Aaron Ross Powell

Creepy sounds.

He spit.

Creepy sounds, is what the kids said. Stuff they’d picked up from movies, television, maybe those internet videos they passed around like measles. Go check it out, daddy. Make sure the house isn’t haunted–we’re scared.

Arden shrugged. You got kids, you got to sometimes do these kinds of stupid things, right? Have to make sure there aren’t monsters under the bed or in the closet; make sure the bad men who are really coat racks and blowing curtains can’t come out at night and eat the little ones while they sleep.

A waste of time.

Arden stood on the sidewalk by the gate, looking up a the house that had his boys so terrified. Nothing scary about it: a single family home, two stories, windows unbroken and no peeling paint. Quaint and comfortable with an asking price of two-twenty, the sign leaning awkwardly in the front lawn said.

It had to be haunted, though, because houses that border on fields where young boys hit baseballs over fences are always haunted–or at the very least, occupied by cranky old men with mean dogs. This one looked to be neither.

Just a house like any other. Nicer, even, than Arden’s own. A congenial house he now had to pound on the door of, probably find no one home, and sneak around back to get the baseball his kids had lost. That was the only way, they’d said. Get the baseball back and we’ll know it’s not haunted. We’ll be able to get it ourselves next time.

Another half a minute and he’d be trespassing on an unknown neighbor’s lawn. Sneaking around, Arden. That’s not the kind of thing a guy like you does in a subdivision like this.

He pushed on the gate. It was locked and the metal fence, topped with sculptured arrow spikes, ran the full circumference of the property. Climbing over would be a pain–but dads have duties and children have needs.

Maybe around back he could find a way over without severely perforating himself. He walked along the fence, turning the corner at the side of the property. Here bushes ran the length, growing through the bars and untrimmed with the laziness allowed by their invisibility to potential buyers driving by the front of the house.

The plants didn’t look stiff enough to provide much help, so Arden continued around. Here was what he needed. Brick columns buttressed a second gate, this one wooden and banded in iron. Arden had to admit, if this was the gate his children had batted their ball over, they might be justified a little in avoiding its recovery.

The gate, a baleful structure, looked heavy and far older than the surrounding fence or the house it barred access to. Easy to climb over–but Arden was now sympathetic to why his kids wouldn’t want to. Even at thirty-eight, well beyond the age where architecture should bring the willies, he didn’t feel comfortable taking too many steps closer to that gate. Could he just buy the kids a ball and hand it over like he’d scooped it up from the haunted house without issue?

No. They’d figure it out. His face would flinch, his eyes turn away; something would allow the children to infer the deception. Kids, like dogs, read faces more than words.

Three paces closer and Arden was confronted with a smell: aged, dank–a miasma of antiquity. He stopped. This was odd and uncomfortable, a deterrent against further advance. Sure now that he was being warned away, Arden willed himself on. It’s only a gate and it’s only a baseball on the other side. Grab it, go home to the kids, and play the hero.

Forward, then. Arden now stood in front of the gate, the dark and rotting wood a foot from his face, the bands of iron that held it together displaying rust and grime. He turned to his right, putting a hand on the brick of the side column, digging his fingers into the crevices to test its strength as a place to climb. Satisfied, he reached up, grabbed the top, and scrambled. The awkward struggle worked and he was soon jumping down onto a surprisingly well tended lawn.

He didn’t see any baseballs. The yard was empty, mostly unlandscaped, so a bright white ball ought to have been easy to pick out. But there was nothing. The kids had said it was in the backyard, right? He tried to think back. Of course it was in the back yard. His children weren’t weaklings, but there was just no way they could hit anything over the entire house. The ball had to be back here.

