Michael R Collings

by The Slab- A Novel of Horror (retail) (epub)

  He shoved the bathroom door open, but already he had heard the squish of water beneath his feet as he crossed the sodden carpet, so he wasn’t surprised when he flicked the light on to see water spilling over the top of the toilet bowl. The floor tiles were an inch deep in the stuff, and the runoff was apparently following the path of least resistance, out the door, across the hall, and into the boy’s room.

  The toilet was spewing gallons of water, it seemed, fortunately clear enough but tinged faintly with not-quite green, not-quite brown against the white porcelain He sniffed reflexively, testing the air. Something…faint, but unidentifiable. Repellent in its own way, but definitely not sewage.

  Willard ran over to the toilet, knelt on the flooded floor, cursed under his breath as his knees went suddenly cold and wet, and struggled to twist the ball valve and shut off the flow. It resisted for a couple of moments, while time the water continued to gush over the toilet rim, onto him, onto the floor.

  “Catherine,” he yelled, still fighting the valve. “Catherine! Towels. Quick!”

  Behind him, he could hear the linen closet door screak open, then shut, then the soft thump as Catherine threw towels over the threshold in a futile attempt to hold back the flood. Too little, too late, Willard thought.

  Finally, with a thick, unpleasant squeal, the valve turned and the water slowly tapered off, then stopped completely.

  He stood, dripping from the knees down, hands chilled to the bone, face flushed with anger and frustration. What next?

  “The boys’ carpet is wet about halfway across the room, but the other bedrooms are dry,” Catherine reported while laying another layer of towels in the hall.

  Willard stood in the boys’ doorway. The dark brown carpet was almost black in a quarter circle that extended from the door as far as the closet. The boy’s bunk beds stood partially in the circle, as did their dresser. Sams’ little box bed seemed dry, and there didn’t seem to be any problem with the low table underneath the window that held a scattering of their toys, Yap’s cage, and assorted detritus of cast-off clothing.

  “Okay, guys,” Willard said, sighing. “Let’s get busy.”

  While Catherine mopped up the bathroom and the younger kids were relegated to the family room to watch a DVD, Willard, Will, Jr., and Burt began the tedious task of moving everything out of the bedroom—Sams’ bed; the dresser drawers, one by one; the toys and clothing that had been lying on the floor and were now either sopping wet or still dry but to Catherine’s mind contaminated and therefore to be removed. With a curl of his lip, as if he smelled something extremely distasteful, Burt dumped wet things into a plastic laundry basket just beyond the damp edge of the hall carpet. Will, Jr., stripped all of the beds and, careful not to let any edges trail, hauled the bedding by the armful into the family room to toss it in a corner behind the couch.

  The only problem came when he entered the family room carrying Sams’ blanket, crossed the room, and tossed the grubby, smelly thing into the washer.

  “Nooo,” Sams screamed, and Catherine had to race in from the back and comfort him, reassuring him that the blanket was only going to be gone a little while.

  “Gone away, like Yip, forever?” Sams demanded.

  “No, sweetie, not like Yip. You’ll have it back fresh and clean before the movie’s over.”

  It helped, but Sams spent the rest of the hour standing guard over the washer, then the dryer, until finally his blanket emerged safe and sound. He curled up on the corner of the couch, sating edging in his mouth, and promptly fell asleep.

  That was probably for the best, since tempers were rapidly becoming shorter and shorter, and he was out of the way, at least.

  A sharp yelp came from the back bedroom.

  Catherine raced back to find Willard standing in the center of the room, water squishing out around the soles of his shoes. He was nursing a bloody finger, his good hand holding the injured one away from his body to keep his shirt from getting stained. The wound had already bled profusely enough to stain his hand red and drip onto the floor. Sodden as it was with the overflowing water, the carpet seemed to absorb the drops almost immediately, as if drinking them.

