top of the steps. The children slowly began the climb up . They could hear their dog barking - but it sounded like he was a long ways off - and his barking was muffled like he was in a tunnel. The steps creaked and the staircase rocked back and forth as the children climbed.

They called their dog, "Shaga, Shaga" - and off in the distance they could hear his barks. The dog's sounds reminded the boys of fog horns they had heard on a stormy night recently when they were going across the English

Channel to see Paris. That had been only a few months earlier. Now they were here. And there would be no France at the top of an old hotel's staircase - though it all did seem very foreign.

At the top of the steps they looked into the third floor of The Crown. There was not a door in the doorway so they could easily look down the hallway. Their dog ran up to them, licked their hands then ran off again back to some mysterious, though probably explainable, to a down-to-earth-person, place at the end of the hall on the

third floor of the old hotel. His barking once again became more distant sounding and muffled.


Lost Ball -Broken Window        Terrell Adsit-Neuage p. 4s

On the third floor there were eight doors - no doubt leading to eight rooms. On the walls between the rooms there were old pictures. Some of the pictures were portraits of people that looked like people who lived in the 1800s. There was a large wanted poster of the Ned Kelly gang on the wall at the end of the hallway. On one of the doors there was a railroad schedule - dated June 1880. There were also pictures of the town - taken in the 1880s.

Sacha and Leigh looked at the 'posters, pictures and railroad schedule, then went to the last room on the third floor.

"This is the room where our ball should be", said Sacha.

Suddenly, Shaga came bolting out of the room that they were about to enter. He yelped, whined, barked, and growled - all at once - then ran at his fastest running speed ever, along the hall, through the doorless-doorway, and down the creaking old steps. The children listened as his barking, growling, and yelping - all at one time - faded off into the distance.

"Dumb dog! - we brought him to protect us, and he's probably home by now hiding under the car," said Leigh.

"We'll just go in and get our ball and get out of here," said Sacha.

The two boys pushed the door open to the room where their dog had recently left - in such a hurry. As soon as they went into the room the door quickly closed behind them. The air became chilly and a strong wind swirled around the room. Sacha and Leigh no longer seemed to be where they had been.

Then as quickly as the wind and cold began to envelope them, it stopped - and there was a still in the room that sent chills though the children's bodies. They stood, frozen in place, as the room clouded up then cleared leaving them wishing that they were somewhere else than wherever it was they were now.


¥ Lost____ Ball - Broken Window    Terrell Adsit-Neuage p. 56

They were in a different place - or maybe it was the same place - how could someone be in a different place than where they were? But they were in a different something, though they didn't know what. In front of them stood the Kelly Gang. It was June 28, 1880 all over again, though the children weren't quite sure how they knew that.

The boys looked around the place they were in, it was a room, but not the room - or at least the room they thought they should be in. There was a broken window. Something, like a ball could have gone through easily enough. Sacha, trying to keep one eye on the strangers in front of him and at the same time look around the room for the ball was using another part of his mind to find an escape from the situation. Leigh, who just didn't believe any of what was happening had thoughts of, "maybe someone is just playing a trick on us and these guys are just dressed up to look like the Ned Kelly gang". He did not know if he actually said that or just thought it. Then he thought - maybe out loud, or maybe to himself, "dad is doing this - he said it was haunted to

nfreak us out - maybe he's made a hologram. But no, he couldn't do that, he wouldn't know how". But what was reality and what was something else was not going to be obvious in this particular situation.

Sacha asked the men if they were the Kelly gang. Then he thought out loud, or maybe to himself - who could tell what they were doing anymore? "these dudes look just like the ones on the wanted poster at the end of the hallway." Then laughing he said "you guys are just dressed up - this is really a joke and you're all stupid, just give us our ball back and let us out of this dump or you will all be in trouble".


Text Box: unexplainable than to figure it out until there was a way to do Text Box: it.	After all a kid can only understand so much and the restLost Ball - Broken Window        Terrell Adsit-Neuage         p. 7

One of the men, an unshaven and dirty man with bad breath, went up to Sacha and looked him in the eye and said, "yep, we're the Kelly gang, what are you children doing here? Did the constable send you to trick us in to a surrender? He had better not - we'll never surrender or stop until Ned is freed."

"Wow, what is this jerk going-on-about anyway," said Leigh.

"I don't know but he stinks," answered Sacha.

Sacha continued, "I don't know what is going on or how we got into your world..." - then remembering that it was June 28 - and in one of his classes at school that he was half paying attention to and half reading a comic book during, the teacher was going on about June 28 being the day the Kelly gang did something. Sacha, standing in this place he was now in, had a thought slip by him, real quickly, that maybe he should pay better attention at school in the future, but it was a fleeting thought - nothing to be concerned or change one's way over. But

there was something here.          It was best to go along with the

gets filed away. That was what his father once said, and maybe it made sense.

Sacha continued speaking to the men who were now grouped around the children. "What was it I was saying? Right! O.K. if we're in your stupid world I will tell you creeps what is going to happen - you're all going to die, NEW SITE = JULY 2014 - http://neuage.us/2014/July/ - Today. This is your last day of freedom. And in the future, a hundred years from now, or is it then? people will treat Ned Kelly as a hero - but I don't or won't, whatever - he was a rotten old thief and murderer and

0 deserves to die."


