Amid the Recesses: A Short Story Collection of Fear

by J. A. Crook

Chasing Crows

  Doctor Phillip Olsen sat in his black leather chair across from Lisa Crowley. The silence lingered. Lisa tried to comprehend what was said.

  “She lost her mother tragically in a car accident. Her father later to depression. A child’s mind, barely aware of mortality, will deal with events like these in peculiar ways. You’re in a difficult position, Lisa, by taking her on as your responsibility.” Doctor Olsen’s final statement kept with her: “Mental illness is difficult to assess, difficult to treat, and demands profound empathy of those willing to help those that bear it. Depression, what we’re dealing with here, hangs within the mind like an black crow, fluttering and flapping for attention, unwilling to allow one to quickly forget the darkness of its shroud.”

  Desirae Crowley sat outside of the door, buried in her heavy, pink jacket. Her rain boots swung back and forth beneath the chair as she finished jotting down the name “Ian” on an envelope soon tucked away in her backpack. Meanwhile, her Aunt Lisa and Doctor Olsen shook hands and concluded the session.

  “Ready to go, hun?” Lisa asked.

  Desirae peeked around her aunt to Doctor Olsen, who smiled and nodded himself. She examined the doctor before she accepted her aunt’s hand. They stepped out together.

  The drive home was mostly silent. Lisa attempted casual banter, “So, you’ll be starting school again in a couple of weeks. Are you excited?”

  Desirae didn’t respond. She stared out the window and watched the cars in the opposite lane zoom by. She experienced the vertigo of staring at rooted trees while the car moved. She focused on each tree as it came into view, then the next as one skipped away. She saw a large black bird on one of the limbs of those trees. It stared her way as she passed. The two locked eyes until the bird was in their wake.

  Lisa tried again, “Doctor Olsen says you’re doing well. That you’re starting to open up a little to him.” She placed a hand on Desirae’s leg and patted it. “Feeling any better?”

  Desirae again said nothing. She saw children as they pulled into their neighborhood. They played in their yards and enjoyed one another. She didn’t look like other children. She hadn’t expressed an ounce of joy or a bit of excitement. Desirae learned something in the time she’d experienced those feelings: the less she divulged, the less she was questioned. She chose silence because it was easier for her.

  They arrived at the house. Lisa parked and Desirae rushed out of the car. She waited at the door until Lisa arrived to unlock it and she went in. She sprinted toward the stairs and toward her room.

  Lisa called out, “Dinner will be in a few hours, sweetheart. Alright?”

  Desirae looked back, mustered a smile, and nodded before running on. She sat at her bed and stared out the window. Hidden from her was the happiness of the children in their lawns. Lost were the waving tree branches. She stared at the empty, blue sky. She placed her backpack to the side and fell flat into her bed. She still saw the blue of the sky as she turned to look at the ceiling. It faded to white. She fell asleep. She awoke later to tapping.

  Desirae opened a sleepy eye in search of the sound. Her gaze fell on the window. She shifted clumsily in her puffy jacket until she sat upright. Outside of the window, a crow, much like the bird she’d seen earlier, sat on the exterior sill. The crow’s head canted and cocked as if skipping frames in reality. It seemed curious of Desirae. It rapped at the window like a coded message, broken and without rhythm. Desirae rolled from the bed and approached the window. The crow stopped its drumming but remained on the sill. The girl glided to her knees and stared into the beady grey eyes of the bird, over the slope of its oily beak. Desirae lifted a hand and extended it toward the window. The door behind her burst open and Desirae’s eyes shot back to it.

  “Desi, it’s time for dinner.” Lisa said as she wiped her hands in a rag.

  Desirae looked back and the bird was gone. Her eyes returned to Lisa, doe-wide. She stood with the hastened impulse of a child hiding something and Lisa saw it.

  “What are you doing, Desi?” Her eyes narrowed. Lisa walked forward and looked out the window, to the sky and to the ground.

  Desirae answered. “Nothing.” She moved around her aunt and left the bedroom.

  That evening, Lisa sat beside Desirae’s bed. She combed a soft hand through Desirae’s auburn hair as she laid in her bed. Plush white covers sat as high as her nose. Desirae’s eyes became heavy. Lisa rose and placed a gentle kiss to her forehead. She prepared to leave the room, but Desirae called out, “May I have Sam?”

