by John Inman
“I don’t know, Sam. I don’t have any more answers than you do. Maybe we should take the boy out of the house completely. The three of us could get a motel room some—”
“No way. I’m not leaving. You can take Timmy and go if you want, but I’m staying. I have to find out what happened here. I mean, if you’ll let me. After all, it’s your house.” We took a step closer to the door and gazed down the basement steps. All we could see was darkness. I still didn’t know what we thought we were looking for.
Sam faced me, gripping my shoulders. He lowered his voice. “Jason, I trust what Bugs—what my brother just told the boy. Timmy will be safe. We’ll watch him like a hawk during the day, and at night, he’ll sleep in my bed. I’m sleeping with you anyway. Don’t go to a motel. Both of you stay here. All right? Timmy will be safe. I know he will. Between you, me, and Paul, we won’t let anything happen to him. Together, we’ll get it all sorted out once and for all.”
“I admire your passion and persistence, Sam, but I don’t know what you think we’ll be able to sort out.”
He tore his eyes from mine and peered down the steps again. “Actually, neither do I.”
I hated asking my next question. It made me feel like a traitor to my family, to my… sister. But somebody had to ask it. “Do you think we should call the police?”
Sam gawked at me for a moment, then threw his head back and laughed. He wasn’t faking it either. It was an honest-to-God belly laugh.
When he regained control of himself, he wiped happy tears off his face and pulled me into his arms. “You’re a funny guy, Jason. Maybe that’s why I love you.”
While I adored being in Sam’s arms and listening to him say he loved me, I could live without the sarcasm.
Faintly, I could hear Timmy moving around in the upstairs bathroom.
I leaned in to whisper in Sam’s ear. “And here all this time I thought you loved me for my dick.”
“That too,” he whispered back, brushing my mouth with his lips. “And your ass is rather likeable as well. But as for calling the cops, I think I’ll let you handle that by yourself if that’s the route you want to take. I’d rather you be the one to explain to them why you think your house is haunted and why the lights go on and off all by themselves and why your stove thinks it’s a flame thrower and why your phone wails like an ambulance every time your sister calls and why Bugs Bunny talks to us directly from the TV like a smarmy televangelist trying to save our miserable souls.”
I considered all that. “Hmm. Yes. I see your point. Maybe I should forget about the cops.”
Sam didn’t sound surprised. “I thought you might.”
We heard a rumble in the darkness below. Or was it a growl?
A chill shot up my spine.
I quickly closed the basement door and latched it shut. Taking a step back, I gave Sam an embarrassed glance. “Just closing the door is all. I’m not scared or anything.”
“N-no, of course not,” Sam stammered. “What’s to be scared about? Just a little noise.”
We eyed the basement door for a couple of beats, then Sam cleared his throat.
“Is it too early for a drink? I think maybe I’d like to have a drink. Unless you think it’s too early for a drink.” It was seven thirty in the morning.
“Not at all,” I said. “A drink sounds great. A beer okay?”
“You bet. Maybe even two.”
“Two it is.”
We headed for the fridge.
TIMMY AND I were just back from walking (and carrying) Thumper around the neighborhood. We traipsed through the house looking for Sam. When we finally found him, he gave us a guilty smile.
“Where the hell did you get that?” I asked. “And what do you think are you going to do with it?”
Sam compounded the guilty smile with a guilty shrug. “Found it. Thought it might come in handy.”
He was standing in the middle of the basement floor holding a sledgehammer. The sledgehammer was so heavy the veins on Sam’s neck were sticking out. Try as I might, I could not see that sledgehammer portending anything good.
Timmy was standing beside me at the top of the basement stairs. He was still cradling Thumper in his arms. The veins on Timmy’s neck were sticking out just like Sam’s. Plus his face was red with the effort of lugging Thumper around. Thumper needed to lose a few pounds. Or learn to walk.
“Big hammer,” Timmy said.
