The Piper's Graveyard: A Small-Town Cult Horror Thriller Suspense

by Ben Farthing

  But Cessy couldn’t yet articulate why she grieved, or exactly how Mom was different.

  She walked to the crawlspace door.

  The radio above screamed, “Prove that you’re not lazy. It’s not an unfair request.”

  The mold on the door puffed into a cloud as Cessy’s approach disturbed the air.

  She unlatched the door and swung it open.

  “Kate?”

  A vivid memory of the thick curtain of shadow beyond the support in the mine, and then the LED light swept into the crawlspace.

  Thick black plastic covered the ground. Ductwork covered in mold stretched under the floor above. Copper pipes and red wires clung to the joists. The ground rose at a gentle incline from where she stood towards the front of the house. To reach the front wall, she’d have to stoop, then crawl.

  The bright circle of her flashlight spread to ineffectiveness after only eight feet. She pointed it towards the corner of the crawlspace that was next to the basement stairs, back the way she came, but could see very little.

  A rectangle of sunlight from the front wall--the crawlspace entrance under the front porch, blocked by a plywood barrier.

  “Kate?” Cessy stepped into the crawlspace. The plastic ground covering crinkled. Her shoes slipped on loose dust and mold spores. She reached her flashlight towards the dark end of the crawlspace, let it lead her. Her right hand went to her holster. “Are you down here?”

  She ducked under a copper pipe.

  “I understand it’s a sacrifice, and that’s why I’m so proud of you. You’re not like your neighbors who ran off. You’re the foundation of everything good in this town.”

  The radio rants were directly above her now, but the crawlspace extended onward. Joists, ductwork, and wires, continued ahead. The flashlight hadn’t yet found the far wall.

  Cessy started counting her steps. She thought she’d already passed the stairs. The end of the house should be another six feet.

  With her left hand on the cement wall that bisected the house, Cessy walked forward, LED light banishing the darkness a few feet at a time.

  Ductwork turned and cut off her path. The far wall had to be right on the other side, but peering through, she still saw only darkness.

  “Kate?”

  Cessy belly crawled under the ductwork. The ground covering was slimy on her cheek; screws on the bottom of the ductwork tugged at her hair.

  Far behind her, the radio host roared. “Not like the vermin selling drugs to children, or stealing from you and me by living on our tax dollars, or shitting on what we used to have.” His words turned to grating gibberish, a guttural release, rabid argument giving way to animalistic rage. The warbling turned to a loud scraping, overlaid with an irregular, wet thumping.

  Cessy looked behind her, expecting the radio host to be standing there, slamming his fist on a mass of wet flesh. But it was just her parents’ crawlspace.

  Her parents’ crawlspace stretched twice as long as it should be.

  Ahead, it stretched even farther, beyond her phone’s flashlight.

  Cessy squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the radio host’s howling and make sense of what was happening.

  Had the chaos with her parents snapped something in her mind? Was she hallucinating? Could a moldy basement trigger delusions?

  She’d never hallucinated before, but she’d arrested her share of schizophrenics. Rarely did they believe they were somewhere else entirely. Instead, they misinterpreted what they saw, flavored it with hallucinations. An approaching cop might be an evil demon, and another demon might be floating in the sky, but they were still standing on Fifth Street. He might even believe Fifth Street was inside a dragon’s belly, but that was a delusion, not a hallucination. Hallucinations didn’t erase your perception--they warped it.

  Maybe Cessy was standing in the crawlspace, staring at the far wall, but interpreting it as an unending crawlspace.

  She slapped herself. It hurt.

  She looked back beyond the ductwork she’d crawled under. A hundred feet away, yellow light from the basement poured through the open wooden door, and a small breath of sunlight from under the front porch.

  This felt real.

  But if that were the case, she’d be under the neighbor’s house. As they were on a hill, she’d be forty feet below the neighbor’s house. She reached up to grip a joist.

