by R. L. Naquin
Felix rubbed his stomach and grimaced. “I need to hit the medicine cabinet for some antacid first. See you tonight, Radley.”
“Sweet dreams, Felix.” Radley scooted under the bed and disappeared with the dust bunnies. A few minutes later, Felix stepped into the closet and shut the door behind him.
At six a.m., the alarm clock went off, and the Bangles blared out their odd observance of how very Egyptian everyone seemed to be walking.
Amy stretched and kissed her husband’s cheek. “I had the most beautiful dreams.”
Devon rubbed his eyes and yawned. “I slept like a rock. I didn’t dream at all.”
“Bargain Basement”
This is a pretty old story. Several years ago, I had it in my head to turn it into a novel, but I never made it past the third chapter. However, the basic idea driving this story keeps finding its way in one shape or another into a lot of my other books and shorts. By the time I get a chance to revisit this story as a novel, I may have already used it all up elsewhere.
I should have guessed something was screwy the day we moved in. How long it took me to figure it out is an unfair measurement of my intelligence. Things that are so far removed from our comfort zones and experiences are difficult to comprehend and impossible to guess. I thought we scored a great price on the house.
“Where do you want these?” the mover asked me. I’d planted myself near the front door so I could direct traffic. He was a big guy in his mid-forties. A bit sweaty for the mild weather, but then I wasn’t hauling boxes and furniture. According to his damp shirt, his name was Roger.
I checked the numbers on the boxes he carried and consulted my list. “In the basement,” I said. “That’s Christmas stuff. Put it up against the far wall away from any other boxes. The previous owners left some boxes they haven’t picked up yet.”
Roger nodded. I watched his sweat plop on the carton containing my mother’s antique Italian nativity scene. He clumped down the hallway, and I turned my attention to the next load. I checked the items off as they came through and gave instructions: bedroom, office, bedroom, dining room. Roger came back, still sweating on Christmas. He looked baffled.
“Where’s the basement?” he asked.
I started to point, but realized the next load would be a few minutes. My sofa was lodged in the doorframe and showed no sign of wanting to budge. “Let me show you.”
I led him back down the hall and opened the first door on the left. Reaching in, I flipped the light switch and backed out of his way.
Roger stood looking at me, dumbfounded. He mopped his forehead on the shoulder of his shirt, leaving a smudge. “Ma’am, I swear I looked in there,” he said. “I thought it was a coat closet.”
I tried to reassure him that he wasn’t stupid. “It happens,” I said with a shrug. “I always get turned around in a new house. With the light off, it probably looked like a closet. Don’t worry about it. We’ll leave the door open.”
He didn’t look entirely convinced as he disappeared down the stairs.
By the time Danny came home, the movers had been gone for hours. I’d managed to put most of the kitchen in order, and the bedroom was fit for sleeping. Otherwise, the house was a hedge-maze of boxes and stacked furniture, and I felt certain I would turn a corner and find a huge wedge of cartoon Swiss cheese in the middle of the floor. I was half buried in a box marked “bathroom” digging for the shower curtain, when he burst through the door carrying a bottle of champagne and a bag of take-out Chinese. I’ve never loved him more.
Over dinner, I amused him with the story of our couch wedged in the front door. “It took them ten minutes to figure out the right angle,” I said. “In the end, they had to unscrew the feet.”
“Any casualties?” he asked. “Did we lose a Ming vase or puncture our Picasso?”
I grimaced. “If you’ve stashed a Ming vase or a Picasso in one of these boxes, maybe you should’ve clued me in. So far, I’ve lost three drinking glasses and a casserole lid. Not even worth filling out the claim forms. I’ll check on my tiara and scepter tomorrow, my lord.” I rose and gave him a curtsey, piling plates and silverware to take into the kitchen. “I’m thinking of keeping all my royal valuables in the basement. If thieves are anything like our movers today, they’ll never find their way down there.”
“They couldn’t find the basement?”
