It Came from Anomaly Flats

by Clayton Smith

  You thought about being waited on by servants, trained experts in the art of supplication. They would attend to you, they would listen to you; they would take interest in you. You would share amusing anecdotes with the Westridges, and yes, they may be dead—and yes, they may be ghosts…but that only means they would be that much more interested in the things you have to say! You could tell them about the great wonders they’ve missed while their bodies rotted to flakes and bone, and they would be so appreciative of you, and they would know that yes, they invited the right person this time, without a spirit of a doubt!

  You didn’t realize the match was still burning. The flame sizzled against your fingers, and you dropped the incinerating stick. Your hand reached down for another match, but somehow it moved beyond the box of matches and reached instead toward the invitation.

  If amenable, please arrive at 7:00 PM sharp.

  You thought about the future. About your future. You saw more days living in silence, more nights spent shivering, unable to kindle warmth in your bones. You saw your house grow old, and decrepit, the same way Hillcrest did, except there would be no moonlight revitalizations, and no one would come looking for your body beneath the rubble when the walls buckled and the roof collapsed. You thought of the meals you would eat next month, next year, for the next decades: the dented cans, the trapped rodents, the black, rotting vegetables from the soggy garden. These things stitched themselves together in your mind to form the tapestry of your life, and you saw so clearly that it was threadbare, and tattered, and snapping angrily in a cold wind.

  At that moment, you realized the same thing that Anne Raftmann did, and that Richard Fasby did, and Rufus, he’d realized it too. You saw with sudden shock that a bar of metal through the brain or a spine snapped like a branch or a flood of scalding water in the lungs or a heavy stone breaking through the skull and liquefying the head was terrible, yes—horrible, painful, grotesque, and atrocious. But it was also perhaps preferable. Preferable to living even one more day in the utter misery of Anomaly Flats. Of the life that had unwound itself around you.

  And so you put the matches away. You dug through the closet and pulled down your cleanest clothes. You washed your hair and trimmed your nails, and you set off across town, through the darkening Lurchwood, and the walk was long, and it was arduous, and you’re sweating now, but you made it to the clearing where the Westridge estate rises like an architectural birthday cake, the candles in its windows flickering excitedly as you approach. The house is like nothing you’ve ever seen. You’ve always thought that “taking your breath away” was just an expression, but as you stand among the hedgerows and stare up at the mansion, the beauty is so great that you cannot breathe.

  It is 7:00 PM. You are perfectly on time. You clutch the invitation in your hands, and the great double doors open to the ghostly, false world inside. The footman bows low from the lintel, and he looks a little pale, though there is a bit of a red blossom in his cheek where a shard of burning metal sliced straight through his mouth when he was caught in the Hillcrest fire. But otherwise, he looks no worse for wear. The shapes of others crowd behind him, beckoning you in, crooking their fingers at you, coaxing you inside, wholly uninhibited by their various wounds, which have puckered over with time as their vital fluids have drained away…over and over again.

  To pass through the doors will be your death. You will be viciously and unquestionably murdered tonight. Perhaps you’ll be stabbed through the eye; perhaps you’ll be roasted on a spit. Or perhaps you’ll be impaled upon the lightning rod of the tallest tower in the house. There is no way to know.

  Yet you find that you actually thrill to the excitement of it all.

  You can smell the chicken and the mashed potatoes, the lemon asparagus and the cranberry cake. You can hear the Victrola crackling out your mother’s favorite arrangement—and how did they know? You can feel the footman’s hand on your arm as he guides you up the steps, and you are enveloped by the reaching, grasping hands of the long-dead Westridge family. They laugh and smile and welcome you in, they usher you into the house, and as the doors close heavily behind you, you understand that this will be the greatest and most important night of your life.

  You have accepted the invitation.

  And oh, what an evening it will be.

  The Thing Below

  There’s something in the basement.

  I don’t know what it is. But it makes a thumping noise. Nothing in our basement ever made a thumping noise before.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Sometimes it moves from one side of the house to the other, slowly, and it gets all the way over to the steps. Then it’s quiet, like it’s looking up at the door at the top of the stairs and thinking. Or deciding. But I don’t think it wants to climb the stairs, because it always thumps back to the other side of the house.

  If I stay up here, it can’t get me.

  If I stay up here, I’ll be safe.

  My brother Joey didn’t know what the thing was either, but he said he wasn’t scared. Said it was probably just the pipes and called me a baby. All day long, and all night, too, we heard it. Thump. Thump. Thump. Sometimes from right underneath us, and then it would stop, and we would listen.

  And maybe it would listen to us.

  I swear in those times, when it was quiet, I could hear it breathing. Sometimes I still hear it breathing.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  The thing is going to the bottom of the stairs more and more. It’s there right now. Waiting. Watching. I could run over there, throw open the door, shine a light, and see what the thing is, this thing that’s living in the basement. I could see what’s been lurking and thumping in the darkness of our house.

  But I can’t. Because Joey was right. I am a baby.

  I’m really, really scared.

  But it doesn’t matter. The thing won’t climb the steps.

  It just won’t.

  If I stay up here, I’ll be safe.

