by Aaron Polson
Chapter 17: The Sub-basement
“Daddy!” Owen’s voice blasted through the night and jarred his father awake. Charlie Pinder rolled over and read the time on his bedside alarm clock. Too damn early.
“Aww,” Charlie muttered, “the kid always wakes me up…she can sleep through anything…” Megan mumbled in her sleep, her hair a tangle of dark blue in the moonlight.
“Daddy!”
Charlie flopped his feet over the edge of the bed and brought them in contact with the cold hardwood floor. Behind him, Megan stirred but remained in a deep slumber, a slight hint of smile dusted across her lips. Charlie stumbled through the dark into Owen’s bedroom.
“What is it buddy?” he whispered. Owen’s small face glowed green from his nightlight with a shining streak down his cheek.
“Is there anything scary?” Owen whimpered.
Charlie knelt down next to Owen’s bed. “No way buddy.” Charlie said.
“The man in the basement said there was lots to be scared of.”
Charlie blinked. “Who?”
“The man in the basement.” Owen wiped a sleeve across his face. “Where does grandpa live?”
Charlie rubbed his forehead. “Grandpa lives in Cleveland, buddy.” He pulled the comforter up to Owen’s chin.
“The man said he was grandpa.”
Charlie sighed. “You and me will go talk to him, together, in the morning. Okay?”
“Yeah…goodnight.”
Pushing himself from the floor, Charlie padded across the hall.
“He okay?” Megan asked, propped on one elbow.
“Fine. He’s fine.” Charlie slipped into bed. “Asked about Grandpa. Says he talked to him in the basement.”
Megan chuckled. “Right. My dad’s in Cleveland.”
“I told him. At least the kid has an imagination.”
Silence swallowed a few moments. Megan turned to Charlie. “You don’t think he’s talking about your dad?”
“That bum took off twenty-five years ago.” Charlie shook his head. “Told Mom he was going out for a pack of cigarettes. Stupid bastard.”
“Mmm-humm. Goodnight.”
Charlie stared at the ceiling for fifteen minutes. Sleep wasn’t coming back so easily. “Megs, I’m a little restless, gonna watch some TV.”
“Make sure you come back,” she muttered, half asleep.
He hopped to the floor. “Funny.” A nice glass of milk. That’ll help me sleep. He walked to the kitchen, poured a glass, and listened. The house was still, only the occasional groaning of old wood and whispering ventilation. Charlie stood at the sink with his glass of milk, imagining people in the dark shadows outside. Nonsense.
But—it won’t hurt to check.
After swallowing the last few gulps of milk, Charlie hurried down the basement stairs. All was quiet, a deep blue silence that hung like old drapes over everything. He flicked on a light and squinted with the bright flare. The room smelled different. Old. A memory sputtered in Charlie’s brain.
He worked his way around the basement, past the unused exercise machine, the ancient console TV, the stacks of boxes—books that never made it out after their last move. He stooped and snagged a book from the nearest one, held it to his nose, and inhaled. No. The basement smell was different the musty odor of old paper. My basement, back home—the old house on Lindbergh. Charlie shuddered at the sudden memory.
In the laundry room he found a door. Pulling his pajama collar against the cold, his feet nearly frozen to the concrete, Charlie stepped closer. Funny, I don’t remember... One hand touched the knob; the brass was warm, out of place. He turned the knob and pulled the door open without thinking. A few feeble rays of light poked through the doorway, but couldn’t really penetrate the black veil.
He found himself through the door before having the thought to go in. Devoured by a new darkness, a more complete quiet, Charlie Pinder said “hello” to puncture the silence.
“Thank God, Charlie.” The voice was raw, wet and raspy. An old man’s voice. Charlie felt a boney hand clasp his arm. “Free at last,” the voice said. The hand released him. Charlie heard a door click shut. The room fell to black again.
Charlie waited for a moment. His eyes did not adjust; no tiny beam of light streamed in to reveal his prison. After a while, he groped about on his hands and knees, touching the edges of the room, finding each corner, wall, and crevice. The door was gone. He sat down.
Someone will come and find me.
Chapter 18: Unchecked Expansion
The sound of breaking glass yanks Curt from his sleep. Bolting upright in bed, he turns to face Gail, her eyes also blown wide with surprise.
"Downstairs," he mutters.
She nods.
"A burglar?"
"Maybe," she whispers. Without taking her eyes from her husband, she fumbles for the cell phone on the nightstand beside her. "911..."
Curt hops out of bed.
"Curt," she pleads.
"I have to check." His scowl says too much: Three tours in Iraq and I come home to some scumbag in my own home. There's your freedom. He ignores her voice chattering into the phone. At the top of the stairs he pauses and listens for another sound. Nothing. The house is cold.
Too cold.
Curt takes the stairs one at a time, his ears ready the whole time. He wishes for the 9mm in his nightstand drawer, the one Gail isn't fond of, especially loaded with a four-year-old in the house.
