the thing in the basement

8/14/2019 The Thing in the Basement

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The Thing In The Basement:

The paneling was not quite straight. It looked straight, the black lines atformerly-fashionable almost random intervals, some of the lines thick, some of

them thin, all of them separated by sheaths of wood or near-wood (it looked like wood but was probably particle-board, which was a type of wood, maybe, but notreally wood. It can't be wood if it's just sawdust compacted into a shape that lookslike wood.)

That was how I felt at the end. Like a person ground into sawdust but thensmashed back into the shape of a person.

And the paneling! Why was that bothering him?

You wouldn't notice that it was not straight, not unless you looked closely, wherepictures hung, to see that if the picture was level (maybe they weren't?) thepaneling was crooked. Maybe it wasn't, maybe the pictures were crooked and thepaneling straight, but the whole effect, once you noticed it, was to give you thefeeling that things were a little off-kilter.

Well, give you the feeling that things were a little off-kilter. A little! HA! They were a lot off-kilter.

That's why I killed myself. It wasn't the sawdust feeling. It wasn't even the ThingIn The Basement. It was because I finally realized that everything just wasn'tright.

But I shouldn't kid myself, or you. The Thing In The Basement had a lot to do with it.

What the Thing In The Basement gives, the Thing In The Basement takes away.One way or another.



It wasn't always like that. At first, we didn't even know about the Thing In theBasement.

When we first found the house, I couldn't believe it. Melissa and I had beenlooking for a house for almost a year. I didn't make very much money, and we

had even less once she became pregnant. I spent all of my time worrying about it. All of the time I didn't spend at my job as a copy editor of a series of local papers. Which was becoming more and more, because (I told myself) we needed themoney and because (I told Melissa) they needed me at the office, since I didn't want her to feel like she was the cause of the problem. She wasn't.

I would sit, sometimes, at my office, late at night, proofreading a story about atown board meeting, and wonder whether I should even go home. I'd wonder,sometimes, whether I couldn't just go drive the car into the lake.

Then I'd shake it off, go home, we'd eat dinner, and go house hunting.

So when we pulled up at what would become our house (it's not like it's ruiningthe surprise to tell you we bought it... I wouldn't kill myself in a rental house, youknow), and looked at it, I didn't think there was a chance in hell we could affordit.

The realtor was just getting out of her car behind us. "Isn't it lovely?" shehollered.

It was. It was a nice-looking house, a little Cape Cod house (and why are CapeCods called that when they're located in the Midwest?) with dormer-type windows and a landscaped front lawn that had enough grass to let you know it

was a lawn but enough flowers to let you know that you wouldn't be doing a lot of mowing.

The realtor saw my gaze. "The flowers are perennials. They don't require a lot of care." There were tall trees throughout the front (and back) yard, providing shadeand showing low, level branches that would easily hold up a tire swing or a treefort.

Melissa just stared, enraptured. "I hope we can afford it," she said under her breath.

We can't. I thought. I didn't see how we ever could. This might be a waste of time.

Then I stepped on the lawn, at the same time as Melissa. I saw her eyes light up."Oh, Jude, it's perfect, don't you think?"

See? See what can happen? That wasn't a mistake. Melissa knew (like I did) tonot make a big deal about the house because the realtor will use that against you.



But she told me later that she couldn't help it. We would be in our first night inthe house, a few weeks later, eating pizza over a cardboard box that served as ourkitchen table, and she would explain that she had overflowed with happiness themoment she'd stepped onto the lawn.

I didn't. I hadn't. When we stepped onto the front lawn I thought I was going tocry. I almost did. But I held it in and it passed.

We went into the house. The previous owners had left it empty. The realtor didn'tknow where they'd moved to. She'd had the house on the market only a shorttime; she thought their lawyer had called and listed it.

If only all we would be dealing with was a lawyer.

The bedrooms, three of them, were small but nice. The rest of the house wassmall but nice, too. I won't bore you. I didn't notice the paneling that first timethrough -- didn't notice for a long time. The paneling was in a den, which had been added onto the back of the house and was somewhat recessed or sunken in,so you stepped down from the kitchen and into the den.

I did notice the wall in the kitchen. I noticed because first, when I stood next to it,the hair on my body stood up like it will during an electrical storm.

And I noticed it because it's not that common to have a brick wall in your kitchen,especially an 8' tall, 4' wide brick wall made of red brick that doesn't match any of the other brick in the house.

"Do you like that?" The realtor asked, noticing me looking at it.

I shrugged. "Seems a little out of place," I said. When I touched the brick, my fingers tingled.

"I think it bricked over a fireplace. Would you like to see the backyard?" We walked out through the den into the backyard, where a small vegetable garden was overgrown with weeds and what might have been a zucchini plant. Melissa walked back to the fence with the realtor. I looked around. No firewood orfirewood pile. No coal shoot.

No basement windows. I looked at the roof. If they'd bricked up a fireplace, they'd

taken out the chimney, too.

When we went back in, I went over to the brick area again. This time, I felt thesadness again, but not as strongly.

"Does it have a basement?" I asked.

"We don't discuss the basement of this house," said the realtor. She turned and



began to walk into the front room.

"What?" I said. Melissa turned to me and said "What?" I looked at her. "Did youhear what she said about the basement?"

"What about it," Melissa asked.

"What do you think?" The realtor said. "Shall I give you a minute?"

I looked at Melissa and said "Yes, give us a minute."

"We'll take it," said Melissa. She looked at me.

Look, I married her, all right? She wanted it. I'm not going to argue. "We'll writeup a bid," I told the realtor. I figured that would do it; we'd never get it.

I watched for a minute as the realtor sat at the small folding table with Melissa writing on the offer to purchase. They filled in numbers and dates and Melissasigned it. I signed it, and as the realtor began folding it up, my cellphone rang.

"Hello?"

"Jude?"

"Yeah. What's up, John?" John is the publisher of our local papers.

"Tina resigned."

