by J. Thorn
Less than ten minutes later, Henry and his father were in the front yard, throwing snowballs and shoveling the driveway as the sun rose above the distant mountains. The wind created drifts taller than Henry, but he carved a path through them the best he could. The sky was clearing and a beautiful blue morning grew from the horizon as the sun rose, sending bright rays through the ice hanging from the trees and the gutters.
Soon the neighbors were awake and tending to their driveways and sidewalks, shovels clanking against the asphalt and concrete. Everyone waved to everyone else, or you at least nodded, even to the neighbors you didn’t really know or speak with often. Henry’s father finished their sidewalk and continued on until Ms. Winslow’s sidewalk was done, too. Then he returned to his own driveway where his son wasn’t having much luck clearing the snow with his little plastic shovel.
A few minutes later, Henry’s mother opened the front door and called for Henry to come inside and have some hot chocolate. He and his father were near the end of the driveway—his father using the big coal shovel his father had handed down to him while Henry worked with his plastic shovel. Henry looked up at his father, trying to hide the exhaustion and the cold creeping into his bones. His father saw the fatigue, of course.
“Go inside, Henry, and help your mother with the hot chocolate so she gets it just right. But don’t forget to save some for me!”
Henry smiled, tossed his shovel into the snow, and ran to the front door, which his mother was holding open. She tussled his hair as he passed by and she called after him to stop and take off his yellow rain boots. He didn’t have snow boots yet, but these kept his feet warm and dry, which seemed good enough for his mother—as long as he didn’t track snow through the house.
Henry drank his hot chocolate and watched his morning cartoons while his mother finished washing the dishes from the previous night’s dinner. Henry waited patiently for his father to come inside so they could plan their big snow day together, but when Henry’s father finished the driveway, he hurried to take a shower and soon after he announced he had to leave for work.
“Why, Dad? It snowed!” Henry said, dumbfounded. He and his mother had checked the local newscast a couple of times to confirm the schools were closed and Henry didn’t have to get ready for the day right away like he did on a normal morning.
“Well, the schools are closed for students, but I have a job to do, even if there aren’t going to be any kids in the classrooms,” his father explained, tussling Henry’s hair like his mother had earlier.
Henry wasn’t pleased at all, and his mother saw this, so she offered to play with him until she had to leave for work. Although Henry loved his mother with all his heart, the offer just wasn’t the same—but being smart for his age, he said nothing as he watched his father carefully steer the station wagon down the slick driveway, waving one last time as he pulled away.
THE PRESENT
(3)
The Boiler Gulps
Two hours after Henry breaks through the mental wall, a noise from the cellar awakens him from his creative half-coma, and he mutters a curse when he realizes what the sound is: the thump-thump-thump of the boiler gulping for oil while trying to expel its belly of built-up pressure.
The boiler can devour as much oil as it wants—and the big beast does, according to the hefty bill left on the front door every time Greensburg Oil & Gas fills the tank—but the unit cannot drain itself of the used water, and without proper drainage, the dirty water and the steam pressure can build and build until it has nowhere to go but through the weakest seams in the pipes. The results could be deadly, a fact that isn’t lost on Henry even when his mind is cluttered with other worries.
Henry forgot his morning maintenance session in the cellar today, and now the boiler is calling for him. Warning him in the only way it can.
Better get moving, boy, ’cause things are getting a bit tight in here.
Henry heeds the call and rushes down the attic stairs, past the family photos and the spacious rooms their unassuming furniture can’t fill. He doesn’t bother to stop and put on his shoes, although he should, considering what’s waiting for him in the cellar.
Henry hurries into the brightly painted country kitchen where he and Sarah had their fight the night before. The cellar door is tucked to the left of the pantry almost as an afterthought. He grabs the glass doorknob in one smooth motion, picking up the heavy-duty flashlight off the kitchen counter at the same time.
Thump-thump-thump, calls the boiler.