  “What happened?” Catherine took one look and turned around to retrieve the first aid kit from the top shelf of the linen closet. She grabbed a dry hand towel as well—all of the larger ones were spread on the floor to draw up the water.

  “I caught my finger between the bedpost and the tip of the screwdriver when I tried to loosen the back bolts on Will’s bunk, and sliced myself all to hell.” He extended his hands so Catherine could see the injury better. “I’m going to have to dismantle the whole bed to get it out of here. We’re going to have to take the carpet and the padding out as well. They’re too wet to dry back here without molding or something.”

  Catherine muttered soothing non-words as she worked on his finger, wiping away the blood and cleaning the slash.

  “It’s not too deep, it just bled like crazy,” Willard assured her absently while scanning the floor. Finally she finished wrapping the wound in a thick gauze bandage. Actually, the injury looked fairly serious. They might have to get Willard to the hospital, she thought.

  “Come on out and sit down,” Catherine said, tugging gently at his sleeve. “You can’t do this alone, and Will’s too little to be much good at moving the heavier furniture. I’ll see if any of the neighbors can help.”

  2.

  Even though the Huntleys had only lived on Oleander Place for a couple of months, they were well enough known and well enough liked that it didn’t take long for a crew of half a dozen men to show up and start work, with a couple of their wives to assist in the cleanup. Piece by piece, the men hauled mattresses, box springs, the wooden frame of the dresser, the low table, then bits and pieces of the bunk beds through the family room and into the garage, stacking everything neatly along the wall.

  Willard tried to help, but his hand really was starting to throb and he felt dizzy every time he went into the bedroom, so finally he took Catherine’s advice—all the while glum, grudging, and frustrated—and remained in the family room. It grated on his nerves, though, whenever one of the men carried another piece through to the garage.

  I should be helping them. It’s my damned house. I should be able to take care of it. I shouldn’t have to call on neighbors and then sit here like a cripple while they do all the work.

  Finally, the men reported that, except for the clothing hanging in the closet and the pictures on the wall, the room was empty.

  “Want us to rip up the carpet as well?” Ned Wilcox asked. “I used to work as a carpet layer to pay for college. It shouldn’t take long.”

  “Let me come back and see,” Willard said. He could help with that at least.

  At the threshold of the bedroom, he surveyed the damage.

  The faint odor he had detected earlier in the bathroom seemed stronger now, even though most of the overflow had been sopped up in the hall and the bedroom.

  He wrinkled his nose and took a deep breath. The air was damp, musty, almost dank, as if it belonged in a old earth-floored, spider-web encrusted cellar. The odor was sharp, acidic, not quite strong enough to draw attention to itself but easily noticeable if one concentrated.

  The most obvious result of the spill, however, was clearly evident, now that the carpet had been removed.

  Arcing from the corner diagonal to the door to midway along the closet wall, a jagged crack showed stark and black against the concrete. On the far side of the break, the floor was stone dry, the typical grey of cement, with occasional dark brown rough spots where the padding had been glued down. Nothing unusual there, except for an inch-wide fissure along the back wall, perhaps two inches in from the floorboards—the extension of the crack Willard had first noticed in the living room and traced further in the kitchen. Now it was evident that the crack continued the entire length of the back wall. If he removed the carpet in the fifth bedroom—Willard’s office—he would no doubt find the
same condition along the wall there.

  On the near side of the break, however, the floor was still damp, almost black, with an odd sheen that suggested that it would be slippery. It looked miasmal, unhealthy.

  Willard stepped into the room.

  The floor wasn’t slippery at all, he was surprised to discover, but he could tell that it would take a while longer for it to dry completely. The kids would have to camp out in the family room for a couple of days, he realized.

  Wilcox and one of the other men—Willard thought his last name was Kemp—stepped into the room after him.

  “That’s some crack you got,” Wilcox said.

  “Kind of reminds me of the Grand Canyon,” Kemp added. “Just not quite as wide or as deep.”