For several minutes, Arden poked around, scanning carefully, pushing aside plants, and generally engaging in the due diligence the kids would expect. He grew bored before he came up with anything, however, and he began to prepare himself for the tears when he arrived home empty handed. We don’t want a new ball, dad, they’d say. We want that one. Because, since he hadn’t found the baseball hit over the fence, it was somehow confirmed that the house was haunted. The monsters, ghosts, or whatever kind of scary thing they figured was living here had clearly grabbed the ball and squirreled it away in a collection of sporting paraphernalia and dismembered neighborhood juveniles. Arden turned to leave, preparing soothing comebacks to this insane line of reasoning.

And then he heard it. From the back of the house, maybe from one of the windows, a thump/crash and a moan. He stopped. Was the realtor here? There weren’t any cars out front. It could be the owner–or a maintenance person–working on the house and possibly hurt. Arden ran to the back door and pounded.

“Hello?” he shouted. “Is anyone in there? Are you okay?”

Silence. But he had heard something. He was sure of that. If he couldn’t find the baseball, Arden thought, suddenly and perhaps selfishly, maybe helping an injured person in the house would be sufficiently heroic to offset the other failure in his children’s eyes.

That’s stupid. Help whoever it is because you can.

He twisted the back door’s handle. It gave but quickly caught: an old and failing lock but still successful. He briefly pondered breaking the adjoining window–he could always blame it on another errant home run. Smashing property, though, was behavior he hadn’t manifested since his teenage years. Probably not a good thing to be starting up again now.

He rattled the door in frustration–and again there came a thump and groan from inside the house. “Screw this,” he muttered and, grabbing a nearby potted plant, shattered the window. Careful to avoid the shards of glass still in the frame, he reached inside and unlocked the door.

“Hello?” he shouted again, stepping into the rear entryway. “Is someone hurt in here?”

Once more, the house ventured no response.

The afternoon sun made the back rooms bright and rather cheerful, not at all the eerie, haunted atmosphere the kids insisted emanated terrifically from the building.

He looked around. The sounds had been muffled, more so than just through the single door. Whoever was hurt wasn’t going to be laying on the floor at his feet. One of the other rooms?

No. Anyone on this level would have heard his shouts, would be able to call back for help.

The basement, then. The moans came through the little, garden level windows, that’s why he’d picked them up outside in the yard but not with the patio in the way.

Arden jogged around a corner and into the formica and oak kitchen. A door, wedged next to the refrigerator but on the wrong side of the house to go to the garage, was open a few inches. This was it. Whoever was hurt had gone down those steps, maybe fallen, and had called out to him. Arden grinned. Kids, your dad’s about to be a hero.

The door squeaked as he pulled it open. Arden almost laughed. The kids might just be right about this whole haunted thing. Basement doors don’t make creepy noises when you open them unless there are ghosts in the vicinity. He’d tell them about it, use the sounds to build the suspense of the rescue.

The lights were off downstairs. As Arden crept cautiously down the steps, wondering why whoever built this place hadn’t gone to the trouble to put a light switch at the top, a new sound–not the expected moan but more of a wet coughing–rolled out of some unseen corner. He stopped, raising his voice with his repeated questioning greeting, and listened.

A giggle. Laughter. Cut off almost immediately, but childlike and out of place.

Imagination, he thought. I’m imagining this. Hurt kids don’t laugh and injured adults don’t sound like amused children. Continuing his descent, Arden pulled his right hand into a fist, his left gripping the railing tighter.

At the bottom he paused before reaching out slowly, moving his arms in wide arcs, looking for a light switch or a pull string, something to dispel the now suffocating gloom.

There! In front of him, low, a shape moving ponderously, perhaps inhibited by pain. Arden reached for it, saying, “I’ve found you, it’s okay, you’re–”

The blow against the back of his head, down by the spine, was numbingly loud. Arden fell forward, seeing briefly as consciousness vanished, a child, a toddler, stepping out of his way, palms held mockingly against its filthy cheeks.

Some time later, darkness faded into a different, more painful kind and Arden came nominally awake.

The floor against his cheek was tacky with fluids of unknown variety. He rolled over, moaning with the dry and hard thumping under his skull. He couldn’t hear anything–no noise, not even his own. This simple trip for a lost baseball wasn’t turning out to be the breezy excursion he’d hoped for, even after the silly dread the sight and smell of the gate had brought.

