by David Six
Thursday, Sally informed me that Edie Carlson was a wreck, because her husband Bill had run off with his secretary. So of course both Sally and Mel would be consoling Edie all night long. And Sally looked at me like I could have stopped it, stopped the infection that Bob had started, if only I’d spoken up.
I had no idea what to say to all this.
Sunday, Sally headed out of the house at two in the afternoon, a couple of bottles of our best cabernet under her arm. She let me know that Tom Culver had followed Bill and Bob off into the wild blue yonder with his own “chippie”, and Tom’s wife Alice was beside herself. She stomped out the door after giving me one of Mel’s knife-stares.
I may not be the smartest guy, but none of this made any sense. Sure, guys occasionally lost their minds and ran off with secretaries or other sweet young things and abandoned their families, but I knew Tom, Bill, and Bob pretty well. We all had things we’d like to change about our lives to be happier, but guys like to be comfortable, and rarely will they leave a cushy setup like they all had—like we all had—unless there was some extraordinarily compelling reason to do so. We all had nice big houses, expensive cars, big flatscreens, and a favorite chair. Without some major precipitating event, it was unlikely that one—much less three—of my fellow husbands would take off, and all in the same week.
I went out front after Sally left for Alice Culver’s house, and pretended to putter in the front yard for a few minutes while I made sure all the bereaved gals were safely inside Alice’s place, and likely into the wine. Then I went to the back yard, and through the gate Bob and I had put in our common fence to let Janey and Tommy play together without having to go near the street, into Mel’s yard. I found the shovel on the ground at the back of her yard, behind a big hydrangea bush—the shovel I’d seen her drop the other night when I’d looked out the window.
It lay on the garden mulch next to a freshly-dug dirt mound.
My heart started pounding. I told myself I was being an idiot, that the kind of thing I was thinking only happened in movies, the crazy wife doing in the unsuspecting husband and burying him in the back yard. But I stood there staring at that dirt, looking for all the world like a grave, and found it difficult to convince myself.
So I picked up the shovel and started digging, keeping an ear out just in case Mel came back to her house for more booze.
I dug for about fifteen minutes, discovering the mound—while large and long on top—narrowed considerably as it went down, as if the sticky clay beneath the fluffy topsoil became more and more difficult for the digger to excavate. A digger with not a lot of upper body strength.
The blade of the shovel struck something soft, something that gave more easily than the clay.
I dropped the shovel and went to my knees, scraping my fingers through the black clay and hunking it out onto the mulch beside the hole. A few seconds later I touched a body.
A cat.
I sat back on my haunches and stared at the orange tom lying at the bottom of the hole. Had Mel owned a cat? I couldn’t remember; I was a dog person. Maybe she had, and it had died. Still, that didn’t explain her and Edie Carlson burying it in the middle of the night, and then acting all giddy afterwards.
I thought about this for a minute, but came up empty. I started to scoop the dirt back over the poor cat, which was starting to smell pretty ripe, when I paused and looked at it more closely. The clay sticking to its orange fur had made me almost miss it.
The cat’s throat had been cut.
“Whoa,” I muttered.
I just sat on my heels and stared. Why would Mel cut her cat’s throat? Or maybe it wasn’t her cat? Then…
Then what?
What the hell had I stumbled into?
I heard the front door slam at my house, and felt my bowels loosen, as if I had been caught in the act of something illicit. Panicking, for what reason I had no idea, I grabbed the mound of dirt in my arms and swept back it into the hole, my heart racing so fast I thought it would punch a hole in my chest.
“Rog?” I heard Sally call.
Fuck! I raced to get the mound looking like it had before, but some of the clay from deeper down ended up on top of the looser topsoil.
“Rog?” A little sharper this time.
I did the best I could, spreading some mulch on top of the mound to blend it in, then ran to the fence. I almost went through the common gate, but heard our patio door slide open, and imagined Sally looking for me in the back yard.
