Under the House

Under the House

It was the smell that woke him. The putrid, sweet stench of rotting flesh. Alan rolled over and groaned, determined to recapture his half-lost dream.

"What's that smell," a female voice asked.

"Huh?" he muttered into his pillow.

"Al?" the voice demanded.

"What Jen?" he asked.

"What is that smell?" she repeated.

"Don't really know," he told her sitting up; rubbing his bleary eyes, "Time's it?"

"Eight," she answered.

He rolled back over. All he wanted was to go back to sleep. Alan did not have to worry, did not have to work, and his wife, Jen, was taking the kids to her folks.

Jen had asked him to go with them. He ultimately wanted to just chill out at the house; alone. Alone time with two kids is just too hard to come by.

"Smells like something died," he told her.

"Where?" she asked.

He grunted, "probably just a mouse or something in the wall somewhere," he groaned again, "maybe under the house."

"Well, it wasn't there last night," she said. Her tone accusatory.

"Well," he started in her same tone, "I didn't have anything to do with it."

Putting his arms around her, he kissed her forehead. He would have kissed her properly, but she hated his morning breath.

Jen pushed herself out of his arms and climbed up out of bed. In the morning glow of the late spring sun coming through the lightly curtained window, she looked as attractive to him as she always had. She stood there in her old-fashioned cotton nightgown and ran her fingers through her shoulder length dark hair. He could see the shadows of her firm breasts and shapely legs as she arched her back in a languid stretch.

"I love you," he murmured to her from his nice warm bed.

She laughed again; a sweet spill of laughter coming out of her like a bubbly waterfall. Her laugh always brought a smile to his face. "I love you too," she told him with an arched eyebrow, "but that isn't going to find out whatever is causing this horrid smell." She smiled down at him, "So get up sunshine."

He smiled back at her and rolled himself out of bed. Alan landed on his feet and raised his arms as if he were an Olympic gymnast competing for gold.

Jen Laughed again and left the room. "Boys?" he heard her call. "Time to get ready. We're going to Grana's today."

Alan chuckled, "Grana," it was an odd name, but one that held a lot of love and respect. When Bryan, their first, tried to say, "Grandma," for the first time, it came out "Grana," so the name stuck. Stephen, the baby, only he wasn't a baby anymore being almost five, picked that word right up. People thought it was odd, but the name spoke of love and family and childish innocence, so he liked hearing it.

The smell grew stronger as Allan walked closer to the mauve colored wall and sniffed. "No", it wasn't in that wall. He walked to the wall on his right and sniffed again, the same. Alan walked through the house sniffing walls like a mangy cur looking for a place to relieve itself. He dodged his running children as they went about the, always, laborious task of getting ready for a trip.

He only stopped his sniffing when a delighted splash of laughter rose from the hallway behind him. He spun around and found his wife, still in sleepwear, holding her belly and rocking back and forth in uncontrolled mirth.

"What?" he asked in wide-eyed, fake innocence.

"You," she laughed.

He pointed to himself, placing one index finger on his chest as if he were completely baffled about what was so funny.

She nodded, "You, in your boxers, and nothing else, sniffing around the house like a dog."

Alan dropped on all fours and scuttled to where she stood; barking as he went. A look of pure amusement crossed his face and he licked his wife's thigh. She yipped and darted to the left, slamming the door to the bathroom. He could hear her delighted laughter from behind the door. "I know you always wanted a dog," he teased in his best imitation of Scooby.

Before he could think to get up, his half-dressed boys tackled him. "Take that," ten-year-old Bryan said as he tried to goose his father in the ribs.

"Get Daddy," Stephen yelled jumping on his father's back. The ensuing "Tickle War," continued until they all lay in the hall laughing and panting.

"You boys better finish getting dressed. It's a long way to your grandmother's and she is probably waiting for you to eat."

They shuffled off to finish the unfair task of getting ready. He got up and heard the shower running. "No reason why we should waste the water," he thought and opened the door.

Clouds of steam billowed up from behind the shower curtain. He dropped his cotton boxers and swung the curtain aside. His wife's eyes widened as he stepped in.

"Alan," she said reproachfully, "The kids are up."