  The only way to explain this was that her parent’s crawlspace connected to their neighbor’s, and their neighbor’s house had a basement with a subbasement below.

  But these pipes and wires and ductwork were all connected to her parents’ systems.

  None of this made sense.

  The radio host’s shrieking cut off. The wet thumping sound continued another few seconds, then also ended.

  Cessy heard herself breath.

  A spec skittered out from the endless crawlspace, into the white light. It zigzagged over wrinkles in the ground covering, up the cinderblock wall, along a yellow wire. Cessy followed it with her flashlight.

  It glided like a boatman beetle.

  She could see no legs, only a dark spec.

  As it drew closer, she got a clearer look. It rode along the surface of the plastic--no, in the surface of the plastic.

  It wasn’t a delusion.It was a hole half the size of the nail on her little finger. Shallow, and bright violet around the interior edges. Like a pencil eraser had been stuck into the ground, then hollowed out.

  And it was moving.

  Surfaces parted for the hole. It slid through the black plastic, and the particles of plastic moved aside. It moved up the cinderblock wall, and the block and mortar parted like a solid Red Sea, closing up behind the hole’s passing. No dust fell.

  Cessy stepped backwards. Confusion about the extended crawlspace melted away, replaced by a panicked need to classify what she was seeing. Insect rodent mental break.

  The hole headed for Cessy’s foot.

  She lurched backwards. The thing chased her, gliding over bumps in the ground like a wayward raft through river rapids.

  Stumbling, Cessy fled, keeping her flashlight and focus on the impossible spec of missing space.

  Ductwork jolted into her. Pain blossomed in the back of her head. The aluminum warbled down the extended crawlspace. She fell, caught herself. A pinprick in her palm.

  She swept the flashlight across the crawlspace, searching for the hole. Her fall had disturbed the ground covering, turned swells into chaotic seas. Forget it.

  Cessy belly crawled back under the ductwork. The loose screw cut her scalp.

  On the other side, she lurched to her feet, ducked her head, and sprinted to the brightly lit wooden door. The run was long enough that she gathered her senses to look once more over her shoulder. She expected to see her parents’ normal crawlspace, the missing wall back in its place, mocking Cessy for her broken mind.

  But the endless tunnel remained. A trail of joists overhead, holding up moldy ductwork, pipes, and wires that stretched beyond the limits of her vision.

  And then she was through the crawlspace door, back into the basement.

  She slammed it behind her, drew closed the latch.

  The bare bulbs of the basement had seemed so dull before. This corner behind the freezer seemed so dark. Now the basement was a bastion of light, its shelves of Mom’s junk were altars in a temple of relief.

  The radio played above, but his intelligible words drifting down through the floor comforted her. She was free from the impossibility of endless crawlspaces populated by a moving hole, and back in the insanity of her parents’ unreasonableness. She could deal with irrationality in people.

  Cessy’s gut twisted. Mom and Dad’s irrationality was a different flavor from past years. Now her baby sister’s safety was at stake.

  She put her hand on the crawlspace door latch. What if Kate was down that tunnel?

  A pinprick on her palm.

  Cessy examined her hand.

  The hole slid around her
thumb, through the flesh of her palm, swirled up her ring finger. A tiny, moving window to pink flesh and sinew, throbbing veins and twitching nerves. It let loose no blood. Cessy felt only a slight tingle where it moved, although every few inches she felt a slight pinprick. The hole reached the tip of her finger to reveal the end of her bone.

  Cessy flicked her wrist, trying to shake loose the hole like an insect. Primal revulsion flooded her mind. The shallow pit slid back down her finger, up her arm. She swatted at her elbow, felt the indentation pass under her fingers--leap to them and continue its journey on her left arm, up her shoulder and under her sleeve.

  She ripped off her shirt. Blood splattered across the back of the freezer; it had pooled on her scalp after the loose screw cut her. Cessy slapped at the tingling on her back, shoulder, neck. She turned circles but couldn’t find it.

