IT LIVES IN THE BASEMENT

IT LIVES IN THE BASEMENT


‘I hope no one reads this, because that means I am dead.’ The handwritten words in a worn notebook read.

“Hey, Lieutenant!  Better look at this.  I think we may have something,” yelled a stout, young, uniformed officer.  Holding up the worn notebook, he leaned out of a smaller room into the living room.

Striding rapidly with long legs, a tall man with more salt than pepper hair, wearing a rumpled brown suit admonished, “Christ, Daniels.  Most of you street cops wouldn’t know what a clue looked like, even if it bit you on the ass!  And didn’t I just tell you not to touch anything until I had a chance to look at it?  Now we’ll have to eliminate your prints from the other fingerprints in the house.”  Glaring down at the shorter man, he continued his tirade, “I realize investigating a Missing Persons case is harder than chasing a speeder, or writing up a guy for having one too many, but would you please try to follow the procedures?  Okay?”  Taking the notebook, he ordered, “Now, go outside and find the landlord for me.  You do remember him don’t you, Daniels, the fat guy who let us in?”

Looking anywhere but the irate Lieutenant, Daniels sheepishly nodded his head.

“Oh, good.  Now go find him for me, would you?”

Shaking his head in disbelief, the Lieutenant watched as the young officer hurried to the front door, then tried working out the mechanics of opening the screen door with just his elbow.  Looking down at the notebook, opened to the front page, he read a few lines.  But his attention wasn’t on the written words.  He had something else on his mind.

Closing the notebook, putting it back on the desk in the small bedroom, he grumbled to himself, “I knew it was going to be one of those days.”  And he had known.  From the moment he walked into the squad room and read the note lying on his desk, informing him that his partner of twenty-three years would be out on sick leave for a week.

He didn't begrudge his partner the sick leave.  Hell, he could use a week off himself!  But the weather in Omaha, especially the week after Thanksgiving, wasn't conducive to a week long vacation at home.  Not being able to afford to go anywhere, he would have been trapped in his house for a week with his wife of twenty-one years, and at least five of the grandchildren that she was always babysitting.

No thanks!  He’d had enough of babysitting when he had to help with the raising of their own six kids.

Being pragmatic about his partner being gone, he knew he was upset because he would be working alone all week, and that meant he would be getting all the shit jobs!  Even though they had their own cases to work, he’d get stuck for the week doing somebody else’s paperwork, the never-ending telephone follow-ups and answering all the Suspicious Activity calls, like this one.

What the hell!  He knew he couldn't buck the system, and with three years left until retirement, he didn't want to try.  But it was going to be a long week.

The Lieutenant stepped back into the living room as another uniformed officer entered the house.  With a snappish voice, Flynn asked him, “Mickosky, where in the hell is Daniels with the landlord?”

Mickosky, looking around the living room, answered, “Take it easy, sir.  He’s coming.  The landlord was down on the corner talking with some neighbors.”  Tearing a page from his notebook, he handed it to the taller Lieutenant.  “Here is all the information I got from the neighbors.  It ain’t much, sir.  Same old shit.  The neighbors know the people that live here.  The neighbor woman to the north of the house says the missing couple is good, quiet people.  But the neighbor guy on the other side says the man’s a nutcase.  That’s the neighbor who called the landlord.  He says their car hasn’t moved for three or four days, and no one has gone in or out of the house.  And their mail hasn’t been picked up since Monday.  The neighbor’s name is, uh, yeah, Leaman, sir.  He’s outside if you want to talk with him.  By our cruiser.”

The Lieutenant skimmed over the paper, folded it and put it in his pocket saying with a sigh, “No.  Not now, Mick.  What I want right now is that damn landlord.”

Just then, the front door opened and Officer Daniels walked in, followed by a fat man in a heavy, gray, unbuttoned coat, greasy overalls and a sweat-stained shirt.

With a big grin, Daniels said, “Sir, here is Carl Santantovich, the landlord.”  He gave a flourish of his hand, as if he had produced the large man from a magic hat.

Holding his hand out to the shorter, younger man, the Lieutenant introduced himself.  “Hello.  I’m Lieutenant Flynn.  Do you mind if I call you Carl?”

Giving Flynn a soft, flabby, moist handshake, the landlord answered, “No.”  Glancing around he asked, “What’d you find, Lieutenant?  Where are they?”