"What?" Tina was my boss, the editor-in-chief.

"Yep. She just now marched into my office and said she was quitting. Didn't evenhave a letter or anything. Just said 'I'm quitting' and turned around and walkedout. I chased her outside, tried to get an explanation, but she wouldn't give meone. Just said she had no choice, got in her car and left."

"Weird," was all I could say. "When did she do this?"

"About two minutes ago. Can you come in?" I looked at Melissa. She was talking with the realtor at the front door.

"I suppose. Why?"

"I'd like you to take over for her."

"What? For how long."

"Forever. If you're not going to just walk out on me. "



"Is this a promotion?"

"Well, yeah."

"So is it a raise, too?"

"It'll have to be, I guess. We'll talk when you get here."

I said I'd be right there and folded the phone. Melissa and the realtor wereoutside. As I turned to walk, I looked at the brick wall. I walked over to it, and Isaw for the first time a tiny crumbled area at the side, about waste down. I bentdown and looked. It was a small hold, or chipped area. At the back of it was whatlooked like a padlock, behind the brick wall.

"Jude, are you coming?"

I left. I wondered why the brick wall was hot, but I left.

Later on, while I'm lying in my car, before I get sucked back in, before I go back in, when I'm nearly nearly dead but not quite so, just nearly so, but after Melissa was already dead (and she got away, I think but I'm not sure) I heard a song.

It was The Good Times Are Killing Me by a group called Modest Mouse.

It was on the CD player in the car in the garage. Melissa must have left it in there.She always liked music like that.

I was lying there, slowly falling asleep, and listening to the lyrics and thinking"How true."

But I didn't die for a while. For a long while, as it turns out.

I've ended the suspense, right? You know I die. I told you that in the beginning.Melissa dies, too. Don't worry about that. And Angie dies.

You don't know Angie yet. Angie was our baby girl, our daughter. She dies, too, but you'll probably get to know her. If I tell you about her.

David didn't die. I don't know why.

What the Thing In The Basement Gives, the Thing In The Basement Takes Away,right? Maybe It didn't give us David.



I wish it had a name. It does, maybe. But It didn't. We would have called It TheThing In The Basement, like I am now, if we had called It anything.

And how am I telling you this, if I'm dead, you're probably asking.

That's for me to know. I'll tell you eventually.

So we moved in. We got the house, and thanks to my promotion, we were easily able to afford it, and even some new furniture which did not, amazingly, make theold furniture we didn't replace right away look too dingy.

We moved right in. We had movers help us and we were mostly unpacked. I'dtried and tried and tried to forget about the day we'd put in the bid, about how weird it'd felt to get that call and the hot wall and the way I'd felt like crying whenI first stepped on the lawn.

That, by the way, did not go away. (It would never go away. NEVER.) In fact, itgot a little worse. The second time I stepped on the lawn, for the pre-closinginspection, I felt dizzy and actually did start crying. Melissa looked at me.

"What's wrong?" She said. She looked pleasantly confused. I like to rememberthat look especially. Better to remember her pleasantly confused, a slight smile with a question in her eyes, than the look that I remember her most with: the oneright before she died. You don't want to be the last person to see someone just asthey die. That burns right into your brain and it's really hard, extremely hard, totake your mind off of it.

"I had to sneeze," said, hesitating "and couldn't quite."

"Don't you hate that?" she laughed. She grabbed my hand. She was a little morenoticeably pregnant. That makes sense. That was David. So maybe the Thing InThe Basement didn't have anything to do with David. Maybe that's why he lived.

If he lived.

Another song would come on the CD, which Melissa had burned on ourcomputer. The Lucky One by Alison Krauss. "You'll be looking at a happy man'cause you're the lucky one/well you're blessed I guess to never know the road

your choosin." That's what she sang.

I know only the worst hack writers use songs to help set the mood or foreshadow.Stephen King has built whole horror stories around songs. Sleepwalkers, I think was one. And he's a hack. I'm not foreshadowing, exactly, because those songs were after the fact. Maybe the Thing In the Basement played them. Maybe it was being ironic.



Melissa grabbed my hand and we walked into the house, that day that weinspected it and the feeling passed pretty quickly. It always would. But each time,it would get worse. I had to brace myself to go home.

Eventually, I would shudder with fear and loathing when I stepped on our lawn.

Eventually, I would sob like a baby in the car for minutes after pulling into ourgarage.

Eventually, I took to getting out and walking around the back yard, telling my family I wanted to see the backyard and liked it when what I was doing was tryingto shake off the images of killing myself.

And it wasn't just me, you should know. I sometimes was crushed, had my soulabsolutely obliterated, by other feelings. Visions of Angie being hung by her feetand tortured. Of Melissa slashed apart with a knife, or maybe claws. Things likethat.

It made me work a lot later.

That's what I was thinking about, a few months after we moved in, when we wereeating dinner together. We were past the pizza-and-cardboard boxes stage. We were eating dinner, a quick dinner of sandwiches. Melissa was about a monthaway from giving birth to David and we were sitting in the kitchen. Sometimes Icould sit there and be fine.

Tonight was not one of those nights. Melissa's back was to the bricked-in wall. I was trying to focus on what she was saying, something about the yard, but I

couldn't.

The bricks were sliding around.

They were rearranging themselves. Remember those little puzzles, with fifteenlittle squares in 16 spaces, in a square, and you would slide the squares around,one at a time into the blank space, trying to make a picture or word orsomething? It was like that. The bricks were not all the same color or shade; there were variations. Some were redder, some were more variegated or scratched up.

And they were sliding around, rearranging themselves quickly and over and over,

jumping past each other and jostling and sliding over and over.

"What's on your mind?" asked Melissa. "Jude?" That jerked my attention away."I've been talking for five minutes and you haven't heard a word I've said, have you?"