  Lisa smirked and glanced to the closet. She went to the mirrored sliding door of the closet and opened it. She pulled a small plush scarecrow from deep within. The doll had long, black, stringy yarn hair and button eyes. Its mouth was a series of ‘X’s in thin black stitching. Its face and hands were a rough, burlap material. Denim overalls covered its tiny torso and brown leather boots its feet. Lisa looked at the queer, sentimental object before she gave it to her niece. The girl swept it up and tucked it into the blanket beside her. Lisa kissed her cheek and went to the door.

  “Goodnight, Desi.” Lisa’s hand settled on the light switch.

  “Goodnight.” Desirae whispered back with Sam held close.

  The light went out and the door closed. Desirae fell asleep.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Desirae shot up. Sam was gone.

  “Sam?” She cried.

  She looked to the window and found the crow. A smothering buzz of flapping wings and cawing lurched in a bassy drone behind the feathered harbinger. Desirae peeled the comforter away and swung her bare feet and pajama-clad legs from the bed. Her toes dug into the padded carpet. She adopted an unnatural grace in her trek toward the window. She did not want to disturb the creature. When she arrived at the window, her jaw fell and her mouth hung open.

  A cloud of miasmic black thickened the sky and turned a dark night into a vacuous space without stars. Her aunt’s green yard was a dusky sea that pulsated in rhythm with her frantic, young heart. She sat in a mild sanctuary at the center of a flapping tornado beyond the window. Haunting, dark birds with their violent grey eyes were the churning wind of the abysmal funnel. The crow at the window observed her shock. Her eyes drifted from the cawing cataclysm to the lone bird on the sill. She neared it. A rebellious smack of its sharp beak against the window sent a crack vertically through the thin pane. Desirae shot back and screamed for her aunt. Her voice was swallowed by the swell of the birds’ rage. The crow watched her. It cocked its black head back and prepared for another strike. Then, without apparent reason, it stopped and hopped to its right. The crow looked around Desirae. No later it flew into the mass of darkness behind it.

  Desirae sat in silence. She burst from her place on the ground and kneeled in front of the cracked window. The birds began to disperse. Something shuffled behind her. Her small hands clutched the inner sill of the window. Her curiosity took her and overcame an intensifying fear—she turned around. She kept her eyes on the carpet. She saw large, brown leather boots, soiled and stained with thick, unknown muck. Her eyes rose. She saw torn denim overalls and a checkered white and red shirt. Her eyes rose. She saw the sewn mouth and large button eyes. Her eyes rose. She saw scraggly black hair under a large brimmed straw hat. She saw Sam.

  RETURN TO THE TABLE OF CONTENTS

  At the Bottom

  The camera focused in and out. The cameraman zoomed in on the grinning face, the long, greasy hair. It was a wild man’s grin. It was uneasy.

  “Am I okay?” He had a deep voice. “Should I move?” He adjusted without recommendation.

  “No, no, Eddie. You’re fine.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Alright. This is simple. We’re just going to ask you some questions and you’re going to answer them. However you like. No stress.” The cameraman said.

  “No stress.” Eddie laughed and nodded. Sweat covered his head. He fidgeted. The red light of the camera stared at Eddie like the devil’s eye. He pulled at his collar as
the questions began.

  “Alright, Eddie. How long have you been a compulsive hoarder, would you say?”

  Eddie paused. “Five years? That’s when things…” He gestured behind him.

  The cameras followed the command of his gesture.

  Stuffed animals and board games, porcelain trinkets and trash, old magazines and newspapers, toys and gardening equipment—a large room made small. Piles of items merged into shapeless masses. The smell of trash overwhelmed the sight of it. Eddie sat in a silence so thick that he heard the spinning gears of the cameras zoom.

  “This is me.” His twisted grin faded to embarrassed solemnity. “Can we stop?”

  The cameraman looked around the camera to Eddie. He lowered the camera, but the red recording light remained lit. “Eddie, we just started. You’re gonna to have to be patient, alright?” The cameraman smiled. “I know this is hard for you.”

  Eddie shook his head. “You sure?”