Wiping his wet palm on his right pant leg, Flynn told him, “Well, so far, nothing.  I’ve searched over the house twice now and there isn’t anyone here.  There’s no sign of a break-in, a struggle or other violence that I can find.  I was hoping you could give me some background information about the tenants that live here, Carl.”

The landlord said, “I can’t tell you much.  The woman’s name was Pat Forbes.  She worked for some insurance company out west.  My wife has the name and address.  The man’s name was John Sempek.  He worked for a construction outfit as a laborer most of the year.  When it got too cold, he would help me with some of my rental properties.  John fancied himself as some kinda writer.  He told me once that he’d half a dozen stories he’d been trying to publish.”

Listening carefully, the Lieutenant also watched as Officer Daniels took a small notebook and pen out of his coat pocket, presumably to take notes, but so far hadn’t written down one word.

Officer Daniels, trying to impress the Lieutenant, asked the landlord, “What type of writer is he?”

As the furnace kicked on, the heavy man stepped away from the heat vent, opening his heavy coat even more.  “Ah, well, John said he wrote about science-fiction stuff.  Shit about flying saucers and little green men.  That kinda crap.  I ain’t no reader and never read any of his stuff.  Wouldn’t waste my time on that kinda crap anyways.”

Raising his hand, the Lieutenant cut Daniels off.  “Carl, why do you keep referring to these people in the past tense?  Do you know something that I don’t?”

Flinching, the landlord quickly explained, “Uh, no, Lieutenant!  No.  It’s just that Wamperely, the guy that rents from me down the block, well he said John’s been drinking pretty heavy lately, and I, well, I thought maybe he’d killed Pat and took off or something.”

Sitting heavily on the worn arm of an old chair, the Lieutenant read over his reports.  “Let’s see if I have the facts straight, Carl.  Three days ago, after you received a call from one of the neighbors, Mr. Leaman, you had your wife try to call Pat or John, at their house.  After three days of not being able to reach them, your wife called Pat’s employers, who told her they hadn’t seen or heard from Pat since Monday.  Then at eight-thirty this morning, you had your wife call the police.  Is that correct?”

Sweat running down his face, the landlord answered, “Yeah.  Then my wife called this bar called Deans Place where John usually drinks.  They said John and Pat were there on Monday after she got off work, but not since then.”  Fidgeting nervously, the landlord continued, “See Lieutenant?  That’s why I figure something’s wrong.  I’ve known Pat and John about five years, before they started renting this house.  John never goes a day or two without stopping at a bar.  Not always Deans Place: sometimes he’d stop in at Newells Bar.  Unless John’s sick, he’d go to a bar almost every day.  The bar was like his office.  That’s where I’d always find him if I needed him to do some work.  It’s not like him not to be at a bar during the day.”

Nodding his head in understanding, the Lieutenant said, “Right.  So you called the police and asked them to meet you here before you went into the house yourself.  Why didn’t you look for them before you called the police?  They could have been here, just changed their routine.”

Wiping the sweat from his forehead on the sleeve of his coat, the landlord answered, “I, ah, if something was missing I didn’t want to be accused of stealing.  And honest Lieutenant, I thought you’d find at least one body in the house.  And I sure as hell didn’t want to be the one to find the body!”  Looking around again, he asked, “By the way, Lieutenant, where’re the cats?  I know Pat has two white cats.  One of the neighbors said that she also had a small, black kitten.  So there should be three cats running around here, somewhere.”

Shaking his graying head, Flynn replied, “Nope.  As I said before, I’ve searched through this house twice.  I saw a litter box downstairs, and some empty food and water bowls, but no cats.  We did find strands of long, white hairs and shorter black and brown hairs.”

The sweating man explained, “Yup.  Those would be from her cats.  The next door neighbor, Mabel, told me Pat just took in a small, black kitten.  And Pat loved her cats.  So where are they?”

Slowly rising from the arm of the chair, the Lieutenant said dismissively, “Look Carl, I’m more interested in where Pat and John are right now, not some missing cats.  It behooves you to help us, because if I don’t find Pat or John within a few days, I’ll have to list them as Missing Persons, then you’ll have to file a petition for a court order to rent this property again.  I’ll have Officer Daniels write you a receipt for the front door key.  You’ll get your key back when we’re done with our investigation.  Thank you for your cooperation.”  As an afterthought, he added, “But before you leave, please accompany the officer around the premises and see if you notice any items missing.  And Carl, please be careful not to touch anything.”  Reaching out, Lieutenant Flynn plucked the house key from the openmouthed landlord’s hand.  Turning away, he ambled into the front bedroom, Officer Mickosky following on his heels.

