Buried in the Basement

by Brian Harmon

  Desperate, she turned, dropping the dress, and began pounding on the wall of the motel room. She screamed for help, begging at the top of her lungs, again and again.

  But no one came.

  Behind her, Roger slowly quieted, his screams growing weaker and weaker. He was rapidly leaving her and still no one would help her, though she cried out with all her might.

  Eventually, she stopped pounding and simply leaned against the wall. “Please,” she begged again, no longer loud enough to be heard through the wall. It was now just a hopeless prayer. At some point she had begun to cry. Tears streamed down her face. “Please… He’s dying…”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, as if forcing out the light would also force out the awful reality. Her face contorted into a tortured grimace as she fought the pain in her heart. She tried to take a breath, but when she let it out, it brought with it a long wail of despair.

  Slowly, she turned her back to the wall, her eyes still closed, trying to catch her breath through the hiccupping sobs that ravaged her shuddering body. She already knew he was dead. She didn’t want to look. But she had to.

  When her eyes finally opened and she looked upon the smoking corpse of her adored Roger, she lost control all over again. Overcome with anguish, she wailed at the horrible scene before her. He stared up at the ceiling with dead, milky eyes. His lips and nose were blistered from the heat and flames. The smooth flesh of his belly and chest, which she had so yearningly kissed only a few short hours ago, was dry and cracked and blackened, like the splitting rind of a roasting pig.

  Slowly, as if deflating, Wendy slid down the wallpaper to the floor. Her cries caught for a moment in her throat as hysterical sorrow twisted her face into a ghastly visage of grief. She tried to say his name, but only a painful creak escaped her throat.

  Smoke continued to rise from Roger’s body and the reek of his burnt flesh threatened to suffocate her. But she did not know what to do. There was nowhere to go and no one would come to her aid.

  On the bed, Roger’s body burst into flames with a loud “whoosh” that startled another choked scream from her.

  “No…” she moaned between heaving sobs. She tore her eyes away from him, unable to watch him burn.

  Suddenly, the window shattered, wrenching yet another scream from her raw throat. Broken glass rained down on her bare legs and a hot wind rushed through the curtains and across her tear-streaked face.

  Wendy stared into the inferno beyond the window, her eyes wide with terror. She could not stop weeping, even as a dark silhouette waded through the fire and approached the window.

  She reached for something to cover her naked body and found the white dress on the floor beside her. She clutched it against her, her eyes fixed on the dark figure as it placed its smoldering hands on the window sill and stared in at her. Even among all those flames, it remained featureless. It was shaped like a man, but she could see no face. It had no eyes or mouth.

  And yet she somehow knew that it was grinning at her.

  On the floor, the shards of glass that had been strewn between her and the window began to tremble. She lowered her eyes from the stranger and watched as one long sliver rose into the air and hovered, a wicked point jutting toward her.

  Her heart thundered in her chest. No, she thought. No. Please, just go away. Leave me alone. Another tear slid from her wide eye and made its way down her wet face.

  Like a tiny arrow, the sliver of glass shot forward and buried itself deep in the soft flesh of her right cheek. She cried out, more in surprise than in pain, as the coppery taste of her blood began to fill her mouth. She could actually feel the tip of the shard between her teeth. With a trembling hand, she grasped the end that jutted out from her face and pulled. She felt a sharp jolt of pain as it withdrew, and then she was holding it before her eyes, mesmerized by the glistening smear of blood.

  Several more slivers lifted from the floor and hovered before her. She stared at them for a moment, horrified, and then turned her eyes to the monster at the window. She wanted to ask why, but she knew it would not answer her.

  Another sliver bit into her right arm. A third pierced the dress and sank into the soft flesh of her belly. Another glanced off her temple. She dropped the dress and lifted her hands to protect her face. More glass pierced her upraised arms. She felt them strike her belly. A sharp pain blossomed at her left nipple. Something stung her right kneecap. Another sank into the tender sole of her bare foot.

  She began to scream again as shard after shard rose from the floor and flew at her, each one sailing faster and sinking deeper. She tried to turn away, but she only exposed more of her body to the piercing glass. A particularly painful one embedded itself deep in her ear.

  She begged it to stop, her voice shrill, shrieking. But it went on and on.

  She tried to crawl away, but the glass in her bloody hands and knees dug only deeper.

  The white dress fell from her lap, drenched with blood as she writhed on the floor, unable to escape the glass that pierced her flesh again and again.

  The pain spread like fire across her body. Soon, her flesh was in bloody tatters. More and more glass passed between her hands and fingers, biting into her pretty face.

  Gradually, her screams quieted as exhaustion eventually overcame her. She could no longer hold her arms up, could no longer defend herself. She slowly rolled to her side, her entire body screaming with agony. Broken glass filled her belly and she could feel it grinding within her. Blood bubbled in her throat with each breath she took.

  And yet she continued to suffer. Minutes passed like hours as waves of agony filled her. She squirmed weakly on the blood-soaked carpet, moaning for mercy while her body was slowly carved to pieces.