I hadn't. I'd been transfixed by the bricks. I looked down at my sandwich, pickedat the sesame seeds on the bread. (We'd been able to afford fancier bread since



my promotion. Melissa got this at a strip-mall yuppie bakery. )

"I guess I'm distracted," I admitted.

"By what?" She asked. I couldn't tell her the truth, right? I made up something

about my job and kept looking down at the bread because I could hear the bricksstill scraping over each other, the slightly-stone clank of bricks getting up andmoving and settling back down and they were going faster.

"Maybe your job is too much for you. Maybe you should take a break," she said."Take a day or two off."

"I'll take time off when the baby's born," I pointed out. The bricks were really scuttling now.

"If you make it that far," she said. "I don't want you getting too stressed out."

I looked at her, marveling at the genuine concern in her voice. Sometimes, thefeelings that overwhelmed me when I came home -- which at that point werelimited to merely (merely!) a tidal wave of sadness (and I say merely because it became so much worse) were harder to shake off, and the theme at the time, Iremember it well, was that nobody cared about me. So the caring in her voicereally hit a chord.

But I was immediately pulled away from looking at Melissa's kind, caring face because the bricks stopped. They'd finished. They were arranged the way they wanted to be. The way the Thing In The Basement wanted them to be, I guess.

The pattern was not immediately clear at first. My attention was drawn by thefact that they stopped. I stared long enough to make Melissa turn around, but shemust not have been able to make anything out.

I was.

The bricks could spell. The Thing In The Basement could spell. And by rearranging the bricks It had spelled out a prophecy. It said:

Jude Will Be The Last To Die.



Oh, the things we trade.

The things we trade away.

Like a little kid, trading away a Hank Aaron rookie card for someone else because

he doesn't like Hank Aaron as much as that other player who doesn't even stick inhis memory anymore, never knowing that the Hank Aaron rookie card wouldhave allowed him to live a life of leisure.

Okay, that's not my memory. That one was actually my uncle's. That's the only appearance he'll make in this story, though.

My family was not one of the things I traded away for anything. They were justnot a big part of my life anymore.

Or maybe I did trade them away, because I did move away from them. And Ienjoyed where I lived. Days like that one day, about two months after David was born. I was driving to work. I'd begun heading into the office a little more in thosedays, in part because I was busier, in part because I was trying to avoid the house,and what I'd come to think of as The Thing (I didn't really know where it was atthat point. Remember, we didn't discuss the basement. Not with the realtor andnot with each other. I didn't because... well, you can guess why. And if Melissa was deliberately not discussing the basement, I didn't know it.)

And in part, because I was enjoying the job and enjoying the prospect of better jobs to come.

So I'm driving along that morning and the farther I got from our house the better

I'd feel, most of the time. That day I sure did. It was a rare morning. I had the topdown on my car -- my new car-- and the sun was shining and the breeze was barely blowing and you could just taste a hint of the ocean which wasn't that farfrom us after all. The clouds were pasted into the sky like cotton on akindergartner's project, and hung just that close. There were actually birdssinging.

Funny that I remember that.

And I was driving along and enjoying myself. I had the radio on, to a local talk station, but I wasn't really listening. I was sort of contemplating the day ahead

and sort of thinking about breakfast and how cute David had looked, and how pretty Melissa had looked even though she was tired.

I pulled up at a red light and stopped for it. The breeze tousled my hair. A few cars turned in front of me and the light turned green. I slowly put the car intogear and began driving forward. And I remember exactly what I was thinking, just then. I was thinking:



This sure is a nice life I've gotten for us.

And the sun twinkled off of the shiny clean hood of my convertible, twinkled rightinto my eye as a dump truck ran the red light on the cross route and smashed intome, and I was stunned because there had not been a dump truck there just a

second ago, I'd swear it, but I didn't have time to think because my car spunaround and began to tilt and I lurched forward and fell out as the car rolled overunder the push of the truck, and I saw it tilting down on me and I rolled and putmy hands up (like that would do any good) and the car didn't hit me.

But it did fall on a little girl, who was riding her bike across the street, who had been to the left of me as I went through the intersection. It fell right on themiddle of her back and pinned her down. I sat up, feeling dizzy, and reached forher.

She was screaming and reaching out her hands to me as the truck driver got outof his truck and all I heard was her screaming incoherently and the sound of tortured metal and glass crunching and tires squealing. I crawled forward, andgrabbed her hands. I pulled a little. She was stuck and her face was turning pale.

"Lift the car," I yelled or maybe someone else did it. I felt her little hand grabmine. She couldn't have been more than 10. I pulled at her again and people were yelling around me. I leaned in to her.

"It's going to be okay," I said. "Can you breathe?"

Her face went whiter, and her eyes rolled back into her head.

"Don't do that," I said. I'm not sure it helped.

Her head lolled to the side and her hand let go of me. I fell back, just a little, andsaw a trickle of blood come from her mouth.

"Pull the car!" someone yelled. "Push the car!" someone yelled. I sat there and feltthe sweat from her hand on my finger, watched the blood trickle down to apuddle, her eyes white, nothing moving. The car, my new car, began to rock back.

Her eyes turned black. Black as coal. Blacker, and deeper, like the eyes had been

removed and there was a hole there, a deep deep hole. Her head turned towardsme, just a little. I couldn't hear anything as the blood rushed into my head, intomy ears, I couldn't hear anything except my heartbeat, and then everything wentsilent and all I could see was her tiny, innocent face, with the dribble of blooddown the side, lift towards me, and those black eyes, and she said

I gave it to you.



It sure was a nice day, up until then.Blood. That was what it looked like.

After a while, the feelings I would get upon coming home weren't remarkable

anymore. And the horror of the accident had faded.

David was three when I saw the blood.

David was four, and Angie was one, when I no longer noticed the blood becauseof the birds.

But first the blood.

It looked like blood.

It smelt like blood.

It coagulated and crusted up and scabbed like blood.

God help me. I can't think of this next part without saying that. God help me, it tasted like blood.