“I hear you, you stupid fat bear,” Henry replies, using his father’s phrase without even realizing what he’s saying.
He opens the door and flips the light switch. It flickers to life in a yellow burst above his head, but there’s darkness beyond the bottom of the stairs. There are no additional lights down there, yet he catches a glimpse of a rat scurrying off into a corner. He shudders at the thought.
This is why his flashlight never travels far from the kitchen counter. There are no windows in the cellar. Only darkness and dampness and an uneven dirt floor—and the rats and centipedes and other bugs that mostly stay in the dark where they belong. Henry’s attempts to exterminate them—traps and poisons—have failed, but at least he hasn’t seen the little monsters anywhere other than in the cellar.
Henry stands on the top step, staring into the gloom, watching for anything else to pass through the slot of light at the bottom of the stairs.
Thump-thump-thump, calls the boiler.
Henry hears the sound, but the noise is suddenly miles away. His vision spins; the stairs twist and roll; the dim light flickers and flashes. The chipped stone walls sweat condensation and he hears the crackle of running water off in the distance. The sound is not really there. It’s more like a memory he can’t quite recall. But everything else is as real as his trembling hand pressed to the damp wall. He shivers.
Thump-thump-thump.
Henry stands at the top of the stairs, one hand clutching the slim metal railing, and he closes his eyes. The vast darkness behind his eyelids spins; he sees colors in the darkness, the same kind of colors that come to him when he’s painting. Bright white stars burst to life in the distance. His fingers tighten on the railing, but he doesn’t step backwards, he doesn’t sit. He remains standing.
Henry isn’t afraid of the dark; he knows the dark intimately. In fact, he has learned to embrace the darkness and control his terrors to his own benefit. His paintings appeal to collectors who still worry about monsters lurking in the darkest corners of their bedrooms and deep in their hearts.
Once, when asked why his work features terrible events happening to perfectly good people, Henry had simply replied: I paint against the darkness.
He never quite understood why those words were so important, but now, as he stands at the top of the spinning stairs, the phrase floats inside his eyelids, the bright red letters hovering in the star-spotted blackness. The stars spin clockwise and the words twist and rotate counterclockwise.
“I paint against the darkness,” Henry whispers, his voice foreign to his own ears.
When he opens his eyes, the rickety wooden stairs have returned to normal. They are steep and narrow but passable. They do not twist or roll. The walls are merely damp. There is no running water anywhere. The light above his head is steady and dim. It isn’t a beautiful light, but rarely has Henry considered any light to be beautiful. Light is, after all, only the absence of darkness.
Thump-thump-thump.
“Get a grip, Henry,” he whispers. “This is the kind of foolish crap Sarah was talking about.”
Henry descends the stairs, his flashlight burning a path through the dark. He keeps a hand on the railing and he remains steady. At the bottom of the steps, he surveys the cellar, shining the flashlight from side to side.
Rats with beady eyes scamper further into the darkness, fleeing the light. They dart behind the tables and empty cabinets of the old workshop the previous owner left behind and which Henry can�
�t imagine ever using. They sprint into the maze of rusted old rakes, shovels, and hoes. The former owner had been in the process of repairing the tools to sell at the local flea market when he broke his hip and was forced to leave his lifelong home for good. The stairs were too much for him to handle at his advanced age.
Henry doesn’t know for certain whether or not the rats were here when the former owner worked in the cellar, but now they squeeze into the tiny cracks and holes in the stone walls as if there’s a network of tunnels through the foundation where the rats live and sleep and fornicate. That thought also makes Henry shudder.
The cellar ceiling is low and constructed of crisscrossing timbers. Henry must stoop to avoid hitting his head, even though he has never been mistaken for a tall man at any point in his life. The floor is hard dirt, packed solid and tight but uneven. The walls remind Henry of a photograph he once saw in a news magazine: the tiny, hidden cell where a prisoner of war had been tortured to death. Those walls were also wet.
