Under The Stairs

by John Stockmyer

  Golden also recalled the old man's death soon after, the coughing elder pressing silver coins into Golden's hand with a final, feeble warning about the name, Cleadon. Never to say it! On pain of death!

  But what could a young boy do by himself, alone in all the world? After the coins had been spent on food and lodging, hunger had driven him to begging, to stealing. To slavery -- Golden picked up beside the road by traveling robbers, masking themselves as wonder workers.

  As a boy, short but strong, the villains had trained Golden to climb the outer walls of houses and sneak in upper windows, creeping downstairs to unbar the door so that the robbers could enter. He had been taught to be an entertainer, to perform for hamlet festivals while the slavers worked the crowd, cutting way the bumpkin's purses. Until Golden, true to his honorable heritage, had grown big enough to break free from the pack. Until he had become fast enough to distance himself from the thieves' dogged pursuit.

  Now, with a growing reputation as a performer of many skills, Golden had been summoned to entertain the King of Stil-de-grain. And to the king's profound surprise, to steal the Crystal! Soon, Golden would lead the dignified existence of his lineage.

  Would they never finish eating!

  Leaving the curtains, certain to be summoned by tromba, Golden paced the cluttered room, adjusting his new, black and white, patched costume, the tiny bells sewed to his shoes jingling rhythmically when he danced.

  He had only one other costume with him, the red and black, the rest of his pack jammed with all that he might need, first to gain the crystal, then to escape with it. The long, thin thread of Cinnabar silk attached to a three pronged grapple. Short pitons of iron, flattened at one end. A gum-padded hammer for driving the thinned ends (with little noise) between the cracks of building stones, the rods making hand-holds by which Golden could climb the sheerest wall. A stouter rope with bigger, iron grapples tied to either end -- for spanning walls. (It was not for nothing that Golden had perfected rope-walking!) He'd put in a length of heavy line, looped on either end. Slender tools for picking locks. A drill: bits for wood, bits for metal. And for listening through walls, a flaring tube of finest silver. (The cylinder could also be used for hearing the click of falling tumblers in the locking mechanism of a safe.) He had his knives, of course, knives that could be thrown as easily at men as at ringed targets! A more practical skinning knife. Black tunic and cloak. Make-up. Enough dried food to run on, fast and far.

  With two weeks to prepare, he had concealed the escape boat at the cliff's bottom edge. And located the perfect place to hide in the palace should everything go wrong, an old man's robe waiting for him there.

  His muscles cooling, Golden bent to touch the ground between his toes, catching the reflection of his dark face in the shiny silver plates that formed his shoe-tops, seeing his boyish image topped by curly black hair. He stood up, stretching one leg to the side, lifting his leg, grasping his foot with one hand, pulling his foot up until the leg was straight, his foot higher than his head.

  And if he failed? If he were caught? He would be executed, undoubtedly in public and by torture, as an example to others of the fate of thieves. When dead at last, his mangled body would be quartered with an ax, each fourth hung from an iron hook outside a wall-gate of Xanthin city.

  No matter. Knowing his ancestry had made his life a torture. With death, at least that kind of pain would end.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 6

  The next day, and the next and the next, John Lyon's hand still bothered him. The occasional tingling; the right hand warmer than the left.

  In addition, the uneasy feeling that he was being watched continued, John still catching himself whirling about in an attempt to see who it was.

  The odd feeling in his hand persisting, John made an appointment to see a doctor Paul recommended, John's visit with the doctor going like John thought it would. Questions about John's symptoms, vague talk about pinched nerves, ending with a proscription for numbing cream -- that failed to "numb."

  (John's own diagnosis was that he could stand "off-again-on-again tingling," as long as it didn't get worse.)

  At home the following afternoon, John tried to concentrate on improvements needed in the house as a way of getting his mind off himself.

  Catching Cream, he sat in the oak chair beside the fireplace, his mind jumping about the room.

