Richard noticed his son raise his brow, obviously not having visited the basement yet. He supposed there was no reason for him to have been down there.
“It smells like something died down there. I don’t know if I remember the smell being there when I first looked at the place. Maybe it was.” He shrugged his shoulders and let out a deep, weighted breath. “But it smelled terrible when I went down there earlier. There’s a locked door, some room coming off the basement. We think maybe an animal crawled in there and died somehow.” He paused, sighing again as he looked at the front lawn. “It’s just all a bit stressful.”
Toby took in his dad’s words. He knew all this was happening, or at least some of it, not the basement part, but he hadn’t put it all together like this. He tried to imagine his dad’s stress.
“Well, I’ll take care of the yard tomorrow. I’ll finish it up,” Toby said.
His dad smiled. “Thanks, but I’ll just take care of it.”
There was a crack and then a snap. Before Toby knew what was happening, he lunged forward and shoved his dad back. A thick branch crashed to the ground where his dad had been standing. His dad looked up, and then down, in some manic combination of amazement, shock, and fear. Toby wasn’t sure if the branch was large enough to kill his father, but it was definitely big enough to have done some serious damage.
“Thanks,” his dad mumbled just loud enough for Toby to hear it.
Toby didn’t respond, still in his own state of shock, surprised he was able to move quick enough to get his dad out of the way. If he hadn’t come out to look for his mother to begin with, he wasn’t sure what would have happened.
His dad bent down and picked up the end of the branch. It was maybe four or five inches thick. He was looking inside it, through it, like the branch was a pirate’s telescope. The expression on his father’s face morphed into something he couldn’t put a label on.
“What in the hell?” his dad said.
He passed the branch off to Toby, who was eager to see whatever his dad was seeing. When he took it, he saw immediately and understood fully what his dad had been feeling. The inside of the branch was rigged and partially hollowed out. There were slender holes passing through its innards like little tunnels, probably created by hungry insects.
But that only happened when a tree was dead, which this tree was, it looked like. Its insides were brown and grey, like a log you found lying on the ground deep in the woods, long time homes to hordes of crawlers. But this tree was standing, and it was in their front yard.
The single question that stood out amongst the rest, the question that haunted his disheveled mind, was why? Why was this tree dead? And if it was, how was it still standing?
Toby noticed his dad staring down at his hand. He tried to peek, to see what had caught his attention, but the sun had already passed its peak and was starting to take cover, placing the yard in just enough shadow that Toby couldn’t make out exactly what his dad was looking at. Before he could move to get a closer look, his dad told him to wait there and headed toward the garage.
Toby continued to jumble around the pieces of info in his head like a puzzle that lacked all its pieces. Dead grass. A dead tree. A dead animal in the basement? It was definitely strange to say the least. Maybe there was some sort of poison in the soil, like pollution from a waste spill or…he wasn’t sure.
His dad came walking back with the hose in hand. He didn’t say anything. He just twisted the nozzle and opened fire on the tree. In no time flat, the brown of the tree trunk started to trickle down the tree like mascara on the face of a crying woman.
It started as single streams going down the trunk but quickly turned into waves. Behind the mask was grey bark, a color that didn’t really seem like a real color at all to Toby but, rather, a lack thereof. It was like something had come along and just sucked the color right out of the tree, like some sort of vampire creature that fed off plant life. The silly idea seemed more realistic when he remembered the dead grass under his feet.
Toby swallowed hard as his father directed the hose stream up higher, toward the leaves. Just as it did with the trunk, the green color of the leaves started to wash away. It dripped down like green rain, drops smacking into the grass below, bursting into little green splatters. For whatever reason, it felt like the most unnatural thing he had ever seen in his life. It must have taken someone hours of precise time to paint this tree color specific, detailed enough that nobody had noticed its deception until now. It reminded him of those wax fruits you found on some people’s tables, their fruit souls completely fake, painted to look like the real thing but fake all the same.
Those things were fake, though. This, the tree, the grass, it was all real. It was dead but real.
9
Robbie knew it was time to talk to his brother. Lisa was out in the kitchen cooking, filling the house with a fantastic aroma. All the kids had retreated back to their rooms, or elsewhere, he wasn’t really sure, which left him and Richard sitting in the living room watching some show on Netflix that he was pretty sure neither of them was really paying attention to. Richard was staring down at his phone.
Robbie shifted in the chair uncomfortably. He was pretty sure Richard probably knew this was coming. Whether or not he was going to let him stay for a while was a decision he and Lisa had probably already made amongst themselves. His brother was a smart man and was always able to read Robbie like a book, even when they were little. He figured it was some older brother thing, a sixth sense.
“You wanna run downstairs with me?” Richard asked, startling Robbie from his thoughts.
“Ummm, yeah. Sure. Why?”
Richard nodded at his phone. “I’m looking here at how to take a door off its hinges.
Robbie almost laughed. The guy achieved all the academic honors in school but had to look up how to take a door off its hinges.
“If the realtor can’t find the key and that smell doesn’t go away,” Richard continued, “we may have to just take the door down.”
