So, as you, dear reader, are probably aware, I write a few things here and there. My most recent publication is a short story called
Stir the Bones, and it appears in
Anthology: Year One. This anthology boasts some truly amazing talent, and I am honored to be included.
Below, I've pasted a snippet from Stir the Bones. If you like what you see, pick up the book and find out what happens to Josie, Paul and Bear, as they struggle to cope with the aftermath of a tornado, trapped in what may be a haunted basement.
Stir the Bones
I still couldn’t get over how loud it was –the wind
had shrieked and wailed and howled like lost souls escaping from the abyss,
swirling around the house, ripping away shingles and siding and God knows what
else. My husband said it sounded like a thousand fighter jets taking off all at
once. He would know, since he’s an Air Force brat. Me, I was amazed that
there’d been a tornado in Massachusetts.
Everyone, even those like me who were born decades
afterward, still talks about the tornado that hit Worcester in 1953, so I guess
today’s tornado wasn’t such an unprecedented event. However, that doesn’t mean
it wasn’t damn irregular. I mean, we get lots of thunderstorms in the summer,
but nothing like a tornado. Nothing like that dark funnel cloud, spewing debris
and destruction like an evil whirling dervish. There had never been anything
like this.
When the rain started, my husband, Paul, and I
hardly mentioned it, except to say that Bear would be unhappy when he went for
his walk. Then, the wind picked up and the warning came over the local news,
and the three of us hurtled into the basement. Then there was the noise, the
horrible howling wind coupled with the sound of wood splintering and heavy
things being tossed about. I wondered if our home had been reduced to kindling.
Now, the storm had ended but we were trapped in the
creepy, cobwebby basement, being that some of the aforementioned flying debris
had wedged the door shut. And, of course, we’d lost power and cell service. It
wasn’t really a big deal; we had a second fridge in the basement, stocked mostly
with Popsicles, old beer, and the other odds and ends not fit for the kitchen
proper. Next to the fridge was a cabinet
filled with canned goods, paper towels, and (luckily for Bear) a million pound
bag of dog food. I figured we’d have cell service restored in a day, two at the
max, and if the door remained stuck, we could call for help at that time.
Until help arrived, we were content to deplete our
hoard of beer. Most of it was left over from various summer gatherings, and I
couldn’t think of a better reason to celebrate than surviving a tornado. I used
a screwdriver to open a green bottle of dubious origin, and grinned at Paul.
“I think this one’s German,” I declared after a
quick sniff.
“Skunked,” Paul muttered as I waved it under his
nose. “I bet most of that stuff’s bad.” He rummaged in the fridge and emerged
with a bottle of his own. We poured a little in a plastic bowl for Bear, so
named because he’s a gigantic brown mutt, and sat down by one of the narrow
windows. “I wish the electric hadn’t gone out.”
“I hope we have a house left.” He didn’t have
anything to say to that, and for a while we just sat there, drinking funky beer
in the dappled light filtering in through the basement windows. I realized that
the dappled light likely meant that the foundation shrubs were intact. It was a
small bit of good news, but I’ll take what I can get.
We finished our drinks, had some Popsicles, then
popped a few more beers. By now, the light was fading fast, we still had no
cell signal, and our electric still wasn’t on. The only thing on was my buzz.
“Remember the wacko we got this place from?” I asked
suddenly.
“Freak,” Paul muttered, because she was. The
previous homeowner lived in this house for ten years, had an assortment of
small caged pets (lizards, hamsters and the like) that she kept in the dining
room, and had had a succession of husbands, boyfriends, and fiancés. According
to the neighbors, eight different men lived here with her at one time or
another. Must have really confused the mailman.
What was really weird was her love of concrete. We
had this twenty-five square foot concrete patio in the backyard, our fence and
deck posts were set in four foot deep concrete holes, and she’d raised the
basement floor by two feet via her favorite medium.
“Too bad she didn’t put down carpeting,” my husband
grumbled when I mentioned that last bit of trivia. We’d talked about finishing
the basement but had never quite gotten around to it, and the concrete was
pretty hard on our butts. The prior owner claimed the old floor was bare dirt,
so in theory the concrete was an improvement, but I disagreed. Our basement was
a cold, dark place, and it would take a lot more than a new floor to fix it.
After a while the sun went down, but it did nothing
for the heat. The basement air was thick and wet, wrapped around us like a used
dishrag. To add to our torment, we were in near-perfect blackness, and the lack
of power made me worry that everything in the fridge was close to spoiling.
Most miserable, however, was Bear. He didn’t like being confined, his thick
coat meant that he hated the heat, and I suspect he was afraid of the dark.