  The cameraman sighed. “Work with us. Let us swing these cameras around a bit, answer some questions and we’ll get you help you need. It’ll come free of charge. Nothing out of pocket. We get a show, you get some relief, alright?”

  “Right.” Eddie’s grin returned. He combed a hand through his hair.

  The camera lifted. “Five years ago? Did something happen, Eddie? When it started?”

  Eddie nodded. “Yeah, something.”

  The cameraman stuck a thumbs up out from the side of the camera.

  “I worked as a private investigator. Small town, eh?” He coughed out an anxious laugh. Sweat ran into his eyes.

  “Yeah?” The cameraman watched Eddie during the monologue.

  “We had five kids disappear in a year. Five.” He showed five soiled fingers to the camera. His brows rose and his forehead wrinkled in a portrait of his age. “I couldn’t find anything. Nothing that year. No leads. No suspects. No kids, you know?” Eddie pulled his leg up and set his ankle at his knee. He looked away from the camera. His eyes glossed over. “I felt like in a town this small, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to fix something like that, right? Or find something. But I didn’t and I quit.”

  “Quit being an investigator?” The cameraman urged. He pointed to one of the other cameras. It began to surf the piles and stopped at a side angle near Eddie’s face.

  Eddie saw the coil and contraction of the lens as it zoomed in on his tearing eyes. He blinked the gloss away. He stared at the camera in front of him. “Yeah. I left. I saved a lot of money in the time I worked. I lived by myself mostly. I didn’t have my own kids to worry about, or a family. I felt empty, you know? Nothin’ to find anymore.” He gestured again to the mountain of nonsense behind him. “I, uh..”

  Eddie stood from the chair. The cameras backed away to catch his movements. He dug through the epidermis of the filth, tearing away tattered scraps of paper and plastic from stinking trash bags. He pulled from it a doll.

  “See this?”

  It had long, stringy red hair and a patchwork dress. The doll’s face was made of porcelain and the paint that designed its face was applied poorly. Its twisted smile and widespread eyes stared dumbly at the camera.

  “What’s a grown man doing with dolls anyway, right?” He put the doll back into the pile. “Talked to one of the parents of the kids that went missing and they said she collected dolls. Gave me that one right there.” He stared at the figure for a long time in silence. The cameras zoomed and buzzed.

  The second camera searched the room for other dolls. Dolls sat throughout, on chessboard thrones or beneath lamp cover tents. Their desperate stone faces stared forward and empty like Eddie’s. Eddie sat down.

  “I bought ‘em. Anywhere I could. Whenever I could. I thought she would have liked them, you know? I bought a lot of things that I knew they’d like. The children. It was, uh—“ He rolled his shoulders and his eyes swelled again with tears. “—kinda my way of saying sorry for not finding them in time.”

  The camera moved in for those tears. Eddie let them fall.

  “In time, Eddie? Did they find them? The children?” The cameraman asked.

  Eddie shook his head. “No. No, they didn’t.”

  “What do you think happened to them?”

  Eddie didn’t answer.

  The camera adjusted with its mechanical indifference. The cameraman tried a different question. “You blame yourself, Eddie? For them not being found?”

  Eddie peered away from the center camera to the one at his side “Yeah. I do.”

  The cameraman lowered the camera and the red light went out. Eddie released a breath he’d been holding for some time.

  “I guess we’re done here?” Eddie’s voice shook.

  “Yeah, Eddie. We’re going to look around the house a bit, alright? Just document a couple things.”

  “Document?” Eddie stood and crossed his arms. “Document’s a nice word for expose, ain’t it?” He laughed.

  “It’s alright, Eddie. If you get uncomfortable, we’ll shut down shop and continue tomorrow, okay? We’ll take it as slow as we need to. We’ve done this a hundred times. I understand it isn’t easy.”

  Eddie smirked. “You know that?”

  The cameraman grinned and put a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. He said nothing.

  Eddie followed the sound of coughing into the kitchen. There was a single path through the house that led there, a trail carved within broken chairs and burdensome pottery.

  “What’s that smell?” One of the other crew members covered his nose with his shirt.

  Eddie charged in and spoke in a hurry. “I haven’t cleaned up in here in a long time. I don’t know anymore, really. I’m sorry about that, that’s, uh—“ He pointed to the refrigerator. “I haven’t opened the fridge in months.” He tried to swallow. His mouth dried.