  Her missing sister, the impossible crawlspace, her bleeding cut, all fled from her mind, forced out by the overwhelming need to rid herself of this absent intruder.

  She staggered into better light. The hole moved up her chest. Cessy jammed her little finger into it. A thousand needles pricked her fingertip. The force of the hole’s movement jerked her hand up towards her collarbone. The resistance she gave the hole hurt. It pushed harder through her flesh, and now she felt more than a tingle. It ripped away from her finger, resuming its previous speed to disappear under her armpit.

  Her nail was cracked and bleeding. A grid of red dots appeared on her fingertip, until the blood combined to form one crimson smear.

  Determination blossomed amidst her panic. She’d slowed it down; she could affect it. It wasn’t a magical affliction--it was rooted firmly in reality.

  She grabbed a box of Mom’s junk, dumped it out. A snowglobe shattered. Christmas decorations tinkled across the floor. Not was she was looking for.

  The hole slid up her neck, her check, over her eye--oh god, her eye--and the basement went blurry, dark, and there in the corner, the cinderblock wall popping out like a magic eye painting, into a cord wider than her 4Runner, squirming past, its length unknowable--then the hole was on to her forehead, scalp, and the basement returned to normal.

  Cessy stared at the corner, unsure what she’d seen, or whether it had been a trick of the light refracting through the hole.

  She regained herself, toppled another box of junk.

  Balls of yarn rolled across the cement floor.

  Cessy picked up a knitting needle, held it in a shaking fist. She exhaled. Waited.

  The hole glided over her navel.

  She stabbed.

  The needle pierced the hole, stabbed deeper. Cessy jerked her wrist, trying to rip free the hole. A jagged tear in her belly.

  Warm blood ran down to her waist, soaked into her jeans. Cessy frantically examined her stomach, chest, arms. She stilled, trying to notice if she felt the hole’s disconcerting tingling anywhere on her skin. She didn’t, and was that a spec of movement under the crawlspace door?

  Cessy yanked on her shirt and ran for the stairs.

  Sheriff Miller stood at the top.

  22

  With the boogeyman from her youth, now aged 20 years, scowling down at her from the top of her parent’s basement staircase, Cessy grew instantly self-conscious of how she looked.

  Above the waist, her shirt stuck on her belly. Below the waist, her jeans were covered in dirt, white mold, and blood. Her hair was wild and matted with blood. She had a gash next to her navel, obviously inflicted by the knitting needle she still held.

  Her chest heaved as she caught her breath, coming down off of her sprint through the crawlspace, then her panic in ridding herself of the empty parasite.

  “Gotdamn, Cessy.” Sheriff Miller put his hand on his holster. “What’s gotten into you?”

  It started in her belly, shaking that hurt her open wound. She laughed at the absurd relevance of his question.

  Mom appeared in the doorway behind the sheriff. She saw Cessy and gasped. Dad limped into view to pull Mom away.

  Sheriff Miller took a step down. “How about you set down that needle?”

  Cessy looked at the needle. A chunk of flesh stuck to the point. She tossed it away.

  “You understand my predicament here, since you’re a fellow officer of the law.” He grinned sardonically at the comparison, brandishing teeth yellowed with age and Marlboros. “I need you to come with me. But we got two problems that just rode into town. Number one, you threatened your parents with violence and are acting unpredictable-like. Number two, you have a gun in a holster. I need that gun to be on the floor. Now, how are we going to get from ‘A’ to ‘Z’ without giving you a chance to shoot me?”

  Cessy raised her hands, palms up. The deadliness of the situation killed her laughter. Sheriff Miller was too old to spryly maneuver down the stairs and confidently remove the gun himself. But if she removed it, all it would take was one wrong twitch for the old man to feel threatened, and quickly open fire.

  She tried to read his expression. She didn’t arrest too many 70-year-olds, and wrinkles and sagging skin made it harder to spot subtle emotional tics.