  Willard nodded.

  Wilcox moved past Willard and Kemp, toward the far corner where the crack began. He seemed to be pacing, measuring something.

  He turned and looked at each of the other corners in turn, then at Willard and Kemp.

  “You’ve got a bit of a slope in here, too,” he said. “I figure a good three, four inches difference between the door over there and this corner.” He gestured at the crack. “If it weren’t for that, the water would probably have run clear across the room, under the wall, and up into the studs. Could have been a real problem.”

  Willard nodded.

  Wilcox pointed along the back wall. “And you got another problem there,” indicating where the wall had separated from the foundation. “Never seen anything like that before.”

  Then he brushed his hands against the sides of his pants, as if getting rid of a layer of dust or something, and said, “Anything else we can do for you, Huntley?”

  Willard shook his head. For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to speak. Perhaps because actually seeing the fissure running across the entire width of the room had startled him, perhaps because he was already fuming—yet again—at the incredible ineptitude, or worse, of the builders. And perhaps because he understood that whatever was happening here, whatever would be needed to make this place livable for him and his family might just be beyond his ability to fix.

  3.

  The city engineer arrived the next Wednesday.

  The boys were still sleeping in the family room—they had constructed a make-shift tent of chairs, quilts, and sheets in one corner and sheets and seemed perfectly happy to stay there for the rest of their lives. Sams was especially pleased with the arrangements. He would sit just under the front flap of the tent, blanket in hand, and watch the television, giggling to himself at some secret joke.

  Yap seemed equally content in his new place on the wide window sill. He spent hours, it seemed, whirling around in the exercise wheel, the small whirr becoming an integral part of the atmosphere in the room.

  The carpet and padding were still laid out in the garage. Thanks to the unusual weather, the garage was overheated for this time of year, hot and stuffy. The padding seemed dry, but the carpet retained an unpleasant stickiness when touched. Perhaps a couple more days would be enough, then it could be re-laid.

  Willard answered the doorbell with a sense both of anticipation and of incipient foreboding. Whatever was going on with the house, at least the inspector would know.

  “Mr. Huntley? I’m Edgar Sai, from the city inspector’s office. I hear you have some questions.” The man was short, official looking, with a calculator in one shirt pocket and a clipboard in his hand. He glanced down, as if to re-check his data.

  “A few,” Willard responded. “A few.”

  In a couple of minutes—after the introductions were made and Catherine went into the family room to keep herd on the kids—Willard and Sai were walking along the back of the house. Sai kept his head down, studying the earth along the foundations of the house, the way the concrete patio slab canted toward the grass, the surface of the yard itself. Occasionally he would nod. He did not speak.

  They turned the corner and stood at the end of the narrow strip along the side.

  “Here’s where I found it,” Willard said. He pointed to the shallow excavation that paralleled the wall, but the action was unnecessary. Sai was already on his knees, one finger tracing the exposed crack. He stood.

  “Do you have a shovel?”

  Willard indicated the one leaning against the fence.

  It took Sai only a couple of minutes to continue the trench the length of the wall. He was more proficient with the tool than Willard had been.

  “Okay,” he said when both of them could see that the crack extended from corner to corner, never less than half an inch wide, sometimes as much as two inches. “It’s pretty clear what happened. We’ve seen this often enough here.”

  “What do you mean, here?”

  Sai straightened and leaned the shovel back against the fence.

  “Here, in Charter Oaks, as well as in Sunset Hills, over there toward the hills. There were a lot of problems when the subdivisions were built, improper materials, inadequate compaction of the soil, even some outright illegalities in construction. Happened, oh, twenty, thirty years ago or so.”

  “But what…?”

  “Basically, the builders failed to meet most of the codes then in place, and the houses started to fall apart within a couple of years.”

  “Weren’t there laws…?”

  Sai had apparently had this conversation many times before. He seemed to know what Willard was about to ask and had no compunctions about interrupting.

