Crawlspace Read online

  “Must be awful—being alone like that.”

  “Yes—I s’pose.”

  “Why did you give him more books? He hasn’t returned the other.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “Well—why did you give them to him?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, staring down at the suds. And that was the truth.

  We washed the dishes and set them in the drainer to dry overnight. When we finished we turned out all the lights and went up to bed. Somewhere on the stairway she turned to me and said, “He frightens me.”

  “We won’t have him here again,” I said.

  We didn’t see Richard Atlee for several weeks. Then one chilly morning we discovered we had no heat in our radiators and no hot water in our taps. I went down into the basement to look at the fuel gauge. In the past I’d spent very little time in the basement. I’d go down there for a tool or a piece of gardening equipment. That was the extent of it.

  The oil gauge was at the rear of the basement in a somewhat inaccessible area. I had to thread my way through a clutter of cartons and boxes. When at last I reached the gauge and read it, I discovered that our tank was empty.

  I turned to go up and just at I did, I passed a cupboard in which my wife keeps Mason jars of relish and preserves. The door of it had been left slightly ajar. When I reached to close it, my eye caught something gleaming on the shelf within. I opened the door and there on the shelf I found several objects I immediately recognized—a small milk-glass angel, a scrimshaw raven, and a jade paperweight I’d purchased in Singapore. The angel and raven came from the curio cabinet in our parlor; the paperweight sat on my desk in the library. There was in addition a piece I didn’t recognize. It was in a small black jewel case. When I opened it I found a Prussian Iron Cross; it lay on a cushion of purple felt—the sort of thing you find in cheap novelty shops. On the shelf below and to the right I found my Blake along with the other books Richard Atlee had borrowed.

  There’s a door in our cellar that leads out to the garden in the back. It’s a small door with an uncommonly shallow lintel. Even a man of slightly below-average stature would have to stoop in order to pass through it.

  The cellar itself is what is called a three-quarter cellar, which means that three-fourths of the cellar is a solid, full stone foundation; the remaining quarter of the cellar is a crawlspace, some three or four feet in height, which runs out beneath the kitchen. It’s not part of the original foundation, but an extension added on at a later date. It’s a dank, gloomy space smelling of mold and rodents. The Quigleys, who had the house before us, kept cats in the crawl, presumably to keep down the rodents. As a result, in wet weather the stench of rutting cats hovers oppressively over the place.

  The entrance to the crawlspace is directly opposite the small garden door with a distance of some twenty-five or thirty feet between them. It’s no more than a black, shadowy square carved into the white limestone foundation about halfway up the wall.

  I can’t say what made me cross the short distance to the crawl but I did, in three or four wobbly strides, and then stood directly before the square peering into the dark shade.

  At first I could see nothing: I stood there squinting into the darkness trying to adjust my eyes. In the next moment I stood on tiptoes and poked my head through the square. It was something like the clammy sensation you get when you press your face against a cold pane of glass.

  I looked around, but still I could see nothing. We kept a flashlight in the basement for emergency use; I found it quickly and went back to the crawl and flicked it on.

  Motes of dust swam up and down in the beam of light. Beyond that hung rusty pipes festooned in cobwebs. Sprawled on the ground was an ancient and decrepit extension ladder. In addition, there were some planks of lumber and a random carton here and there. Nothing remarkable.

  I was about to turn away when my eye caught a squat, hump-like shape pushed off into a far corner. It turned out to be a mound of dry straw heaped on the ground about twenty-five feet from the entrance, set just below an overhead tangle of pipes and joists.

  What struck me so curious about it or why it even caught my attention at all I can’t say. Perhaps it was simply the incongruity of seeing it there. Such an unlikely place for a mound of straw; also, I’d been in that crawl several times before. You had to go in there to turn on the water to the outside taps in the garden, and I was certain I’d never seen such a mound of straw there before.

  Suddenly I had the distinct impression that I ought to leave. Turn my back on the place. Get out as fast as I could. It’s curious the way you sense things like that. As if some awful disclosure is about to be made to you, and the mind reasons that if you can just avoid having that disclosure made, then the dangers implicit in it will never come to pass. Like avoiding the doctor when you have alarming symptoms.

  But I didn’t leave. Some grisly fascination drew me on. In the next moment I’d dragged a small stool over to the crawl and begun to climb in.

  The ground over which I walked was cold and hard. It seemed to be made of a coarse sand that had been congealed by dampness and frigid weather. I had to stoop as I groped my way toward the humped shadowy shape. I recall being a little breathless. In the next instant I felt the tip of my shoe brush against straw and I turned my light full on it.

  What I saw at my feet was assuredly a straw pallet, the kind of thing you imagine beggars might sleep on. It was not the pallet, however, that troubled me; it was what I saw around it—the bones. Almost a charnel house of them strewn about here and there; clumps of animal fur and feathers; bits of paw and that sort of thing. It looked like the lair of a weasel with the carcasses of all its hapless victims strewn about.

  I moved deeper into the crawl, stooping as I went, one trembling hand holding the light, the other clapped over my mouth—coughing into my fist from the dust and dampness.

  Before I’d gone another half-dozen paces my foot kicked something else, which went rattling loudly over the hard earth. I swung my light over the ground in the direction of the noise. There at my feet, half in and half out of an old coffee tin, were toilet articles. Some of them had scattered across the ground when I kicked the can. There was a razor, a beaver brush, and a pair of fine old isinglass cufflinks which I recognized as my own.

  I must have remained there only a few moments more. Then I quickly gathered up all those strewn articles, replaced them in the coffee tin, and put the whole thing back beside the pallet.

  For some inexplicable reason I left the books and all the stolen items exactly where I’d found them and in the next instant I was clattering up the stairs, a twinge of pain at my chest, thinking about getting the police, dialing the number in my head and muttering the story aloud and a little breathlessly to myself. I was planning how I’d present the thing to the sheriff over the phone in a plausible way.

  I got upstairs, happy to discover Alice out; down in the garden somewhere, out of earshot. My hands trembled at the directory pages while I made a sickish effort to fight down the panic. For a moment I caught a glimpse of a greenish reflection of myself in the mirror about the phone. POLICE wasn’t listed under P as I’d thought. Then what was it listed under? S for Sheriff? C for Courthouse? Finally I recalled that the police are generally listed under government departments, and so I went on tearing through the tissuey pages until somehow or other I found it.

  I started to dial and had even gone through the first three digits when suddenly and quite unaccountably I put the receiver down. The wave of panic subsided, and in the next instant I sighed and sank wearily back into a chair by the phone. “Why the police?” I suddenly thought. What was he that I had to have the police for? A boy of eighteen or twenty. A poor creature who simply wanted to come in out of the cold. And pleasant enough at that, too.

  But all the same, I didn’t know the first thing about him. And living out that far you hear some pretty hair-raising tales about vagrants and itinerants and the like. Oh, apocryphal or exaggerated, mo
st of them. I’m sure—

  But all the same——

  Still, though, this was not the same sort of thing. I knew the boy. Had talked with him. Even sat down with him twice to dinner. He didn’t seem the type to—Still, it was obvious he couldn’t be permitted to remain down there in the crawl. But the police seemed a drastic step. And even if they came, all they’d do would be to put him out. That struck me as an even greater danger. What if he were a spiteful or vindictive sort and I’d had him driven out of the county by the police? What then could prevent him from coming back here some dark night looking for revenge.

  So I didn’t call the police. Instead I called the fuel company. It was a small rural business, and I spoke to the owner himself.

  “Is Richard Atlee there?”

  “Who?”

  “Richard Atlee. Your representative.”

  “Oh, him. He quit.”

  “Quit?”

  “Up and left about two weeks ago.”

  “Two weeks,” I muttered. There was a pause in which I could hear myself breathing into the receiver.

  “Who is this?” said the voice on the other end of the phone.

  “Mr. Graves. Albert Graves.”

  “Oh. Out on the Bog Road?”

  “That’s right. The Quigley place.”

  “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.

  Chapter Two

  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 throug
h 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.