by Brian Hodge
"Exit point," Watson said, never breaking his stride even when he approached what looked like an impenetrable wall of foliage. Dodging and ducking, he moved silently through the woods as if he was without substance.
"You mean for the little brothers?" Kip asked. Watson grunted, and Kip took that to mean yes.
"How many are there? Exit points, I mean," Kip asked after another minute or two of silent walking. They were still walking toward exactly where Kip feared they were going. His mind screamed at Watson to turn in his tracks and take him back up the hill, anywhere, as long as it was away from where they were headed.
"No way of knowin'," Watson said. "They dig new ones every time they come up from underground. I've been keeping track of as many of 'em as I find, but that's damned near impossible. I can't get around like I used to. But if what I think is right, you'll see something that'll make lemonade in your pants."
"Great," Kip said, bending low beneath a swaying pine bough. Pine pollen sifted down onto his head and arms like fine mustard powder.
"D'you know anythin' 'bout this land where your father's buildin' his house?" Watson asked.
Kip couldn't tell if there really was a change in the tone of Watson's voice, but he thought he detected a threatening undercurrent to it, like the low-throated sound of the wind during a winter storm. He shrugged, then quickly swatted at a mosquito that strafed his face. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"D'you remember when I saw you out there last week? Remember what I said?" Watson asked.
Kip chuckled, and for the first time, Watson paused and looked around. His eyebrows shot up with the unvoiced question... What's so damned funny? Sunlight shattered by the leaves overhead made his face ripple with energy.
"You mean when you asked us who really owns the land? God, you scared the crap out of me." Kip sniffed again with laughter. "I thought you were crazy and was gonna kill us both."
Watson kept staring at Kip as though measuring him up against some yardstick Kip had no awareness of. The old man's brow wrinkled with concentration, and his dark eyes had a hint of fire that made Kip wonder if he really might be insane.
"My—umm, my dad said you might be—not really dangerous, but—he said he thought you might have been drinking."
A tight smile lifted the corners of Watson's mouth. "You might say I'd had a drop or two that day." He smacked his lips and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. "'N I have to admit, all this hikin's giving me a bit of a thirst right now. But have yah thought any more 'bout what I asked yah?"
Kip shrugged, shifting his feet nervously under Watson's intense stare.
Watson smacked his lips. "Now d'yah have a little better idea what I was talkin' about?"
"You mean the little brothers?" A strange, sinking feeling hit Kip's stomach like he'd swallowed an ice cube whole. For a second, he thought he was going to throw up.
"Of course I mean the little brothers," Watson said. "Your mother was killed when she was cleaning brush outta that old cellar hole."
Waves of darkness nibbled at the edges of Kip's mind, but by concentrating, by telling himself he knew—now—what was in that darkness, he was able to hold it back, if only just a little.
"See," Watson said. "That was your father's first mistake, decidin' to build on the old cellar hole. You don't know nothin' 'bout the house that was there before, do yah?"
Kip glanced at the ground. "Not really. I heard stories and stuff from around school."
"Like what?"
Kip shrugged. "You know... the kind of stuff kids always talk about. Like the house belonged to a witch or something a long time ago, and that people from town burned it one night, and the witch was killed in the fire. Stuff like that."
"Of course, you didn't believe any of it, right?"
"I dunno," Kip said, shrugging and shifting nervously from one foot to the other. "I mean, it's just stories, but then after my mo—"
His voice choked off, and he looked away in embarrassment.
"After your mother was killed," Watson said, continuing for him. "You started wondering how much of it might be true after all because of what you saw, right?"
Kip's agitation was growing by the second. He brought his hand up to cover his mouth so he wouldn't start screaming.
"What you saw that day made you think maybe those stories were true... maybe that place—that cellar hole—might really be haunted. Right?"
Kip nodded, a quick up-and-down jerking motion that hurt his neck.
"Do you think maybe you understand a little better what you might've seen that day?" Watson asked.
