Crawlspace (3 page)

“I know you. We seen you at church. Been meanin’ to introduce ourselves. Atlee your man out there?”

“That’s right. He was supposed to look after our fuel. Now I discover our tank’s empty.”

“That’s too bad,” said the voice on the other end. “I’ll try and get someone up there this afternoon. Can’t promise a thing, though. All the trucks are out.”

“I see.”

“Sometimes one comes in early, though. And if it does—”

“Please do. It was below freezing last night, and I’m not very well.”

“What?”

“Never mind,” I said. I didn’t want to go into all that. “Atlee,” said the voice again, and it made a clucking sound. “Queer duck he was. Just lit out without a word of notice. Left us all up in the air. Didn’t even bother -collecting his pay.”

“You know who he is?”

“What?”

“Do you know anything about him?” I said.

“Nope. Drifter. Kept to himself. Pleasant enough, though. Amiable. Seen plenty of that type. Blow into town from nowhere. Work for a while. Get a little coin stashed, then—light out. Common enough.”

“I see,” I said, my voice huskier than usual.

“Yop. Just up and lit out. Not a word of notice or parting. You’d think the law was on his tail’. Queer duck.” He was silent, waiting for me to respond. When I didn’t, he simply rattled on. “I’ll try and get a man up there to you this afternoon. Can’t promise a thing. Got a fireplace?”

“Yes.”

“Burn it. Burn logs. If I don’t get up there today, I’ll get up before the week’s out, anyway.”

“I see,” I said, suddenly feeling terribly alone. “Sorry about any inconvenience. Happens, though. Oh—by the way. My name’s Beamish.”

Just as I hung up, Alice came in, her cheeks glowing from the pinch of late October air. In her arms were bundles of marigolds and dahlias. She bustled cheerfully across the kitchen to the sink. “Thought I’d better get these in before the frost gets them completely. Aren’t the dahlias grand?”

I looked at them blankly.

She filled a vase with water and started to arrange a bouquet. “That you on the phone just now?”

“Yes,” I said distantly, all the while thinking of the grim place just beneath our feet. I’d decided not to say a word to her until I knew what I wanted to do. And at that moment I hadn’t the slightest notion of what I wanted to do.

“Who were you talking to?”

“The fuel people.”

“They sending someone out to fix the furnace?”

“The furnace is fine.”

She turned from the sink, the water still running behind her.

“The tank’s empty. That’s all.”

“Oh—Did you tell what’s his name?”

“Atlee.”

“Yes. Atlee. Did you tell him?”

“He’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Gone. Quit his job about two weeks ago. Just disappeared into thin air.”

Her mouth fell open, her arms crossed, and her chin came to rest in the palm of her hand. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Where do you s’pose he’s gone?”

“I don’t know,” I said vacantly, looking at the floor and feeling my bowels turn within me.

“Well, I hope they’re going to get some oil up here. We can’t live like this. The place was cold as a tomb last night.”

“They say they’ll try and be out this afternoon.”

She set a copper kettle on the stove. “I’m disappointed in that boy. Letting us down like that. And we treated him so well. Like some tea, dear?”

“Where do you keep the key to the cellar door?” I asked. She turned around and looked at me oddly.

“You know very well. Right up above the stove. Where it always—” Her hand reached up to a small shelf above the stove and groped about. “Now isn’t that funny?”

“It’s gone,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

The fuel company didn’t come that afternoon. That night a thick fog and biting frost settled in around us. Gray, swirling mist licked at the window panes, and we built the fire high and sat at the supper table in thick wool sweaters.

When bedtime came we banked the fire, put out the lights, and went upstairs. I lay there for a time in the dark listening to the slow regular breathing of my wife beside me. Outside, the high, keening sound of the wind moaned over the bogs like the sound of someone mourning on a distant hill. I kept thinking of the grim place below the kitchen, wondering if he was down there now, imagining him as he looked crouching in the darkness, surrounded by his pitiful little mementos and the animal bones.