Thumper agreed. “Ruuff!”
“Oh, hell no!” I flatly stated. “You are not taking a sledgehammer to my house!”
Sam dumped the sledgehammer in the corner with a crash. “Geez, it was just a thought.”
I harrumphed and Timmy giggled. He always giggled when I harrumphed. Thumper dropped her head over Timmy’s arm and immediately fell sound asleep.
“Are we cleaning the basement again?” Timmy asked, clumping carefully down the stairs, trying not to trip or drop the dog. On the bottom step, he turned and gazed up at me. “Are you gonna wear your clown clothes again? That was funny.”
I glowered at him. Then I glowered at Sam. “Don’t ask,” I said, heading him off at the pass. “And no, Samuel, they were not clown clothes. Per se.”
Not knowing what I was talking about anyway, Sam turned away to stare at what was quickly becoming his own personal nemesis. The brick wall that stretched from one end of my basement to the other. He eyed it up and down and sideways. Then he studied the other three walls, which were unpainted concrete block. Those three walls had the tiny windows at ground level. The brick wall on the east side didn’t.
Growing more confused by the second and wondering what he was up to, I watched Sam pace off the width of the basement.
“What are you doing?”
“Measuring,” he said.
When he was finished, he moved to the security door leading to the backyard. He unlocked the door and climbed the steps into the raging sunshine. I followed. Sam paced off the width of the house from the outside.
“Didn’t you just do that?” I asked.
He nodded, not answering because he was counting paces in his head.
When he was finished, he just stood there for a moment, rubbing a leaf on my orange tree between finger and thumb while he thought things over.
Then he paced off the house again.
“You’re driving me nuts, Sam. Please explain to me what it is you are doing.”
When he had finished measuring the width of the house for the second time, he aimed his eyes at me. He opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t. Abruptly, he turned on his heel and rounded the opposite corner of the house. Again, I followed.
I walked up behind him and laid my hand on his shoulder. He was staring down at the little basement windows.
“Windows,” he said.
I wondered if I had anything like an Advil around the place. “Yes, Sam. Windows. So what?”
“This is the east side of the house.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I know.” I hooked my thumb over my shoulder and aimed it behind me. “The sun rises over there.”
His gorgeous lips tweaked their way into a smirk, making me want to kiss them. “Don’t be a wise-ass,” he said.
“Sorry,” I responded. Although I wasn’t sorry at all. I liked being a wise-ass.
His gaze skittered away from me, and he eyed Timmy, who was running across the yard with Thumper nipping at his heels. Apparently, the mutt had woken up. He was howling with laughter as he ran. Timmy, not the dog. Although the dog looked happy too.
Sam waited until I turned away from Timmy and focused on him again.
“The brick wall in your basement is on the east side.”
“Yes, Sam. I know.”
“And this is the east side of the house.”
“I know that too.”
“There are basement windows on this side of the house.”
“They’re all around the house. What’s your point?”
Sam tilted his head and stared at me so long I was
beginning to wonder if I had something unfortunate hanging out of my nose.
Then I blinked. A realization germinated.
Sam’s face brightened in a smile. “There it is.” He chuckled. “It’s soaking in.”
I stared down at the basement windows. “Wait a minute,” I said. “There aren’t any windows on the east side of the basement. It’s just—”
Sam finished the sentence for me. “—brick wall?”
I nodded. “Brick wall.”
SAM AND I stood staring at the brick wall, which was quickly becoming a major force of contention in both our lives. Timmy was under the stairs rooting through boxes again. Thumper was once more asleep on the blanket in the corner. Thumper was a firm believer in the therapeutic value of naps. Timmy wasn’t. I suspected the only sure way to get him to take a nap would be to shoot him with a tranq gun.
“So where are the windows?” Sam asked.
I shook my head. “’Tis a puzzlement.”
“More to the point, oh King,” Sam said. “Where’s the other six feet of your house?”