“No. I had to show it to them and leave the door open. Some weird depth perception thing with the light off, I guess. He looked embarrassed. He swore he’d looked and only found a closet.”
Danny went quiet, his forehead creased in thought. I touched his sleeve. “Hey,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. It’s just that Dave said the same thing when he came to look at the place last week. He couldn’t find the door to the basement. Said it was a closet before I opened it for him.”
~*~
I spent the next week moving boxes from room to room, pulling things out, putting things back in. Each day the maze of cartons looked a little more like a home. At last, the only boxes I had left were the ones I had to take downstairs to be stored. I put it off until last more because I hate stairs than any creepy feeling I had for the basement. I didn’t believe for a minute there was anything weird going on. I admit, occasionally I passed the door in the hallway and shot my hand out, yanked the door open, and peeked down the stairs. I tried relaxing the muscles in my eyes until the doorway went fuzzy to see if maybe I could make it look like a coat closet. Nope. It never looked like anything but a stairway.
I flipped the lights and grabbed a load of boxes. The wooden stairs were sturdy but narrow, and I had to step carefully to avoid misjudging my footing. I piled my cartons on top of the ones the movers had placed the week before and took a look. The basement was a huge, underground room, stuffy and dank, but well lit by overhead lights. Our belongings were along the far wall, but not alone. Boxes and furniture were stacked in every corner in neat, carefully labeled piles. We’d never met the previous owners, but the realtor had asked if we could store a few things for them until they were settled. It would only be for a few weeks. We didn’t mind. I hadn’t realized how much they were leaving behind, though.
I went up for a second load and brought it down, craning my neck to see the labels on the other boxes: “Christmas,” “Baby Stuff,” “Personals,” “Old Paperwork.” Whoa. Personals. That was hard to resist. Stop it, I chided myself. We were doing a favor for someone and they trusted us not to snoop in their stuff. I went for a third load and brought it down, making sure it was stacked where it couldn’t be mixed with someone else’s “Personals.”
Oh hell. What could it hurt?
I nudged the foreign box with my toe and looked around, as if anyone else would be watching me in my own basement. I peeled back one box flap and peered in. The flaps were tucked over and under to lock them in place, so pulling one up only gave me a peek at what was in there. Huh. Looked like porn. I tugged a little harder, trying to find the best view without actually opening it. All the corners sprang loose at once. I jumped back and looked around, like my mother might be watching, wagging her finger in reprimand. I felt stupid. My house. Nobody home but me.
I crouched down to flip through the magazines and books. Someone had some kinky tastes. At the bottom, I found a large leather collar with a tag that said “Misty” on it. Coupled with the owner’s taste in magazines, I assumed “Misty” was not a dog.
The phone rang upstairs and I eyed the box with a guilty conscience. I’d have to leave it until I came back down. I sprinted up the stairs, closed the door and ran around the house searching for my cell—I never leave it in the same place twice.
After an hour-long conversation with my mother (she was not, in fact, wagging her finger at me in the basement. She was still in Tulsa, four hours away), I remembered to eat some lunch. By the time I came back to the basement, over two hours had passed. Clutching the last pile of storage in one arm and the rickety handrail w
ith the other, I clambered down the stairs.
The “Personals” box was closed up tight.
My eyes darted around the room, and I turned full circle. No one was there. My stomach flipped, and the hair on my arms and the back of my neck lifted. Scrambling up the stairs, I didn’t pause to put out the light. I slammed the door shut behind me and leaned against it to catch my breath. This is stupid, I thought. Nobody’s been in the house. I had the wrong box. There was so much stuff down there, it would be easy to mistake one box for another. I rubbed my forehead with a shaky fingertip.
“Get a grip.” I dropped the boxes on the floor.
It took me two days to find the nerve to go back, and I made sure Danny was upstairs within earshot. I didn’t tell him what had happened. I felt stupid enough without sharing.