There was gentleness and concern in his voice that genuinely surprised and warmed Kip. When he looked at Watson, he saw him in an almost entirely different way. His craggy face and flinty eyes had softened, and what Kip had once seen as harsh indifference or detachment from the world now seemed to be touched by a warm caring that was so intense it was inexpressible.
"I don't know what I saw," Kip said, shaking his head. He was on the verge of tears, but the steadiness and strength he sensed in Watson helped bear him up.
"Well?" Watson said. "I can show you something in that cellar hole that'll maybe make you realize them stories might not be so far off. You think you can handle it?"
Kip realized he was gnawing on his lower lip, pondering everything Watson said. The darkness in his mind was getting stronger... blacker.
"We ain't got much time." Watson glanced at the sky. Already the shadows under the trees were deepening. "Once the sun's down, I don't wanna be anywhere near this place."
Kip shuddered as he took a deep breath and clenched his fists. "Yeah," he said, "I'm ready."
"Come on, then," Watson said, and he started along the path again, ducking beneath low-hanging branches.
After a few minutes, they broke out of the woods at the house site at the same spot where Watson had emerged the day he had surprised Kip and his father. The sun threw their long, distorted shadows down the hill.
Kip's eyes were drawn to the stakes his father had driven into the ground to mark the rough limits of the house and driveway. Nailed to the top of each stake were strips of orange surveyor's tape that fluttered like pennants in the breeze. They looked somehow small and insignificant.
"This way," Watson said, making directly for the cellar hole.
Kip couldn't help but hang back, but slowly—step by step—he forced himself to move closer.
The edges of the cellar hole were weather-rounded and covered by weeds and small brush. A few scraggly saplings thrust their top branches up above ground level out of the hole. The hole itself was a dark rectangle in the ground. As he came closer, Kip kept telling himself that's all it was, just a hole in the ground.
But Kip thought it looked more like a freshly dug grave of gigantic proportions, and he had the courage to get even this close only because Watson was leading the way. He stopped in his tracks when he got close enough so he could look down and see the hard-packed dirt floor.
"Come on," Watson said. He was standing at the edge of the hole when he turned to look at Kip. Without waiting for Kip's response, he flexed his knees and then jumped down into the hole. His head disappeared in a blink, and Kip's first impression was that Watson had gone.
Vanished.
If he ever found the courage to go to the edge of the foundation hole and look down, he'd see...
Nothing.
Watson grunted loudly when he hit the ground, so Kip knew he was still there, just out of sight. Still, Kip had to fight back the panicked thought that before he could bring himself to the foundation edge, he would hear a throat-tearing scream, and sharp, yellowed claws would reach out of the darkness, and slash Watson to shreds.
"Com'on, boy. Get on down here!" Watson called out.
Feeling like his bladder was about to burst, Kip sidled up to the edge and looked down. Smiling widely, Watson looked up and waved him on down.
It had been five years ago... five years since he'd had the courage to come e
ven this close, and now Watson—a drunken, old, crazy Indian—wanted him to get down inside there, into the hole where something had exploded out of the darkness, and—
In a flash, another memory came rushing back to him.
It was nothing anyone in his family ever spoke of, but he remembered now that his mother's funeral had been closed casket.
Had she really been torn apart so badly even the mortician's magic couldn't restore her well enough for anyone to see her, to look at her one last time?
"Right over here," Watson called out, his voice slicing through to Kip's awareness. "Get on down here!"
Watson walked to the far end of the cellar hole. "See how this part of the old cellar wall is built different here? Not like the other three walls. See how these stones are bigger and more rounded? And the mortar between 'em is a different color."
Kip nodded but still couldn't screw up his courage enough to actually jump down. His eyes darted around as he tried to put all of his memories into some kind of rational order.
—Where was she standing when they got her?
—Where had he first seen her, lying on the ground, just a tangle of pink meat?