He laughed, "I locked the door. I ain't gonna see you all weekend, so I thought we could remind ourselves why we're married. Besides, it's a pretty good day so far." She reached out to him and for the second time, that morning circled her arms around him.

After drying off, Jen turned to Alan, "Did you ever find out where that smell was coming from?"

Turning to her, his toothbrush sticking out of his mouth and mumbled something unintelligible. She reached out and pulled it out of his mouth and smiled.

"I think it's somewhere under the house; under the living room probably. I'll get it out after ya'll leave."

She smiled, "Your draw is coming out."

A looked of mock astonishment crossed his face, "Well, now li'l darlin', I'm a Texan, after all."

She laughed and spoke the words that made every bad thing that ever happened between them meaningless, "I love you." It always amazed him how those three little words spoken at the right moment could always banish whatever demons had decided to climb into his skull.

The rest of the morning went by fast, too fast for Alan. It was a good day. He had almost decided to forget about his lazy weekend and go with them; probably would have if it weren't for that damned smell. It seemed to get stronger as the day wore on. There was no putting it off.

He walked his small family to the van and helped his wife into the driver's seat. "I might come up in the car after I get the animal or whatever it is out from under the house."

She gave him a glowing smile, "You're sure?"

"Yeah, I'll come. It'll do us some good, and I haven't seen your folks for a couple of months. I enjoy yammering at your dad," then he smiled, "Maybe we could convince your mom to make us some chicken and dumplings?"

She feigned a hurt look, "I made that for you just last week."

He shrugged, "I know, babe, but it's just not the same." She slapped at him but her heart wasn't in it, almost falling out of the van as she missed.

"I love you," she said out the window as she began to back the van out of the driveway.

"I love you too. I'll see you later today, OK?"

"Sure, I'll be looking forward to it. Maybe tonight we can finish what we started this morning."

"I thought we did finish," Alan smirked.

A wolfish grin spread across her face, "You did, I didn't. You can try and rectify that tonight."

"At your mother's house?" he feigned incredulity, "I think that might be wildly inappropriate."

Jen shrugged, "Well, it didn't seem to bother you when we were dating if I recall. You owe me Andrew, and I always collect on my debts."

"Yes, ma'am." He said and backed out of the way so she could leave.

He watched as the old van disappeared down the dirt track that passed for a county road. Then turned and started around back to the shed. "Now, let's get this nasty business over with so I can be on my way."

Collecting what he thought he would need under the house proved more difficult than he'd hoped. He was looking forward to spending some time at his in-laws, and nothing was where it should have been. He found the garden sized trash bags in a corner on the concrete floor instead of on the old wooden shelves where he thought he left them. Grabbing two he rummaged around for the rest of his supplies. The flashlight turned out to be in an old box of sprinklers, and his leather gardening gloves had disappeared entirely. "I ain't doing this without gloves," he told himself. Judging the smell of whatever had crawled up under his house and died, it was going to be rather nasty. In, fact, he wondered why none of them had smelled it before that morning.

He put the bags on the grill next to the only opening in the foundation. It was covered with an old piece of plywood. Alan kept telling himself that he needed to replace the old thing with an actual door, but he only thought of it when he actually looked at it. Something about it, however, tugged at his mind, something didn't seem right. "I'll be damned if I know what," he mused.

Sighing, he went into the house. He had to find some gloves and fresh D-cells for the flashlight. It took him half an hour but he found the new batteries and a pair of his wife's rubber gloves, the ones she used to wash dishes. They were tight and yellow, but all he was concerned with was keeping dead things off his skin. The thought of touching some dead animal with his bare hands made him shudder. He honestly didn't know how he was going to get through the whole situation without vomiting.

It was going to be bad enough in the damp black Texas clay that served as dirt under the house. It was a pier and beam structure built in the late fifties. The realtor had used the pier and beam construction of the foundation as a selling point. "They don't have the foundation issues that slab houses in the area have," she had told them. She lied of course; all houses in North Texas had some kind of foundation issues because of the black clay in the area, no matter what kind of construction was used. The biggest problem with the foundation, in Alan's mind, was that when it rained, "a real turd floater", his old man would say, water would fill the area up under the house. One time he even had to have a man come out and pump the water out from under it.