The lights were still on and that was reassuring. I knew I hadn’t turned them off on my way out. I stood on the top step, arms full, with my head cocked to the side listening. Nope. Not a sound. I crept down the steps and peered in, noting the empty shadows. Piling my load on the teetering stack, I inspected the room. The box marked “Personals” was still closed. Nothing else seemed disturbed. Maybe we had a ghost who was either sexually insecure or obsessed with the privacy of others. A little creepy, but nothing threatening.
Danny popped his head in the doorway, and I jumped. “You want me to order pizza, babe?” he asked.
I nodded, feeling silly. “Get breadsticks.”
I thought my voice sounded a little shaky, but he didn’t seem to notice. He pulled his head back out and shut the door. There I was, alone, in a potentially haunted basement, and he shut the door. I took a deep breath and tried not to succumb to irrational panic. Almost immediately, the door opened again.
Obviously, I’d expected my husband. I was mistaken.
I wasn’t the only one who had difficulty navigating those narrow stairs. A woman in her mid-sixties came down sideways. She wore white sneakers and baggy jeans with those little socks with the pom-poms peeking out. I didn’t think they made those anymore. Her bedazzled floral T-shirt was tucked neatly into her elastic waistband, and she carried a large pile of fluffy sweaters in her arms. Halfway down the stairs she noticed me staring up at her. Her face split in a grin.
“Oh, you’re here!” she said. “How wonderful! I was hoping I’d be the first to meet you, and here you are.” She picked her way down the rest of the stairs and hurried over to me.
I was puzzled and glanced up at the closed door above us. “Did my husband let you in?” I asked.
She patted me on the arm. “No, dear. I came through my door.”
“Your door.” I said. “Are we neighbors?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” She crossed to a section of boxes in a corner and opened a carton marked “Winter.” Carefully placing the sweaters inside, she squashed them down with one hand and tried without success to fold the flaps over with the other. Feeling a bit like Alice in Wonderland, I helped her fight the sweaters until they were nestled safely away.
“So,” I said, waving my hand around the basement. “All this stuff is yours. When will you be coming to get it?”
“Oh, no. Just what’s in this corner. See the little “H” on all the boxes? Those are ours. “H” for Holdstadt. But you can call me Gloria.”
She paused and it took me a moment in my lost state to understand she was waiting for a response. “Jennifer,” I said, automatically sticking my hand out. She squeezed it with both of hers, then only let go with one, in order to indicate the various groupings around the room.
“That corner is the Campbell area. They keep to themselves, mostly, but if you ever hear kids down here, that’s them. Then over here we have William’s belongings.” Still clutching my hand, she pulled closer and lowered her voice. “You need to stay out of his things, dear. We all poke into a box or two at first, before we know what’s going on, but you want to stay out of his filth. He’s very touchy if he thinks something’s been moved. I might not always be the first down here to close up the boxes, you know.”
I blinked at her. Emotions jostled my brain, crowding for attention. I didn’t know which to feel first. I was relieved my basement wasn’t haunted. Mortified this sweet lady had caught me poking through someone else’s stuff—and it was porn. Furious she’d been in my house, uninvited. Confused my basement seemed to be a multi-family storage unit. I took a deep breath but it didn’t help.
“I can see you’re confused. Did you buy your house from a short man, dark hair, walked with a limp?”
I nodded.
“When we bought ours, fifteen years ago, he called himself Ben Swindleman. What’s he calling himself now?”
“His name is Barney Huxter.” I frowned, feeling a headache growing in my skull. “What’s that got to do with it?”
Gloria looked at her watch. “I really don’t have time to explain all this right now, Jennifer. I have a pie in the oven upstairs and I need to pull it out before it burns.” She looked at her watch again and shuffled to the steps. “I’ll meet you back here at seven o’clock tonight. Bring your husband, dear and I’ll bring my George.” She hurried up the stairs and paused halfway, turning back. “What time zone are you in?”
“Central,” I said, drawing the word out like I was talking to an idiot.