Suddenly I heard something—a faint, fight tinkle, like that of a metal wrench being struck against a pipe. In the next moment I could hear the distinct sound of metallic tapping ringing up from below through the radiators. The sound was unmistakable. Richard Atlee was in the house.

I said nothing to Alice about the noises I heard coming from the cellar that night or, indeed, what they meant. The fuel truck came the following afternoon driven by a big, jovial red-faced man. His size was reassuring, and I snatched at the opportunity of following him down to the basement. I had no idea what I’d find there.

He puttered, tinkered, and fiddled with pipes, whistling all the while he went about his work.

“When’s the last time you had this smoke pipe cleaned?” he said, hustling round the furnace adjusting nozzles and gauges. “You gotta keep the flue open,” he went right on, not waiting for my answer. “Clean. Know what I mean?”

He brushed past me, the beam of his light swiveling round the cellar, poking into corners. All the while he chattered, my eyes ransacked the place for signs of Richard Atlee. I checked the cupboard and found the books and other mementos exactly where I’d left them.

I wanted to get back into the crawlspace while I had the security of the driver down there with me. I was certain Richard wasn’t there now, but there was always a possibility that I might be wrong. From observing the pattern of his routine I guessed that it was his habit to desert the cellar for the entire day, emerging from his lair in the cool gray hours of the dawn, then returning late at night after we’d gone to sleep, all the while letting himself in and out through the small garden door, thus avoiding any chance of running head-on into us.

What he did in the daytime I couldn’t imagine. But I reasoned that he spent these hours in the bog or back deep in the forest hunting birds and small animals, then returned each night to eat his kill.

“I don’t seem to be getting any heat up through the kitchen radiator,” I said to the driver. That wasn’t true. I lied in order to get him to go into the crawl.

“Where’s your kitchen?” he snapped. Before I could answer, his eyes swiveled round the cellar and came to rest at the crawl. “Out that way?”

“Yes. Right above the crawl.”

He was there in a moment, peering through the square, throwing his light around. “Helluva place to get into.” He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “Wanna hold that a minute?”

He handed me the flashlight and I held it while he scrambled up into the square. Then he reached back and took the light. I followed him.

Once in there, he moved swiftly, ducking here and there under the maze of joists and sweating pipes.

“Smell sewerage?” he asked. The beam of his light swept right past the mound of straw and he moved on without having noticed it. “Your sewer lines got out this way?”

“No. Out there. Over the other side.”

While he busied himself examining pipes, I peered back in the direction of the straw pallet. The squat ugly hump of it stood out clearly in the shadows, and when I drew closer I could see the signs of bones and animal debris. But there was no sigh of Richard.

“Can’t see no reason why you’re not gettin’ heat up there,” said the driver. “Might be the radiator valves.” He was tapping pipes and coughing a great deal. “When’s the last time you flushed ’em?”

By the time we climbed out of the crawl, his face was quite red. “I’ll send someone up here to clean that flue. Cost a few bucks, but you’ll make it right back in efficiency. Lower your oil consumption. Know what I mean?” I told him I did and nodded dumbly. All the while he spoke, my eyes were riveted on the small gray square leading into the crawl.

Later when I walked out to the truck with him I was in a state of agitation.

“You got about three weeks of oil in the tank now,” the driver said. He tore a bill off his pad and handed it to me. “I’ll get someone up here about that flue. Make all the difference in the world.”

He climbed into his truck while the name Richard Atlee stuck in my throat and refused to come out.

The truck lurched down the gravel driveway, then gasped as it shifted gears at the bottom of the hill, turned left, and started up the steep hill that runs alongside the orchard in front of our house. I clung to the fleeting sight of it until it vanished over the hill. As it did so, a great hush fell over the earth.

Once more we were alone.

That afternoon we walked in the forest and picked apples and wild raspberries. When we got back we went into the garden and picked several ripe pumpkins. That night we baked pies. When, at last, we turned out the lights and went up to bed, the house was warm from the oven and full of the smell of molasses and cinnamon.

Sometime early in the morning, perhaps 2 A.M., Alice woke me.

“What is it?” I asked, foggy with sleep.

“The pipes are banging.”

