The Thing In The Cellar

The house was quiet when I got home; hell, the entire street was quiet at 1:30 in the morning. A light spring rain had fallen earlier in the evening, bringing with it the sticky humidity of the approaching summer. My work shirt was tacky with sweat and clinging to my back, so I took it off as I pulled into the dark driveway. The streetlight a couple of houses down was out again, throwing my side of the street into total darkness. It was the third time that light had gone out this year, the by-product of neighborhood kids most likely. I parked in front of the garage door and cut the engine. The thought of those destructive kids made me consider putting the truck inside for the night, but the ancient and usually-broken garage door opener made me rethink that idea. That garage door weighed a ton.

I slung my shirt over my bare shoulder and walked around to the front of the house. It was a modest little one ½-story, nothing much, but better than overpaying for rent on a tiny 3-room apartment. It was mine. I unlocked the door and went inside.

The place was pitch-black, even the VCR clock seemed dim, as if the darkness of the living room to my left was just too dense to penetrate. I could not see but didn’t have to, I had lived here for 2-plus years and I knew where everything was. I draped my work shirt over my La-Z-boy in the darkness; I had done this hundreds of other times, it was routine. I kicked off my boots and left them by the front door, on a mat I couldn’t see but I knew was there. I scrunched my stockinged feet deep into the carpet and took some satisfaction in hearing my toes crack, then wiggled them to celebrate their freedom. I took my socks off, collected my shirt, and headed through the living room towards the small laundry room. The glass coffee table was invisible in the darkness, but I walked around it without thinking, then padded barefoot down the hall.

I left my socks and shirt in the laundry basket by the door. I didn’t need any light because I was home. I was familiar with the precise location of everything in the house and I – tripped over the damn cat.

I stumbled blindly in the dark with my arms pinwheeling, trying to regain my balance as I staggered into the kitchen. I knew there was a radiator there, so I put my arms out to brace myself against it, but was too close and kicked it instead.

“God damn it,” I cursed loudly through clenched teeth. I grabbed for my throbbing foot while hopping up & down on the other, and took deep breaths in an attempt to clear the bright flashes of color that invaded my eyesight.

I traversed the kitchen on one foot guided only by the dim green glow of the microwave clock, found the string dangling from the ceiling fan in the center of the room, and snapped on the light. After a quick examination, the only damage I could find was to the nail on the third toe of my right foot; it had split open and was bleeding. There was also an angry-looking abrasion up by the knuckle, but at least nothing was broken.

I caught my breath and glowered in the cat’s direction, “Thanks a lot, Fleafarter.”

She sat there in the open doorway of the kitchen, demurely licking her paws as if unaware of the recent commotion she had caused. She looked up at me when I called her the name, as if it was in poor decorum to badmouth a cat, but chose instead to ignore me with a grandiloquent show of her tail. She then proceeded to lovingly run her tongue over every inch of it.

It wasn’t really my cat anyway; I found her. Or maybe she found me. Either way, she appeared on my back doorstep almost two years ago while I was watching the 4th of July fireworks from my stoop. I had been drinking a cold bottle of beer and she came up to me and rubbed against my leg. I made the mistake of feeding her and haven’t been able to get rid of her since.

I named her “Independence,” a suitable name more so because of her aloof nature than the date on which we met. I sometimes shorten that to “Indy,” maybe in reference to Indiana Jones, or maybe because she tears around my small house like a race car. I sometimes call her neither of these things, preferring instead to use whatever derogatory thing comes to mind first.

She looked sharply over her shoulder at me, as if reading my mind, then paced around. She ambled to the back door and tried to convince me she needed to go out. This was de rigueur almost every night, even though she must know by now that I would never let her out this late. “There are a lot of weirdos out there at this time of night,” I explained to her and shut off the light.

Indy didn’t listen; she sat stubbornly at the door and refused to look at me. I informed her that behaving like a bitch would not make me open up the door any faster. “Besides,” I told her, “you’re breaking the ritual.”

The ritual was about bonding. Every night when I got home from work, I would feed the cat and take a shower. When I was done, we would both sink into the La-Z-boy and watch Sportscenter for an hour.

That was when I let her out, right before bed, only to let her back in again in the early afternoon before I left for work.