I ran down to where the fence split our narrow side yards, took a jump, caught the top of the fence, and vaulted over, landing on my left hip and knocking the wind out of myself. I leaped to my feet, knocking over one of our big plastic trash bins.
I heard Sally’s size-six feet scuffle on the concrete walk that fed off our patio, and come down the side of the house to the garbage cans. I dropped to my knees, grabbed a handful of the loose dirt lying against the foundation and scooped it back, just as Sally rounded the corner of the house and saw me.
“Didn’t you hear me calling you?” she said, her hands on her hips, her eyes hot as the sun with her irritation.
“What?” I said. “Oh, hi, hon.”
“Why are you so dirty?” she demanded. “What are you doing?”
I pointed at the foundation. “I was taking out the trash, and thought I saw a termite. I was just digging a little to see if it was.”
“Termites?” she said. “Ick. Make sure we don’t have any. I don’t want my house to fall down around my ears.” She looked at me for several silent moments. “I just came back to get some snacks for the girls. Alice is a mess, but she has to eat.” She gave me another unreadable look, turned on her heel and went back into the house.
I sank back on the dirt and let out a breath.
I had no idea why I was afraid of my own wife.
And wait…
Her house?
Monday morning I got up for work at six as usual—Sally wasn’t there; probably still at Alice’s—took a shower and shaved, then opened the hamper to toss in my pajamas.
And froze.
Lying on top of the dirty clothes was a towel.
Soaked in blood.
I swallowed, but the spit wouldn’t go down.
I heard the front door open downstairs, and giggling. A lot of giggling. I spun, heading for the bedroom door and into the hall. Shit! I was naked!
“Rog?” my wife called. “Where are you?”
More laughing, from at least six different women. All six pairs of feet thudded on the stairs.
“Oh Roger,” Mel called in her cold voice. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Moan
At night, that’s when the moans start.
I lay in bed, thinking about the day, no money, worries, how to pay for the new house. Tiny though it may be.
At some point I drift off.
Then the moans start.
You’ll think this is stupid, or I’m a drunk, or hallucinating from something illicit. Fuck you—I’m not any of that shit. I dare you to spend a night in my house.
It’s the neighbors fucking with you, you say. They don’t like you because the first day there you sprayed their white and brown Shih Tzu with the hose when it was taking a crap on your new sod. No, they apologized and invited me for barbeque.
I live alone. My wife and I divorced six months ago. We’d already sold our home, and I was staying in a month-to-month studio apartment, thinking I’d never be able to afford a house again. Then my realtor called me with this one. I thought, Fuck, this is lucky—I get a house again. No crappy apartment with neighbors blasting music till three in the morning. I jumped on the deal.
I have to wonder now if my realtor knew about this, the moans. I have to wonder if she was ever in the house when the moans started. I have to wonder if she ran from the house and thought to herself, What rube can I sell this cracker-box to.
Me, I suppose—I’
m the rube.
But now I can’t afford to go anywhere else. So I lay in bed, night after night, and just when I start catching some Zs, they start:
Ohh-uhh-unn-uh.
That’s what it sounds like. Not screams like in the movies, like someone getting stabbed or beaten. It’s a low, keening sound, like a sick animal that won’t ever get well. But the sound isn’t coming from any animal’s throat.
It’s human.
Or something like human.
Ohh-uhh-unn-uh.
Over and over, all night long. I fucking haven’t slept for two weeks now, not more than a couple minutes at a time. So pardon the fuck out of me if I’m goddam cranky.
I crashed at Bob’s place the other night, Bob that I work with down at the warehouse. But his wife said Uh-uh, no more than one night, ’cause there’s only enough room for us. So Bob said Sorry, but you can’t stay.
One of the nights was warm, so I dragged the patio chair onto the screen porch off the back of the house and tried sleeping on that. But you know what? About three a.m.:
Ohh-uhh-unn-uh.
Like it was right in my ear. Like I hadn’t gone outside at all.
