The Basement Dwellers

by Thomas Willits

conclusion

Each step down was like Armstrong descending onto the moon. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the shadows of the steps where at any moment... hands could pop out. His mind showed him this, over and over. He refused to ignore it.

A long, pale arm with long, slender fingers slowly wiggled for something to grab. Another hand poked out with razor-sharp nails and flaky skin. Then another emerged about the third step from the bottom with purple scales and bright red blisters and lesions. Another appeared from under the second step. A child’s by the look of it. Its span was only half that of the others and the skin much smoother and gentler. Then the back of the hand flipped around to Ralph to expose the palm and there, directly in the center, was an eye.

Stop it, you fool! he shouted in his mind. He nearly tripped from fright but quickly regained his foothold. There is nothing back there. Nothing at all!

Without any more delay his thumb depressed the black button on the flashlight and he leapt down the remaining steps — averting them altogether. His feet came to rest on the damp concrete and he could feel the chilling floor beneath his cotton socks penetrating his calluses.

Like a madman he aimed the flashlight at everything at once, trying to cover it all at the same time — an impossible task, yet he attempted it anyway. Ralph wanted no surprises. He wanted to see it coming. He desired to see it and hear it and feel its cold presence.

But nothing came and once Ralph was certain he was alone... he turned around and faced the stairway. The light above glimmered its sixty watts of GE incandescence. He recalled it was the same bulb he had installed with the fixture some ten to fifteen years ago and wondered how come he had never replaced it.

After all the trips Margaret made to do the laundry and put away the canned goods, and after all the time Ralph spent organizing his tools and wrenches; it still burned. The light was a pitiful display of old technology at work when there were vast quantities of bulbs out there that performed better and brighter at lower wattages. The amount of light barely even extended to the laundry room.

He almost pointed his flashlight at the stairs and into that black unknown through the risers, but he just couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. Not yet, anyway. He understood that all he would see was perhaps a few empty boxes stacked on top of each other and maybe that old treadmill that had never made its way to the trash or spring yard sale.

But he wondered... what else? What else waits back there... in the dark?

He pulled the string to one of the fixtures mounted to a floor joist, but nothing happened except a rusty-sounding click followed by a cloud of falling dust. This light was placed just above the work bench in the corner. He aimed the flashlight above him and saw there was not even a bulb screwed in.

Next he aimed the light at everything laid out in this small area: the washer, dryer, water heater, furnace. He glanced at the workbench and checked the electric outlet just above it. What he expected to find there was a small radio, but instead he found only his electric drill and sander and about a dozen other items that had no apparent order to them other than that they were all tools and somehow needed to congregate together in one place.

He checked the outlet behind the washer and dryer and found nothing there either.

“Damn,” he cursed, frustrated he didn’t find what he expected to see.

He slowly brought the flashlight around to the center wall where the small beam was swallowed up by the reddish hue of the masonry, leaving nothing to reflect and expose the room. The onset of dilapidation had occurred; the walls were hideous and quite unpleasant to behold.

Flakes of deteriorated brick had fallen off and accumulated along the floor in a heaping mound of red powder. He could feel the dampness down here and almost taste the basement odor that haunted so many old homes like this one.

He knew what he had to do.

He aimed the light down along the length of the wall to its opposite end. Somewhere down there was a corner which he would have to turn and then walk several more feet and then turn again back in this direction. But it wouldn’t be back toward the stairs. It would be the other side, the other half of the basement. The half where he almost never went. A large lump grew in his throat and he swallowed it miserably.

The first step was the most awkward he had taken since that walk down the aisle at their wedding. The next wasn’t much better but after the third he was moving rather briskly. He wanted this business over with. If it meant walking all the way around this dreadful wall and all the way back to the back of the stairs on the other side, then so be it.

He could do it because he wasn’t going to be scared back upstairs by a few shadows and foul smells. This was his house. Their house. And that included the basement too. If there was someone down here, then it was his job to clean them out.

What if they don’t want to leave? his mind asked. What if they won’t go willingly?

He stopped suddenly at a dissonant sound which he believed could only be from the other side of the wall. It was a dull, hollow, thud. A single knock like on a solid oak door. Ralph’s heart pounded faster and faster like the dramatic music in horror movie when it is about to reveal the monster.

A cold wave of air enveloped him, changing his bare arms to gooseflesh. As he exhaled, he imagined he could see his breath if the light were stronger this far back. In the dark the walls appeared to narrow in on him, sealing him in from all sides. Of course, proportionally they were the same and equidistant apart but the feeling was virtually real and overall quite tenebrous.

Okay, his mind reasoned. I’m almost to the corner. Just a few more steps.

Then he conjured up an almost ludicrous idea. It sort of popped into his mind all at once and he couldn’t push it away. Sometimes thoughts do that when faced with real fear. Sometimes crazy, irrational thoughts creep in and go awry.

He focused hard to forget it but it was no use. Once the mind brings it up, it’s useless to try and ignore it.

What if I just shut the flashlight off and walk around the corner?

He tried to forget it but could only attempt to think of something else instead. Before he could steady his thoughts his feet began to move again, and he was almost surprised at that.