It’s no wonder the real estate agent tried to avoid showing Henry and Sarah this cellar when they first toured the property. But when the agent mentioned the steam-powered heating system, Henry had insisted on seeing the boiler for himself. His father had worked with steam boilers and Henry wasn’t sure about having one in his own home as an adult. They were loud, often clanging like a demon was loose in the pipes, and the older models weren’t exactly renowned for their ease of use.
More importantly, they could be dangerous. If you weren’t careful, you could be injured, maimed, or even killed.
Thump-thump-thump.
The boiler calls for Henry again and he points his flashlight to where the beast hulks, huge and ugly. The center section is round and as black as a moonless night. There are a dozen pipes snaking in every direction from the main body, curving and twisting like a roller coaster with no end. Next to the unit is the enormous oil tank, which has been refilled three times already this winter.
The boiler gulps the oil, Henry once told his wife, and she gave him a funny look.
It gulps, you know? he said earnestly. She smiled and laughed and touched his face with the gentle understanding of a mother whose child isn’t making much sense. She didn’t understand, but he did, and that was what mattered.
Henry stares at those pipes; he studies them closely. Sometimes in his dreams the pipes come to life, quietly shaking loose, stretching and reaching like arms with giant hands. In these same dreams, the faceplate on the boiler inevitably blows open, sending a wave of flames rolling across the dirt floor to engulf him, and the boiler growls and says: You were right, Henry, I gulp and I gulp until there’s nothing left!
Henry always wakes with a start from these dreams, although he knows they aren’t real. There are monsters in the world, but they’re not the bogeymen of children’s stories. Still, after the nightmares, he often slips out of bed and sneaks to his attic studio to paint the darkness away. He paints until his mind and his heart are calm. Then he returns to bed and sleeps like a baby.
The pipes and the main body of the boiler are wrapped in asbestos, which has been encapsulated by thick coats of paint over the years. But the paint is old and flaking, and many of the sections have crumbled into chalky piles on the dirt floor.
“Ah hell, asbestos gets a bad rap,” Henry says, quoting his father. “If you don’t burn it and breathe in the flames, and if you don’t sniff big piles of the dust, you’re good to go. It’s the best insulation there is.”
Henry doesn’t understand why he’s standing motionless at the bottom of the steps instead of getting the job done so he can return to his work in the attic, but he senses there’s something wrong. He can’t put his finger on what the problem is, and nothing appears to be out of place, but Henry’s father taught him to trust his gut and never take chances when it comes to a big old steam boiler, which is essentially a pressure bomb ticking away in the basement of your home. A profound coldness has wrapped around Henry, chilling his arms and legs and closing in on his heart. He shivers; something is truly wrong and he has no idea what it could be.
Thump-thump-thump.
The boiler continues to call, but Henry stands silently in the darkness, unable to move, his legs frozen by a strange fear he can’t explain.
Thump-thump-thump.
THE BIRTH OF THE ARTIST
(4)
After Henry’s father left for work, Henry knew he should still be thrilled: he didn’t have to go to school today, after all. Now he needed to decide what to do, and the answer to that question was easy, too. There was a big back yard full of snow waiting for him. What couldn’t he do?
As Henry dressed himself in his snow pants and the yellow rain boots, his mind filled with possibilities. No school! He actually liked going to school and seeing his friends and his teacher, but the idea of being home on a day he was supposed to be in the classroom was exhilarating, like getting away with breaking a stupid rule.
A few moments later Henry’s mother came into his room, where he was sitting on the floor trying to buckle the latches on his boots. She was dressed for her job as a triage nurse in the hospital’s emergency room, which the snowstorm had left more short-staffed than normal.
“Going to play in the snow?” she asked.
“Yep!”
“Have fun and be safe. I have to go to work, but Ms. Winslow will watch you.”
“No snow day for you and Dad?” he asked.