In the nine-by-eleven foot bedroom were two dressers, one small, opened closet, and a small desk in the middle of the room.  In the center of the desk sat a new electronic typewriter.  Sitting at the small desk, the Lieutenant turned on the typewriter.  He knew the typewriter had a correctable memory, and he wanted to see if there were any words stored in the memory.  The memory was empty.  He scanned over the desk where there were piles of neatly typed pages, and then over each dresser.  Then he peered down at the floor littered with handwritten, yellow legal pages.  Having been in the room twice before, he knew that these were the originals and probably rough drafts, of the stories that John had been working on.

Mickosky said, “Whew!  This guy sure wrote a lot, didn’t he, Lieutenant?”

Being a rhetorical question, Flynn merely nodded, asking, “Do you read much, Mick?”

The officer shrugged.  “Nah, never got into books much. I’m more a television man myself.  Why?”

“Well, Mick,” the Lieutenant surmised, “The people who live here spend a lot of time reading, I’d say.  There has to be more than a thousand books in this house, on every subject you can imagine.  I read a lot at home, Mick, and they have books from all the top authors, and some I’ve never heard of.  My wife says that people who read a lot are sensitive people.  Now I don’t know whether I believe that, but I do know that people who read as much as these two, are sensitive about their books.

“If our Missing Persons have left for parts unknown, they wouldn’t have left their life’s worth of collected books.  They might not have taken all their books, but they would have taken their favorite books.”  Glancing toward the living room he continued, “And there aren’t any empty spaces on those bookshelves in the living room or dining room.  So I’d have to say all their books are here.  To me, that’s a red flag something is wrong.”  Rubbing his forehead, he confessed, “Something grabbed my attention before, but I can’t remember what it was.  I searched over the house again hoping to find it, but never did.”

Sighing in frustration, he said, “My gut is telling me that Pat and John didn’t take their cats and walk off somewhere.  Their car is here, but we didn’t find any car keys, and the house was locked, from the inside.  Remember?  I had to cut the screen on the front door to use the key.  The refrigerator is stocked and there are eleven cans of beer from a twelve pack.  There isn’t a single reason that I see that would make two people just up and leave.  Hell, even their rent is paid up for almost a month.  But still, we have two people missing, and three cats.  I wish I could find whatever it was that I noticed before.”

From the bedroom doorway Daniels said, “Well, the landlord is gone, Lieutenant.  He said he wouldn’t know if there were any missing items anyway, except the cats.”  With a trace of awe in his voice, he stated, “Christ!  This place is like a library!  Why would they have so many damn books?”

Smiling tolerantly, Flynn explained, “Well Daniels, you see, people who enjoy reading tend to collect books so they can reread them on occasion.”

Turning, the young uniformed officer stared at the tall bookshelves that lined the walls of the living and dining room.  With incredibility he said, “You mean they’d read the same book more than once?  The same book?  Why would anybody want to read the same book more than once, if they didn’t have to?”

Flynn said softly, “it’s apparent to me Officer Daniels, that you have never squandered your valuable time on the elements of higher education, nor on the dubious and possibly, to someone of your density, dangerous aspects of deep thinking.”

Beaming a proud smile, Officer Daniels said, “Why, thank-you, Lieutenant.”

Turning away, Mickosky coughed into his hand, trying to hold back the chuckle he couldn’t stop.

Daniels asked, “Uh, do you figure these people just left, Lieutenant?  I mean, their car is still here, and the house was locked from the inside, their clothes are still here and that looks like a purse on the floor over there next to that bookcase.”

Snapping his fingers, the salt and pepper-haired man jumped up.  “That’s it!  Right out the mouths of babes.  Thank-you, Daniels.  Good work.”

As Flynn rushed past him out the door, Daniels blushing, said, “Uh, thank-you, sir.”  When the Lieutenant was gone, he leaned toward his partner and asked, “Uh, Mick, what did I say?”