I limped over to the cupboard and grabbed a can of cat food. I opened it and set the contents on Her Highness’s very own plate near the cellar door, refilled her water bowl, and undid my jeans. I wasn’t one to break with tradition; I would drop them off in the laundry room on my way to the shower.

The cat, however, would not stop; she crossed the kitchen and parked herself in front of the cellar door. She stood on her hind legs and reached up with her front paws in an effort to gain my attention. When she saw that was ineffective, she lay on her side and tried to slip her paws beneath the door. After that, she simply sat there and stared at me expectantly.

“Jesus, from one door to the other. Why don’tcha make up your damn mind?”
She looked at me with her big yellow eyes unwavering.

“All right,” I relented and started for the door. As I got closer, Indy turned her brown body around in multiple 360s, evidently pleased with me for making the right choice, and looked up at the door handle, her patience ebbing.

I might be a pushover, but I wasn’t going to give in without a stern lecture, “If you are covered in shit when I let you back up here after I take my shower, I won’t let you up in the chair with me.”

The cat never gave a second thought about it and darted off into the darkness below.
The shower was refreshing; I felt as if I had scraped off two or three layers of sweat & grime by the time I turned off the water. After drying myself, I put on a pair of clean boxers for bed.

The cat had been down in the cellar for about fifteen minutes. There was nothing much to do down there, so I figured she’d be ready to come up about then. I opened the door and called to her, but she did not come bounding up the old, rickety stairs like usual.

“Fine then,” I shut the door, “bitch.”

I shut off the light in the kitchen and walked into the living room. I turned on the ceiling fan to try to get a little airflow established, and plunked down into the easy chair. I snapped on the TV and leaned back into the leather.

Almost immediately, I heard it, a high-pitched wail. It rose and fell like a siren, the keening painful to my ears. Instinctively I hit the mute button, thinking there was something very wrong with the television’s speakers.

The sound continued even after I had turned down the TV. I heard a clunk below me and realized that horrible sound was Independence. Never in my life had I heard a sound like that coming from any animal; ice-cold shards of fear shot up & down my spine.

“Indy, what the hell are you doing?”

The cat, normally quiet and dainty, thundered up the stairs, screaming as she went. Before I could completely rise out of the chair, she hit the cellar door with a terrifying impact, hard enough that I half-expected the old door to break and send the cat hurtling into the kitchen in a splintery explosion. I jerked and dropped the remote into the heavy carpet at my feet.

That screeching was ungodly, and I froze, unsure of what to do.

BANG!

BANG!

The door rattled and cracked as if Indy was throwing her 8-pound frame repeatedly into it, the shriek increasing in both volume and pitch. The door banged violently in the darkness as I ran to open it.

BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG!

The maelstrom ceased just before I got to the door and opened it. Indy was not there.

I suddenly felt very foolish for allowing myself to fall victim to one of her feline pranks yet again, “Indy, what the hell? Did you get into some wild catnip down there or something? You scared the hell out of me.”

Nothing. Blackness looked back at me as I looked down into it.

The TV flashed in the other room and I jumped in spite of myself. I was emotionally caught up in the situation even though I should know better. I sighed heavily and gave a little embarrassed peek into the living room, where the television’s shifting glow danced over the walls. I shook my head and tried bringing my jackhammering heart rate down to a healthier pace.

When I turned back to look down cellar, I could see Indy’s eyes reflecting back at me: two red dots in the blackness, blinking once, twice, very slowly. This did not seem like the behavior of a cat that had just moments before raced up & down the stairs and smashed against the door.

An involuntary shudder shook my legs and I urged her upstairs, “Come on."

The eyes didn’t move.

Stubborn beast, I thought as I grabbed her food dish. I knelt at the top of the stairs and held the dish out with my right hand, to entice her with the aroma of giblets & gravy. I put my left hand on the floor to steady myself, but immediately pulled it back. The top step was hot and wet, and for the first time I noticed a strong metallic smell.

I did not need to turn on the lights to know I had put my hand in blood. I was instantly concerned about Indy; had she split her head open when she slammed against the door, and was now hurt & bleeding at the bottom of the stairs? My heart suddenly ached with guilt for calling her all those names; I genuinely cared for her.

I took a step down to rescue my injured cat when it hit me: the lights were off. Except for the faint blue flickering of the TV two rooms away, I was surrounded by utter darkness.