  The cameraman pointed to the refrigerator. “Open the fridge. Get some close-ups on the food in there. Anything rotten or expired. Plenty of footage of that.”

  Eddie jumped in front of the crew member that went toward the refrigerator. “Should I try to get something out of there first?”

  “Oh no, Eddie. Nah, we want all of that. Relax, man. It’s alright. It’s alright.”

  “Yeah, you keep saying that.” Sweat built at his head. The ball in his throat rose and fell and he smacked his lips.

  Eddie stood at the back of the kitchen while men climbed across the landscape of trash. They recorded the clogged sink. They opened cabinets stuffed with hundreds of piecemeal plate sets. There was the occasional slip of the foot and the consequential landslide. Eddie shouted like an anxious bird taught a single phrase, “Be careful, please. Be careful, please.”

  The crewmembers apologized and closed the cabinets. “Somewhere else we should go, Eddie?”

  Eddie shook his head. “Not today. Please, no more today. I need some time.”

  The cameraman looked at the crew. He nodded and gestured them out of the kitchen with the tilt of his head. “I understand. No problem. We’ll get out of your hair. We’ll be back tomorrow morning with the psychiatrist, alright? Maybe we’ll look around some more? Your bedroom, maybe?”

  Eddie nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, sounds good.”

  They left.

  When the crew arrived the next day, Eddie was outside. He wore a cheap black suit with grey pinstripes. His hair was greased back into a helmet on his head. A cigarette threatened to breathe fire at his lips. He stared at the crew’s van with a disdain thick enough to unscrew its tires.

  “Lookin’ good, Eddie! What’s the occasion?” The cameraman asked.

  Eddie ducked around the cloud of smoke. “My Momma used to say—“ He inhaled and stared through the man, “—that if you’re goin’ down, you best go lookin’ good, Eddie.” He grinned his primal grin. He rose and dropped his cigarette to the dirt. He stamped it out and it whispered a rebellious hiss. He went to the door. “Can’t get any lower than this. Goin’ down lookin’ good.”

  The cameraman stood silent a
nd dumbfounded. He scanned the crewmembers behind them before he waved them in. Again they were immersed in the stench. Again they were buried in the filth. The light of the sun outside faded away, curtained by piles of refuse clinging to the windows.

  “What’s the plan, Eddie?” The cameras scanned the alien landscape of Eddie’s apartment.

  “Someone supposed to fix me, right? Eddie asked. His back was to the camera and his eyes were on the basement door. He turned around and grinned.

  The psychiatrist arrived a few minutes after the crew. She was a pretty woman in business dress. Eddie’s eyes and the red eye of the camera followed the woman as she entered the house. She avoided the piles of refuse with a conspicuous professionalism. She focused on Eddie like a hawk on a small rodent.

  “You must be Eddie.” There was a trained enthusiasm in her voice. “I’m Doctor Gregory.” She extended a hand to him.

  Eddie took her hand a shook it. His handshake rattled a few strands of his hair to the front of his face, hair that he swept back after he stepped away.

  “I’m a clinical psychiatrist, specializing in cases of OCD and extreme hoarding.”

  “Like a crazy-people doctor then.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, Eddie. I help people with disorders, like yourself. We’re here to help you, alright? Now, why don’t you tell me a little bit about what’s going on here?”

  “I was kinda hoping you were going to tell me something about that, miss.”

  He explained his situation. The kids. The investigative work. The failure. She listened affirmatively. Her head bobbed like a dash board character. She smiled and showed pretty white teeth. Straight. Orderly. Organized.

  “Well, it’s apparent that Eddie has suffered some sort of serious trauma as result of his investigative work. He wishes to make things right. Unfortunately, the struggle has resulted in a severe hoarding case. It’s a sanitary issue. It’s a mental health issue. It’s caused strain on his personal relationships.” The psychiatrist said.

  The camera centered on Eddie.

  “I look alright?” He asked as he adjusted his suit.

  “Yeah, Eddie. You look great. Now Eddie, when was the last time you had someone over?” The cameraman asked.

  Eddie leaned back into his seat. He placed a hand on each of his knees. “It’s been years. I had a girlfriend when this started. Wasn’t easy on us. Things didn’t work out. How could it? Some times were worse than others.”