But Ralph knew it was his mind taking over and subduing this ridiculous fear so he could proceed to the other side. He finally came to the corner and aimed the flashlight down the short L-shaped wall. As he suspected, there was nothing there.

The dampness grew thicker, and he left footprints where his socks had soaked up the condensation. He felt the chill increasing and regretted not bringing a coat. He found the odor was worse back here and Ralph suspected it would become increasingly atrocious the more he neared the old plumbing — if the old plumbing was the source of the smell.

“Eater of vermin. Blood and flesh ripe with life... lavish the meat.”

A feminine voice from the darkness.

Ralph froze solid with fear; his legs were like twin anchors.

“Come and feast. Eat... eat... EAT.”

The voice filled the air around him, entwined him, and he knew undeniably that it came from around the corner. The voice was on the side of the basement he never went.

From somewhere nearby came another solid thud, which he could almost feel in his chest. He tried to breathe, but the air was so cold it nearly suffocated him.

He peeled his feet one by one from the floor and they felt as if they were sticking to high-strength velcro. His left heel tried to buckle but managed to free itself from the damp, freezing-cold concrete.

And then, just before he was ready to take flight from this basement dungeon, he saw something appear from the dark side of the basement. There in the shadows, something stirred from the floor as if rising into an erect position. And then crossed into the light. Ralph could see it must be human, but in his mind he saw Wolfman’s brazen-yellow eyes gleaming in the moonlight.

“Margaret?” he asked hysterically. “How... Why? What on earth…?”

She emerged from the darkness with a faint smile. But Ralph wasn’t laughing. In fact he was nearly having a heart attack. Then he tripped and nearly planted his face into the concrete.

Margaret stared down at him sorrowfully.

“You did this?” he screamed. “Margaret? What on Earth for?”

“I told you to see Dr. Harper, Ralph,” she said. “You’ve been ignoring it far too long. It’s gotten worse. And I know how much you don’t like it down here. Or back there...” She pointed with her hand to the corner and the darkness beyond.

Ralph slowly rose to his feet studying her hand that she pointed with. Not the smooth ivory that Margaret had always kept but pale and thin; bony. All part of the charade, no doubt.

He began to put two and two together. She was trying to use this as a means to justify his need to pursue medical assistance. Ralph licked his lips slowly trying to understand why she would try this kind of a prank.

He had bouts of narcolepsy from time to time but they weren’t severe. It hadn’t progressed any further that he was aware. He was the same old Ralph. He had done nothing to warrant this. And his fear of the basement wasn’t completely unhealthy. This was a dreadful place.

And then it hit him all at once.

His mind saw the shelves for canned food they kept near the stairs. He hadn’t noticed them before, but now that he thought about it, they did appear rather old and rusty. Hadn’t Margaret been bringing down new cans every week? His mind recalled when he had just recently flashed his light on the shelves that they weren’t fresh cans of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup or clam chowder but old and faded labels of yesteryear. Some of the labels had even fallen off, and the rest were brown and faded.

That wasn’t all.

How long had that message from Delilah been left? He first thought it was just a couple days ago. But after careful consideration, he guessed it could have been longer. A year perhaps. Maybe more. How long had he had this narcolepsy problem? He guessed that it was over a year for that as well.

But the most important question to Ralph was who had been doing the laundry day in and day out? Who had been coming down here and who had he been sharing a bed with part of the time? That is, when he hadn’t been sleeping on the couch, which was quite often, and at that he took another glance at Margaret’s thin hand.

He could see her wedding ring slipped all the way down to the last knuckle, almost ready to fall off. The fingers were so thin. So thin and lifeless.

“That’s why the light still works,” he said dryly. “It’s hardly even been used. I’m alone here. I’m really alone.”

Margaret looked at Ralph, puzzled through her hollowed eyes.

“Why no, Ralph,” her voice rasped. “You’re not alone. You’re not alone at all.”

Ralph thought about the masculine voice he had heard before and knew she was probably right. There were others down here. Many others. They’d lived here for years and he never even noticed. How long ago had he lost Margaret? Five years? Ten? If it hadn’t been for his problem he might have noticed sooner. But now...

She stepped backwards very slowly. “You look tired, Ralph,” she invited. “Come and sleep for a while. Come with me and sleep. And then you can eat.”

The offer sounded genuine.

She slipped backwards around the corner and disappeared into the darkness. The last Ralph saw of her was her slender hand at the corner of the masonry wall. Just before it dissolved into the shadows her index finger curled up enticingly and beckoned him to follow.

He couldn’t tear his eyes from that corner. He wanted to turn and see if there were hands popping out from under the stairs but he didn’t dare look. He didn’t need to. He knew they were there, waiting for him. He would finally see what was through the missing risers and under those stairs in the cold, damp, dark.

He could feel it happening. His eyes were getting heavy, almost as though they had lead weights attached to them. And although he wasn’t hungry he thought a midnight snack might bode well for him.

Ralph Dempsey stood up steadily and took a step toward the corner. After a few seconds he found it wasn’t that hard to keep moving. Actually, once he got started, it was hard to stop.

to Challenge 327…