So how come Indy’s eyes were shining up at me? Cats’ eyes appear bright at night because they reflect what little light there is. The reflection is usually a shade of yellow, green, or sometimes blue.

This eyeshine was definitely red.

For the first time, I became worried. Maybe there was another animal in the house. Maybe that high-pitched screech was Indy’s way of warning me. Maybe the blood at the top of the stairs was not the cat’s but rather from some injured animal.

That didn’t ring true. I could think of no animal that had eyes that glowed on their own.

Yet there was an unmistakable pair of eyes glowing up at me from the bottom of the stairs.

No, not the bottom. They were on the third of fourth step. Whatever creature this was, it was stealthily ascending the stairs while I had been preoccupied with this unbelievable sequence of events.

I took a step back and the animal stopped. There was a moment’s Mexican Standoff, where neither the thing on the stairs nor I moved. We were both sizing the other up, assessing the situation, and I got the weird sensation of participating in a John Woo movie, where the hero and the villain invariably thrust a gun (or two) in the other’s face and the audience must watch who has the fortitude to come out of it alive.

I was also reminded that the John Woo Standoff is only the calm before the storm, a pause to catch your breath before all hell breaks loose.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a darkened figure moving next to the refrigerator.

I jumped and almost cried out, but realized it was only my own reflection. I had hung a full-length mirror next to the fridge a few months ago to cover up a bald spot on the wall.

Damn it, I should have known that was there! Was my own mind turning against me now?

No, wait. This whole thing had obviously been blown way out of proportion by my tired nerves; this was a perfectly natural occurrence of an animal seeking refuge in the cellar of a house. Maybe it was rabid, maybe it was hurt, it was almost certainly dangerous, but it wasn’t anything supernatural. No demon from Hell was coming up my cellar stairs to get me. I would simply walk into the kitchen, reach up and grab the dangling string, and yank the light on. That way I could properly see what kind of animal I was dealing with. This was no time to loose my reason and sanity.

The eyes were on the move, not stealthily this time, but really hauling ass up the stairs. I cried out; somewhere in the far recesses of my frightened mind I recognized the cry – it was identical to the one Indy gave just before she was killed and presumably eaten at the top of the cellar stairs. It all became so clear to me, my mind lucid for the first time since arriving home: whatever it was, this was no kind of animal I had ever seen, maybe no one had ever seen. It had killed my cat, and was now bolting up the stairs to kill me too.

Reason be damned, I whirled and sprinted from the open door. I ran into the kitchen, my last thought of turning on the light still forefront in my mind. Maybe discovery outweighed the instinct of self-preservation.

I was terrified, and the Adrenaline coursing through my body made me hit the hanging cord at full speed. I put all of my horrified weight into it, and the whole string ripped out of the ceiling. The light flashed on for a split-second, but did not stay on, and my life was plunged into darkness again as I fell. I skidded across the floor to the refrigerator, and bounced off. I only had time enough to look up at the mirror hanging on the wall about a foot away.

This time the shape that scared me was not me, it was the thing in the cellar. It was difficult not to feel the power of its legs as it thundered up the stairs; stealth was replaced by absolute hunger for its prey. A flash of its eyes as it burst through the doorway and rounded the corner toward me. The eyes were glowing with a red-hot intensity, as if the thrill of the hunt excited it and made them glow all the brighter. It was about the size of a dog, although I couldn’t really see in the darkness; all I could see were those glowing red eyes. A big dog maybe. Fear froze me into inertia, and though I would have crawled through a wall to get away at that moment, the only part of me that seemed to move was my brain. Richard Adams called it “Tharn.”

It looked across at me, at my predicament, and slid to a halt. It knew it had the easy kill, no need to hurry. It took a small step towards me, the claws on its foot clicking on the linoleum. Its shoulders were massive, and when it hunkered down in preparation to spring at me, I caught a glimpse of powerful muscles under the earth-colored pelt.

A new wave of terror swept through me, and my immobility was gone. I turned over to crawl to the mirror, but even as I did so, I heard the beast grunt behind me as it pushed itself hard off the floor to pounce. All I saw clearly in the mirror were the powerful jaws opening as it dove at me, the rows of razor-sharp teeth lining its hideous maw.

And my own terrified eyes.

end.