Bringing it to mind, Alan looked up at the overcast sky, "I hope the rain holds off until I finish. I damned sure don't want to swim my way back out from under there," he told himself.

Setting his supplies on the ground, he reached out and pulled the old plywood sheet off of the access like a cover on some lost tomb. The rancid smell hit him in the nose like a boxer's jab. "Well, where's Lara Croft when you really need her?" he asked plaintively.

He switched on the flashlight and drug the garbage bags behind him as he went in. The underside of his house echoed and yawned out before him. There wasn't really enough room to craw, so he had to use his legs and forearms to push himself back toward the front of the house on his belly.

Panic started to reach out for him and with an effort, he blinked it away. Alan had never been claustrophobic, but the dark, the damp, and the foul odor of rotting meat mixed with sour clay pushed the panic on him just the same. He was about ten feet into his journey when the stinging started.

"Shit," he exclaimed and rubbed his neck and arms. He moved the flashlight over to see what was crawling on him. "Goddamned Fire ants!" he cursed and began pushing himself back to the opening.

Much faster than going in, he made it out into the fading daylight of the backyard. He jumped up and rubbed the nasty little insects off of his arms and neck. "Shitty little fuckers," he cursed again, "Now I know where all the ants went after I treated the yard."

He went inside, took off his mud smeared shirt, and looked in the mirror. Angry welts appeared all over his neck, chest, and arms. "Thank God I'm not allergic to the little bastards," he noted to himself. After making sure there weren't any more on him, he picked up the recently discarded shirt and went back outside.

Alan dumped the shirt on the front porch as he went back around to try again. "Just have to be more careful and watch where the hell I'm going."

Again he entered the underside of his house but moved slower, holding his light so that he could miss any of the other ant piles that probably infested the lightless domain. During this careful crawl, he banged his back on the support beams several times, once or twice, scraping his back on the old, rough wood. "I should just fill all this in with concrete," he thought as he banged his back once more.

That was when he felt another crawling sensation on his arm. It wasn't the same as the ants, hell he didn't even notice them until they stung him. He shined his light on this arm and saw a large black spider making its way toward his face. "Fuck!" he exclaimed and dropped the light.

He smashed the thing on his arm, but not before he got bit, he hoped the damned thing wasn't poisonous. Thinking of going out and just hiring someone to come out and snatch the dead animal for him, he started to crawl back out once more but stopped. "I can do this, what's a few bugs. I am going to hire a damned exterminator though."

Again, he started forward and banged his back. "Shit," he growled, but kept moving toward the living room. He stopped for a moment, something large and covered in fur was lying about five feet in front of him, but he couldn't make out exactly what it was. He could see that the fur was gray and it was large enough to be a small dog, but he doubted that. It was then that the thunder started.

"Just my luck," he said and started forward again. Once he was close enough to reach out and touch the form, he realized what it was. "A Fucking Coyote," he whispered fearing deep down that the thing might hear him.

He would have to lie to the kids. There were unnaturally afraid of the animals. He had discovered that one of their babysitters telling them that Coyotes were demons in disguise and would grab little kids right out of their beds to haul them off and eat them. The boys had nightmares for weeks, and he still had to reassure the kids when they heard a pack of the beasts off in the distance. That babysitter was never used again and on the rare occasions they did need one, they hired a sweet old lady that would tell them stories of princesses and knights.

Alan held up his light and pushed himself up a little to get a bit closer look at the animal. His back struck the main support beam under the living room and heard a crack. "Shit," he muttered no longer whispering.

He stayed up though and did get a better look at the animal. The thing had been dead for a while, its eyes were gone and maggots had replaced them. Also, there was a gaping wound in the creature's side where more maggots had crawled and squirmed. Alan forced himself not to retch, "that would be bad," he thought.

Making sure the gloves were indeed tight, he fumbled with the garbage bags. Thankfully, he had opened them before he entered the subterranean realm under his house.

Another clap of thunder sounded outside. It was muffled by the enormous weight of the house above him but it was close, and it made him jump. Again, his back hit the beam, and again it made a shuddering crack, and he didn't like the sound, not at all. "Better hurry," he thought and went about his business.