Robbie thought his brother just looked bored. There was nothing they were going to accomplish by going and looking at the door. If they were going to go down and take the door off its hinges, they may as well just go do that now and get it out of the way. But he wasn’t about to debate something as silly as that right before having to ask his brother for a huge favor.
Robbie jumped to his feet. “All right, let’s go.”
Robbie followed Richard into the hall. Lisa caught sight of them as they passed and asked what they were doing.
“Just running down into the basement,” Richard said as he reached the basement door and grabbed the handle.
An unholy wave of putrid disgust flooded up from the basement the moment Richard cracked the door. So fast, even, that his mind didn’t have the time to register what was happening. He opened the door fully, allowing the tsunami of filth to crash through the house for just a second before slamming it shut again, gagging as he did so.
Lisa shrieked from the kitchen. Robbie bent over and dry heaved. He was absolutely thankful as he came back up that he hadn’t eaten much of anything all that day otherwise he may be splattering the floor with it right then.
But Lisa wasn’t so lucky. They heard a gag and a splashing sound in the distance. Richard took off for the kitchen, stumbling with disorientation as he tried to regain his senses after the smelly onslaught. Robbie simply stepped back, putting distance between himself and the door as if it would pounce again.
He had remembered the basement smelling terrible that morning but nothing like this. It was undoubtedly the worst thing he had ever had the misfortune of smelling in his entire life, and Robbie had spent a fair share of nights in some pretty disgusting places during his couch-surfing early twenties. Whatever was causing this, it had to be dead—like really, really dead. Or worse. But what was worse than dead?
Richard held back his wife’s hair as she heaved up her lunch into the kitchen sink. After a few loads of half-digest
ed food coated the metallic surface, she released one final painful heave as her stomach tried to push up contents that weren’t there anymore. The acid burned her from the throat up, tinging her taste buds with the flavor of stomach juice and bile.
Thuds echoed from the stairs as the three kids came rushing down led not only by the horrible smell that they had all noticed immediately, even from different rooms, but by the sounds of commission that accompanied it. The smell intensified as they reached the first floor.
“Gross!” Paisley said as she threw her arm over her nose.
Trevor stopped altogether. Without a word, he turned back around and headed up the stairs, his hand covering his mouth. Toby didn’t stop him to ask why he was going. The kid had been half sick all day, and a whiff of this mess probably only made it worse.
Toby joined his sister, covering his nose with his hand. He saw his dad in the kitchen handing his mother a glass of water. Then he turned on the faucet and used the sprayer to hose down the interior of the sink. At the end of the hall, Robbie stood there, his entire expression a deranged mix of disgust and something else.
“What’s going on?” Toby asked.
His dad rubbed his mother’s back and whispered something in her ear.
“I’m fine,” he heard his mother say softly.
His dad nodded and then headed toward Robbie.
“We have to do something about this.”
Robbie agreed.
His dad turned around and looked at Toby and Paisley as if surprised to see them.
“All right, you three head outside and get some fresh air while me and Robbie try to figure out what’s going on. Where’s Trevor?”
“He’s upstairs,” Toby said. “Probably in bed.”
His dad nodded. “Okay, you three go outside.”
“What are you going to do?” his mom asked, concern etched in the contours of her face.
“We’re going to have to take that door down and figure out what the hell is back there that smells so damned terrible.”
His mother didn’t argue. She rounded up the two of them like there was a fire somewhere in the house that only she knew about and led them to the door. Toby wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but it sounded like whatever the problem in the basement was, it wasn’t the first time they had encountered it.
A nice, cool breeze greeted them as they exited the house. Their mom closed the door behind them, and Paisley took a seat on the steps. Toby noticed the branch still on the ground. By the way his mother was staring at it, his dad had already filled her in on what happened.
In the disappearing sunlight of dusk, he could still see the brown of the grass. He almost thought he could smell the putrid scent coming from the lawn as well but knew it was just his mind playing tricks on him.
He took a step toward the tree, wanting to get a better look at the plant corpse, mostly because there was little else to do while they waited. He noticed movement in the corner of his eye and looked at the house across the street, the one where Addy lived. He thought, for a second, that he saw people standing in the window of the front room, but by the time he had processed what he was seeing in the growing dark, whatever had been there was gone. He blinked twice, as if assuring himself that he was awake and seeing straight. Still, he saw nothing.
Richard fetched a hammer and the longest screw he could find in the toolbox. Some of the suggestions on the internet were to use an ice pick or something of that shape, like a screwdriver, which he figured many more people had laying around their house than an ice pick. But, ironically, he didn’t see his screwdriver in the tool chest, nor an ice pick for that matter. He recalled having used the screwdriver just earlier that day, but he must have left it laying around somewhere, and he didn’t have the time to find it now. He just had to hope the screw would work for what he needed it.