  I told Joey not to go down. I told him we should just stay upstairs, and we’d be okay. But he said that was dumb and called me a stupid little girl. It’ll come upstairs eventually, he said. It’ll come for us. But I told him I didn’t think it wanted to come upstairs. Because if it wanted to, it already would have, I think. Right? I think it already would have. But instead, it just goes to the bottom of the steps, and it doesn’t come up, and it just thumps back to its corner, and if we stay up here, we’re safe. But he said we shouldn’t just let the thing have the basement. At first Joey said it was just an animal, probably, something that got hurt and found its way into our basement and needs to be put down. But it doesn’t sound like an animal. And there’s no other way into our basement except through the door in our kitchen.

  I don’t know how the thing got down there. But I know it’s not an animal. It’s something that went down the steps and never came back up.

  I told Joey not to go down, but he did it anyway. He took Daddy’s shotgun, even though we’re not supposed to touch it. We’re not supposed to know where he keeps the shells, either, but we do. I begged him not to go down, but he said enough is enough, and he opened the door and went down the steps, even though the light had burned out and he couldn’t see anything, and we couldn’t find a flashlight, and it was dark at the bottom of the stairs, so dark, and he couldn’t see anything, but enough is enough, he said, and he went down, and he closed the door behind him, and then he was the thing going thump, thump, thump, down the stairs in his heavy, muddy boots that Daddy wouldn’t want him wearing in the house, and when he got to the bottom of the stairs, I couldn’t hear anything, and everything was quiet, except for my heart, which was loud like a drum, beating in my chest, but then I heard it, thump, thump, thump, the thing emerging from its corner and moving toward my brother, and thump, thump, thump, my brother moving clo
ser to the thing, and then the thing’s feet moved faster, thump-thump-thump-thump, and then a shotgun blast, loud as a bomb, it shook the whole house, and then a scream, I don’t know if it was Joey or the thing, but it was a loud scream, and I guess I do know whose scream it was, I guess I really do know, because a few seconds later, after the screaming stopped and it was quiet for a while, there was the sound again, thump, thump, thump, and the creature went back to its corner, and Joey never came back upstairs, and that was almost three hours ago now.

  I told him not to go down. I told him the thing wouldn’t climb stairs. I told him if we stay up here, we’re safe.

  But he didn’t listen.

  I should leave. I should pack my things in a suitcase and run away from this house. I should go find the police, or maybe Aunt Judy. I could live with her, even though I don’t like her much, and she doesn’t like me much, either. She smells like old closets, and her food is always sour, but it’d be better than living with a thing in the basement.

  I should leave. I should go.

  But I can’t.

  Daddy wouldn’t want me to abandon the house. Stake a claim, is what he’d say. What’s yours is yours. He’d be really mad if I left the house in the control of the thing in the basement. It can’t come up here, he’d say, so why be afraid? And he’d be right. I stay up here, and the thing stays downstairs in the dark, and this is how we’ll live.

  I miss Daddy. I don’t know where he went. I haven’t seen him in two days. That’s about when the thumping started. I try not to think about it. Or I try to think maybe he went off on one of his trips, and he’ll come back in a few days, dark circles under his eyes, and shaking a little, and smelling like sweat. I don’t like it when he goes on his trips, but this time, I hope he that’s what he did. I try not to think that maybe the thing got him like it got Joey.

  But worse, I try not to think that maybe Daddy is the thing.

  It’s moving again. Thump. Thump. Thump. It’s crossing the basement, and I know what it wants. It wants to come up here. It wants me. But I won’t go down, and it won’t come up.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  It’s at the bottom of the steps now, and it’s quiet. It’s waiting. It’s watching.

  I could run to the door. I could open it. I could scream at the thing and try to show it that I’m not afraid. Sometimes I think I could just go down the stairs...that I should go down the stairs. Let the thing swallow me up and be done with it.

  I want to. Then it’d be all over, and I wouldn’t have to hear it down there anymore. Wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore. I’m so tired. I can’t sleep, with all the thumping, and I’m so tired, and I keep seeing things that aren’t there, and hearing things too, slurping and giggling and growling and whispers. I want it to be over, but Daddy wouldn’t like that. Stake your claim, he’d say. What’s yours is yours.

  I’ll stay upstairs. I’m safe up here.

  But the thumping just started up again. And this time, I’m screaming.

  Because the thing in the basement...

  It’s coming up the stairs.

  Lucy

  The Missouri horizon was a beacon of hope. There was no telling where the road would unravel.

  Lucy giggled as she flew her hand out the window, letting the warm air lift and lower it like a bird as they cruised down the interstate. She scratched the little mole on her cheek and said, “I can’t believe we really did it.”

  Jake grinned in the driver’s seat. “Sure as shit did,” he said, and Lucy had never seen him look so bright, so alive, as if his skin might swell and burst with dazzling light. Jake was always handsome, but now, with his hair blowing in the highway’s free wind, smiling his big, beautiful, crooked, stupid smile, he looked like something plucked from a tree and polished on God’s own lapel.

  Of course, the shirt and tie didn’t hurt, either.