He hears the other sound when he reaches the first floor. Wind?
The thing is on the kitchen floor, swollen and blue, stretching across the room. The small table they'd inherited from her parents is clearly broken, smashed under the thing's weight. One leg juts out at a strange angle. The kitchen window above the sink is broken, and chill breeze cuts through the opening.
Curt spies a slip of cardboard on the floor, approaches carefully and picks it up. The blue thing undulates like jelly after someone taps the side of the jar. He can almost hear it breathe.
The slip of cardboard is from the package. They'd bought the Magic Growth Sponge at the checkstand earlier that day to keep Sophia quiet. She'd begged; he'd given in. It was supposed to grow into a cow after soaking in water. A fucking cow.
Curt read the label in the dim moonlight: Continuous Growth.
The thing swells...
"Bring the gun, Gail."
Chapter 19: Thaw
He woke from the dream and immediately rolled over to find her, but she was gone. His hand found damp sheets and a soaked mattress.
"Molly?" His heart thrum-thrummed in his chest, and he feared the silent house would be the only answer.
"In the kitchen," she called.
He hopped from the bed, nearly skidding into the wall when his socks slipped on the hardwood.
She was there, standing at the kitchen window, her white arms folded across her chest.
"I had a dream." He reached out and touched her shoulder. His eyes sank to the puddle on the floor at her feet. "I was worried about this."
Her eyes, walnut brown so dark they often looked black, stayed on the window. "Nothing's melting out there."
He pulled his hand back. He'd expected a puff of frost as she spoke, but nothing. His mouth opened and closed while he tried to find the right words. "Look--don't go. I'll turn off the heat.
Wear my coat. Just--just don't leave me, okay?"
Chapter 20: Ten Years Late
Millie woke to a clacking sound, a rhythmic tic-tic-tic-tic outside her window.
"Jerry?"
The shape next to her mumbles and rolls over. "Mmmmm."
Millie slides out of bed, flinches when her feet touch the cold wooden floor, and goes to the window. She parts the blinds. Sunlight forces her back for a moment, but her eyes adjust. What she sees drives a spike through her already hangover-addled skull.
The street below is devoid of cars. Now covered with ruddy cobblestones, she traces it to the distance and finds the source of the sound: a
black carriage, polished to a high gloss, pulled by two horses.
"Jerry. My God. It's happened."
"Mmm...what?"
Millie's mouth hangs open but her tongue can't form around the three little syllables: Y-2-K.
Chapter 21: The Ox-Cart Man
Until we were twelve years old, Billy Wilson and I searched for the Ox-Cart Man during our summer vacations in New Hampshire. Our searches grew over the years, adding new technology and techniques to find the worn path where that phantom supposedly trekked home from the Portsmouth market.
That last summer was very special—we both knew it would be our last chance to find the old road and maybe catch a glimpse of the Ox-Cart Man together. Billy’s dad was being transferred to California, and I would have to reconnoiter the Piscataqua River valley alone, climbing over rock and stone, through old forests, and near quietly murmuring streams for a hint of the legend. We pledged to find him that year.
Billy collected anything to do with the Ox-Cart Man—scraps of stories in old newspapers, books of regional ghost stories, pictures of lost throughways, bridges, and foundations of homes that time pushed aside. He constructed a map of the region, complete with every reported sighting.
I snuck out of my house on that last night. Both of us traveled by bicycle, dangerous in the dark, but stealthy too.
“I’ve learned some new stuff,” he said, eyes glowing like silver embers under the moon. “Mom drove me to the library in Portsmouth today. They have a whole new local folklore section.”
We slid off our bikes near an old crossroads.
“All the stories corroborate, he was shot by some highwaymen. He was on his way home from the market after bartering all his family’s goods, even the ox and cart.” Billy snapped on a flashlight and ducked under a sycamore branch.
“Okay, we know that bit,” I said, tromping after him.
Billy stopped, turned, and smiled. “There’s a part of the legend I’d never heard before. His son left looking for him after the Ox-Cart Man didn’t return. The son never came home, either.”
A chill breeze danced through the trees.
“They say his son is still looking for him,” Billy whispered. “He was our age.” He nudged me with a knobby elbow. “His name was William.”
We found a spot where the old path dipped low beside a dying stream. Billy’s notes indicated this might have been the location the Ox-Cart Man met his fate. I felt a little childish when fear crept in my chest; Billy needed some closure on his own childhood—he needed some verification of his beliefs.
The moon shifted back toward the morning horizon, filtering long streams of pale light through the light forest. The night smelled black: the rich smell of mud and old moss. Billy and I kept the vigil in silence. Then he arrived, shimmering like a morning fog.
The Ox Cart Man looked more solid than I’d expected. He loped with a steady gait, a pole over his shoulder holding a black kettle. His face was drawn, long and rimmed with a reddish beard, just like the legends said. The man wore a rough cotton shirt and black coat. His feet struck the ground with no sound but the light brush of breeze.
Billy stood up. I remember the burning in my arms and legs—the tingling nerves. I wanted to stop him, but all I could do was watch as my friend walked toward the Ox Cart Man.
The man stopped, regarding Billy. He knelt after a moment, smiling. I heard a voice—not from the specter but in my head, William? Billy nodded. The Ox Cart Man reached inside his black kettle and pulled out a small candy, wintergreen so the stories told, and offered it to Billy.
They stood for a few minutes in silence until finally without a look back, Billy walked away with the Ox Cart Man. I could do nothing but sit with throbbing heart as the father and son vanished into the trees, fading like the mist.
Chapter 22: Crenshaw’s Gift
Little Ralphie hugs the package to his chest and shakes it back and forth. The contents rattle, a muted clatter-clatter.
"It's so big," he says, smile beaming.
Mom leans over to Dad and lowers her voice to a whisper. "Legos, right?"
Dad shakes his head while Ralphie strips the paper from the large box.
"Well...it's big. Almost as big as the boy." She frowns. "Tinker Toys?"
Head shake.
"Lincoln Logs?"
Head shake.
"All right...I give."
Ralphie yanks open the end of the box. "Whoa..."
Dad smiles. "Remember old man Crenshaw down the street?"
Ralphie tips the box and the contents tumble to the floor in a noisy, off-white pile. The skull, round and empty, falls out last.
Mom frowns and covers her mouth with one hand. "My god..."
"Don't worry honey. I bleached 'em clean." Dad looks at Ralphie. "Careful boy--there's no spare bits in there. A real one-of-a-kind set."
Chapter 23: Better Lessons
Stefan found the monkey hiding under a dumpster in the alley behind the Caleta Hotel. He was a scrawny Barbary Macaque with matted, clumpy hair. Lost and hungry. Stefan, himself a little lost and hungry in a different sense, lured him with a biscuit. He smiled as the monkey’s fingers, long and pink and trembling, snatched the treat from his hand. Crumbs tumbled from his busy mouth.
“You’re quick with those fingers. Far away from the Ape’s Den or the tunnels, too.” Stefan hoisted the monkey on his shoulder. “We’ll call you Yanko for God is gracious to poor Stefan. We can have a good business, you and I.”
Yanko learned the quiet art of the pickpocket, and took to thievery like it was oxygen. The pair worked the crowds of tourists: Europeans and Americans rapt by Gibraltar’s stark beauty and the mobs of Yanko’s cousins, delightful in their comfort with humans and comic antics. Stefan’s purse grew, swelled with wallets, jewelry, and watches liberated by Yanko’s hungry fingers, and the two pirates lived with impunity in a hostel room, anonymous and safe. Who could name the thieves from an island of grinning monkeys?
Stefan often whispered stories from his beloved Romania at night, drifting off with words still tumbling from his lips. “Perhaps, some day we will go, you and I,” he would say. He mentioned his wife and daughter, holding his finger and thumb together to indicate the gold locket his precious Sofia wore. “A heart with a picture of sweet Florica tucked inside. My little flower,” Stefan said, his voice rattling with time and memory.
“I was too young to be a papa. Too young and too hungry.”
Stefan fell asleep with the image of Sofia in his eyes. He woke alone in the dark of early morning and searched for his friend. Yanko returned after dawn, still lean despite his fill of biscuits and fruit and nuts for weeks. His tiny fingers clutched a heavy gold chain and fat broach bright with diamonds.
“You’ve fallen in love with the thrill, little one.” Stefan smiled. “Have you been hopping ledges of the Caleta again, creeping through sleepers’ open windows to have at their luggage?”
Yanko chattered, his eyes glittering and black, pink fingers pressed against the treasure until his knuckles turned white.
On the second morning Yanko crouched in the center of an array of gems and heirlooms laid out in rows on Stefan’s dresser. His pink hands rested on his knees.
“All from one night’s haul?” Stefan’s smile wavered. “Success has made you greedy, my friend. We must take caution. You’ll be caught…maybe worse.” He patted the monkey’s hairy head. “But with this,” Stefan’s hand swept over the cache, “we can live like kings, little one.”
Stefan brushed the treasures into a wooden box and stashed it under the bed.
Yanko waited at the windowsill on the third morning. A thin, gold chain trailed from his paw. The monkey pulled his closed paw to his chest as Stefan approached.
“What is it?”
Pink fingers unfolded. In the middle of Yanko’s palm lay a tiny heart of gold.
“A locket?” Stefan’s heart pinched against his ribcage.
Yanko held his prize forward.
�
�It’s like…it’s like my Sofia’s,” Stefan said, picking up the locket with one hand and touching the opposite to his throat. “I can see against the skin of her neck.” Stefan fumbled with the clasp and pried it open.
“I thought…perhaps…” Stefan raised his eyes from the empty locket. The window stood open, and Yanko was gone.