  In the final moments of her life, as she lost the strength to even squirm, she thought of Roger and how for all that she loved him, she had been unable to protect him.

  A final, bloody tear rolled from her remaining eye as the world finally dissolved into oblivion.

  * * *

  Roger awoke and sat up in his bed. His heart felt as though it would explode within his chest. His hand instinctively went to Wendy’s breast. He felt her gentle heartbeat and relaxed. She was still with him. But for how long?

  His eyes swept across the walls, where several shadows moved with restless silence.

  “You’ll never wake up,” said a horrible voice. “Never.”

  His eyes drifted to the window, where the gold and crimson flames danced in the endless ocean of fire.

  * * *

  Roger awoke with a shout and sat upright in his motel bed. An icy chill washed over his naked skin and his heart thundered in his chest. For a moment, he was engulfed in crippling terror. But the images of the nightmare were already fading, unraveling into confusing snippets of thoughts until he could no longer remember what had frightened him.

  Children in the Dark

  The darkness was as absolute as his fear. It engulfed him, squeezing him until he felt he would suffocate in its black embrace. His eyes strained to see, but the cavernous shadows refused to allow him even the sight of his own trembling hands. The only sounds to touch his ears were the hammering of his heart and the quivering of his breath. He could not imagine what this place could be, had never in his life even dreamt that there could exist a place so utterly black and silent, except perhaps within a buried coffin.

  Almost as terrible as the darkness was the confusion. He had no idea where he was or how he came to be lost in this darkness. Disoriented, he struggled to grasp the slippery feeling in his head, the fleeting connection between sensation and reality. He was confused by his blindness, by the eerie stillness, by the coolness of the air and the smell of musty concrete and stale, dusty places, but most of all he was confused by the fear, the icy panic that made him shiver all over, the unexplained terror that gripped him, that had made him shrink to the floor with his back pressed against a wall and his knees clutched against his trembling chin.

  Was it only the
darkness that terrified him? As frightening as the mysterious blackness was, he didn’t think so. If he could only remember how he’d gotten here, maybe he could remember why he was so desperately afraid. Somewhere, locked within him, must be the memory of how he came to be in this place, but he was unable to remember anything of his immediate past. He remembered that his name was Kyle Alters and that his mother’s name was Gail and his father’s was also Kyle. He remembered that his fifth grade teacher was Mrs. Courtney and that when school let out for the summer his grandparents were taking him and his parents and his aunt and uncle and two cousins to Disney World. He remembered his address and his dog, Jumper, and where his mom hid the Christmas presents, but the entire day, perhaps the entire week or even month, were completely gone, his most recent memories as hazy as his most distant.

  He had no way of knowing how long he’d been hiding in this strange place, cowering all alone in the dense darkness, and might have continued to sit there for hours more had he not heard the weeping. It drifted to him through the emptiness, distant, soft, muffled by unseen walls. At first the sound frightened him, but as he listened to the childlike sobbing, it slowly calmed him. It even gave him strength. There was someone else in this dark place, someone every bit as frightened as he was.

  If he could find that other person, then neither of them would be alone anymore. And he desperately wanted to no longer be alone.

  He stood up, his back still pressed against the cold wall, his ears alert for the slightest sound of movement, eyes wide open, but still utterly blind. His heart pounded, but he forced himself to move, guiding himself along the wall, feeling his way along the cold brick, around the corner of the small and mysterious room until he found the door.

  He had feared that he would find himself locked inside this black room, but the door stood wide open. Beyond it was another room, one that felt considerably larger than the one he’d just left.

  This place was some sort of enormous building, a school perhaps, or maybe a large store. But it was empty. Its walls were cold, naked cinderblock. It had a musky odor, like an unused basement, moldy and deserted. It was pitch black, cavernous, without a hint of light.

  He kept one hand on the wall and the other out in front of him, feeling for unseen obstacles in his path. He felt certain that at any moment a cold hand would reach out of the blackness and grab him. And when it did, he was sure he would instantly fall dead from fright.

  Drawing on every drop of his courage to keep himself moving, he focused neither on the darkness nor on the mysterious building in which he was trapped, but on the pitiful weeping.

  He felt desperately sad for whoever was there. He wanted to call out, to say that he was coming, but he dared not. He was afraid that if he called out, something in the darkness would hear him and that it would cross the blackness and seize him. The thought was not entirely irrational, after all, since he knew nothing of where he was or how he’d come to be here, so he firmly clenched his chattering teeth and pushed on, feeling his way around the corner of the room.

  It was about now that he realized that his ankle hurt. It was a dull sort of pain, an aching stiffness that he could not remember ever feeling before. Had he twisted it during the unremembered events that brought him to this place? He wondered if he was brought here against his will. He couldn’t imagine wandering inside a place like this on his own. Had he put up a fight? And what became of his captors? Why would someone bring him to a place like this and then just leave him to roam free in the dark?

  After what felt like a terribly long time, he found another doorway and another cavernous room beyond it, but this area was different. There was a hint of light here, emanating from a door at the far corner. Releasing his grip on the wall, he started across the middle of the room toward the visible doorway, eager to enter whatever light he could find. But halfway across the room he stopped. The weeping was not coming from that way. It came from the other corner, the one on the far right. To find who was there, he would have to venture back into the empty darkness.