“It’s nothing. Just the radiators. Go back to sleep.”

“It doesn’t sound like the radiators.”

I sat up in bed shaking my head while the banging grew louder.

“That’s no radiator, Albert. Go down and check.”

I had no intention of going down to the cellar. But I couldn’t stay there cowering under the covers and let on to what I knew. In the next moment, I climbed out of bed and put on a robe.

Outside at the landing, I flicked on the stairway light and started down to the kitchen. I paused at almost every step and listened with frozen horror to the banging. It took me several minutes to get down the entire flight.

Once down in the kitchen, I was standing directly over the crawl gazing transfixed at my feet while the pipes in the radiator gonged up from below. Several times Alice called down from above.

“Albert?”

“Yes.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Is there anything there?”

“Nothing I can see.”

Then she was silent, but the banging in the pipes grew louder and more insistent. After a while I could feel each stroke in my stomach. At one point when it reached a peak of unruliness I panicked. Lying near at hand was a large kitchen knife. I grabbed it and started banging frantically back on the pipes.

Instantly the noise ceased and silence roared in upon me. All I could hear was the thudding of my heart. The next moment there was a scraping, shuffling movement just below my feet, the kind of noise you associate with small animals rummaging in a confined area. Then I heard nothing.

“Albert.”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Go back to bed. I’m on my way up.”

Before I went up I locked the door leading from the library to the cellar. When I got back to the room, she was sitting up in bed, her eyes wide and staring. “What in God’s name was it?”

“Only the pipes. I made an adjustment.”

She must have seen something in my face, because she looked at me oddly. “Go back to bed, Alice.”

“Albert?”

“Go back to bed.” This time my voice was harsh. It wasn’t a voice she was accustomed to hearing. She stared at me for a moment, then without another word, slipped obediently under the covers and turned her back on me.

I sat on the edge of the bed gazing at the frost-fogged windows and listened to a naked branch scratching at the eaves. When my hands stopped trembling, I reached back and touched her head ever so gently. “I’m sorry, Alice. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning.”

It rained the rest of the night and on into the next day. A cold, steady drizzle mixed with sleet rattled down on the rooftops.

Alice was standing at the breakfast counter in a wraparound shawl, beating eggs. For the most part she was silent, wailing for me to speak. I, for my part, was attempting to arrange in my mind the exact words with which to describe the sequence of events that led up to what had occurred the night before.

The copper kettle on the stove began to hiss. Just as Alice was reaching for a canister of tea, her gaze fell on the shelf above her.

“What on earth—”

When I looked up at her, a spoon of blueberries slipped from my hand and clattered loudly on the table. She watched berries rolling off the table onto the floor in a dozen directions. “For God’s sake, Albert. If you wanted a slice of pie, you could’ve simply—”

By that time I was across the room, past where she stood, and gaping at the pies. They gave the appearance of having been pawed by an animal. Fully three-quarters of all three of them had been devoured. What remained had been smashed and ground into the Pyrex plates with such force that the fruity innards had splashed over onto the shelf.

“Dear God, Albert—what is it?”

Standing there, gaping at smashed pies, I imagine the expression on my face must have been horrible. Not only did Richard Atlee have the key to the garden door, he also had the key to the library-cellar door.

Alice looked at me oddly and our eyes met. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

By that time she knew something was quite wrong.

Isn’t it curious how long you can live with a person, feeling certain you can predict his or her behavior in any given circumstance, then discover that you’ve been
wrong.
But not merely wrong; wildly and incalculably wrong.

Thus it was with Alice (with whom I’ve lived for nearly a quarter of a century) when on that morning I sat her down and attempted to explain our situation. That explanation, I realize now, must have sounded strange to her. I did it slowly and laboriously, my voice a curious mixture of measured calm and barely repressed hysteria. I was like a man carrying a hot soup bowl, seeking desperately a place to set it down.

All the while I spoke, a high, nervous laugh kept erupting from somewhere deep within me. It was a strange laugh—one I’d never heard before. It was like hearing a stranger laughing somewhere near you in the dark. I can’t say I cared very much for the sound of it.