This choice: Try to get him to stay in the basement • Go Back...Chapter #10Basement Confessions by: Seuzz   "You know, I've got a sleeping bag, if you want to crash here," you tell Connor.
"You mean at your place?" Caleb asks on Connor's behalf.
"No, the school basement."
"Why would he want to crash in the school basement?" Caleb demands. "Place looks like it could be fucking haunted."
"He'll be fine."
You and Caleb argue for awhile while Connor himself just chills. But he's the one who ends the discussion by saying that he wouldn't mind hanging out at the school a little longer, and Caleb leaves, muttering in the back of his throat. Since you don't have to be back home by eleven, you keep him company, though you don't go down in the basement.
You just spend the next hour talking, and though you're talking about Westside again, you don't mind it so much now because he's talking to you instead of gossiping with his friends, and you're able to ask him questions.
So in his disjointed way he relates some stories about the things that he and Justin and some other guys got up to when they were students there. The big reveal, as far as you're concerned, is about the ductwork inside the gym. There's a second-story loft on the eastern side of the gym, facing the student parking lot, that since time immemorial has been in the possession of the sports jocks, where they are able to hang out any time of day, any day of the week, with each other, their friends, and their girlfriends, and where they can eat, drink, and screw without being disturbed. Everyone at Westside knows about the fabled "fuck room," but Connor and Justin knew about something else related to the loft: It contains ducts that lead down to a small maintenance room behind the boys' showers, and by listening in at those ducts anyone can hear almost everything that goes on up in the loft. Last November, the two of them even installed a powerful microphone down in that maintenance room and recorded a lovemaking session between John Garrison, who was at that time the captain of the wrestling team, and his girlfriend. Connor and Justin then set up a fake fan-page dedicated to the wrestling team -- and to Garrison in particular -- that attracted the preening attention of Garrison and his cronies. Then in March Connor and Justin dropped the hammer by posting the audio they had recorded. It was clearly of Garrison, and it set off a small witch hunt that still didn't come close to nabbing the two conspirators.
"You like to live dangerously," you tell Connor.
He shrugs. "Me and Justin don't like being pushed around."
"So what do you do now for fun?"
He shrugs again.
"You don't torture that guy -- what's his name? The guy you live with?"
"Manuel? No, we told you, he's cool."
"So what do you do for fun?" you press him. It seems unfair that guys with that kind of prankish humor aren't getting into trouble now that they don't have any schoolwork of any kind to get in the way.
Connor sighs deeply. "Not much. Sometimes we take short road trips. But mostly I think we're trying to be responsible. Learning how to run a business by working at Starbucks. We're talking about, you know, opening up a place of our own."
"Like a coffee shop?"
"There's too many of those already. Maybe we'll buy a food truck. Manuel's aunt makes great Mexican food."
"What about, you know, girls?"
Connor's shoulders sag. "That's the real reason to go to school, you know," he says. "The girls that come into the Starbucks, they just see a guy in a green apron."
"What about Olivia?"
"Meh, that's not worth it. I don't want to be the kind of guy who macks on high school girls after he's graduated."
* * * * *
By eleven o'clock it seems like he's sobered up enough that you'd trust him not to make a fool of himself around his roommate, but Connor says he wouldn't mind spending the night in the school basement if you stuck it out with him. It seems worth a shot, so when you get home you tell your dad that some of the guys are doing a kind of "campout" in the fields behind the old school, and that you'd like to join them. "We've got church in the morning," he says.
"I'll be up in plenty of time to get back for that."
He looks skeptical, but agrees, probably because the proposed camping ground is so close. You run upstairs, pull down your regular sleeping bag and an old, patchy one from your closet, and run back down. "I'll be calling you at eight in the morning," your dad says as you run past. "So keep your phone on."
It's very dark in the basement, and musty and dusty, and you and Connor bang your shins against desks and chairs a couple of times as you make an open spot big enough for your bags. He's turned quiet, and before crawling into a bag, he fiddles around with some of the supplies on the desk. When he sits down on the sleeping bag, he's holding the mask that Caleb was working on. "So you just have to polish this up, right, and then you can use it?"
"Yeah."
"You just put it on someone's face, and it copies them?"
"Right."
"Then you have to seal it."
"Caleb explained all that to you."
"Uh huh. Just making sure I remember it all. I was kind of freaked out as he was telling me about it."
"I bet. But we're keeping that one for a spare. To use in the 'experiments'."
"Right." He stares at the mask, then fumbles over to the desk to turn on the small lamp that you and Caleb had set up. "I'll just be a minute," he says when you tell him he should turn it out. "There's only this little spot in here that has to be rubbed away, you know, and then it's ready to go."
He's making you a little nervous by now. "Yeah, we can finish it up tomorrow. But we also need to go pick up more supplies -- "
"And talk to Justin."
"Uh huh. My dad'll be calling me early, so let's go to sleep, okay?"
"Sure." He puts out the lamp, plunging everything into inky blackness, and in the dark the two of you get undressed and slip into the sleeping bags. You don't talk much longer, and sleep soon overtakes you.
* * * * *
You wake on cold, hard ground, feeling very stiff, and only with great difficulty do you turn over. For a second you're disoriented, and then the dusty smell of the basement locates you. The concrete of the floor is ice-cold, and it has seeped through the bag to give you the shivers. You try wrapping yourself more tightly in the fabric before groping around for your phone.
It's not by your side.
In fact, none of your clothes are nearby. You sit up, blinking stupidly.
It takes you a moment to realize that the other sleeping bag is empty, and you call out Connor's name. Your voice dies with a thud on the rough walls of the basement, and there is no answer. You paw about the ground, searching for anything to put on, but all your clothes, and Connor's too, are missing. It can't be that he took your stuff, so your first, panicked thought is that someone snuck in and kidnapped him and your clothes.
And after you've rid yourself of that weird fantasy -- but without replacing it with any other hypothesis -- you start to wonder what time it is, and how you'll get back home without your dad killing you when you get there.
Though the basement is like an ice box, you get out of your bag and peer out through the window. There's something wrong out there, but it takes a moment to realize that it's your missing truck that set off alarm bells. There are no cars at all outside.
Okay, you decided after you've warded off an attack of hyperventilation. Connor had to run somewhere, and he had to take the truck because there were no other set of wheels for him to use. He'll be back.
But why did he take your clothes? To ensure you wouldn't run off until he could return? And why did he take your phone? And why didn't he wake you up?
You decided to explore a little bit. You creep up to the door and peer out, and see no sign that he's simply moved your truck, or that anyone else is nearby. Down in the basement, there's another thing that bothers you that you can't figure out. There are the two sleeping bags, and that's all. Why do you think that something else is missing?
After you've got yourself wrapped up in the bags -- and are warmer for having two sets of covers -- you review the night's conversation, looking for clues that would explain this waking nightmare. You talked about Westside, and about his plans. The last thing you talked about was the extra mask. Yeah, that creepy talk; remembering it sends a shiver up your spine.
And then you realize what's bothering you: He had that mask and the lamp with him when you sent to sleep. They're also gone. You search more thoroughly, and find the lamp, and you get a further nasty shock when you find that the bowl of sealant and the paint brush have shown up in a spot where you know you didn't leave them.
It looks for all the world as though Connor sealed up that mask. But he only would have done that if he had finished polishing it, and had used it on someone.
You gulp.
He has taken your clothes, and that suggests that he used the mask on you.
Now a violent shiver does set your frame to trembling all over.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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