  He chewed on his cheek. “Here’s what we’ll do.” He drew his pistol, a silver revolver he’d probably bought after a John Wayne marathon, and aimed it loosely at Cessy’s feet. “I want you to grab your gun with just your thumb and forefinger.”

  Cessy slowly reached for her side.

  “Hold up. Turn around first. Face the wall.”

  Tactically, it was a smart choice. If she wanted to shoot him, she’d have to get the draw on him, and aim true after twirling around.

  But this was Sheriff Miller, the man she’d tormented as a teenager. And they were standing in her parents’ house. Eight hours ago, that would have been made things safer. Now, she was in the home of two uncooperative suspects who wouldn’t answer questions about a missing person. And the man aiming a gun at her feet had been party to their invented story about Jackson disappearing, rather than dying in a sinkhole.

  Still, Cessy was staring at the barrel of a .45, wielded by an old man with absolute authority, questionable motives, and an arthritic trigger finger. She didn’t have much choice but to comply.

  She turned around, hands held wide for Sheriff Miller to see.

  “Go on,” he said. “Thumb and pointer finger.”

  Cessy reached to her waist. She held her fingers at the perfect angle for the old man to see both fingers touch the gun. “I’m pulling it out now.”

  “Like I told you. Real easy like.”

  It occurred to her that Sheriff Miller’s eyes couldn’t possibly be as good as they once were. She was standing twelve feet away, under lightbulbs that were dim after coming inside from the sunshine. The old man probably couldn’t tell where her fingers ended and the pistol’s grip began.

  Cessy tugged the gun loose. She closed her eyes, anticipating a shot in the back.

  None came.

  She pressed the release on the pistol. The magazine fell free.

  “Toss it away.”

  “There’s still a round in the chamber.” Tossing the gun onto the cement floor could set it off.

  Sheriff Miller barked back, “I said toss it away.”

  He’s watched too many Clint Eastwood movies. She flung the gun into the basement, sliding it along the cement floor where it crashed into an orange ball of yarn.

  A pair of handcuffs clattered at her feet.

  “Put those on,” said Sheriff Miller.

  Cessy relaxed. She was past the risk of being shot. They might charge her with misdemeanor assault for brandishing her weapon, but once the Fairfax police department lawyers got on the phone with the Hamlin sheriff’s department lawyer, they’d iron it out.

  Cessy complied, handcuffed her wrists in front, slowly marched up the stairs under the watchful, cataract-ridden eyes of Sheriff Miller. He walked her outside. Blinding sunlight filtered through the maple tree in the front yard, and reflected off the grass.

  Sheriff M
iller shut the front door and left her alone on the porch to have a muffled conversation with her parents.

  Cessy looked down at the porch. Below her feet was an entrance to the crawlspace. If she crawled down there now, would she find the same extended tunnel?

  She shook her head.

  Of course she would. She’d never hallucinated in her life. For some insane reason, Dad had extended the crawlspace into the hill. That didn’t explain why their home’s ductwork, piping, and wiring also needed to extend into the hill, but Cessy didn’t need all the answers to know she wasn’t crazy.

  She stepped to the edge of the porch to look up at Black Gold Peak. Valerie Watkins was still up there, waiting for Cessy to stop back by on her way out of town.

  Now Cessy would be spending a few days in the jail cell until the Fairfax lawyers came through.

  She’d never made it to the Watkins’ house to tell them where Valerie was, or to at least hear their side of the story. Couldn’t depend on the word of a woman clearly suffering from a psychotic break.

  Cessy hesitated. If she told her own parents what she’d just experienced in the basement, they’d think she was crazy. What exactly had Valerie said to her last night? Cessy couldn’t remember, only that it sounded detached from reality. Maybe Valerie would have an explanation for the crawlspace.

  From across the valley, the trees on top of Black Gold Peak were a blurred mass of green. Cessy needed to get up there and speak to the maybe-not-schizophrenic librarian.

  The front door opened. Sheriff Miller stepped outside and shut the door behind him.

  “They don’t want to talk to me?” asked Cessy.