  Studying the results of his decorating skills, John became aware that Cream was making her ratchety mew, meaning he'd stopped petting her, a lapse he remedied, the cat stretching, yawning, settling back contentedly in his lap.

  Looking at the room again, John decided one corner needed brightening.

  The solution? Put a lamp on the unused plant stand on that side of the room.

  No problem. If he had anything, it was extra table lamps from his parents' living room. If he could only remember where he'd stored them. .... Ah! ......

  Putting down a protesting Cream, John walked into the hall; bending down, unlatched the under-the-stairs door, swinging it into the hall, most of the boxes in there containing lamps, he thought. Since he didn't care what kind of lamp he got, all he had to do was drag out the first box he could locate.

  Getting down on his knees, reaching in, John was wrestling with the nearest carton when .....

  What he'd heard was Cream's "attack" mew, the cat galloping past him into that fascinating stair-space.

  Damn!

  Pulling out the box, sliding it to the side over the worn, wooden floor, John stuck his head into the cavity, the other boxes keeping him from entering very far.

  "Cream? Here, kitty, kitty," he called, like a fool, cats never coming when you called. She was in there and would stroll out in her own sweet time.

  On second thought, John decided not to give up that easily. Particularly since the longer the cat stayed back there, the dirtier she'd be when she did come out.

  Though putting little faith in extracting Cream no matter what he did, John went to the kitchen to get the flashlight, wanting to at least locate the cat back under there. Who knew? Maybe the light beam would flush her out. There was no predicting cats.

  But he had no luck with the light, either. All he could see were boxes and more boxes.

  Switching off the flashlight, putting it, "muzzle " down, on the flat top of the bannister's end post, John left the door open. Cream would come out ... eventually.

  John only began to worry about that damn cat when he hadn't seen her by early evening, thinking she might have slipped past him to hide somewhere else.

  Concerned enough to want to track her down, John searched the rest of the house. Methodically. Thoroughly. Checking Cream's hiding places. Until he was certain she was nowhere to be found.

  It was then that he had a frightening thought! What if Cream had slipped through to the outside? She was an indoor cat. Couldn't cope with the out-of-doors.

  Consumed by that dark thought, John got down on all fours to crawl under the stairs -- only to be stopped, again, by the boxes.

  Frustrated, he began sliding out box after box until he'd vacated the space, John picking up the flashlight and shining its beam under the stairs. Seeing nothing.

  Kneeling to crawl part way inside, however, still playing the light around, he thought he heard the raspy, little mew that only Cream could make.

  Was she trapped in there? Caught somehow? A possibility that made John's blood run cold, John crawling all the way in.

  Completely inside that cramped cavity, off his knees and sitting down, he still couldn't see her.

  Careful not to bang his head on the slanted ceiling, John covered every inch of the hole, playing the light over the walls and ceiling ... seeing ... a hollow, triangular shaped area under the stairs. No pipe that Cream could have gotten stuck in. No ledge the cat could have jumped up on. Nothing to trap a cat back in there. And yet ... no Cream.

  Defeated, John backed out. Though he couldn't see how Cream could still be under the stairs, John decide
d to stack the boxes in the hall and to keep the door open. He could always put the containers back when he'd found his cat, or ..... He didn't want to finish that thought.

  Days went by, the weather getting colder, John growing more despondent.

  In the afternoons after teaching, he found himself searching for Cream in the scrub woods around his house. No luck. He made posters with a description of the cat, promising a reward, and tacked them to sign posts out on Troost. With no results.

  He couldn't believe how much he missed that silly cat. True, he'd had her for years -- at least his parents had, the cat another possession John had inherited. It even occurred to him that his obsessive attachment to Cream could be because she was the only living link with the world he'd known before the tragedy of his parents' death.

  Whatever the reason, as the days went by and no Cream, John didn't seem to "heal."

  He went through the motions. He taught. He talked to Paul.