—Where had her blood splattered, and how many rains and snows had it taken to wash it all away?
—And when her shirt sleeve had flown through the air and landed at his feet...
"Oh, shit... No," Kip whimpered as he looked around, frantic for help. "No!"
It hadn't been just her shirt! his mind screamed.
He didn't know if the sound he was making was loud enough to be heard or not.
Her arm... Her arm had still been in the shirt sleeve!
"This brush here, see? It's covering something."
Watson seemed not the least bit aware of Kip's rising panic as he walked over to the side of the wall and started to pull aside the branches that had grown up. After a few minutes work, Kip saw that he had exposed something that in the gathering gloom looked like a doorframe. A rough-cut timber lintel was set in the wall, and various rotting planks had been nailed across the front, sealing off the doorway.
"This is one of them exit points I was tellin' yah about." Watson kicked some more of the brush aside, then stood back from his work, panting as he wiped his forearm across his brow.
"That's just the cellar door to the house that used to be here," Kip said. His voice sounded an octave or two too high. He knelt on the edge of the cellar hole and cautiously started to lower himself down into it. His back scraped against the side, starting a minor avalanche of dirt and rocks, and he couldn't help but think there might not be a cellar floor. Maybe—if he jumped—he would fall and never hit bottom. He'd just fall... and fall... and fall... forever.
But at last his feet hit solid ground, and weak-kneed, he started walking toward Watson.
"These timbers and this wall've been here for two hundred years at least," Watson said as he ran his fingers along the edges of the gray-weathered boards nailed across the front. It looked to Kip as though several layers of boards sealed the doorway. Some of the exposed wood had rotted away, and Watson's fingernails pried into it, removing small chunks as he probed.
"What are you doing?" Kip asked, struggling for control of his voice. He cast a longing look at the edge of the cellar hole above him. The sky seemed to be further away than it should. The trees, swaying in the wind high overhead, had that same weird sense of distance that Kip got whenever he viewed something through a telescope.
"I want you to see where this leads," Watson said. He wiggled his fingers beneath one of the boards and, bracing himself, leaned back, pulling hard. At first, nothing happened. The board didn't even budge. But with more effort, the loud, complaining sound of rusted nails yielding filled the cellar hole. It hurt Kip's ears, making him wince.
"Just the... the cellar door... right?" he said. "It used to lead up some steps to a bulkhead." He no longer even pretended he could control the tremor in his voice.
"Goes down. Not up," Watson said, grunting with effort. "I never even suspected this was here 'til I checked around after your mother died. A couple of weeks after that, I came back out and sealed it off as best I could."
At last, the nails gave to the steady pressure Watson was applying. The old man almost fell backward with the sudden release of resistance. After he caught his balance, he tossed the board aside, wedged his fingers under another, and started to pull back on it.
"Okay, I believe you," Kip said. He clenched his fists so tightly his wrists began to ache up to his elbows.
Another board came loose, a little easier this time, Kip thought. The screech of nails pulling from the wood drove into his head like a dentist's drill, but he found that he couldn't turn away. He tried not to imagine some of the possibilities of what could be behind that door. He considered leaving, just climbing out of that cellar hole and running away as fast as he could.
Let Watson mess around all he wanted to down here.
Let him face whatever's behind that doorway.
"Watch the nails on that one," Watson said as he tossed the board down on the ground next to the other one and then continuing to work more boards loose.
"You know you don't have to do this," Kip said. "I mean, if you're just doing this to prove these little brothers are real... you don't have to. I believe you."
"Watch," Watson commanded. Grasping another board, he put one foot up on the doorjamb and pulled back. The board came free in his hand a little easier, and it joined the pile of others on the ground.
Kip's pulse was hammering in his ears like a drum as he watched Watson pull the board off, one by one. Once the outer layer was gone, the inner boards came off faster, easier. Before long, the pile of wood behind Watson was knee-high. Quickly, he yanked off a couple more boards, but then he stopped and stepped back quickly, almost tripping over the pile of boards.
