Secrets

Once and always, there is a man. His name is unimportant, it could be anything. It could be yours, it could even be mine. He lives in a normal quiet house in a normal quiet town, probably in suburbia. It could be a yellow house with white trim. A spacious front porch for the children to play on. A well trimmed lawn and a charming flower garden. Nothing more normal in the world.

Our man might be a large fellow, with a fluff of grey hair left on his spotted head and wrinkles cascading down his face. He might always smell sweet, because he carries little green candies in his pockets. The neighbors would love him, thinking him funny and cute and never caring that they don’t really know anything about him. At work, he would be quiet and well-mannered, a good worker, and able to bring a smile to anyone’s face. A very dear man.

While he is at work, the house waits silently. The quiet yellow house with the large porch and the dark basement. The screen door blows gently in the wind, screeching open and slamming itself shut. Battering against the door frame, as though trying to get free. The cool wind smells like lightning as it tries to carry the door away. The sky, bright with clouds, rumbles faintly in the summer humidity.

Inside the door, the house listens. The wood in the foyer creaks slightly, the floorboards protesting against age. The humidity draws this noise from the house, like a conductor guiding an orchestra. Small whimpers and moans spring from the floorboards and the walls, calling out to the world, filling the silence left by his absence. The walls are stained with the colour of the sky, forcing the rooms into greyscale (except for the dark basement, where the sky cannot reach). Normally, each room is bright and cheery. Without him, their lively natures are lost. The pink, yellow, and red walls fade slightly, wilting without his sunny presence. The nick-knacks and clutter that gives the house such character seem to no longer hold any meaning.

The clutter is vast. He keeps a great deal of plants, watering them carefully and trimming them with love. There are books covering almost every surface, each home to a jumble of pens, candies, teacups, and dried flowers. The house is thick with his life, the air pulses through it like so much blood. He keeps birds.

The house sits quietly in the summer air, leaves rustling in that electric breeze, paint flaking from the back, where he hasn’t paid close attention to the upkeep. Last year’s leave blow around back there, shrouding the grass which lies dead in the summer heat. The house, stayed by its foundations, sits calmly and waits for him to come home.

It is much later when he arrives. He spent hours at the office, diligently doing his work, showing photos of his children to the others in his office, drinking from an old evian bottle that he fills with water every morning. He never drinks coffee. Says the caffeine does bad things to a person, makes them a little bit crazy. Look at the kids today. His kids never have caffeine.

He comes striding up the walk, not as fast as he used to. He walks from the train that he takes every morning to the city. He walks home, through the suburban streets, until he reaches his own little nook in his tidy little cul-de-sac. He kicks a leaf along the sidewalk a little ways, as he comes up the drive and starts up the stairs to his front porch. His veiny hand, liver spots freckling it slightly, catches the screen door as it bangs frantically against the house, trying to tear itself away. Inside the door, he pulls it closed behind him and it ceases its panicked fluttering.

He takes off his hat and hangs it on the proper hook, before going into the rest of the house to find his children. A place for everything and everything in its place. However cluttered and messy the house may seem, there is order to it, as there must be to everything.

His children. They are in their rooms, precisely where he expected them to be. He hugs and kisses them all, asking them about their days. He has stories for them and candies and they have a merry time until he declares that he must go and make dinner. He brings them downstairs and leaves them to play in the sitting room while he cooks a simple meal of spaghetti and meatballs. He finds his wife and has her come and taste the spaghetti sauce, which he declares is the best in the world.

Then, the whole family sits down to dinner. The house is bright with life again, now that he is home. The soft yellow light from the electric lamps bring a warm glow to the whole building. Even the birds in their cages seem to wake up from some dark slumber and the room is filled with a cheery whistling and singing.

When dinner is through, he clears the table and sits down at the piano, as tradition requires. He plays a cheery tune and singing is soon heard throughout the house, giving it a voice of its own. His fingers dance out playful children’s pieces and he shows the children how he can still sing the way that he did when he was their age. His wife’s lips are fixed in a smile, she sits still, simply listening to the music.