He positioned himself to slide the rotting carcass into one of the bags and slid the bag up over it. Once the beast was halfway in, he tried to move to get the rest to slide in, all the while holding his breath for fear of vomiting when the smell hit him full force.

Again, Alan's back struck the beam, but this time instead of a crack there came a loud ripping sound. He tried to jump out of the way but the crawl space wouldn't allow for the maneuver. The beam and all the weight it supported came down on his back, pinning him horribly in the sour, black clay and darkness under his house. Sharp racks of pain issued from his back and ribs. His vision swam for a moment and then he passed out; the darkness overtaking him.

It was the water that woke him. Alan's head ached, and his chest felt like it was on fire from the inside. Most frightening was the fact that he couldn't feel his legs. "I've broken my back," he said, not even recognizing his own raspy, weak voice.

He tried to move, but couldn't budge even a single inch. "I'm Fucked," he groaned. And then there was the water. "Holy shit," he thought. If it indeed came a "turd floater," then he was finished. If the water came up enough to cover his face, he wouldn't have a chance. He would drown fifty miles from any lake, three hundred miles from the ocean, and at least a mile from any creek. All that would be left of him would be a pale, shirtless corpse wearing tight yellow dishwashing gloves.

He felt the cold plastic bag against his cheek. A thought struck him out of nowhere, "How the hell did you get under here, Mr. Coyote?" The only access was closed, it's not like the damned dying animal could have opened and then closed it behind itself. Then he remembered the ragged hole in the side of the animal. It had been shot. Alan was no expert, but he knew a bullet hole when he saw one. He had seen the same kind of hole before when his father had shot a bobcat that was taking chickens at the old home place.

The hole was big enough that there was no way the animal could have survived long.

A sound jerked him out of his thoughts, it was the phone. It was ringing. It had to be his wife. Hope bloomed back inside of him, deep down inside of his gut where it had almost been lost. "If she doesn't get me then she'll know," he thought, "She'll know something is wrong." But she wouldn't, she'll just think he was on the way, that he'd be in the car on his way to meet her.

"Fuck! I am going to die. Sweet Jesus, I am going to die with a broken back and the only one here is Mr. Coyote and he ain't gonna whisper sweet things into my ear to pass me off into the dark unknown. Fuck!"

An even darker thought hit him then. "Someone put this damned thing here. Had to. There was no other way for it to get under there. The access was covered, even if it had fallen or something, the damned Coyote didn't put it back."

"But who? Who, Mr. Coyote? Who put you here? I can't imagine Jen shooting a gun or even coming close to touching a dead animal. Who does that leave? Who the hell put you here?"

"It doesn't matter, Alan, ol' pal, ol' buddy," that little sarcastic voice he always had in his head muttered. "You were the one who went and broke his back, you were the dumbass that went crawling under the house just before a rainstorm. What really matters ol' buddy is that the water is up to your lower lip, what matters is that even if your wife does come, it won't be in time. What matters Alan is that you are going to die."

And that was it. The only thing left to him was time. The sickening sort of time when nothing could be done, nothing left to accomplish, and nothing left to say. There were only two things that sort of time was good for. One was debilitating fear, and enough of that already poured through him. So he could lay there and wait for the end, or he could do the only constructive thing left to him.

He opened his mouth, but a rush of water quickly entered causing him to cough and splutter. The more he coughed out the more tried to rush in. It tasted foul, foul enough for him to realize in horror that some of the water had mingled with what was left of his friend, Mr. Coyote. After a few terrifying moments he got it all out, swallowing some of the nasty liquid, but most of it was out. "I'll get a disease from that," he thought and almost laughed at the absurdity. Alan knew he only had a few moments left.

"God," he thought, "I would pray out loud, but I can't. This isn't how I thought I'd go, and I guess it's too late to ask that you save me. All I want, before I go to wherever I have to go, is for you to take care of my Jennifer and the boys. Please God let her be safe and live a long time. I love her so much."

The water was flooding up inside his nose. "No time left, Lord, Help my kids to know that I love them. Keep them safe and happy and let them grow up. Please, Lord." He couldn't hold his breath anymore; the burning seething feeling in his chest erupted in a great exhale following closely by the deep inhale of foul water. He tried to cough the water out, but there was only more, his lungs were heavy. The blackness came slower this time, but the blackness this time was final.