Richard and Robbie gathered outside the basement door. Robbie had fetched them dish towels large enough to wrap around their faces, an attempt to block the smell. They took turns tying them around the other’s face. It wasn’t much, but it was all they had. Richard wasn’t even sure a gas mask would be enough to keep the smell out, or if those things were even made for something like that. That led Richard to wonder exactly how toxic these fumes were. If there was some sort of dead animal down there, and it was rotting away, then it must have been festering with bacteria. The smell, he thought, was created by bacteria, which also released their own toxins, a fact he remembered loosely from school. He wasn’t a bacteriologist or anything, but these lingering thoughts were worrying him.
He pushed them away, forcing himself to focus on the task at hand. Whatever the cause of the smell was, they were about to find out. They would hurry down and then hurry back up. Quick and easy. Richard had a thought. He hurried back into the kitchen and opened the cupboard under the sink, grabbing a garbage bag. Whatever they found down there would need to be hauled up and thrown in the trash to be disposed of.
That was it. It was time. Richard looked at Robbie. Robbie looked back.
“Three. Two.” The smell, barely even a memory yet, was ready to greet Richard at the door to hell. He only hoped he was ready as well. “One.” Richard pushed the door open, flipped the light switch, and rushed down the stairs much quicker than was safe.
To his surprise, the light held bright, much to Richard’s relief as they hadn’t had the chance to switch the bulb yet and he hadn’t remembered to bring one of the new bulbs down with him. He hurried to the door, trying with every fiber of his being to ignore the thick, tangible smell that already had his eyes watering in the few seconds they had been down there.
Robbie stood beside him as they reached the door. Richard considered the info the internet had provided him with. The hinges were easily dismantled. All he had to do was use the screw and hammer to tap away at the bottom head of the hinge, and then, once that was removed, he had to do the same to the upper part and the long, thin bar that held the door on would pop right out.
Richard stared down at the door, confused and reaching his limit with the smell already. Robbie crouched down, feeling the edge where the door met the wall. Strangely, there didn’t appear to be a hinge at all. Richard hadn’t noticed this before because he wasn’t looking for it, wasn’t thinking about it at all when he was down there the last time. But now that he was looking for them, the hinges seemed to be gone or maybe never existed at all. The door seemed to just appear where the wall ended, as if someone had carved out the shape of a door from the surrounding wood and shoved the door in like a perfectly placed puzzle piece.
Even the cracks you would expect to see in the minute space between the door and the wall were basically non-existent. Nothing was there except a thin, black line going around the door, too small to see through even if you had the sharpest eye in the world.
Frustration boiled in Richard’s chest. None of this was making sense and the basement smelled so damn terrible. It was like the scent wasn’t a scent at all, but more like a life-sucking mist floating in the air, clamping down on the inside of his nostrils. This wasn’t what he wanted. This wasn’t what he paid for. A sudden desire to punch the damn realtor in the face surfaced under his skin, tingling straight up his spine.
Richard hauled his foot back and kicked the door as hard as he could. It didn’t budge. It didn’t break. The wood didn’t even groan. Pain shot up Richard’s leg. He yanked his leg back, fearing a sprain or a broken toe. It was like he had just kicked pure steel.
The light went out. Richard turned in one direction and then the other. Instinctual fear coursed through his veins. He grabbed Robbie, making sure his brother was still there, that he, Richard, hadn’t somehow passed out or been transported to some dark, interdimensional hell.
“Let’s get out of here,” Robbie said, the words echoing around the basement’s emptiness.
They hurried for the basement stairs, Robbie in front, Richard trailing directly behind, neither of them completely sure why they were panicking so
badly. The scent was burning Richard’s nostrils as if the towel wasn’t even there. He felt like it was crawling into him, filling him like smoke in a burning house, ready to clog up his airways and suffocate him. He had the sudden fear that if he were to die right then, the basement’s stench would be too terrible for anybody to venture in and retrieve his body, that the smoke would consume his remains like a hoard of starving insects. Like the tree in the front yard, he would become a hollow corpse. He didn’t want to rot alone down there in that pit.
Beyond Robbie, Richard could see the outline of the hall light circling the basement door. They were so close to freedom. Just as he almost let the feeling of happiness enter his being, he felt something. It was a light pull, like a child tugging on your pantleg because he or she wanted to tell you something. Except he felt the tug everywhere, at every corner of his body, under his clothes, all around him. As if the dark itself was pulling at him. As if the dark didn’t want him to leave.
10
Every window in the house was open as they tried to vent out the smell, which had engulfed the place from top to bottom. Toby was upstairs, sitting at the window, taking in the soft breeze that trickled in far slower than he liked, along with the fresh air that he craved so deeply after having reentered the house.
Everybody had unanimously forgone dinner that night, all far too nauseated to even imagine eating. Not even his mother’s delicious chicken soup sounded good right then. Not only was he upstairs because dinner had been cancelled and the whole house, especially the downstairs, smelled atrocious, but because his dad was in one of the worst moods Toby had ever seen him in. He had stormed around for long minutes, infuriated that the realtor wouldn’t pick up the phone.
Toby wasn’t surprised the man wasn’t picking up the phone. It was late in the evening. He was probably at home eating dinner with his family. Even if he had noticed the calls coming in from their father, Toby doubted the realtor would answer knowing his dad had been angry about the missing key earlier that day.
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