Eventually, however, he runs out of happy music and the darkness starts to take over. It only takes a few old ballads before he announces that it is time to end the evening. He gets the children ready for bed and kisses them all dearly, telling them that he loves them again and again. He tells them stories of his childhood, he tells them all of their favourite fairy tales. He tells them never to grow up, ever. The world is a horrible place for adults, but if they stay children always, then they will stay happy always. He loves them so.

He goes then to his bedroom, with his wife. They shower and he helps her into her nightie. Then, before going to sleep, they make love under the sheets. He pulls her body as close to his as he might, trying almost to become her. After, they lie side by side, his hand stroking her hair idly. He looks up at the ceiling and asks a question he has had for some time. If he shouldn’t try to make another child. Looking into her green eyes, he sees the answer. He kisses her sweetly, whispering his love in her ear, and they go to sleep.

Yes, his life is perfectly normal, as far as the house can see. The softly lit rooms see only joy and happiness, a simple life. The neighbors know nothing of darkness. But the darkness in the basement is still there. The tools for cutting and sewing, the secret room, the chains. Because, as normal as everyone seems, each person has a dark basement in their own house. A basement filled with secret horrors that the world is perfectly content to ignore.

Our man’s basement is vast. Or, wait. I’m sorry, I have the story wrong. It isn’t a man at all, is it? Perhaps it’s a woman. A stern looking woman with sharp features and tawny hair. She works at the local library, shelving books, helping patrons, trying to finish the novel she’s been writing for the past seven years. And perhaps her house isn’t yellow, it’s peach. And her secret is living in the attic, if you could call it that. Perhaps… well, it doesn’t matter. The story is the same, whoever it is about. The words may change, but the story never wavers.

In his vast basement, there is something resembling an art studio. No, it’s more like a cobbler’s workshop. Or perhaps a dressmaker’s workroom. This is where he gave his birds life. The birds that he brought home from the store and suffocated in tiny plastic bags, standing just here in the basement. Here on the cold stone floor, in front of the table. The weary old table, with its scarred surface stained with the years. The tools winking on their hooks, glowing dimly in the lamplight. The table where his birds came to life. He took their lives and gave them life eternal, forever sitting in his parlor, singing when he purses his lips for them and produces their song. He filled their little bodies with wax and sawdust, skillfully keeping them alive forever, as long as he was there to give them meaning.

When he began it all, he was not so skilled. He made a few rather serious mistakes before he was able to bring anything back to life in the way that he did now. More than a few small bodies had to be disposed of in the dark backyard and under the spacious porch that he likes to sit on as he watches the sun set.

It is here that he will come tomorrow, as he fulfills his desire for another child. He will bring the thing down the stairs, into the dark room, soon lit by the lamp he keeps in the corner. He will place the thing in the corner room, a makeshift closet that he bas built around one of the corners in the dark space. He will chain the thing up, punish it for growing as its nature demands. He will curse and rave, he may even force his love upon it, but he will not leave a mark. The skin must be perfect.

Finally, he will give it the greatest gift of all. The gift that he wishes he had been given. He will allow the thing to become a child and to stay a child forever. He will take care of it and love it. He will fill it with wax and sawdust, give it glass eyes that twinkle in the soft yellow light of his house. He will buy it clothes and tell it stories. He will take pictures of it to show the men at work. He will tuck it into bed and kiss it goodnight, just as he does the others.

He will sing to it, the way that he does all the others. The way he does his wife. He will keep them all, young forever, until he is no longer there to put words in their mouths and ears. Until they are left alone. But even then, their eyes will twinkle, open to the whole world forever. Forever young, just as he always wished he could be.

He may have wished that. Or she may have. Or you, or I. This man could be any of us. We all have a dark basement, even if it remains obediently in our minds. Maybe yours is real. Maybe you are keeping a family in your attic, eating them one by one. Maybe your daughter is in a hidden room in your house, because she is crippled or because maybe you’ve fathered her children and are raising them as your own. Maybe you simply hit someone in an automobile and fled the scene of the crime. Maybe you killed the neighbor’s dog when you were seven and have never really forgotten that it’s buried in that park on Elm street.

Maybe you’ve never done anything. Maybe I haven’t. But that dark basement is still in our minds, just waiting for us to slip up and let it free. Just waiting for us to forget the charade and let the evil inside out. We are really the same, he and I. I am just a little better at pretending we’re not.