  In a last ditch effort to "get his mind off that dammed cat," John called Sears, using what was left of his Sears card to have them install a humidifier on the new furnace. Goodbye dry. Farewell nose bleeds.

  And still no Cream. Just ... another cat that had disappeared in the old Van Robin place.

  On the other mystery front, John received a "revelation" one morning about his on-again, off-again tingling-hand sensation: that what he'd been feeling on the back of his hand was very much like a warm, gentle rain. Where that understanding got him, he didn't know.

  Things ground on until the middle of November, John sitting in his den on a late Thursday afternoon. (He'd recently moved his desk so he could sit with his back to yet another solid wall, hoping that changing location would help him best the sensation that someone was looking over his shoulder. It didn't.)

  Trying to read ... John's hand began to "shower." Coincidentally, he heard that soft, rain noise in the house. And ... something more: a low pitched, wavering tone.

  John closed his eyes, concentrating.

  Mumbling? Chanting?

  Thinking about that thrumming sound, he remembered hearing it before, in the night -- just after he'd moved in.

  What was that wailing sound? The wind? Blowing through a crack in the house? It had been windy all day. A cold blast. The wind doing its best to blow up an early winter storm.

  The rain he was hearing was the shower sound, of course, a noise he'd gotten so used to it hardly registered anymore. But maybe he could track that ... muttering ... stick something in the hole the wind used to make it, in that way help weatherproof the house against the coming winter.

  Determined to trail that ... noise ... John got up and went into the hall, there to thread his way around the stacked boxes that he still hadn't had the heart to put back under the stairs.

  To find that the muttering was louder there than in the den.

  John turned his head to the left ... then to the right, trying to locate the sound, the mumbling seeming to come through the under-the-stairs door he'd left open. Both the low warbling noise and the sound of rain.

  John had told himself that the noise was connected with electricity so many times he'd come to believe it. Except ... there were no electrical connections beneath the stairs. He'd been under there; had looked the area over carefully.

  John shivered, each hair on his neck vibrating! It was one thing to hear rain noises in the house, to speculate about their origin ... quite another to find that the sounds had an impossible source!

  As John's "scientific" explanation for the rain sound crumbled, he was cast back to unexplained noises. Ghost noises. Coming from a place where there was ... nothing. Coming from that wedge shaped ... empty ... storage space!

  Paul was right. There was something frightening about this! Something dangerous about playing around with nature's secrets, a cold sweat beading John's forehead, his breathing shallow, John afraid to move for fear of attracting the attention of ... what?

  Calling himself a coward to jump-start a little courage, he stepped to the side of the stairs as quietly as he could and squatted down before the black cavity. To find the rain noise even more pronounced in front of the hole. Drip, drip, drip. The sort of light rain he was feeling at that very moment ... on his hand.

  Was there a connection between the sound and the strange way his hand had been feeling!?

  Before John had time to think about that, he heard it! Cream's mew; that ragged, halting mew. Coming from the hollow beneath the stairs!

  Standing quickly, leaning to the side, John grabbed the flashlight from the flat top of the end post. Squatting, swinging the door wide, John leveled the flashlight at the space and switched on the beam. ... Nothing ... Just an empty cavity ... from which he heard ... rain.

  It was then, while listening intently, that the rain sound ... died away. And one more thing. When the rain stopped, so did the feeling of raindrops splashing on the back of his right hand!

  Shaken, the next thing John remembered was sitting at his desk, trying to fit these ... insane ... parts into a whole. ... Ghosts! ... Weather?

  Closing his eyes, John tried to project himself into the situations in which he'd heard that mysterious rain. The first time in bed.

  No question any longer about the origin of the sound -- it came from under the stairs; was loud enough to wake a man sleeping fitfully. He'd heard the dripping noise for the second time while grading papers. Had heard it so many times since, he'd banished that noise to the outer edges of his consciousness.