“You think there’s anything over there that can hurt
him?” I asked. Bear was scrabbling away at something in the far corner, behind
the washer. Normally I wouldn’t let him scratch around like that, but I figured
he was bored. I know I was.
“Nah. The detergent’s up high.” I heard Paul stand
and make his way to the fridge, then the soft pop of a bottle opening. Normally,
I would have something to say about this rampant drinking, but what else were
we really going to do? Then he pressed a cold bottle into my hand, silencing me
in his own way.
“It’s so creepy down here,” I said, hugging my knees
to my chest. I’d never liked the basement, not when we did our first walk
through and not now, after living on top of it for two years. There was
something wrong, like the walls were watching. And, I don’t think they liked
what they saw.
“Better than up there,” Paul said. He’d gone up the
stairs and tried the door for the umpteenth time, verifying we were still
stuck. Alive, but trapped.
“God, where is the power crew?” I got up and paced,
which wasn’t a smart thing to do in the dark. I tripped, swore, then kicked
whatever had tripped me and hurt my foot. Paul yelled at me to calm down while
the dog barked his fool head off.
“Shut up shut up shut up!” I screamed. “Both of you
shut up!”
Silence. Thank God.
I picked my way over to the washer and sat on the
lid. I could just make out Bear in the moonlight, giving me that quizzical face
dogs get after you yell. “Sorry.” I rubbed Bear’s ears, speaking loud enough
for Paul to hear. “I’m just going a little stir crazy.”
Bear put his paw on my wrist; at least he didn’t
hold grudges. My husband, now that’s another matter. I noticed Bear’s wet,
sticky fur.
“Hey, babe,” I called. “I think Bear got into the
detergent.”
Paul walked over and flicked his lighter. Bear had a
thick, sticky liquid on his paw, matting down his fur. I bent closer, careful
not to singe my hair on the open flame, and caught a faint metallic scent.
“I think he’s bleeding.”
Paul hauled Bear over to the sink and plopped him
in; luckily, the water lines hadn’t been compromised. Bear’s no fan of water,
but we got his paws rinsed off. After they were clean we inspected them as best
we could with the lighter, but couldn’t find any cuts.
“He must have just gotten into something,” Paul stated
in that brook-no-argument way of his. “Oil, or dirt.”
I nodded in the darkness. There wasn’t any oil or
dirt in the basement, or anything else that would account for the dark liquid
on Bear’s paws. However, the middle of the night after a tornado is not the
time to explore the depths of the basement, especially this basement. I made
another weak attempt at humor, and mentioned my theory that the last owner’s
exes were the reason she raised the floor. Paul wasn’t having it.
“Will you get off that? There is nothing here. Nothing. Don’t you think the home inspection
would have mentioned it?”
“Exactly what would it have said?” I countered.
“Fresh grave in the northeast quadrant, financing denied?”
He blew out an exasperated breath and popped another
beer. I considered one myself, but I wondered if alcohol was part of the
problem. My fuzzy brain, coupled with this sweatbox that stank of dog and
blood, was making me hallucinate.
Wait-we rinsed his paws. Why does it still smell
like blood down here?
“Lemme see the lighter.” Paul tossed and I managed
to catch it, and made my way over to the far corner where Bear had been
scrabbling around. While the entire floor was a concrete slab, that end had
some vinyl floor tiles affixed to it, a lame attempt at making the space
livable. I crouched down and examined the vinyl. Bear had pulled up the corner
and shredded the edges. There was more of that mystery liquid seeping up from
underneath, and I wondered if we had a leak.
“Hey,” I called, “there’s some sort of goo oozing up
through the floor.”
“Really?” Paul made his way over to me, peering over
my shoulder at the black mess. “Is that oil?” I didn’t answer. Instead, I
gingerly grabbed the shredded corner of the vinyl and slowly peeled it up.
I screamed. And screamed.
I leapt backward into Paul, now hyperventilating as
I tried to tell him what was beneath our house. What our dog had found. I lost
my breath, then darkness took me.
When I came
to we were sitting halfway up the basement steps. Paul was holding me against
him, and Bear was smushed up against my hip as if to guard me. Despite the
heat, I welcomed the huge, furry mess of him.
“It was a stick,” Paul whispered in my ear. “Bear
found a stick.”
“It wasn’t a stick,” I snapped, my voice raw. Had I
screamed that much? I guess I had. “It was a bone.”
“It was not,” he insisted, but he was wrong. I
remember seeing it there under the floor, red and meaty and gnawed on. It was
bone, and it was human. God, I hope Bear wasn’t the one gnawing on it. I hope
he doesn’t get sick.
If Bear wasn’t gnawing on it, who was?
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