The House on Plum Street
IV Echoes of Darkness (Cont’d)
Frankly, in the daylight there was nothing scary about the house. The only threat came seemingly from the rotting, soggy floorboards that might break under the weight of my body causing me to plummet to the basement below. Yet, I couldn’t suppress a shudder that rippled through my body. The musty air smelled of dead things.
But, not the sickly sweet aroma of decaying flesh that came from rotten meat or a dead body. Last summer a dead body had been discovered in the marshy greenbelt behind our office by a couple of my co-workers. All week they had smelled something “off,” as they say, during their lunch time walk. Brandon, who was certain it was a dead animal as the greenbelt was populated with deer, raccoons, rabbits and the occasional coyote, unwisely jumped the fence separating the path from the marshy land on the other side to investigate. Brandon walked less than 50 yards into the faux everglade swamp before his walking companion heard a gasp and the horrified retching of Brandon vomiting up his lunch.
The more stalwart office staff swarmed in small clusters hovering as the police and coroner’s office went about the business of retrieving the dead man who had been rotting away unseen for sometime. Those who possessed weaker constitutions stood inside nose pressed to the glass watching from the safety of screen as if they were watching something on the nightly news via their television. I watched in rapt fascination as the public safety workers managed to haul up the body from the soggy, marshy, greenbelt onto our parking lot. I can see why homicide detectives on television carry small jars of Vap-o-rub to swipe under their noses, is the only thought I remember.
The body looked alien. Internal gases had caused it to swell massively to the point that what remained of his torn clothes revealed yellow-gray flesh splitting its seams. The body looked like a zombie version of the Michelin Tire Man. The smell, rancid putrefaction, caused my stomach to gurgle. But, not in disgust, I was surprised to find that I was hungry. I wondered if I was secretly a ghoul. Later, I would learn that many experienced homicide detectives and other public safety workers who often came upon grizzly death found themselves hungry after attending to such horror. Hunger wasn’t about ghoulish cravings; hunger was about affirming life - your life.
The House didn’t recall those smells. It was the smell of unknown, unseen dead things and creatures made of mold and alien spores. It was the musty smell of ancient, lingering nightmares feeding off the fright of young children looking for a visceral, hormonal thrill, like I had when I last walked through the decaying home with my cousin Jolene, all those Halloweens ago.
Gone was the sound of skittering rodents scratching and moving behind the walls. In fact there was no evidence whatsoever of mice, rats or any living thing except for the strange fungal growths that lined the window sills. The ceilings and walls were as I remembered them, splotched with water stains and dark slimy mold. Wind whipped down the hall and from the living room I could hear the catawampus front door slam. I looked out the window. My car was still the only one in the driveway. My digital watched blinked 10:15. Zoe was late. Had I gotten the time wrong?
I opened up my notebook and looked at the note clipped there written by Zoe the evening before. Nope, I had the right time and date. My client was late. Did I want to wait much longer? Business was slow. Actually, I had nothing potentially commission earning going on. It behooved me to stay a little longer and give Zoe Koontz the benefit of the doubt.
But…
But, I really didn’t want to stay in the house any longer than I needed to. Then again, I could go out and wait for her in my car. I headed for the door.
Then I heard it
A sound
Muffled crying
An echoing sound that reverberated off my mind turning my blood cold as dark memories buried in the part of my brain that stores unwanted things from the past crawled into my consciousness. Another blast of cool fall air burst down the hall. The walls and ceiling appeared to heave as if the house were breathing. It occurred to me that the house was what was alive. There was nothing hidden waiting to get to me; nothing scary that would jump out from around the corner and shout, “Boo” as I screamed in mortal terror, wetting my pants.
A cloud must have passed overhead as the ambient light seemed to disappear and the interior of the house darkened considerably. Once again, without much forethought, I had walked through the mouth of the front door into this living nightmare. The house was a predator waiting with arachnid patience for its next victim or meal to walk heedlessly into its front door. But, I was 33, no longer the imaginative 12 year old, sneaking through an old house. I lived in a world of stark reality, housing markets, escrow and commissions. I shook off my unease and headed for the front door convinced that my overactive imagination had me a little freaked over returning to a site of a childhood trauma.
Muffled crying
I knew immediately that it was coming from the basement.
And it sounded real
To Be Continued…