  “Sure. But laws only work when you catch the bad guys breaking them. This guy—McCall—was too canny. It wasn’t until two years after this subdivision was finished, almost five years after Sunset Hills was finished, that the inspectors finally started to close in on him.”

  “Did they get him? Put him in jail or something?”

  “Actually, it was sort of ironic. About the time the indictments came down and the law finally got in motion, he…died.”

  “Died? How?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, some kids found him….” Sai suddenly stopped. His eyes dropped to the clipboard in his hands. He took a second or two to read something, the looked up at Willard. For another couple of seconds his eyes widened and he just stared. “Uh, they found his body on Halloween night. Gave them quite a scare. Still a bit of a mystery as to how he died.”

  Sai seemed unwilling to say more. He made a few notes on the form on the clipboard.

  “From what I see here,” he said finally, “it’s pretty clear what happened. This McCall had a nasty habit of cutting corners wherever he could, regardless of what it meant to the integrity of the structures.

  “One of his favorite tactics was supremely simple. He would set the foundation boards and lay the steel rebar, everything ready to pour the slab. The inspector would come out and find everything perfectly within code. He’d sign off on the house, then leave.

  “And McCall would pull up the rebar, pour the slab immediately, and use the same rebar in the next house. Saved a lot of money that way. No one knows which houses, if any, finally got to keep the rebar.”

  “So the concrete would just give way after a while,” Willard said, almost to himself.

  Sai nodded.

  “That in itself would have been enough of a problem. But he had another trick as well.”

  Sai knelt down and caught a clod of dirt in his had, then stood, crumbling it as he did so. Both men watched the dust filter to the ground.

  “The soil here, and at Sunset Hills, is unusually expansive. It captures moisture when it rains, and…well, swells is a good non-technical term. Then when it gets dry, it shrinks. Up and down.

  “That’s why rebar is so crucial around here. It helps stabilize the slab to minimize the effects of the recurrent movement. In addition, construction permits in the Valley specify a particular compaction technique on a property before any building can begin. It takes a fair amount of time, some expensive heavy equipment, and specially trained operators for the technique to work properly.

>   “Unfortunately, there’s no real way to test the soil before construction to make sure it’s been compacted sufficiently.”

  “Let me guess.” Willard knew what was coming. “McCall skimped on it.”

  “Yeah, most of the places around here are still sitting on pretty loose ground, and when we have a wet winter followed by a dry summer….”

  “Up and down. Up and down.”

  “Right. And this is what happens. The walls separate here,” Sai pointed to the foundation. “And there.” He pointed up to the jointure of wall and roof. “You can see where….”

  “Yeah, I noticed.”

  Willard stood silently for a minute.

  “Wasn’t anything done about the houses, I mean, after the city found out what was happening?”

  “Not much. By that time McCall was dead. The other partner in the business had disappeared a couple of years before—everyone figures he guessed what was coming and took off for parts unknown. There weren’t any laws like the first-year guarantee back then, so buyers were on their own.

  “A couple of insurance companies made good on claims for the first year or two. Then, when it became obvious that probably every house in both subdivisions was defective, they got together and set up a deadline. They honored claims up to that date. Afterward…. Well, caveat emptor, as they say.”

  “But…” Willard was feeling more than a bit of the rage that had been with him since the roach experience weeks before. “But what about now? Isn’t there anything like an inspection that would let new buyers know?”

  “Sure. But there are ways around that as well. Look here.” He knelt again and indicated the place where the stucco showed at least three paint jobs.

  “This”—pointing to the lower color, sickly yellow showing here and there where a more recent slate blue had been abraded away—“this was probably the original paint job. From the looks of it, it was probably the only one for twenty years or so, then the house was repainted with this blue. See how the coats of paint extend a couple of inches below the soil level.”

  Willard nodded.

  “This”—now running his finger along the earth-tone paint just above—“is new, probably less than a year old.”