  Then, there was Cream's disappearance. He'd gone to get a lamp from under the stairs only to have her charge past him into the hole. Vanished in there. Except ... for her mew.

  Disappeared ... where? Somewhere ... else.

  What was the direction of that line of thought? Somewhere else? What did that mean? Some science fiction kind of thing; some other reality?

  Stymied for the moment, thinking about Cream again, John was reminded that he'd been petting her before he "lost her" under the stairs. He'd also been petting her earlier that fall, just before he'd moved the lamp boxes under the stairs, his hand "tingling" after that. He recalled that, at the time, he'd attributed the strange sensation on his hand to static build up as a result of messing with Cream. Nothing like a cat's fur to attract static, the house so dry ...

  And, there he was, full circle. Back to electricity; back to an electrical explanation for this odd phenomena. Electricity! Was that the common factor?

  Electricity fit Cream -- if you thought of electricity in its static electric form. Given the arid atmosphere of the house, Cream was a static fur-ball all the time!

  It as then that John got an exciting idea! Did static electricity, somehow, "thin" the "wall" between this world and another? ........

  A crazy thought ... but one he could test!

  Fur! What he needed was fur. Fur? Inside his winter gloves upstairs!

  A dash up and down the stairs, John breathing rapidly as much from excitement as from that burst of speed, and he was squatted before ... the space.

  Taking a deep breath, John reversed the glove and rubbed the rabbit fur on the back of his left hand -- vigorously -- thinking that, if rubbing Cream with his right hand had built up enough of a charge for his hand to "slip" through some invisible "wall" into another reality, by charging up his left hand, he ought to be able to poke it through, as well. One hand in some other world, two hands in another world -- what difference did it make?

  Quickly, before John could "think" himself out of it, still rubbing his left hand with the rabbit fur, he thrust his hand inside the stair-space, forcing himself to keep it there for a moment, before jerking it out again. ... Nothing. .... No sensation. Nothing like the warm feeling on the back of his other hand.

  His left hand remained ... a hand.

  He tried the fur again. Felt normal. He tried again. Failure.

  Was there ... another way to build a static charge?

  The only thing John knew about static electricity was that if
you shuffled over a carpet in the winter time, you'd get "electrified" enough to shock someone. Kids all did that. Zappp??! A little spark, a little pain for the both of you. But fun ... for a kid. Always in the winter. It never worked in the summer because ... the air wasn't dry enough in the summer .......

  And that was it! He was certain of it! No nose bleeds. Not since he'd had the humidifier installed. No nose bleeds because ... the air in the house was no longer ... dry.

  John's theory that static electricity made a "pathway" into some other reality had not been tested -- yet.

  Back at his desk, tired but excited, John thought this whole situation through, stroking his lower lip with one fingertip as he sometimes did.

  This was not the kind of idea he could tell anyone. Paul, maybe. But certainly no one else. In fact, maintaining he'd heard "ghosts" could get John in trouble. Before this "rain business," if someone told John about hearing "ghost noises," John would have thought, "bats in his belfry." It followed that, if John wouldn't have sat still for unexplained sounds, other people couldn't be expected to be receptive to the possibility of another ... what? A parallel universe? Another reality? Accessible to highly charged up ... cats?

  No. He could tell no one.

  Tired though John was, he had one more thought; about a way to test his theory. "All I need is more static electricity to counteract the moisture of the humidifier," John said aloud. "And I know where to find out how to get that power!" John laughed hysterically, the tension spilling out at last. "And there's no way you're going to stop me!"

  John realized he'd been talking out loud. Or was it more accurate to say he'd been addressing that ... thing ... who'd been spying on him?

  My God, John thought, taking care not even to move his lips as he formed the words in his mind. Could it be true after all? Something he'd considered, but not seriously? That ... gradually, he'd been slipping into the world of the insane? A place of impossible sounds. Of paranoia?

  By tomorrow, he should know.