The house is settling, you say. It’s the wind blowing through the soffit vents, you say. You got a dead rat stuck in a plumbing chimney.
No, no, and fuck you. It’s not any of those.
My house is haunted.
I know how fucking stupid that sounds, like I’m some baked teenager daring another baked teenager to run up and touch the abandoned house where the family was murdered. I know you think I’m the stoner.
I’m not going to waste my time trying to convince you. I hardly believe it myself. I did ask Bob to come over one night to listen with me, but his wife said No. I’m still too new down at the warehouse to ask any of the other guys—they’d probably think I was queer or something, begging them to spend the night with me to listen to my ghost.
But I’m fucking sick of it now, and I have to do something about it or I’m going to go out of my gourd. I told Bob at work today that tonight I was going on the warpath against the damn ghosts or spirits or whatever they are, and he said Good luck. I don’t think he believes me, that I got a ghost. I hardly believe me. But the black circles under my eyes and what my boss called my “listless behavior” tells the tale. I’m going to get fired if I don’t do something, and then I’ll be living under a tarp in some alley.
That night I stripped and put on my pajama bottoms like I always do, but instead of getting under the covers I just sat on the edge of my bed twiddling my thumbs and waiting. Sure enough, around three a.m.:
Ohh-uhh-unn-uh.
It almost sounded like a girl doing the moaning, as I sat there and listened hard instead of trying to shut out the noise. Like some girl who’d been hurt, or was hurt, or sick with something like cancer. Like she had a deep, nonstop pain that just was eating her up inside. Like a pain that never gave her a minute’s rest, that she could never get away from.
I sat there for a good long while, I don’t know how long. I could feel my heart, like something was thumping in my chest trying to get out.
Man up, I told myself. Stop being a little bitch and go deal with this.
I grabbed the wood bat I’d started keeping by the bed, like that would do any good. If all the movies were right, that is—how do you club a ghost? Well, if there was any way I could, I’d beat that fucker bloody.
I went out into the hallway, all six feet of it that ran from the bedroom to the rest of my little house, and could see the glow coming from the microwave in the kitchen ahead.
Ohh-uhh-unn-uh.
I got such a chill, I had to clamp down or I’d of peed right there on the carpet. I’d come out to the hall before when I’d heard it, mainly the first week I was here till I got too tired to deal with it anymore, and it had never sounded this loud. Maybe the fucker was finally dying or something. A dying ghost—yeah, that made sense. I needed some fucking sleep.
I choked up on the bat and put it against my shoulder so I’d be ready to swing for the far bleachers, if it came to that. I realized I was barefoot, and thought of going back to the bedroom for my slippers.
Ohh-uhh-unn-uh.
Fuck it, I thought. One way or another, this ends tonight.
I strode forward like I had a hot date. In the kitchen I turned on the lights, stopped and listened. After about fifteen minutes of just standing there, my low back was starting to ache and my legs were getting crampy.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe I imagined the whole thing.
Ohh-uhh-unn-uh.
Did you hear that? I didn’t imagine shit, so fuck you kindly. You want to stand here in my haunted house and hold the bat, you can judge.
Ohh-uhh-unn-uh.
Now the moans were coming faster, like the whatever-it-was knew I was coming for it. You want a fight, fucker? You got one!
The next one, I cocked my head. The moans usually sounded like they came from all around me, but this…
I stared at the closed door to the right of the fridge.
Ohh-uhh-unn-uh.
The moans were coming from the basement.
Every scary movie I ever saw flashed through my head. Don’t go in the basement, they all said, and of course the idiot kids in all the movies went in the basement and got stabbed or chopped up or something.
But I wasn’t a kid, and I had a bat.
“I’m coming for you,” I yelled. “You hear me, spook? I’m fucking coming for you!”
No answer. Don’t know what I expected, maybe an Oh, I’m so sorry for bothering you, I’ll stop moaning now would have been nice. But I didn’t hear anything, not even another moan, which was kind of unsettling at that point.