  “Do you think she would be interested in an interview with us, Eddie? We like to interview ex-girlfriends, family members. They add to the whole scene, you know? Speaks to the sickness.” The cameraman said.

  Eddie sat stunned. “Oh, no. No, I don’t think so.” Eddie’s eyes shot around. “Have you seen my glass of water?”

  The cameraman shook his head.

  “She’s been gone a long time. I don’t know where she is. It’s too much for her.” He shrugged. His head swiveled as he searched for his water.

  The psychiatrist winced as she listened. She gestured to him. “How would you say her leaving changed things, Eddie, if at all?”

  Eddie stopped looking and watched the psychiatrist. His eyes squinted as the red light of the camera beamed at him like an alien probe. “It didn’t make things better, Doc. I could dwell, you know? I could dwell on it and let it eat me up and take up more space in my life. I don’t have any more space.” He opened his hands and motioned to the clutter around them. “I kept things that reminded me of her. They’re here and there and, you know.” He laughed desperately.

  No one else laughed. The camera buzzed.

  “We going into the bedroom?” Eddie asked.

  “That’s the plan.” The cameraman said.

  Eddie tugged on his shirt collar “I look alright?”

  “Real nice, Eddie.” The psychiatrist assured with a faint smile.

  Eddie slicked back his greasy hair and puffed a breath out like a revving engine. He approached the door of the bedroom and placed his hand on the brass knob. He opened the door.

  A sudden distinct smell permeated the air around Eddie and the crew like a black miasmic poison gas that was indescribable and instinctually threatening. Everyone covered their noses except for Eddie. They descended the stairs. Eddie pulled on a ball-bearing lanyard coated in cobwebs and a dim light filled the space.

  “I sleep down here most of the time. I keep it dark.” Eddie said.

  Firetrucks and dolls and xylophones and coloring books littered the stairwell. In the center of the stairs was a narrow path for passage.

  “I’m seeing a lot of the toys you mentioned collecting down here. Is there a reason you keep these items closer to where you sleep?” The psychiatrist asked.

  Eddie nodded as they reached the base of the stairs. Toys, dolls, bicycles, train sets and a large canopy bed fit for a princess sat in the center of the room. The pink, silk obscuration draped from the high posts of the bed. The crew paused in a silent reverie of the sight. The cameras were lowered for some time before being shot up like a gun in a pistol battle. The red light beamed on and stared with a mechanical bewilderment.

  The psychiatrist’s mouth opened and closed in speechlessness.

  “Is that bed yours, Eddie?” The cameraman asked.

  Eddie looked back. “Do I look alright?”

  No one answered. Eddie stepped toward the bed with his arms swinging dramatically like a sinister circus ringleader. “I got a problem with collecting things. A big problem.” He pulled the drapery aside and revealed six corpses, five of which were those of children, dried and dead, with leathery skin sunken and rippled at their skeletal faces, with shrunken, withered eyes that observed the camera crew with macabre diffidence. An adult female with two absent sockets for eyes and curled, dried lips smiled in the midst of her post-mortem companions and completed a sinister family photo-op, devilish and unnatural.

  The doctor threw her hands up and rushed out of the room. She shoved away the stunned camera crew and screamed: “Oh my god! Oh my god!” Her echo faded up the stairs and through the house.

  Most of the crew fled in her wake. The cameraman remained. His head leaned out from behind the camera and studied the figures on the bed with a hung jaw and wide eyes.

  Eddie gestured to the figures on the bed. “If you’re goin’ down, you best go lookin’ good, Eddie.” He reached under the stained mattress and pulled out a revolver.

  The cameraman lowered the recording camera. “Whoa, whoa, Eddie. Eddie, calm down. Calm down. No need for any—“

  The cameraman didn’t finish the statement before Eddie cut him off. “When you finally find something this precious, it’s just hard to get rid of.” He shrugged. “You understand, right?” He asked.

  “Eddie…”

  Eddie put the gun to his head.

  “Eddie don’t.”

  “This is the only way out from the bottom.”

  “Eddie!”

  He pulled the trigger. The judgmental stare camera’s red light lingered with indifference. The camera whirred and buzzed with excitement.

  RETURN TO THE TABLE OF CONTENTS