What would Melissa have said if she'd seen me? I'd been seeing the blood for afew weeks. Maybe months. I don't know. Time runs together now and it rantogether then. I'd first seen the blood trickling down a hallway. A little stream of blood, right down the center of our upstairs hallway, not more than a quarterinch wide. It had reached the end of the hallway and the first step, and was just

about to form a full-fledged drop. I saw the drop forming at the end of the streamas I came upstairs with a cup of coffee in each hand, one for me and one to wakeMelissa with.

I stopped, got down on my knees, set down the coffee, and looked. I looked fromthe drop, growing more bulbous slowly. I saw the rivulet of blood in the hallway,and, leaving the coffee where I'd set it, I crawled forward, looking at the blood. It went straight up the middle of the hall. Halfway down the hall were two doors,one on each side. The one on my left was David's room. The one on the right wasa storage room. A trickle of blood was coming from that room and flowing intothe center of the hallway. I looked at the door, which was closed. I shifted from

my hands and knees to my knees and turned the knob of the door. It wouldn'tturn. I rattled it for a second and looked down at the little stream of blood flowingfrom the crack under the door.

That stream, from the spare room, was not the original runner of blood. It joineda stream. I forgot about the spare room and looked further up the hallway.Standing up, I walked the few steps towards the end of the hall where the door toour room, mine and Melissa's, was closed. The blood came from under that door,



pooled a little, and then flowed to the center of the hallway and down towards thestairs, joined halfway by the blood from the spare room. I reached out andtouched the doorknob, swiveled it to open the door.

It swung in on its own force and I gasped and jumped back.

Melissa was standing there. "Jude?" she said.

I was sweating. She looked confused. I was confused. How had the door... but shemust have opened it, right? That's how it opened on its own.

"What's the matter with you?" she asked, stepping forward.

"Watch out," I said, pointing down. She looked down. I looked down. The blood was gone.

We decided, she decided, that I'd been sleep walking. And was startled by her. Inever told her about the blood. Not until now, I guess.

That was the first time I saw the blood. But not the last time. There were new little trickles all the time. There would be droplets of blood on the mirror in the bathroom when I got out of the shower. A pool of blood on the kitchen floor -- a big one, too. I'd be wiping it up and it would disappear, even right off the towel.Once, blood came out of the spigot in the basement by the washing machine, when I was down there loading some clothes into the dryer.

Once I was eating lunch with Melissa and David and blood was pouring out of Melissa's nose. She noticed it; it was dripping onto her food, on her plate. "Oh, for

goodness' sake," she said, and stood up, leaning her head back and holding hernose pinched shut. She went over to the sink and began running cold water and wet a washcloth and then stopped. I turned around to see her standing there.

"What was I doing," she said. "Isn't that crazy? I came over here and forgot what I was doing." She took the washcloth and brought it back and wiped off David'sface and forgot all about it. The blood had disappeared.

All the while, it would have been hard for anyone to tell that anything was wrong.I'd grown used, as I said, to the feelings that overwhelmed me as soon as Istepped onto the property, feelings that by now included flash visions, horrible

visions, disembodied heads and lighting strikes and mutated insects and demons.I'd actually grown used to that although it still sometimes made me physically illto pull up in the driveway.

I'd been promoted again at work and our secondhand furniture was slowly beingreplaced with first-hand furniture and new appliances. Oh, the things we tradeaway, and I didn't even realize it at the time. The house was bleeding me!



Not the house. The Thing In The Basement.

You're probably wondering about the basement itself, by now. Why haven't Imentioned that?

Because the blood comes first. I'd actually gone into the basement. But I had totell you about the blood first.

The last time I saw the blood was late at night. I'd jerked awake and couldn't get back to sleep. My heart was racing. I laid there and tried to remember my dream. Why was I so excited, upset? I couldn't think of anything in particular, and thatshould tell you just how bad things were that I didn't think that visions of deathand destruction, thoughts of suicide, pools of blood, were anything in particularto get excited about. I'd seen the basement, of course, by that time.

I looked over at Melissa, who was sleeping peacefully. She had never given any sign of noticing anything about the house, and neither had David. They bothloved it. They did not have the signs of gray hair I had, the heartburn, theinsomnia, the worries. Melissa was happier than ever. She talked about puttingDavid into a private school and maybe having another child. Private school!Something she'd always wanted but had never dreamed she could give to herchildren, she'd said.

I would have done anything for her. I tried to, anyway.

So I went downstairs, that night. I walked around the front hall, the living room,the kitchen, all quiet and mostly dark in the moonlight. I shuddered a little as I walked by the brick wall and heard them shift slightly, and I even glanced down,

but they hadn't opened up this time so I wasn't allowed down there. I circled thekitchen table and was about to head back upstairs but something stopped me.

A slight glint of light, of white, from the counter. I walked over there.

One of the knives was on the counter. Out of the holder, those wooden block things you get at Target nowadays. It was the biggest knife. It was like an axe,almost. It was laying there.

We'd had grilled cheese for dinner. I don't think Melissa had used this. I looked atit, afraid to touch it. I leaned closer. My breath clouded the blade where it was

shiny. But not where the blade was dark. I clicked on the light over the stove, bathing a small area of the counter in soft yellow light.

The knife had blood on it.

I still didn't want to pick up the knife. I've seen those type of movies a millionstimes. Pick up the knife, get your fingerprints on it, then go upstairs and find yourfamily slaughtered and you're hauled off to prison. 20 years later your story will



be told as a weak horror movie with James Garner in a cameo role as the judge.

So I didn't pick up the knife, right away. But I had to. It wasvibrating. I could seeit vibrating, the sides slightly blurred, shaking and shifting ever so slightly. Itrattled just a bit, so I picked it up and it stopped vibrating. The blood ran down

the blade towards my hand. A little of it dripped onto my hand and it was cold, socold I dropped the knife with a clatter.

The knife hit the counter with a clatter and disappeared. We never did see itagain. There was no blood on the counter, but there was blood on my hand,flowing more freely as though I had a cut.

I stared at my hand and without knowing what I was doing, well, withoutknowing why I was doing it, licked my hand.

That was the last thing I remember that night. I don't remember going back to bed. I don't remember Melissa waking up, and trying to wake me up. I don'tremember the police officers coming to the door holding David, who hadsomehow gotten out of his crib and out of the house and was walking down thecenter of the street four blocks away. And I don't remember David kicking andscreaming in Melissa's arms as he was brought back into the house and put intohis bed, screaming and crying like he was being burned alive until he got so tiredhe couldn't stay awake anymore.

I was told about it, but I don't remember any of that. I remember the blood.

It wasn't until after Angie began preschool that things got bad.

Imagine that.

Imagine how bad things would get. Up until then, all I'd had happen to me were visions of blood around the house. Suicidal and homicidal thoughts. Crushingdepression. Threats spelled out on the walls of the house. And a horrific murderthat happened in front of my eyes.

I don't know when I began to think of it as The Thing In The Basement. Maybe it was when things began to talk to me.

Not just the walls spelling, but the things around me talking to me.

Remember Son of Sam saying the mailman's dog talked to him? Or whatever it was he said? I don't think he had it as bad.

Just so you know I'm not crazy, I'm going to tell you a little bit about that, and alittle bit about what I saw in the basement.



Things were getting out of hand for me by the time I went in the basement. It was before David had the screaming fits that began the night he walked away,thenight I tasted the blood , although those concerned me.

Melissa didn't seem concerned.

Melissa didn't seem to notice.

You'll begin to think you're crazy a lot faster if nobody around you notices thethings you notice. I wonder where I learned to handle things like that? I nevermentioned them to Melissa, and I certainly didn't want to mention them to adoctor, or a friend (if I'd had one. Which I didn't.)

Melissa never seemed to even notice that screaming fits. Melissa didn't seem tonotice any of the things I noticed. (Maybe she did, judging by what she said at theend.)

But the basement. I don't know why I get so distracted. I can't seem to focus.Being dead will do that to you, I guess.

You know, you guessed, right, that the basement door was behind that brick wall.By the time I went and faced the brick wall that night, I had about had it. I wasgetting home later and later as time went on. I told Melissa it was because of my new job-- another promotion -- and I tried to make it up to her. We bought her anew car. We had a plasma tv by then. She had jewelery; I'd always promised her jewelry.

I couldn't stay away, though. When I wasn't there, I worried about Melissa, andDavid, and Angie. If it, whatever it was, couldn't work on me, would it start onthem?

Silly me. It had reached out and killed a little girl just to remind me who was incharge.

The night I went to look at the basement door, I tried to force the issue. I'd wokenup with blood dripping down onto my forehead, just little drips. That hadn'thappened before. I hadn't repeated the little episode of tasting it. This woke meup, of course. I sat up, and looked over at Melissa. I always checked her, to see if

it was after her.

It wasn't. Yet.

The blood dripped faster and faster, became a stream, and was splattering allaround me. I finally gave up, got out of bed, and was wiping the blood out of my eyes and off of my face trying to walk out of the bedroom. It was stinging, runninginto my mouth. The floor was slippery with blood. I leaned on the wall, leaving



bloody handprints, bloody grip marks on the doorknob, which I could barely open. I walked out into the hallway. I saw blood flowing from Angie's room-- theroom that had been the spare room. Not from David's.

I walked down the hall, nearly killing myself trying to navigate the stairs. The

blood kept following me, like those rainclouds that hover over cartoon characters.It was almost ankle deep in the house when I heard the howling. It sounded like wolves. Large wolves. It echoed around my house and split through my ears.

I was downstairs. I was in front of the kitchen. The bricks were motionless.

"What!" I yelled. It was meant to be a question, but didn't come out that way."What! What! What!" I didn't care if Melissa heard. (Why didn't she hear?) Davidstarted yelling, screaming in his sleep. I kept yelling it: "Whatwhatwhatwhat!"

The bricks shifted slightly. There was a small gap, almost waist high. A smalldoorknob sat there. A dull, brassy doorknob. The blood stopped. The wolf howlscontinued.

I reached out and touched the doorknob. I expected it to be hot. I expectedelectricity. It felt like a doorknob. Nothing happened. The wolf howls kept going.

I slowly twisted the knob.

I don't know if I can describe it yet.

I don't know if I can tell you what I saw that night. I'm pretty sure that was thenight I began to think of it as The Thing In the Basement.

I wasn't the only one who called it that. The knives in the kitchen, for example,called it that.

I told you that, right? That things, things, began talking to me? I told you that.The knives talked to me. Food talked to me. The trees in the yard talked to me.

Mostly they talked about death. I'd walk out to my car in the morning, and my keys wouldn't jingle, they'd curse: Kill you rot in hell pick your eyes out with our teeth. The trees would snicker.

The knives called to me. They'd sit in the kitchen and call my name when I walked by. Jude take us with you use us take us to see The Thing In The Basement. But I could never go there armed.

I guess I could tell you what I saw. Telling you about it can't be any worse thanactually seeing it.

The first time I saw The Thing In The Basement I tried to gouge out my own eyes.



The second time I killed myself.The first thing I noticed was the paneling.

The paneling I mentioned at first, remember? The crooked paneling, the stuff that made you feel slightly off-kilter?

It was disconcerting. I had turned the knob expecting, I don't know, a stairway into the depths of hell, or a bottomless pit, or maybe just a giant mouth waiting toswallow me. While I wasn't truly prepared for those, I also wasn't prepared tosee... a rec room.

That's what it was, more or less. It had the paneling, clearly installed by someonenot a professional, and those carpenter steps that are put in when a house is builtand not taken out by people that don't expect to use their basement. These had been altered to be carpeted, somewhat, by the use of oddly-colored carpetremnants poorly tacked down.

I walked down them carefully, not just because I didn't want to trip, but because-- remember -- this was where I expected to meet The Thing In The Basement.

This was all before objects began talking to me. I'd piece it all together later (Ihave lots of time now, being dead) but not at that time, I hadn't, and I'm notgoing to give it all to you here. I have too much time, and you're listening, aren't you, so I'm going to take up that time.

I wonder where we'll all go?

Oops. I'm giving it away.

So I walked down the stairs, and turned the corner. I was ready, I thought, foranything. I was prepared.

I won't say the Thing In The Basement doesn't have a sense of humor.

What I saw was a robot.

I knew you wouldn't believe me. But it was... off-kilter. That's the only way I can

describe it. That's part of what led to me feeling that way. Here I'd been having visions and troubled thoughts, suicidal and homicidal thoughts and my kids were waking up screaming or wandering around the house, and that was before theanimals started dying in our yard but you get the general picture, and I finally went down, was allowed down into the basement, and saw a robot.

Not a robot like from the Star Wars movies or something. I should be more clear.I had a little wind-up robot when I was a kid, one of those little toys you get for



like a dollar and it has the two little feet that slowly walk forward. It was like alittle shiny cylinder with orange claw feet and a glass bowl on top. I'd had it whenI was a little kid. I instantly recognized it.

The basement was bare except for that. There was the paneling around the walls,

the carpeted stairs, and a cement floor that was empty, bare, except for this littleinch-tall robot slowly walking across the floor.

I stood there, as shocked as I could have been with anything else. That's why it was so perfect, I guess. The sense of humor -- such as it is - -might havemanifested itself in other ways, from what I've seen and heard from the few people who will still talk or listen, but for me it was that robot, which was not justfunny (to the Thing) but also strange enough and unsettling enough to be scarierthan if it had been a giant mouth. I guess, by that point, the strange, evil, scary things were expected. They were still strange, evil, and scary, but they were losingtheir shock value like in a slasher film when by the fourth or fifth time someoneopens a closet and the killer is there, you might jump but you're no longer really shocked.

But this shocked me. Maybe because it was so unexpected, so anticlimactic.

Or maybe because the robot was walking, so it had been wound up, and I couldn'tsee anyone so I had to think that there was something else hidden even thoughthe basement was small and well-lit by the overhead bulb. I couldn't hardly takemy eyes off the robot but I'd shoot glances around the room, waiting for thedemon or zombie or whatever was going to kill me now that I was distracted butit didn't come.

Or maybe it was because the robot had been buried so deeply in my mind. I'd hadit when I was six, maybe, and hadn't thought of it in years and years, but theThing In the Basement had pulled it out as easily as what I'd eaten for lunch thatday.

I walked towards it, about as fast as the robot walked. It was making that littlegrinding noise, which I could hear, barely, over the whooshing of my pulse in my ears.

I stood in front of it, towering over it. It was walking towards my foot. I keptshooting glances around, looking over my shoulder, but there weren't even eerie

shadows, just this little robot walking across the floor.

I squatted. It kept coming forward.

I looked at it more closely, and finally reached out my hand to pick it up.

You knew it wasn't really there, right? Or it was but I'd never be able to pick it up.I reached out my hand but never made it there. Because the robot disappeared



and I was surrounded. Surrounded! Buried in a sea of people all rushing andmilling around me.

People?

Hardly. Corpses, it looked like, or rotting people, maybe those zombies. One guy didn't have a head. I spun around and around, looking everywhere at thehundreds of people who were standing around me, or milling around me, orshuffling towards the stairs, or trying to push each other.

The guy without a head was a body just walking slowly with his neck truncated off and a splash of blood over his shoulders and down his front.

There was a lady who sat against the wall with her neck cocked at a strange angleand her tongue hanging out. Her face was blue and red. Her arms twitchedspasmodically and periodically her legs kicked.

There was a man with no lower jaw, just ragged shards of skin around his mouth.He turned towards me and I saw through the lower part of his face through the back of his skull. His head had trouble staying up because there was no spinethere. He dragged a shotgun behind him.

A wet young child, spitting up water, with shampoo in his hair, lying on his back.

Someone twitching and jerking, his skin smoking, his eyes rolled back into hishead. I couldn't figure him out, and didn't want to look, but I saw in his hand what looked like a lamp cord. He tried to stand, would jerk himself to fall over,and tried to stand up.

There were more, all with missing limbs or missing faces or missing heads, somecarrying weapons, some wet, some with hand prints on their throats, I couldn'tkeep looking at them. They had clothes from years gone by and clothes from yesterday.

I saw the little girl, too, the one from the car accident, still covered in blood, herchest caved in, still trying desperately to gurgle at least a little oxygen through hersodden, collapsed lungs, and she wasn't walking. She wasn't able to, because herlegs were crushed. She pulled herself towards the stairs, slowly, using her arms,pulling with all her might as though the car was still resting on her legs.

I fell back from them and in doing so, walked through them. They were spirits,shadows, ghosts, souls, call them what you will. They had no corporal bodies, nophysical presence. But as I watched them, as I backed through them and tried toavoid them and finally pressed my back up against the wall, I saw that thoughthey had no bodies, they could still feel . They were standing, sitting, lying, walking, crouching, in my basement, spirits, endlessly reliving the pain of theirdeaths.



That was when I had to cover my eyes, and when I did, I could still see them.They were not physical, so they could not be blocked out by physical things. Withmy eyes closed, with my hands over my eyes, I could see them, their slack jawsgaping at me, their eyeless heads slowly turning towards me, their hands clawing

at the kitchen knives buried in their necks and chests and backs.

I could still see them and I couldn't stand it. I clawed at my eyes and tried to pullthem out of my head.

I wasn't successful. But that's probably lucky for me, all things considered.

You're not getting tired of listening to me, are you?

Like you could do anything about it.

I'd like to tell you it wasn't all bad, during those years. I'd like to tell you thatthere were plenty of nights that Angie and David sat with Melissa and me and watched TV, or played Monopoly, or just listened to music or ate a nice dinner.

We must have, right?

I can't think of them right now, though. I can't remember those nights. The nightsthat stick in my memory, the things I can remember, seem to be dictated.

The Things I can remember are dictated by the Thing In The Basement. Ha.That's rich, right? But they are.

Is she looking at me?

Never mind.

I do remember the night that things started talking to me. I remember that night, which started out normally enough. We were, in fact, playing Monopoly. Melissaand David and I were playing. Angie was not old enough to play, so she andMelissa were on a team.

Like now, you might say.

I don't remember if I was winning or losing. There's an apt look at how thingsturned out. Did I win or lose? I was, in fact, the last to go, but I don't feel like I won. I usually never won at Monopoly, either. I was probably not doing good.Doing well? I don't know. Doesn't really matter anymore.

Maybe someday we'll get out.



That was when the things started talking. I'm pretty sure. That was the day thingsreally started talking to me, or at me. They usually didn't answer me when I would talk to them, so they were not talking with me.

The dice were the first things I remember talking to me. I was about to pick them

up and they said "Why bother." I swear, they did. I thought maybe I hallucinatedit, but as I was rattling them in my hand, one said to the other "Make it a three.I'll go two." And I rolled and one was a two and one was a one.

I had to be imagining it. That's what I would have thought. Stress, that's the usualexcuse we give for weird things.

Remember by that time I was well past thinking I was hallucinating anything. By that time, I'd seen the blood and David had walked away and I'd watched a littlegirl die in front of me simply because of what I'd thought.

So I didn't tell myself I was hallucinating. I thought "Oh, shit. A new one." It wasalways something new. I used to say that you could get used to anything. I saidthat the human psyche could adapt to anything. I gave an example: if I punched you in the face, you'd be shocked and hurt. But if I did that to you once a day for10 years, by the 3,651st time, you'd say "Oh, there's my punch in the face."

That was how the Thing In The Basement made it worse, I guess. I could get usedto, or at least tolerate, what it threw at me. I could adapt to the horrifying images.I could get used to the crushing depression. I could walk through the rivers of blood with only minimal revulsion. So it made things talk to me, or made me ableto hear things talking that I couldn't hear, or it talked to me through them.

Maybe I could ask it...

It doesn't matter, does it. Plenty of time to adapt now. Maybe death will be justsameness over and over.

I thought I saw...

Never mind. I can't.

And the dice kept talking to me throughout the game. They started talking moredirectly to me. Taunting me. "You never win at this, do you?" "Nice move. Maybe

you should keep your day job." Silly things. I was being teased by a pair of plasticcubes. And it was hard to hide.

Then they got mean. I handed them to Melissa at one point and they said "Maybe you'll cut off her hands first." I dropped them like they were hot, messing up the board. Melissa gave me a weird look. I was used to that, too. Although she didn'tseem to notice most of what I was up to, she noticed enough to occasionally raiseconcerns.



David did, too. I'm glad he got away. As sad as I am about Angie, at least one of usgot away. I wonder why.

I have to keep talking. I'm glad you're listening.

David wandered away more than just that one time. Each time he came back. He was never comfortable living there. He had a haunted look about him. He had bags under his eyes and a reddish tint to them that came from never having agood night's sleep. He would sneak out over and over, at 7 and 8 and 12. And healways came back by hook or by crook. Never willingly. We should have hadsocial workers involved by that time, but they never were. How many times canthe police bring a kid back, or a concerned neighbor, before someone getsinvolved?

That was probably more of the Thing In The Basement's doing.

I was thinking of that because David left that night, and the dice told me he would. When he scooped them up to put them into the box at the end of thenight, one said "He'll escape." The other said "Yeah, he'll get out tonight but notfor long." The first said "No, I meant in the long run." The second said "Oh.Right." The first one said "Not like the little girl. What a way to go."

And I thought at the time they were talking about the poor little girl in the caraccident! I thought that as Angie toddled up the stairs holding Melissa's handtalking about how she always likes to be the dog in the game and who'd want to be the shoe?

I lay awake that night, wondering if the dice were right. I finally got up and walked downstairs and sat down on the couch in the living room, within sight of the door. I didn't turn on any lights. I just sat there, staring at the stairwell.

It wasn't long before I heard the rustling. I thought it was the leaves in the trees, but it wasn't. It was whispering. The things around me were whispering. Thecouch cushions, the lamps, the books, the bookends, the throw rug, theornamental glass vase on the coffee table, the coffee table itself, were all whispering. I held my breath and listened.

"What's he waiting for?" "Is tonight it?" "Can't be." "He's not ready." "He is. Have

you seen the eyes?" "Not yet." "I think it's tonight."

I thought then they were talking about me. I still think that. But maybe they weretalking about the Thing. That was the night I saw it, too.

David came down the stairs, finally. It was about five a.m. Out the window, there was just the slightest haze of pink above the houses. The sun would be up in anhour, but it was lighting a part of the world that was in driving distance from us.



David came walking down the stairs and the whispering stopped -- finally! I'd been listening to it for hours. It had moved on from speculation to descriptions,half-caught snatches of conversation:

"...ripped her arms off..." "On fire, most of his body," "Both of them soaked in blood," "Fell right on him" "Pulled the left eye out first" "Choked the life out of her, right where that couch is""... then shot himself right in the mouth with the shotgun,"

That kind of thing. At least I didn't have any trouble staying awake.

David walked down the stairs slowly. He didn't hold the railing, which I thought was odd because he usually did. We had wood stairs that were kind of slippery.He walked right down the center of them, not looking left or right. He didn't look at me. He didn't wave. He might not have even seen me.

I was going to let him just go out the door. Why bother stopping him? He wasalways brought back, one way or the other. And if he escaped, so much the better.If he could stay away, maybe he would be spared. (Even then I might have had anidea how this would end. The visions had always focused on one thing.)