Smiling, Mickosky patted his shoulder. “Oh, Daniels!  Don’t worry about it, you did fine.  You’ll –-.”  He was cut off as a call for squad car 306 blared from his radio.  Mickosky went to find Flynn, who was kneeling on the floor next to the television, a large, black purse dumped out on the brown carpet.  “Lieutenant, do you need us any longer?  We have a bad accident a few blocks from here.”

Flynn glanced up at him. “No, Mick.  Go ahead.  And thanks for your help.”

Mickosky ginned, nodded and gave a two-fingered salute, then headed for the front door, talking into his radio confirming that car 306 was enroute.  Looking out the front window, Lieutenant Flynn winced as their squad car squealed down the street sideways, lights flashing, sirens blaring!  Daniels was driving, a big grin across his face, while white-faced Mickosky clung onto the dashboard!

Shaking his head at their foolishness, Flynn knelt back down.  Using his ballpoint pen, he shuffled the contents from the purse around.  He unsnapped the suede-covered wallet and flipped it open.  Inside was a checkbook, three credit cards secured in glassine envelopes and a blue pen in a slot, with gold lettering on it saying “Patricia Forbes”.  Checking the account balance in the back of the checkbook, he said softly, “Okay, Pat.  Talk to me, girl.  You didn’t leave and forget to take your purse.  Not with three current credit cards and more than seven hundred dollars in your checking account.  So where are you?  And where are John, and your three cats?  C’mon girl, talk to me.”

Pushing a few more items around with his pen, he used his handkerchief to pick up a key-ring with a large silver tag that had a Libra sign stamped on it.  Striding long-legged to the front door, he used the first key on the ring to lock/unlock the front door.  He walked out into the cold toward an old, rusty, red Mustang hatchback.  Using the round key, he unlocked the hatchback and stared inside: an old paintbrush, a worn-out pair of gloves, a few empty beer cans, and sacks from some fast foot joints.  Nothing else.  Shivering, he shut the hatchback and headed for the warm house.  At the front door, Flynn turned around.  None of the eight people standing around had spoken to him, although they watched his every movement.  Turning, he went back inside, content to leave the eight sightseers standing outdoors in the crisp nine degree air.  He shivered again as he headed toward the kitchen, grateful when he heard the furnace kick on.

In the kitchen, he took a coffee mug out of the dish strainer, filled it with water and placed the mug inside the microwave, located in the pantry.  After the microwave beeped, he added instant coffee, which he’d found on the counter.  Sitting at the small, tan kitchen table, he lit a cigarette then sipped his steaming coffee.  Leaning back in the kitchen chair, long legs outstretched, he surveyed the room.  He had never seen a kitchen with five doorways.  Two of the doorways were on the east side of the room, one for the backdoor and the other for the bathroom.  Then on the south side of the room, behind where he sat, was a doorway for the pantry and right next to it, the doorway to the basement.  The last doorway was on the west wall, leading into the dining room / library.  The kitchen table sat against the west wall, and when he leaned back, he could see from the kitchen, through the dining room, into the living room.

He sat there, flicking his cigarette into the ashtray, waiting, but not sure why.  One thing he felt certain of though, that Pat Forbes wasn’t going to come home and demand to know who the stranger was sitting in her kitchen, drinking her coffee!  And he also felt John Sempek wasn’t coming back home either.  He couldn’t find any hard evidence indicating that something was wrong, just some circumstantial clues.  Making a judgment call without some evidence of violence, a break-in or other wrongdoing was difficult.  Yet he knew that these people weren’t alive any longer.  He could feel it in his gut, as he sat in their kitchen, sipping their coffee.

To himself, he said, “Well, Flynn, if you’re wrong, it sure as hell won’t be the first time.”  Then he smiled, as he knew that his reputation over the years had proven that his hunches were more often right than wrong.  And when he felt as certain, as he did now, sitting here sipping their coffee, he had never been wrong!

When his mug was empty, he refilled it and placed it back in the microwave.  As he waited for the beep, he said to the kitchen, “Well, Pat, you’re not talking to me at all.  Maybe John will.”

With a long-legged stride, he went back into the front bedroom, picking up the spiral notebook that Daniels had shown him earlier, then headed back toward the beeping microwave.  As he passed in front of the bedroom doorway, on the south side of the dining room, the old floorboards gave out a protesting squeak.  In one spot, the worn floorboard felt squishy under his foot.