“Sorry, love, but duty calls.” She kneeled and helped Henry with his boots. Then she smoothed the part in his hair with her fingers. Her nails were freshly painted. “You be good for Ms. Winslow. Be my Big Boy, okay?”
“I will.”
“And promise me you’ll stay away from the woods.”
“I promise,” he lied without missing a beat.
In the summer, the growth of the woods beyond the yard was thick and wild, but if he made it through the bushes and prickers and weeds safely, there was a well-worn path along the Slade River where he could skip stones on the water or catch a frog with his bare hands. Today the river would be icy and there would be no frogs, but he wasn’t the least bit interested in the frigid water. He had another destination in mind.
Back in the heaviest growth, just short of the river, was where Henry had discovered the old abandoned pick-up truck the previous summer. The tires and seats were rotted, the paint was nearly gone, the frame was rusted, and it was sitting a mile from the nearest road with no easy way to explain how any kind of motor vehicle could have gotten there. Henry’s best guess involved something he had seen while watching the New Year’s Day Twilight Zone marathon with his father.
The truck wasn’t the only hidden treasure to be discovered in those woods—and that was what really excited Henry’s imagination. The best thing he ever found—besides the truck and the dozens of antique Coke bottles and a broken fishing rod and even the rusted barrel of a flint rifle—was a forgotten tree house, nestled high in the limbs of a soaring oak with a thousand branches. The majestic tree stood alone in the middle of a clearing, rising above the rest of the forest like a mighty tower.
There wasn’t a rope ladder to the tree house any more, but sometimes Henry thought if he were just a little bit taller he might be able to reach the lowest branch and climb the rest of the way. He daydreamed about what he might find up there, and he fought the urge to tell anyone else about it, even his father. The clearing and the giant oak were meant to be a secret place. Somehow he knew that deep down where he kept all of his secrets.
Henry loved his adventures in the woods, but he had to be careful, too. He had a bad scare the first time he wandered off the trail—a mistake he knew to never make again—and the older kids at school had already filled his head with stories of monsters from beyond the grave who supposedly haunted the forest. Henry knew enough not to believe the stories, yet deep down, he thought maybe they could be true, at least a little. For a little boy with a big imagination, that was enough.
The w
arnings didn’t stop Henry from wandering off the trail occasionally, of course. He was careful in the woods—people sometimes really did go missing along the river—but there was so much cool stuff to be found away from the trails and he wanted to explore the land until he knew all of its secrets.
And today the woods presented a whole new world, one covered under a thick blanket of snow and ice. So even as Henry had been dressing himself to play in the backyard, he knew where he was really headed on this perfect snow day.
His day would be spent exploring the woods.
And that was how he would discover the monsters in the real world.
THE PRESENT
(4)
The Darkness Below the House
The boiler needs to be drained and refilled every twelve hours during the winter, and the previous owner left Henry a helpful note explaining all five steps of the process very clearly. Henry had discovered the handwritten instructions tacked to the cellar door the day his family moved into their new home. He knew all about steam boilers from his father, of course, but he appreciated the kindness of the previous owner, the man who had lived here all his life, leaving behind the workshop and those rusty tools in the cellar as his legacy.
A modern unit can do the five maintenance steps automatically, but the boiler in this cellar is anything but modern. Actually, Henry is pretty sure it was original with the house. Somewhere along the way someone upgraded the unit to oil from coal, but the idea of adding any kind of new and automated controls is laughable. Henry is hoping to replace the boiler once and for all in the spring if their finances allow. The new unit will handle the five twice-a-day maintenance steps automatically, controlled by a thermostat on the first floor. Henry will never have to visit the cellar again if all goes well.
Right now, though, Henry stands frozen in place, unable to perform the tasks he came here to do. Something feels very wrong in the cellar. Maybe it’s those damn rats or maybe the sensation is an aftereffect of the vertigo, but his arms are covered in goosebumps and his heart is racing. He senses movement in the periphery of his vision, but when he swings the flashlight around, there’s nothing to be seen. Then:
