Hero

by Michelle Bobier

conclusion

Over dinner, his sister said, “What’s with you spending every waking hour in the basement?”

“I don’t spend every waking hour there.” He took a bite of meatloaf. “Jeez.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” his mother said. “And why do you spend so much time down there? What’s so fascinating?”

He shrugged. “I’m exploring.”

His sister rolled her eyes. “What’s to explore? It’s a basement.”

“Every boy is an explorer at heart,” his father said. “Right, son?”

He nodded, hurrying through his dinner.

* * *

After helping to clear the table, he watched TV with his family for a while. He didn’t really want to, but after what his sister and mother had said, he was afraid they might get suspicious if he dashed down to the basement right after dinner. The last thing he wanted was for his family to start snooping around in the storeroom.

When their television shows were over, it was time for homework, and then it was time for bed. After wedging his closet door shut with his bedroom chair, he lay in bed, listening to the low gurgling sounds coming from the closet. When he was reasonably sure everyone else was asleep, he rose from bed, pulled a sweatshirt on over his pajamas, and slipped down into the basement.

“Things were okay for a while after we moved into this place,” the journal continued. “I mean, it was just a house. Things didn’t start to get weird until after my uncle came to visit.

“I never did like him. I’ve always been kind of scared of him, as a matter of fact. Creepy old guy. I guess he’s only about 50, but he seems a lot older. He never laughs, and he smells funny, like he lives in a swamp or something — kind of musty — and sometimes there are spots on his clothes that look like some kind of mold, like he stores them all wadded up in some damp place.

“Of course, my parents had to go and give him my room. God forbid the princesses should be disturbed! So I had to sleep on the sofa bed in the living room, the one where the mattress feels like it’s stuffed with tennis balls. I was awake about half the night, and when I got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, I heard weird noises coming from my room.

“I mean, weird noises. Like nothing I ever heard before. There was kind of a strange croaking sound.”

He started, sitting upright in his chair. He had heard something like that in his room just a few nights before.

“But not a normal, frog-croak kind of sound. It was really deep, and muffled, and kind of echoed. I can’t really put it into words. But I definitely heard it. I heard other things, too, like something heavy thumping around. And I heard my uncle talking in a soft voice. I stood outside my door and listened really hard, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. And then I smelled something, like that swamp-smell my uncle has, but stronger.

“I’ve never been so scared in my life. I didn’t know what to do. So I just stood there in the hall like a moron. After a while, I got the idea of waking my parents up and telling them I was afraid something was wrong with my uncle — pretend I was worried about him. So I did that. But even though I was only in their room for a minute, by the time they got out into the hall and knocked on my door, everything was okay. No noises. Even the smell was gone. So everybody went back to bed, and my parents thought I’d been having some kind of nightmare.

“And just when I thought things couldn’t get any weirder, not long after I went back to my sofa-bed, my uncle left! In the middle of the night, without waiting for breakfast or even saying goodbye. When he passed by the living room on his way to the front door, he stopped for a minute, like he might be looking at me or something. I just laid there, pretending I was asleep. And then he snuck out the door and drove off.

“My parents were freaking out when they got up and found the old creep gone. They thought that was weird, even for him. But they got over it pretty quick, and life went on like before.

“Except for me. Things have never been the same for me. Because, even though my uncle has been gone for months, I guess he left something behind, or invited something in, or — I really don’t know what. Maybe he opened up some kind of passage into someplace else, someplace that’s not at all like here. Sometimes I feel like that’s probably it. But I don’t know.

“All I know is that those noises I heard, and those smells I smelled, when he was here — now I hear them and smell them every night. Other noises and smells, too. And none of them are good. My closet door won’t stay closed, either, so I can’t escape it. And one day my sister’s guinea pig got out of its cage and went in my closet, and even though I looked for him right away, that was the last anybody ever saw of him. She tried to blame me for it, too.

“So now I feel like I’m not safe in my room, so I spend a lot of time here, in the storeroom, like some weird hermit or something. My parents are getting fed up, and have started to talk about locking me in my room at night, to force me to get over my ‘unreasonable fears.’

“Unreasonable, my ass. If only they could get a load of what goes on in my closet at night — but whatever it is is too smart for that. Way too smart. So I don’t know what’s going to happen. But at least I have it written down. It doesn’t really help the situation, but it makes me feel better, somehow.

“I just wish we would move. I wish, I wish, I wish we would move.”

Those were the last words in the journal. He leafed carefully through the rest of the pages, but there were no more entries. He sat there, looking at nothing in particular, thinking of a great many things, until shortly before dawn. Then he went upstairs and took a shower. When his parents got up and found him already dressed and in the kitchen, they wondered why he was up so early, but seemed pleased, too, both of them making remarks about early birds and worms.

* * *

All day, he thought sleepily about the writer of the journal, and wondered what had happened to him. In a way, it felt good to know that someone else had gone through what he was going through. But it didn’t help him to know what to do, either. And why had the writing stopped so suddenly? Obviously, the writer’s family actually had moved. But people needed time to move; it wasn’t something that happened like a bolt from the blue. So why wasn’t there anything in the journal about the move, especially since that was what the writer had wanted?

He had a terrible feeling that something else must’ve happened. Something bad. Maybe something having to do with the “difficult family circumstances” the realtor had mentioned.

Whatever that may have been, he couldn’t let it happen to him. He just couldn’t. Whatever was in the closet, or on the other side of it — maybe it could be fought, the way the heroes in some of the books in the storeroom fought other, less strange, things.

* * *

It was difficult to fight sleep that night. During the evening, he found time to go the storeroom and doze in his chair until his sister yelled down the stairs to him at bedtime, but by the time he went to his room, he was still more tired than he could ever remember being. He read in bed for a while, then switched off the light and waited.

Within a few minutes, he was hearing low, ragged, phlegmy noises from behind the closet door, along with echoing, batlike squeaks. Whiffs of algae eddied around his bed. He got out of bed, stood in front of the closet door for a minute, gathering his nerve, then took hold of the knob and jerked the door open.

The darkness inside seemed almost solid. He didn’t bother with the flashlight, knowing what little good it would do. Instead, ignoring his pounding heart, he took a few deep breaths of mildewed air, grabbed his softball bat, and stepped into the darkness.

* * *

“This is a great house,” the realtor said, unlocking the front door. He showed the prospective owners in. “There was extensive remodeling not long ago. And the price is right; the sellers are motivated. You’ll love the kitchen. And don’t miss the closets. It’s unusual to have such big, deep closets in an older home.”

The realtor brushed at something on his sleeve, something that looked like a silvery trail, and smiled. “They don’t make ’em like this any more,“ he said. “No, sir. They sure don’t.”