Back at the kitchen table, with his hot coffee, he opened the notebook saying, “Okay, John, let’s see what you have to say.”  John Sempek wrote stories, and what the Lieutenant was looking at was obviously another of his efforts.  “Well, John, since I have a lack of evidence to go on, and I sure as hell don’t want to go out and talk with your neighbors in the cold, I think I’ll kill some time and read your story.  Let’s see what kind of writer you were.”  He smiled when he realized he had used the past tense.

In the notebook were thirteen handwritten pages, the writing in pencil.  He turned to the beginning and read:

‘I hope no one reads this, because that means I am dead.  I know the cats are, and I’m positive Pat is too.  They were killed by this Thing living in our basement.  I know this sounds crazy, but what I’m saying is true.  I’ve never seen the Thing, but have caught glimpses of it several times.

‘Being a rational man, and knowing the kind of imagination I have, I told myself what I was seeing was my eyes playing tricks on me, or a trick of the shadows.  For example, when you’re lying in bed in the dark of the night and you see clothing piled up on a chair, though you know those are the same clothes you took off before going to bed, you have one hell of a time convincing yourself, and your frightened mind, that there isn’t someone, or something standing there, watching you.

‘It became easier for me to ignore what I was occasionally seeing, and I had myself half convinced that it was our new, black kitten that I was catching glimpses of, as a dark ball of fur darted around.  So, whatever has happened to Pat is my fault.  Because you see, our cats disappeared on Monday, yet early on Tuesday, when I again saw that same dark ball of fur, I still told myself that it was Charlie.  I had too.  What else could I tell myself it was?  Please, be patient and I’ll try to explain the best that I can.’

Glancing up, Flynn rolled his shoulders then lit another cigarette.  The handwriting was in light pencil, and difficult to read.  The faint writing didn’t make it any easier on his already tired eyes.  He sipped his coffee and began reading again.

‘We already had two big, white female cats, Muffitt and Stuffitt, and a few months ago we took in a small kitten, Charlie, who had been born wild.  We keep the cat’s food and water bowls in the basement.  Cats are sloppy eaters and a kitten is worse.  Anyway, after we took in the kitten, the amount of dry cat food we were going through more than doubled, and the water bowls were always empty.  Pat and I thought it strange that suddenly we were going through eight to ten pounds of dry cat food a week.  It wasn’t possible for one small kitten to eat five or six times what our full-grown cats did, even when they had been kittens themselves!  But we thought that had to be the reason, and let it go.

‘Monday, I was home all day until it was time to pick up Pat from work at 5:00 pm.  I had been in the front bedroom we use as our office, working on my stories, except for trips to the bathroom or coffee.  At 4:05 pm, I went to the kitchen, grabbed a beer and tried to unwind before I had to go fight traffic to pick up Pat.  On each trip from the office, I had seen at least one or all three of the cats somewhere in the house.  But when I went into the kitchen for the beer, I’m positive I didn’t see any of them.  Their disappearance didn’t register with me at that time, as there had been more than one occasion when all three of the cats had been in the basement together.

‘Feline lovers understand that cats always seem to know what time you get up in the morning and when you come home at night.  Well, all three of them would be there waiting for Pat the minute she set her foot through the door.  They didn’t care about me, but Pat always had to stop and pet or scratch them the minute she came home.  This was an established ritual for them.

‘Anyway, I picked up Pat, and we went to this bar that we like to frequent.  We arrived home around 7:30, and that’s when it became apparent there was something wrong.  We didn’t see any cats.  We searched all over the house, but they weren’t anywhere!  Pat became really upset.  By the time we went to bed, she was convinced that I had done something to the damn cats, because I always teased Pat about cooking them for dinner and making house slippers out of their fur.

‘The only lame excuse I had was that the landlord might have stopped over after I left, and the cats had spooked and ran outdoors.  But we knew my explanation was a crock of bullshit, our cats wouldn’t go near the door as it was damn cold outside on Monday.  Pat cried herself to sleep, hating me, while I laid there trying to remember the last time I saw the dummies.’

Again, Flynn looked up from the notebook, rolled his shoulders then lit another smoke.  He sipped his cold coffee, and went back to the story.