He pushed himself up onto his elbows, the inside of his head writhing with even this slight change in elevation. A concussion… and a kid? A baby?

Arden couldn’t see anything, and the basement was again silent.

Who had hit him?

His arms, weak from pain, began to give, so he lowered himself to the concrete and rolled over onto his back, scanning for any visual clues. A yellowish glow throbbed fainting off to one side, too far away to identify. He had to move–toward it, up the stairs, wherever he could get–had to find help. He recognized this ironic twist, knowing immediately it would make for a terrific story over beers at some distant tailgate party. Right now, though, what he needed was get outside or to a phone.

But the light was getting brighter, the pulsing more relaxed, and the corner had filled with overlaid voices whispering. “What!” he shouted. “Who’s there?”

The light went cold and then was gone. Could someone be hurt, maybe with a dying flashlight, the weakened batteries unable to produce an uninterrupted glow? Arden forced himself toward it, dragging his legs up and lifting himself. Head thudding, he stumbled in the direction of the now absent illumination.

The basement was uncluttered and, for the most part, clean. However, as he shuffled closer to the corner from which the light had come, he found himself stepping through loose dirt, his feet occasionally kicking small stones. His strength gradually returning, he felt around, checking against abandoned furniture or other obstacles that might accompany the increasing mess.

Twice more during this slow journey Arden called out to his possible, injured companion. No response came. The dirt and rock soon became thick enough to slope upwards slightly and, when his outstretched hands felt the edges of broken cinder block, Arden realized he was climbing over the refuse from the digging of a tunnel. He called into the hole, expecting nothing and getting exactly that.

Arden again questioned this quest to help. The glow might very well have been the arc of a severed wire or an abandoned lamp still lit from the tunnel’s excavation. The likelihood of a hurt person, thumbing on a flashlight in response to Arden’s calls, was exceedingly low. And he had been hit. Someone had come up behind him and whacked him.

Are you sure, Arden? he thought. It’s dark as hell down here, your kids, your goddamn children, have you worked up about hauntings, and you probably just walked into a low beam. A mess is what this is and the best you can do now is to figure out if anyone else has wandered in and been hurt–just like you have.

He pushed his head into the tunnel. The air had a smell of dust and loam and, just barely, he could feel its movement across his face. Where did this go?

He shouted once more, deciding this would be the last time. If nothing came of it, he would pick his way back across the treacherous basement, up the stairs, and head out the way he’d come, writing off for good his kids’ stories–and their lost sporting equipment.

But now, with this final shout, this final request for acknowledgment from whomever might be out there, came a reply. Faint, yes, and definitely not words, but a reply nonetheless. A moan from deep in the tunnel, a call weakened by pain, perhaps, and exhaustion.

“Yes?” Arden shouted. “Who’s there?”

The noise came again, louder by the smallest increment, but strong enough to make him sure.

“I’m coming!” he called. “Stay where you are. I’m coming!”

He crawled forward with careful haste, his hands waving when each wasn’t the bearer of his weight, feeling at the tunnel’s rough walls, seeking jagged rocks, sharp metal, and any other unseen dangers. Arden had no idea how great his progress actually was, had no sense of distance is the excavation, but he kept moving and kept calling.

Most of the shouts his companion answered. Still the voice was muffled, the content of the sounds–if there was any–impossible to make out. Arden tried to maintain a comforting tone in his continuous exultations, wanting to comfort this other party. He found himself hoping he was wrong but very convinced that he was crawling toward a hurt child, some neighborhood kid who’d broken a leg–was maybe crushed–while exploring this rumored haunted dwelling.

Some distance later, the light returned, muted and indistinct, but pulsing rhythmically. It was surely a flashlight, a beacon the wounded child used to guide his rescuer. Arden looked back, trying to get a sense of how far he’d come, but the blackness of the basement matched perfectly that of the tunnel. How much further did he have to go? How far could the light of a weakened flashlight carry?