Lost Ball Broken Window          Terrell Adsit-Neuage       Pita

¥ The man with the bad breath that was staring eye-to-eye with Sacha gave him a slight shove and said, "how's a couple kids going to stop us?" And just to show he was not kidding he took out his gun and waved it around.

Then there were the sounds of gun shots outside of the old hotel. Leigh and Sacha saw several police dressed in the clothing of the 1800s outside the window. They quickly got away from the window and ran to the other side of the room. The Kelly men began shooting back at the police outside. One of the men grabed Sacha and started dragging him toward the window. 'Sacha pulled out his torch and shown it into the man's eyes. The man, never having seen a torch before - as they hadn't been invented, or at least one like Sacha had, yet in the 1880s seemed terrified and let go of Sacha. Sacha shown the light, and it was a powerful six battery one that flashed on and off, into the eyes of the other men. He told them that he could turn them into stone with his torch. The frightened men dropped their guns and ran out of the room.

As soon as the men left the room the air cleared and the old

( room reappeared.        There was a big old dresser with a cracked

mirror. Spider webs coverd a large portion of the room. A calendar on the wall showed the date as June 28, 1880. "Exactly one-hundred and ten years ago," Leigh said. There was a bed

with out a mattress.          And several broken chairs lay on the

floor.         Plaster was coming off of the ceiling and there was a
large crack in the wall.

Instantly the children knew what had happened. Though once again they were left to wonder how they knew something that no one had told them about - but they knew.


Lost Ball - Broken Window                                   Terrell Adsit-Neuage    P. %1

The Kelly gang had been trapped in the old hotel - even though it was a thousand kilometres from where they really were trapped a hundred years earlier.

The old hotel that the children were in had been built the same week as the one that the Kelly gang had once been in and had died in. The hotels looked the same. They probably felt the same, though it would be impossible to compare the two as the other one was long gone.

Even the materials that the hotel was built of were from the same place. The doors of the two hotels were made from the same tree. The floor boards, cupboards and bed posts in the two rooms were from the same tree. That is the same room that the Kelly gang had been in in 1880 and the one they were in with the children in 1990.

The Kelly gang's hotel had been set alight by the police. As they burned in the flames, they became trapped in a time bubble. The police had also become trapped in the same time bubble and the Kelly gang and the police reinacted, though they didn't know it., the event every year on June 28.

When Sacha had shown his torch into the eyes of the gang, the men were so startled that they broke through the time bubble that they had been in and were finally freed of their earthly prison. When they left - the original police left with them.

The boys looked at the broken window. The ball had gone through it, that was for sure. And there it was under the bed. Leigh crawled under the bed and retrieved it. The two boys ran out of the room, down the hall, through the doorless doorway and down the wobbly and creaking, crackling stairs.


class=Section10>

Lost Ball -Broken Window Terrell Adsit-Neuegw                          to

As Sacha, running behind Leigh, stepped on to the ground the whole staircase shook then collapsed in a pile of dusty rubble behind them. Then with a loud crash the third floor of the old hotel caved in. The boys ran to the street in tront of the hotel and watched. As the third floor, and it seemed like it was happening in slow motion, crashed through to the second then first floor, the whole building rocked then exploded with boards and furniture flying in all directions. The two boys quickly went across the street and went home without once turning to look back at where they had been.

They never told anyone, accept me, not even their father what had happened. They told me the story one day many years later, actually it was on June 28, while we were sitting next to each other on a plane trip that was headed overseas. I was just a stranger to them and they said they had to tell someone the story that they had kept secret all these years.

/--Th

) The boys, who were grown-up when they told me the story, said that the local council had set the ruble of the old hotel alight three days after it had collapsed. The land then was cleared and a three storey department store was built on the sight of the old hotel. On the third floor, strange as it may seem, is the sporting goods section. Balls are displayed on the floor in the exact location as where the bail that Leigh hit then found, was.

And looking out the window as we fly over the town far Delow can still see the old hotel that the police set alight in 1800 and there I am, running through the flames


Text Box: Lost Ball - Broken Window	Terrell Adsit-Neuage p	ItText Box: ?t JSacha and Leigh never found out what became of the man they sat next to on June 28. He got up from his seat while the plane flew over Stringybark Creek in Victoria to go to the bathroom but never returned to his seat. When they landed Sacha and Leigh asked at the ticket counter where the man that was sitting next to them had gone too. They were told that the seat had been reserved by a Mr. Kelly but he had missed the flight and therefore no one had sat next to them on their flight.WE ARE HERE - due to omicron & worries about borders we have moved our trip forward by a week - Lahore Pakistan arrived the fourth of December. See ya soon, on our (covid) 15-week world tour: Abu Dhabi (UAR), Lahore Pakistan (December 4 - 22), Istanbul Turkey (December 23), Washington DC (December 24 - 30), New York City (December 30 - 31), Oneonta New York (January 1 - 4), Washington DC (January 4 - 17), Nieuwerkerk aan den Ijssel & Utrecht Netherlands (January 18th) return to Australia late March 2022 [what could possibly go wrong] See our photos in Facebook -

our first video clip 'going for a bit of a shop in Lahore' scan the QR code

#DailyThoughts as of 11 December2021
#OurCurrentLifeWithCovid as of (DST) - 11 December2021 Lahore Pakistan

HAPPY 74TH BIRTHDAY TO ME one-hundred-twenty-four days ago