  Lucy was clad only in short denim cutoffs and a plain white ribbed tank top—her standard summerwear. She had felt a flush of embarrassment and shame back there at the courthouse, that Jake had cleaned himself up for the occasion, even swiped an old necktie from his daddy’s closet, and there she was, in her torn shorts, with her blonde hair pulled back and messy. But he just laughed and scooped her up into his arms and said he didn’t care what she wore, and that if it were up to him, she wouldn’t wear anything at all, and that’d be just fine. She giggled and gave him a good swat, but he just held her tight and said, “All I want is you. Don’t matter how you come wrapped.”

  Lucy beamed down at her left hand, at the way that even such a little stone could sparkle like a real diamond in the sunlight. “We really did it,” she said again. Jake smiled and patted her hand.

  It hadn’t been the wedding she’d dreamt about as a little girl. No church, no flowers, no dress, obviously, and the only witness was a court clerk who still had bread in her teeth from her lunch break. But Lucy didn’t care. This was her life now, and Jake was her husband.

  The past was dark, but the future was bright.

  “We shouldn’t be on 70,” she said dreamily as they passed a highway marker. “Daddy’ll have every hillbilly with a shotgun on patrol between here and Kansas City.”

  “Ain’t no one can stop us now, Lucy,” Jake said with a grin.

  She only shrugged. “He’s done worse things than kill the man who stole away his daughter,” she said. “You know it’s true.”

  Jake lifted an eyebrow and gave her a little smirk. “Ain’t scared of your daddy,” he said, giving her hand a little squeeze. “Just let him try to stop us. The ink on the license is already dry, and he ain’t got enough man in him to stand up to sweat.”

  Lucy giggled. Jake was always going on, running his words in a way she didn’t understand, and it was one of the things she loved most about him. But she shook her head and turned back out the window. “Don’t underestimate him,” she warned. “He’s a mean old sonofabitch.”

  “Don’t I know it.” Jake tapped the steering wheel, thinking. “All right,” he said, suddenly resolved. “Only one thing to do then.” He pulled the wheel, and the old Caprice squealed off the interstate, bouncing onto the off-ramp, fishtailing and sending loose gravel spraying like a fountain.

  Lucy squealed and hung on to the window edge. “What’re you doing?” she demanded, giggling.

  “If your daddy’s on the highway, we’ll just take the back roads.”

  Lucy let out a little cry of triumph. “All the way to California?”

  He gave her hand another squeeze. “All the way to California.”

  Lucy’s heart sang as they cruised up Highway 41, and she hummed along with the bright melody. It was a song of pure joy, and of freedom, and of uncontainable hope. There was also an underlying bass line of sadness, a small one, quiet, but ever-present. She’d hoped her parents would come around to seeing past Jake’s rough edges, to seeing the good heart of the man beneath the flint-rock exterior, the way she did. A chasm had opened up between the family that morning the second Lucy climbed into the Caprice, and it was growing, and spreading, and trying to swallow her whole. She and Jake were doing their damnedest to outrun the widening crater, and it was working. They were on their own side of life now; her parents were just sad and angry specks on the other, and there was no bridge long enough or strong enough to close that gap again.

  “It’s you and me,” she whispered, and she was sure her words were lost in the wind whipping through the car.

  But Jake heard her. He always heard her. “Till the horses dry out,” he said, and he kissed the back of her hand.

  The new road curved past Arrow Rock, and Lucy had cotton-gauze memories of her parents bringing her to that little town a few times as a kid to see A Christmas Carol at the old Lyceum Theatre. They’d gone a few years in a row, until Lucy fin
ally burst into tears during one performance and they had to leave. Her mother rubbed her back and whispered, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Little Lucy hiccupped through her tears and told them that she was afraid of the ghosts, had always been afraid of the ghosts, and she didn’t want to see the play anymore. She couldn’t take it. Her father shook his head and sneered. “That money, wasted,” he spat.

  They never went back to Arrow Rock.

  “Can we get off this road?” Lucy asked, straightening up in her seat and rolling up the window. She suddenly had a chill, despite the heat of the day. “I know it’ll slow us down, but Daddy knows this place. He might look here.”

  Jake gave her a queer look from the edges of his eyes. But he shrugged and turned on the blinker. “Sure thing, Loopy-Loo. We got nothin’ but time.”

  They turned onto a washed-out gravel road that disappeared between two high walls of enormous trees, set into the earth as tall as the Ozark Mountains themselves, and as stiff and straight as iron. The canopies wove together and shouldered out the sunlight as they were swallowed by the forest, and Lucy felt her shoulders relax. She hadn’t noticed how hard her heart had been beating, but it slowed now, subdued by the stoic shield of trees.

  They could really do it. They could break free of the past and start fresh somewhere new.

  They could be happy.

  They could be safe.

  She pressed her forehead against the glass and smiled with relief as they passed a sign that read Welcome to Anomaly Flats.

  •

  They stopped for lunch at the Nite-Owl Diner, an old greasy spoon set right near the edge of the little town’s main street. “What’ll it be?” asked the waitress, an older woman with a bad dye job that made Lucy click her tongue in pity, though she didn’t mean to be rude about it.