Then the tunnel opened and Arden stood up in a room dug from dirt and rock, though one side bore the convex arc of a concrete sewer main. The pulsing light was heavier, the illumination enough for him to see by, and it seemed to come from a raised stone platform at the opposite end of the chamber. Arden walked toward it, curiosity sweeping subtly in and momentary clouding his prior, Samaritan drive.

It was a well. The wooden cover lay broken on the other side. Arden looked down the depth of shaft, trying to pick out the source of the light and realizing suddenly that, if there were a child down there, he had no way of offering immediate help.

The glow was harsher now, the rhythm still steady. He shouted down the well, calling out to the child, “I’m here! Are you down there? Are you okay? I can go back and get help or find a rope. Just tell me you’re okay!”

The pit was silent and then, softly, even comfortingly if in a different context, laughter percolated upward. Confusingly inaudible at first and then louder, the laughter broke into mad giggling. Arden backed away, tripped over a stone, and fell. He caught himself on his palms, drawing blood, and kicked away from the sound. There was more than one voice in it. Dozens of overlapping children–he was sure they were children–mocking him with sick mirth.

And then he heard something else, something rising behind the laughter, the sound of an unimagined form climbing out of the well. Arden scrambled to the tunnel mouth and dove forward, crawling as fast as could in the direction of the basement, paying no heed to protruding dangers in his path. Several time along the way he skinned himself, catching his clothes, and had to stop briefly to get free. He could hear whatever it was–whatever they were–coming after him. There was a wet smack as it breached the top of the well and slid over onto the floor of the chamber. Seconds later, a sticky sliding and scraping came from behind him in the tunnel. The moaning reached him then, the same call that had guided him to this place.

Arden coughed heavily as he crawled. The tunnel was filling with dust. Up ahead, he thought he could make out the hole and could see a minor rise in the level of light that meant the basement was close. He pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth, trying not to think about the new smells the the dust brought, the odors of age and enclosure–and rot.

At last he pulled himself from the tunnel and ran toward the basement steps. Halfway across the room, he slipped, falling backwards, bouncing his head off the cement floor. Cursing, he rolled over to pick himself up. As he did, light poured from the mouth of the tunnel and a great wave of fifth burst forth, filling the basement, flooding around his knees. With it came the children, all of them no older than toddlers, their faces smeared, their hair matted and patchy, stalking haphazardly from the tunnel.

Arden crouched, unable to force his muscles into flight, as the children fanned out and looked back, waiting for something else to make its way through the tunnel and into the cellar. When it finally did, when it squeezed out onto the floor, Arden shook and called out noiselessly, demanding himself to move, to get out of here, to not think about what was in front of him.

The thumping, moaning, crying thing slid and rolled across the floor toward him, its adolescent caretakers, hands pressed firmly into its flesh, giggling furiously and tromping along beside like pallbearers.

Arden tried to scream but the filth was too thick, flooding into his mouth and reducing him to a fit of convulsive retching. He pulled his legs up under him, trying to get to his feet, and, coughing grime, scrambled upright.

He smashed a shin in his ascent of the stairs but then was back in the kitchen, turning the corner to the exit, not bothering to look behind him at whatever it was that followed. Broken pieces of plates and bent silverware flew past him, thrown by more of the babies he caught glimpses of, leaning out from cabinets and behind door frames. They all laughed, their child fat shaking.

Arden ran, stumbling and off balance, out the back door and along the garden path to the gate. Behind him, the children called from the doorway, shouting and laughing as they hurled the pumice rocks that lined the planter boxes.

Several of the missiles pinged into his back while he fumbled at the lock on the gate, that horrific structure falling open, freeing him from this hell with an expansive view of the playing field. He yelled as he ran, not having a direction anymore, his fevered mind failing to notice the scuffed baseball that lay mostly buried in the weeds that had grown up just inside the gate’s chipped brick pillars.