  He wanted desperately to bolt for the light, to be free from the darkness, perhaps even find an escape from this whole, mysterious place. The last thing he wanted was to venture deeper into the shadows. But he couldn’t just leave whoever was crying.

  He hesitated, not sure why he should feel so strongly. It might be better to just go, to run away and find help. But he could not simply leave. If not for that weeping, after all, he would not have even gained the courage to get up off the floor and find his way to this light.

  Bracing himself, he hurried across the empty room to the dark corner and felt his way along the wall until he found another doorway. There was a narrow hallway here, leading right and then turning to the left.

  There was light here too, he realized. He turned the corner at the end of the narrow corridor and saw that it opened onto a much wider hallway. Directly across from him was yet another doorway. The light was coming from a window inside that room and so was the crying, which he now recognized as the soft sobbing of a girl.

  He saw her as he entered the room, curled up on the floor directly beneath a small window, very much as he had been sitting as he first became aware of his situation. For a brief instant, she looked not like a child at all but a grown woman weeping like a child, but that was only a trick of the shadows. As he approached, he saw that she was his own age, no older than eleven. She was very pretty, dressed in khaki shorts and a simple white blouse. She had long, dark hair and a sweet, round face. Her eyes were closed and Kyle could see the streaks her tears had left on her cheeks.

  “Hello?”

  The girl opened her eyes and stared at him, surprised, and Kyle stared back at her, unsure what to say to her.

  After a moment, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. He noticed as she did this that she smeared her makeup and he wondered why she was wearing makeup at all. She was just a girl, after all. She didn’t need it. It looked kind of silly on her.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I’m Kyle Alters.”

  “Do you know the way out of here?”

  Kyle shook his head. “I don’t remember getting in.”

  “Me either. I don’t remember anything. I was just…” She began to sob again, her fear overwhelming. “I don’t remember the last thing I was doing! I was just here!”

  Kyle stood there for a moment, feeling awkward, not knowing what to do. Finally, he walked over to where she sat and knelt beside her. He was instantly swallowed in her arms and he held her, speechless. He was surprised by how unafraid her tears made him, and by how grown up and strong it made him feel to hold her like this. It felt so right, somehow, so encouraging.

  At last, after a minute or two, the girl regained control and pulled away from him, embarrassed. “I’m Catherine Ness. Everyone calls me Cat. I’m sorry I cried on your shirt.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “How did we get here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Cat looked at her watch, a small, gold-colored piece with a thin, leather band. Its face glowed softly in the darkness. “It’s almost two in the morning,” she observed. “My mom’s going to have a horse!”

  Kyle Chuckled. “Does she do that often?”

  She looked at him, puzzled, then giggled when she understood. “Yeah. Every now and then.”

  They both laughed, their spirits lifted, and then, almost immediately, they lapsed into thoughtful silence. The humor had overpowered the fear for a moment, but they still needed to find a way out of this strange place.

  “How are we going to get out of here?” Cat asked, voicing the question that ran through Kyle’s head like a broken record. “I tried the window but it doesn’t open and there’s nothing to break it with. Besides, we’re up too high.”

  “We must’ve gotten in somehow. Do you remember anything at all?”

  “Not a thing. It’s like I just woke up and I was here.” She gazed at him with the most pitiful look he had ever s
een. “It was really scary.”

  “Yeah. Me too. There must be a door somewhere. We’ll have to look for it.” He started to stand up, but Cat grabbed his arm and then hugged him fiercely.

  “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Kyle blushed in the moonlight. “I’m glad you’re here too, Cat.”

  She held on for a moment, but finally relinquished her grip on him and stood up.

  A noise rose from the stillness beyond the doorway, a sound like hurried footsteps on concrete. It lasted only a moment, and then was gone.

  “What was that?” Cat asked. The panic in her eyes was unmistakable even in the darkness. She stood frozen, her voice a bare whisper.

  “I don’t know,” Kyle confessed.

  “Where did it come from?”

  “Somewhere close.”

  The two of them stood listening for a long time, too afraid to move, their eyes fixed on the open door. But the sound did not come again. The Building remained silent.

  “Come on,” Kyle urged. “We should get out of here.”

  Cat nodded. “Yes, please.”

  When they stepped out into the hallway, Kyle’s first thought was of the other light source, the one he’d left behind to find Cat. He felt his way across the hall and through the narrow corridor to the door that would take him back into that large room.

  “What is this place?” she asked as she stepped into the open room behind him

  “I don’t know.” He took her by the hand and began leading her toward the softly glowing doorway on the far right. As soon as he did this, a strange, muffled noise rose from the darkness very close to them.

  “Did you hear that?” Cat asked, her voice practically squeaking with fright.

  “Yeah.”

  “What was it?”

  “No idea.”

  “It sounded like it was right next to us.”

  Kyle nodded. It was a strange noise. A high-pitched, stuttering sort of sound.

  “I’m scared.”