I studied his face. “What do you mean?”
“Pace it off yourself, Jason. The exterior of the house is six feet wider than the width of your basement. So where did the other six feet go?”
I did a slow 360-degree turn, checking out the walls, windows, everything. Sam was right. It looked too small. And how could I never have noticed there were windows only on three sides? Was I blind?
I gazed up at the unfinished raftered ceiling with its tangle of wires and pipes and cobwebs stretching from one side of the house to the other. I let my gaze travel across the ceiling to the stairs leading up to the service porch. Directly above my head was the kitchen.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“You said Paul and Sally did all the work in the basement, right?”
I tried to think back. “Yeah, I think so. I mean, not them personally, but they had it done. Some of it may even have been done after Paul disappeared. In fact, I’m pretty sure the brick wall was done later. Prior to her selling the house to me. The building inspector must have made it a condition of the sale. Like I told you the other day, the house’s foundation needed bolstering. When I bought the house, that was one of the big selling points I kept hearing from the Realtor. That the foundation had been upgraded. It’s an old house. Things need upgrading once in a while.”
Sam nodded. “Did you ever see the basement before it was upgraded?”
I thought back. “I must have. I was here a lot. Visiting. Paul had barbecues in the backyard. I helped them move in.” I cast another cockeyed glare at the brick wall. “But I don’t remember when the wall was put in. And I don’t remember how the basement looked before the wall was put in. Although I do remember the furnace was sort of freestanding, away from the walls. Probably safer that way because of the potential for a fire.”
“But now it’s snug against the new brick wall,” Sam noted.
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
“So,” Sam pondered. “What do you suppose is behind the wall? Six feet of nothing? Why would they seal it off?”
I tried to think. Had Sally ever explained anything about that to me? I was sure she hadn’t. And now I thought about it, I had to wonder why. There must have been a reason to block off all that extra storage room. A six-foot swath times the length of the house must add up to a couple hundred square feet of floor space. Why throw it away?
Unless she was trying to conceal something.
I felt a chill as I stood there staring at that damn wall. When Sam sidled up beside me and I felt his hand come up to cup the back of my neck, I jumped.
He cast me a knowing look. “You feel it too, don’t you? You feel creeped out.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t feel anything.”
I was lying through my teeth, and Sam knew it.
He smiled an unbelieving smile. “Whatever you say.”
It took me a moment to realize he was holding the sledgehammer in his hand again. He had it resting on the floor, propped against his leg.
“Give me that,” I said.
“Soitainly.” He grinned, handing me the hammer with a grunt.
I hefted it in my hands. It weighed a ton. I wondered if I was man enough to wield it.
“What are you going to do?” Sam asked, as if he didn’t know.
I gave him a cocky leer. Propping the hammer between my feet, I spit in my hands like Paul Bunyan with his trusty axe.
And just like Paul Bunyan, I said, “Stand back, babe. This may get messy.”
Sam stepped away, placing himself between me and Timmy, just in case the kid came exploring.
I threw the sledgehammer up to my shoulder and thought, Holy fuck this thing is heavy! I chose a spot in the middle of the room, well away from the furnace. Sam saw where I was headed, and ducked in before me to drag a couple of boxes out of the way.
Praying to God I wouldn’t make a complete and utter fool of myself in front of the man I loved and the nephew I adored, I roundhoused that sledgehammer with every ounce of force I could muster. The first collision with the wall made my bones clatter from my jaw all the way down to my toes, but it failed to do any noticeable damage to the wall. When my bones stopped rattling, I figured my skeleton was considerably rearranged from the way it was when I started, but since everything still seemed to be operational, I swung the sledgehammer again.
A chip of brick about the size of a pencil eraser snapped off the wall. It flew across the basement and plinked against an old mirror leaning against the wall.
Well crap. Talk about an anticlimax.