‘Pat is a hard worker, and usually gets up at 5:00 am, but many times I wake up earlier than her.  Once I wake up I can’t go back to sleep, so instead of tossing and turning and accidently waking up Pat, I get out of bed and go work on my stories.  And because I don’t want to disturb her, I usually don’t turn on the bedroom light.

‘On Tuesday, I awoke at 3:10 am.  I carefully climbed out of bed, and using the flashlight from the nightstand, proceeded to dress.  When the flashlight beam hit my pile of clothing, I thought I saw the Thing again, or at least a part of it, as it disappeared under the bed.  I caught a fast glimpse of something that looked like course, brown hair.  Then it was gone.  I stood staring at the spot for a few seconds, then I grabbed my clothes and left.  And GOD help me, I never looked under the damn bed!  I kept telling myself it was a shadow from moving the flashlight around.  But you see, I never knelt and looked.  If I had, Pat would still be alive.

‘I went into the kitchen and turned the light on, but not the bathroom light.  After I flushed the toilet, I walked back out into the kitchen, past the open basement doorway, and from the corner of my eye, I thought I saw two, round, yellow eyes reflecting the kitchen light back up to me from the bottom of the basement steps.  I stopped and peered down the stairs but wasn’t able to see very far in the dark, so I turned on the basement light.  There was nothing on the bottom step.

‘I drink too much, and for a while, I’ve been hitting the beer pretty hard.  So I easily convinced myself that I was seeing things from my overindulgence.  Half my brain was telling me this, and it sounded much better than what my logical half was trying to tell me, so I promised myself to cut down my drinking.  I shut off the kitchen light, took my coffee into the office, closing the door so my typing wouldn’t bother Pat, turned on my radio and got busy.

‘I came out of the office at 5:40 for more coffee.  It dawned on me that Pat hadn’t bothered me for her ride to work.  Because Pat’s usual ride to work was off this week, I was taking her back and forth.  So I figured she had either overslept or wasn’t feeling well.  I went into the bedroom to see what was wrong.  Her robe was there, on the door where it always hung, but she wasn’t in the bedroom.  As cold as the temperature was last night, I knew she wouldn’t leave the bedroom without her robe.  Still trying to be rational, I told myself she had already dressed in the bedroom and was probably in the bathroom.

‘Turning on the kitchen lights, I stood in the doorway, noticing that she wasn’t in the dark bathroom either.  I turned on the bathroom light anyway, just to make sure, but no Pat.  I yelled her name with no response.  I decided to check the basement, so I turned on the basement light.  My heart stopped when I saw what was lying on the second to the bottom step.  One gray, wool sock.  As Pat’s feet were always freezing, she usually wore that pair of heavy, old, wool socks to bed when it was cold.

‘I walked halfway down the steps and found the other one.  Her second sock was lying on the floor next to the water heater, but it looked different. I walked over, picked it up and found warm, sticky blood on the sock.  Oh, not much, a few drops, but enough to see that it was blood, and the blood was fresh.  I stood looking around the basement, then walked to the door in front of me.  ‘Half the basement is finished, and behind that door is the unfinished part.  It’s under the front part of the house, with a dirt floor and walls.  We never go in there but to read the water meter, located just inside the doorway.

‘I opened the door, but couldn’t see anything but blackness.  Then, right at the edge of the doorjamb, where the dirt floor begins, I saw the scrapes.  It looked to me like something had been dragged in there.  Something heavy.  Pat weighs around one hundred seventy pounds, which sounds overweight, but not for a six foot tall woman.  We had been in that dirt room Monday evening searching for the cats, and I was positive those scrape marks weren’t there then.  The room didn’t look any different, just the one light bulb, the water meter, dirt floor, walls and an old piece of cardboard leaning against the wall in the far corner.  The light bulb hangs from the ceiling about six feet into the room, right at the edge of the light shining in from the finished room.  Everything beyond is blackness.

‘Now, whoever reads this has to believe me.  I couldn’t MAKE myself go into that room!  Not even far enough to turn the light on.  There weren’t any strange sounds coming from the dirt room, but I stood there paralyzed for what seemed a long time.  When I could finally move, I closed the door and dropped her socks.  I went back upstairs, into our bedroom and retrieved my 9mm pistol out of the dresser drawer.  Now, I am sitting at the kitchen table writing this.  And believe me; my back is NOT to the basement door!