Alan Crawford's last thought was, "Who the fuck put the..."

#

Jen Crawford stopped the van in the driveway and got out. It was early Sunday morning. She waited while her parents' new Olds pulled in behind her. The kids rode with their Grana and Grand-dad. "Well, the car's still here," her father remarked offhandedly as he got out. "Why don't you and the kids stay in the car, for now, Maggs," he told his wife and got out.

"I don't like this, Dad," her face openly worried. "The door's open. That's not like Alan, he's religious about locking the door before bed."

"Maybe he's out back," her father shrugged.

"I hope so."

"Tell you what. You go in and I'll check out back, let's see what we find before we jump to conclusions."

She ran up the steps and entered the house. There was something odd about the living room. It wasn't the water on the floor, thought that was odd too. It was like the door had been open during the storm. Something else seemed odd, but she couldn't catch on to it, not at first. She left the living room and ran into the bedroom calling out her husband's name.

"Alan! Alan? Alan, where are you?" But nothing came back. The house was eerily quiet, the house was horribly silent. She raised her voice again, "Alan!"

The bedroom was empty, and the bed had not been slept in. It was just the same as it had been when she left it the day before.

She went next to the bathroom. Here the room had changed, but only a little. There was mud on the floor. Not a lot of mud, but there was some.

Every other room was the same. They all had that empty, ghostly quality of emptiness to them. All of them but the living room, the coffee table had moved. "No," she thought, "That's not it. It's leaning oddly." That was it, that was what was wrong. The floor dipped outrageously. "It's like the supports... Oh, my God!"

She ran out the door banging the screen behind her. "Dad!" she yelled. "Daddy, Oh my God."

When she turned the corner she found her father coming out from under the house, covered in mud and muck. She stood stock still, frozen, fearing the worst. When she saw his face, she knew.

"Noooooo! She wailed, "it can't be, no, no, no, no, no!"

"I'm sorry, hun," her father tried as he reached his arms around her, but she beat her fists on his chest.

"Get him out!" she demanded.

"There's no way. It'll take a crew to do it, the whole weight of the house is on top of him."

She stopped betting her fists into her father's chest and began to cry.

#

Oliver Marin lay in the bed smoking a cigarette. He loved fucking this chick. She was the best he ever had and he didn't know how he made it through life without her. They'd been doing that for over two years and it never got old. Oh, he wasn't in love with her, but he did love fucking her.

"How'd you do it?" she asked for the fifth time that day.

"You don't want to know." He said and took another drag. After he blew the smoke into the air he said, "Where are your kids?"

"They're with mom. I left them there so I could pick up the insurance checks."

He chuckled, "The grieving widow. How much you get?"

She looked over at him and smiled. It was the same smile that she used to light up her husband's face. "After the accidental death thing about three hundred thousand from his life insurance. I got another two from the homeowner's insurance."

He whistled low and long, "Half a million and all we had to do was kill a useless prick and break his old house," he paused and looked at her, "you feeling guilty?"

She laughed, "Not at all, Alan was a nice man, too damned nice and he had no fucking ambition. He would have kept us poor until one of our kids stuck us in a retirement home to get rid of us."

"That's cool."

"So, how did you do it?"

Oliver mashed out the cigarette on his side table, not even bothering with the ashtray, then rolled over and cupped one of her large firm breasts, "You sure you want to know?"

"Yep."

He licked his lips, "I shot a coyote in the yard. Fucker fell right there," he laughed, "Anyway, I called you, first thing."

"I remember."

"While you were all at work and school and whatnot, I drug the thing up under your house. It's pretty nasty down there and I got into some fire ants form my trouble. Once it was under there, I sawed the main support beam so that if anyone hit it from underneath it would break in half. I figured luck would help us out, hell bitch, I always been pretty lucky."

She giggled like a little schoolgirl, "It worked just fine."

"Yep," he said and started to pull out another cigarette.

"No," she said putting a hand on the pack.

"What?" he asked.

"Fuck me again."

He did.