I was already sweating like a steam engine. My shirt was stuck to my back, and Timmy was giggling in the background. I was afraid to look at Sam in case he was giggling too.
“Hit it harder,” Timmy said.
“Yeah, put some back into it,” Sam chimed in.
I growled at them both.
My third swing of the sledgehammer didn’t do any further damage to the wall, but it damn near killed me. I dragged the hammer over to the stairs and plopped myself down. I pulled my T-shirt over my head and used it to blot the sweat off my face. Then I examined the palm of my hand. Great. I’d been working for less than a minute, and I already had a blister.
“We need to think this over,” I proclaimed.
Timmy clapped his hands. “Goody, Uncle Jason’s gonna think!”
Wise-guy.
Sam came over and gave me a consoling pat on the back. His fingers lingered over my bare skin, giving me another chill. This chill was the good kind. “Don’t you worry, Jason, I’ll show that wall a thing or two, yessir. Don’t you fret about that at all. Give me the fucking hammer.”
I shriveled Sam with an icy stare while Timmy scraped one index finger over the other in an accusatory fashion. “Omm, bad word,” Timmy said.
Then my nephew showed more sense than all the adults in the room when he handed Sam my spider gloves. “Use these,” he said. “There’s no bugs in them, I looked.”
So Sam slid the gloves on and manhandled the sledgehammer over to the wall.
“Don’t collapse the house,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” Sam said, hoisting the hammer onto his shoulders. “This isn’t a retaining wall. Basically what it is is just an afterthought. It makes no sense for this wall to be here at all. One little hole in it isn’t going to hurt anything. I hope,” he finished up in a barely audible whisper.
He gripped the sledgehammer with a lot more aplomb than I had displayed, and without thinking too much about it (another one of my faults), he drew back and slung the hammer into the wall with a resounding crash. Through a thick cloud of dust, we heard a clatter of loose bricks as a hole materialized in the wall in front of us. The hole was two feet off the floor and after a few more bricks tumbled through the opening and the dust began to clear, it finally showed itself to be about the size of a doghouse.
I nervously scanned the basement ceiling through the haz
e of dust Sam had stirred up. The house showed no signs of tumbling down upon our heads, so I figured we were safe.
Timmy was whooping and clapping and leaping around in his excitement. Thumper had burrowed under the blanket, leaving only her trembling tail exposed. I guess her excitement level was considerably lower than Timmy’s. All three of us were coughing and blinking back tears due to the brick dust hanging in the air.
Sam still wasn’t satisfied with the destruction he had wreaked, so he drew back one more time with the sledgehammer and knocked loose the bricks standing between the new hole and the floor. Sam immediately stepped away to escape the second cloud of filth he had raised, and as soon as the dust from that hammer strike cleared and the bricks stopped tumbling, voil̀a, we had a doorway, of sorts.
I reached out and took Timmy’s hand. I led him forward until I could take Sam’s arm with my other hand. Together, the three of us slowly approached the ragged opening, not sure what we would find.
We leaned forward through the freshly opened wound in the wall and peered into the dim interior. It was lit only by my missing basement windows, long painted-over and placed high along the opposite wall. The windows were thick with spiderwebs. I got the creeps just looking at them. The stench and heat wafting out of the shadowy recess reeked of mildew and stale air. And dirt. Raw dirt.
Looking down, I realized the space was unpaved. The floor was naked earth, clumped and uneven, slanted up in a rise toward the front of the house…. Broken slabs of concrete that must have once comprised the floor were stacked in a jumble in the opposite corner as if they had been jackhammered out of the ground and laboriously tossed there out of the way. For what reason, I couldn’t imagine.
Sam and I gazed at each other. He tried to wipe the dirt from his face but left a bigger smear of filth than was there before.
“I think we’d better do some digging.” he said.
I looked down at Timmy, who had tilted his head back to peer up at us. Then I turned to once again consider the expanse of dirt in front of us—and the unexplained walled-up space in my basement.