“Eight, then,” she said. “Eight o’clock your time.” She reached the door and turned to face me again. “One more thing. Keep this door closed. When you leave it open, we’re locked out. The day you moved, in I couldn’t get the door open all day long.” Then she went through the door and closed it behind her. I ran up the stairs two at a time, risking my safety all the way, threw open the door, and nearly hit Danny in the face.
“Pizza’s here,” he said. “But I guess you heard it. Are you all right, Jen?”
“Did you see her?” I asked.
“Yeah. I gave her a good tip, too. She’ll need to deliver a lot of pizzas to pay off those breast implants.”
I gave him a blank stare. “What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I need a beer with my pizza,” I said.
~*~
We kept an eye on the basement door and, when 8:00 pm came around, we were hesitant to go downstairs right away. If people were tracking through our house, we wanted to catch them at it. We also wondered if we should bring some sort of protection, like a baseball bat. At least Danny took me seriously. He may not have understood what was going on, but he never doubted my sanity. I did enough of that on my own.
We went down ten minutes late and unarmed. Gloria seemed harmless, so how threatening could her husband be? Danny went first, taking the stairs with confidence while I closed the door and trailed behind. In theory, the basement should be empty, since no one but us came through the hallway upstairs. In reality, there were five faces turned up, watching us descend. Several folding metal chairs had been set in a circle, and everyone seemed to be milling around a table of food. I could smell pie.
The minute our feet hit the floor, Gloria broke from the herd and pounced on us.
“Jennifer!” she said, beaming and looping her arm through mine.
“This is Danny,” I said. I placed my free hand in his and examined his face. He didn’t look well. He was pasty and looked lost. I knew how he felt.
Our hostess had us well under her control, bustling us to the center of the room for introductions. “This is my George,” she said.
George was a pleasant, grandfatherly type, smelling of pipe tobacco and peppermints. We shook his offered hand and made the mild, meaningless greeting noises of human strangers. He stepped aside, and Gloria introduced us to William Decker, a tall man with a receding hairline, short-sleeved dress shirt, and banana-yellow “power tie.”
“Great to meet you both, Dan,” William said, pumping our hands with a ferocity worthy of a politician up for re-election. “Great to have new blood in the basement, if you take my meaning. How’s your port
folio looking these days, Dan?”
“Oh for God’s sake, Bill, give it a rest.” A man with kind, hazel eyes stepped forward and shook our hands. He had a firm, decisive grip. “I’m Ted Campbell,” he said. “And this is my wife, Grace.” Ted and his wife were opposites. She was small and delicate with dark eyes and mousy hair, while he was large and sturdy with a shock of hair like shoe polish.
Grace gave a shy, welcoming smile, but said nothing.
“I know this is all a surprise,” Ted said, escorting us to a pair of folding chairs. “It wasn’t long ago Grace and I were the new ones, so I know how crazy all this seems. Have a seat and we’ll try to explain it.”
We murmured our thanks and sat, feeling awkward and vulnerable. Plates of cherry pie and cups of coffee appeared in our hands. I wanted to object, demand answers and cry out in anger, but the entire situation seemed so normal. I had no idea how to react. Danny was in the same state. We did the only thing we could do: we ate our pie, and we listened.
It seemed we’d been the most recent mark in a real estate scam. Our agent, Mr. Huxter, (Swindleman, Conner, Scammington) sold us a house with a large basement and gave us a great price, only charging a little extra for the substantial, underground basement. A comparable house with such a large basement would normally go for a great deal more.
“If you go to City Hall,” Ted said, “you’ll find the original plans for your house didn’t include a basement. It’s just not there.”
“That’s crazy,” Danny said. “We’re sitting in it right now. There is a basement in this house.”
Ted nodded. “There’s a basement, but it’s not in your house. Where do you live, Danny?”
Danny blinked, not understanding the question. “We live upstairs.”
“No,” William said, pulling out his wallet. “What city? What state?”
“Lawrence, Kansas,” Danny said. “What are you trying to say here?”
William crossed the circle of chairs and stood in front of us, brandishing his business card. “My house is right upstairs, too,” he said.