IT LIVES IN THE BASEMENT (3 page)

‘I drink too much, and for a while, I’ve been hitting the beer pretty hard.   So I easily convinced myself I was seeing things from my overindulgence.  Half my brain was telling me this, and it s
ounded much better than what my logical half was trying to tell me, so I promised myself to cut down my drinking.  I flicked 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 ou
t of the office at 5:40 for more coffee.  It dawned on me Pat hadn’t found 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’d either overslept or wasn’t feeling well.  I went to 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’d already dressed in the bedroom and was probably in the bathroom.

‘Turning on the kitchen lights, I stood in the doorway, noticing 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 walke
d 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 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’d 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 six feet into the room, right at the edge of the light shining in from the finished room.  Everything beyond is blackness.

‘Now, whoev
er 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, to our bedroom and retrieved my 9mm pistol out of the dresser drawer.  Now, I’m 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
’ve noticed before; items that’d been moved or food that’d 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, woke me. 

‘Since
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’d 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’m writing this, it occurs 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 r
ight 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
’d 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 he’d 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 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 do
orway.

Suddenly,
loud clicking noises echoed up the stairwell. 

Hastily s
natching up his gun, he dropped his cigarette, 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 sof
tly to himself, “Goddamn, Flynn.  You’d better calm yourself, old man.  You almost shot into the basement because of the fucking furnace.”

He
’d 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’ve 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 saw 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 d
own 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 dark, brown suit pants.  When he picked up his half-smoked cigarette, he noticed how much his 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.

‘Y
eah, 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 my notebook must know by now that I couldn’t kill It with my fourteen shot, 9mm semiautomatic pistol.

‘I know I’ve seen I
t, 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 I
t 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’m 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 stared
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 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 be
cause it was cold out, they proceeded inside. As they’d 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 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 w
onder why the Lieutenant left 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 in
to 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’s 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
’ve 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.