‘As I sit here writing this, I realize there were signs I should have noticed before; items that had been moved or food that had disappeared.  I also remember the night a few weeks back, when the three cats were sleeping on the bed with us and the bedroom door was closed for warmth.  Something, a noise, awoke me.  As this is an old house it makes plenty of noises, especially in the winter.  But there are certain noises the house makes when you stand or walk on specific spots on the dining room floor.  That’s the noise I heard, and it only comes from one place in the house, a spot about two feet outside our bedroom door.  The noise is a very specific squeaking sound.  The floorboard never squeaks when the cats walk across it, so it requires more than eighteen pounds of pressure to make the floor squeak.  I know that’s the sound that had awoken me.

‘Pat heard the squeak too, whispering to me in the dark about the noise she had heard.  I silently squeezed her hand and we laid there listening.  Still in a whisper, she asked me if it sounded like something was breathing.  And it did; a harsh, raspy kind of breathing, right outside the bedroom door.  I was trying to see the dresser in the dark, where I keep my gun, when we clearly heard another noise. Pat said it sounded like the cracking of knuckles, which I do on a regular basis.  I agreed with her then, but I know better now.  As I am writing this, it occurred to me that that noise wasn’t the sound of cracking joints, but the clicking of clawed feet on the tiled, kitchen floor.

‘The furnace kicked on then, making too much noise to hear any more small sounds.  So we jumped from bed.  With my gun in one hand, and the flashlight in the other, I began searching the house, Pat right behind me.  We turned on every light in the house, and checked all the windows and doors.  Even the basement, and though we knew there were no openings in the dirt room, we searched anyway.  Before long, we had ourselves convinced the noises we heard was the house settling from the cold.  What else could it be, the place was tightly locked!

‘And my God, one part of me knew there was someone or something in the house with us.  Because of my overactive imagination, I wouldn’t let myself dwell on the possibility.  Otherwise, I’d wind up weaving baskets in the funny farm!’

The Lieutenant felt a chill creep up his long spine.  He suddenly felt like he was being watched.  He nervously got up and made more coffee.  He had been sitting at the kitchen table with his back to the open basement door.  He surprised himself by sitting at the table, facing the open doorway.  He surprised himself further when he reached to turn the notebook around, and found that he had drawn his revolver!  His snub nose .38 lay next to his left hand, near his coffee mug.

He stared at his revolver for a few seconds, then over at the open basement doorway.  Flynn smiled.  “Shit!  This guy is a damn good writer.  He had me going there!  Yeah, claws clicking on tile.  Sure.”

Smile fading, he watched his left hand trembling where it rested on the butt of his gun.  He gave a shake of his head; slowly removing his hand from the gun butt, then lit a cigarette, and took a sip of coffee. He did this without taking his eyes away from the open doorway.  He couldn’t make himself tear his eyes from the basement doorway!

Suddenly, loud clicking noises echoed up the stairwell.  He snatched up his gun, dropping his cigarette and spilling his coffee.  Nerves stretched to the breaking point, he almost pulled the trigger, and at the last second, made himself hold off as he realized the new sound was the furnace kicking to life down there, nothing else.  Still staring at the doorway, and with a silly grin on his face, he said softly to himself, “Goddamn, Flynn!  You had better calm yourself, old man.  You almost shot into the basement because of the fucking furnace.”

He had searched every part of the house twice before, including the dirt room in the basement.  The small room had a dirt floor with dirt walls.  He didn’t remember seeing any scrape marks on the floor, but at the time he was looking for a new grave or a body, so he may not have noticed the marks if he had seen them.  Thinking hard, all he could remember seeing in the room was the water meter, a few pole supports, and the light bulb.  And off across the room in one of the corners, a piece of cardboard leaning against the irregular dirt wall.  But nothing that would have sparked any interest, like drag marks, or footprints.

As he put his gun down, and retrieved his fallen cigarette, his head jerked up!  He thought he’d seen movement in the shadows of the stairwell!  Staring at the shadowy, open doorway, he said, “Christ!  You’re losing it here, Flynn!”

With gun in hand, he crept to the basement doorway, switching on the light.  With the shadows gone, he leaned in and looked closely.  After a few minutes, he realized he was holding his breath, and released it.  He silently climbed down three steps, leaning out, so he could see the whole basement.  His eyes stopped at the door to the dirt room, but he didn’t go down any farther.