It felt like my feet were stuck to the floor, and that wasn’t just the spilled beer from my shitty cleaning habits. I made myself move, and crossed the tiny kitchen to the basement door. When I put my hand on the knob:
Ohh-uhh-unn-uh.
Like the whatever-it-was was getting excited I was coming. Yeah, you get excited, fucker, ’cause I’m done with your shit.
I told myself I had a bat and some pretty good strength, but the hammering in my chest told me right back that I was about to piss myself.
I turned the knob and opened the door. The rush of cool air from below hit my face, and I did pee a little, the warm wet spot spreading on the front of my PJs. Great. What a fucking baby. No such things as ghosts. I started down the steps, feeling for each tread with my feet because the string for the light was at the bottom.
The air coming up from the basement smelled like old paper that had gotten wet and dried out and gotten wet again. The people who had the house before me hadn’t cleaned out all their boxes of shit, and I hadn’t gotten around to throwing it all out. The smell itched my nose and made me sneeze. It sounded like a gunshot.
A glob of snot flew out of my nostril and plopped on the handrail; I could see it glisten in the light leaking down from the kitchen. It sat there a second, then started oozing over the side of the rounded rail, and fell off onto the bottom step where it raised a miniature cloud of dust. I reached up to the string and pulled it. The sixty-watt bulb lit, blinding me for a moment.
I blinked till my eyes adjusted, and didn’t move off the bottom step. I guess I felt that the second I put my bare foot on the concrete basement floor, something was going to grab me.
I never thought of myself as anything other than a manly man, but I was acting like a pussy.
“Suck it up,” I said to myself, and put my foot on the floor.
It was cold, like basement concrete always is no matter what the season, and I felt the skin on the bottom of my foot wrinkle. The chill made me let out another couple drops of pee. Guess I should have hit the pisser before I came ghost-hunting.
I listened. No sound. I looked around. It was just an old basement—some dusty, warped shelves over against the south wall that the previous owners h
ad made with pine boards and two-by-fours. The shelves were mostly empty, just an old oil lamp and a stack of newspapers on the second one from the top, and the moldy boxes lining the bottom one.
I took my other foot off the step and put it on the floor.
I shivered. I don’t know what I expected, but nothing happened. No fanged monsters rushing from the dark corners to grab me, no white shimmery figures floating towards me.
“Nothing to say, ghost?” I jeered.
Maybe taunting a ghost wasn’t the best strategic move. I stood there, the lightbulb right above my head, the heat from it warming the thinning spot on top of my skull. I was holding the bat in my right hand down by my side. Now or never, I thought.
I took a step forward. Nothing happened.
“Okay, are you here or not?” I said, grimacing when my voice cracked a little at the end.
Another step. The light was behind me now, shining around my body, casting a long shadow forward on the concrete and up the far wall. I stopped and looked around. The light only shone so far into the space—all the corners were dark. But I could see well enough to tell that it was just an empty basement. The only other thing in it was the furnace and water heater on the north wall, standing next to each other like old buds.
I turned a full circle, making sure I looked everywhere. Nada. The place was bare, like it always had been.
My muscles started to ease, and I felt pretty fucking stupid standing there in my pee-soaked PJs holding a bat, thinking I had a ghost in my basement. I took one more three-sixty, just for shits and giggles.
There was someone in the corner.
“Yah!” I yelled, and jumped back.
My tortured bladder let loose and the entire left leg of my PJs got drenched. I dropped the bat and fell on my ass, the hard concrete sending a jarring punch up through my tailbone. I scrambled like a crab, the fear shooting through me like an ice knife. I scuttled backwards until I slammed into the bottom step, the wooden tread scraping a hunk of meat off my lower spine.
“Jesus H fucking Christ on a crutch!” I hollered. I dove forward and grabbed the bat, clocking my chin on the floor and snapping shut my teeth on the tip of my tongue. I tasted blood.