"Holy shit," he muttered. He bent down and picked up one of the smaller pieces of wood, gripping it like a baseball bat. "You see that?"
"What?" Kip asked, his voice twisting off into a high-pitched squeak.
"Take a look." Watson pointed at the doorway with the board he was holding. "Watch out. Not too close."
Kip thought his knees were going to give out on him as he took one... two... three steps closer to the door. His heart was racing so hard and fast it made his vision jump with each beat. A vagrant breeze blew into the cellar hole, dancing like icy fingers along the back of his neck.
The sun had long since seeped out of the cellar hole, but Kip hadn't registered the gradual change until now. Everything was shrouded in darkness as he stared at the doorway, but his eyes could just barely penetrate the darkness. It was as if a stain, a wash of black ink covered the rocks and wood.
But then his eyes finally adjusted, and Kip did see something.
"What the—" he managed to say, even as his throat closed off.
Several layers of wood still covered the doorway, but in places where the doorway was open, it looked like—
That's impossible! Kip's mind screamed. It can't be real!
But there was something...something alive behind those slats of wood!
The longer he started at it, the more his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and the easier it was to make out faces.
"Jesus!" he shouted. "What is it?"
"It's them," Watson said softly, edging nearer to Kip and still holding the board up like a weapon. "What I been telling you about."
Kip could finally make them out. First one, then two, and then so many faces he couldn't begin to count them.
They pressed up against the remaining boards, jammed and packed in so tightly their faces were distorted so they blended together. Their eyes were dull, staring, lamp-like globes, and their claws—thick, yellowed, and curved—slowly flexed open and closed. They made harsh rasping sounds against the wood, and the creatures—whatever they were—were making low squeaking noises.
Like rats, Kip thought.
They stirred, and the sounds rose l
ouder, grating Kip's ears. And as he watched, he saw the entire mass of untcigahunk moving, seething. Their tangled arms and legs twined slowly around, making them look like one solid, pulsating mass. Their mouths opened and closed, showing rows of needle-sharp teeth. The wood blocking the doorway creaked and bulged outward from their weight, and it seemed not nearly strong enough to keep them back for long.
But it was their eyes, their eyes that horrified Kip. Steady, unblinking, and full of hungry evil.
"Are they... are they dying or something?" Kip asked, not daring to look away from them to see how Watson was handling all of this. He didn't feel very secure, even knowing that the man was standing beside him.
"No, they ain't dying," Watson said softly. "They just ain't fully awake yet." He glanced up at the dwindling sunlight and took a deep breath. "Night's when they wake up and come out. Even this little bit of daylight is enough to keep 'em at bay. Livin' underground most of the time, their eyes can't adjust to light as fast as ours can. 'Course, that means we can't see in the dark as well as they can, either."
The longer he stared at the tangled mass of untcigahunk, the more Kip began to realize that these things really were what he had seen five years ago. These things had come pouring out of the ancient doorway when his mother was down in here clearing brush. They had swarmed all over her and had torn her to pieces, and all he had been able to do was stand there on the edge of the cellar hole and watch.
"Check this out," Watson said, as he fished a book of matches from his shirt pocket. He passed the board he was holding to Kip, then tore off a match and struck it. The match flared into life with a sputter, and Watson used it to touch off the whole pack. When the brilliant orange blossom of flame erupted in his hand, he held it close to the faces in the doorway.
The effect was instantaneous and terrifying. In the hissing glare of fire, the untcigahunk squirmed and writhed. Their ratlike squeaks rose shrill and loud until the foundation echoed with the sound. They blinked their eyes and turned away, trying to shut out the light as their claws, twitching shut in hard spasms, made loud clicking sounds against the wood.
Frantic, they pushed against the wooden barrier, reaching out through the gaps between boards. Kip was sure he could read what was in all of their minds. It was reflected in the cold hatred he saw in their eyes.