Upset with himself, he climbed back upstairs to the table and sat.  He never asked himself why he left the basement light on.  Using the heel of his hand, he scraped the spilled coffee from the table, wiping the soggy notebook on his brown suit pants.  When he picked up his half-smoked cigarette, he noticed  how much has hands were shaking, and after one more flick of his eyes to the open, but lighted doorway, he looked down, and again, began to read the now wet story.

‘Yeah, well, maybe being locked away in the funny farm is better than going into that dirt room.  But I don’t plan on walking in there.  No.  I’m going to sit on the bottom step, with my gun and the flashlight, and wait for It to come out.  And It will come out.  For me.  Then I’m going to kill It, if I can.  So, whoever is reading this must know by now that I couldn’t kill It with my fourteen shot, 9mm semiautomatic pistol.

‘I know I’ve seen it, as I said, in brief snatches.  It’s brown, bigger than a full-grown house cat.  And it has to weigh more than eighteen pounds to make the floor squeak.  It would have to be extremely strong for its size to be able to drag Pat down into the basement, then into the dirt room.  It has round, yellow eyes, or at least they appeared yellow in the light before.

‘I don’t know where it came from, or what it is, but I do know where it is! If you don’t find me, for God’s sake, don’t go into that room!  Run and get help.  Men with guns.  Many men and many guns!  I can’t prove any of this, but I am warning you, if you don’t find me, don’t go down there alone, because IT LIVES IN THE BASEMENT!’  The end of the story was signed John Sempek.

Lieutenant Flynn looked again at his trembling hand where it rested on the gun butt, then to the open, lit doorway.  He took out his pen and wrote quickly for a few seconds, then slowly, reluctantly unfolded from his chair.  He knew that if he didn’t go down there and check the room, he would never be able to sleep again.  But he didn’t want to go down there.  OH GOD, he did not want to go down there!

**********

The time was 3:15 pm, and Mickosky and Daniels were cruising slowly north, toward the new downtown station.  Their shift ended at four, but they liked to get in earlier if they could.  They always had so much paperwork to fill out and it was easier filling out the reports at a table than on a car seat.

Mickosky turned north on 18th street, as Daniels pointed and said, “Hey Mick, there’s the Lieutenant’s car.  Let’s stop and see what he found.”

Not answering, Mickosky double-parked next to Flynn’s car, and they got out.  The front door was still open.  Mickosky leaned in and yelled, “Hey Lieutenant Flynn?  You in here?”

Not hearing a response, and because it was cold out, they proceeded inside. As they had been in the old house before, it didn’t take them long to search, discovering there was no one in the house.

Daniels recognized the coffee-stained, spiral notebook sitting on the kitchen table.  He said, “Oh yeah.  One of those stories that the Sempek guy was writing.  From the looks of the notebook, the Lieutenant didn’t like the story.”

Mickosky stomped up the wooden stairs from the basement.  “I wonder why the Lieutenant left all the lights on downstairs.  Say Daniels, do you remember if we saw a shoe in the dirt room?  Lying right inside the doorway?  I don’t seem to remember seeing a shoe.”

Daniels dropped the still soggy, coffee-stained notebook into the kitchen trashcan.  “Hell, Mick!  How am I supposed to remember now?  We were here hours ago!  Hey, I bet the Lieutenant’s getting statements from the neighbors.” Glancing at his watch, he suggested, “It’s getting pretty close to quitting time.  What do you say we just go check in, buddy?”

Mickosky stared at the coffee-stained notebook for a second, then walked past it saying, “Yeah, you’re probably right.  Let’s go.”  They let themselves out into the cold, and hurried to their warm car.  In seconds, they were gone.

Through the ensuing investigation, and for several years afterward, Mickosky was nagged by something he could never quite remember. As he stared at that coffee-stained, pencil-smeared page of the notebook lying in the trashcan, his mind didn’t register the fact that the last line on the page was written in illegible ink.

Some experts claim that once you read something, you never forget it.  You may never remember what you read, but it is filed in your brain somewhere.  So in Officer Mickosky’s brain, was stored that one illegible, ink-written scribble at the bottom of the coffee-stained page.

The one line that should have read, “If you don’t find me, then this story is true, and don’t go downstairs alone.  I’m going down there now, at 12:30 pm.’  The page was signed, Lieutenant Mike Flynn, Omaha Police Department, November 30th 1985.