I sat there. There was no whispering at all. David walked towards the door andput out his hand in a lurching sort of move. That was when I saw it.

It clung to his back, like a backpack almost. It was only about a foot tall, and justabout as round. It had a short tail, with an actual point on the end. It had twolittle horns and a ridge of spikes down its back. It had claws for hands and clung

to David hard enough that it was poking through his pajamas and I could seedroplets of blood.

I thought back for just a second to earlier in the year when we'd gone to thecommunity pool. David had opted not to go in, leaving his shirt on all day.Melissa asked him if he wasn't hot, and he said no, he was fine, he didn't want toget sunburned. He did that quite a few times.

I'd never thought much of it, naturally.

The Thing was riding him out the door. This little homunculus, this little lizard,

puke-green and black thing with glowing eyes was clinging to him like a reptilianleech and obviously controlling him. It was going to take him out into the night, ithad done it before... I didn't even think.

I knew this was the cause of the troubles. I'd finally seen IT. I leaped at it,snarling deep down in my throat. Deep down inside all of us is still that primalhuman, the one that first learned that a sharp rock could kill another one of usand learned that by doing it and that part of me leaped at the Thing! I attacked it!



And it turned as I did that, and threw itself at me and the force of it knocked medown on the ground and as it touched me I felt a shrieking pulsing wail inside my head, not so much heard it as felt it in every cell in my brain, and I fell back, and

the Thing looked its red eyes into mine and it bared its teeth, rows and rows of tiny razor-spikes, and I felt its claws on my chest, and it ripped its teeth into my throat and pulled out my aorta and half of my tongue. I felt the blood gurgle upthrough the hold in my chin and neck and felt my heart beat just once before itgave up.

I saw the Thing jump back on David's back and go out the door.

I laid there. I was not dead. I couldn't move. My heart wasn't beating. That wasscary enough; you get so used to it beating. I couldn't even close my eyes, or movethem. They were still turned down somewhat, where I'd been looking at the top of the Thing's head while it ripped out my life. It happened that I was looking at thedoor. I couldn't move my hands, or my toes. I could feel the blood- it was warmand I was not-- dripping down what was left of my throat. It pooled under my arm.

After some time, the door opened again. David came walking back in, calmly. Hedidn't look at me again. But when he was about to go up the stairs, he stopped (Icould just make him out on the periphery of my vision) and the Thing suddenly landed on my chest again with a thud. It walked up to my face, on its hind legs, orlegs, since I guess the other two were arms. It stood on my chest, just shy of my tattered neck. It leaned over into my face. I wanted to shudder and look away. Ithad a face that was half-human half toad, with those sharp teeth, and sunken

eyes that no longer glowed. They were the color of dried blood now. It had a longtongue that snaked out and licked its lips. It had flaring nostrils and heavy, scaled brows.

It leaned in closer. I couldn't even close my eyes. I was paralyzed, or dead, or both. It put one hand up to my eye, and held out its index finger. I saw the claw on the end, sharp as a nail and speckled with blood. The sunlight caught it andglinted. It jerked and poked the claw into my eye. I could feel that! I tried toscream, but had no throat. I could feel the liquid, the vitreous part of my eyeflowing down my cheek like thick tears.

I felt it move a little, and felt its breath on my other eye, but I couldn't see it. I felta claw tap my eyeball, but I couldn't see the claw. Then it pulled back and left thatone. Then it began fumbling around and poking and doing something on my neck.

Then, out of my still-good eye I saw David lurch a little and start up the stairs. Hispajamas were bunched as though they were gripped by something, but I couldn'tsee anything on them. Anymore.



With a gasp, I realized I could breath, and sat up. There was a pool of bloodaround me, down my front and on the floor. I felt my throat. It was cold, but fine.I felt my eye, and turned them both ways. I could see everything. I covered firstone eye, then the other, and could see out of both of them. I could see everything.

I thought back to David going up the stairs.

I could see almost everything.

It couldn't go on long after that. I knew, you know, everyone knows.

I could go on a long time. I could go on forever. I could give you detail upon detailupon detail.

I've got nothing but time.

But, then, you know that, don't you? You're a good listener. I guess you've got thetime, too.

But there couldn't be much after that.

After that night that I saw the Thing I never saw it again. I never saw the blood,either. I never saw the bricks moving again.

I could still hear things. I just couldn't see things. Whatever it had done to my eye, I couldn't see the things I used to.

And I couldn't talk about anything, really, but the most innocuous things. I know because I tried. The night before, I tried.

The night before what?

The night before I killed myself.

I was lying in bed, lying awake. I could hear the things rustling around me. Icould hear the flowing sound of blood like a river outside my bedroom. I guess I was grateful that I couldn't see them.

But I could hear and I didn't like what I was hearing.

"Tomorrow's the day, isn't it?" That was a book on my nightstand. I hadn't read inmonths. Years maybe. The book was just lying there. I looked over at it.

"I think it is." I didn't answer it. I tried not to do that. It was answered by apainting on our wall. A painting of a sailboat off the coast of Maine. You don'tthink of that kind of thing haunting you. Then again, I think I already pointed out



that the Thing In The Basement seems at times to have a weird sense of humor.

I heard a rustling from David's room. He was probably waking up again. I'd seenhim leave a few other times, sometimes coming back on his own, sometimes brought back. Each time, he'd had a shirt on, a shirt that seemed to be pulled

down and scrunched up as if something was sitting on it. But I couldn't see it.

"How do you think he'll do it?" That came from the lamp.

"Violently." That from the rug. There was a general murmuring of assent.

I listened and listened to them talking about it. They didn't get specific, but Ithought I knew what they were referring to. The Thing was going to kill us. It hadto be us. Us. I remember because it said that I would be the last to die.

I had to try to do something. I remembered the car accident. The visions. Thespirits I'd seen.

I leaned over and in the dark of the middle of the night, as quietly as I could, I whispered her name. " Melissa," I whispered. She shrugged. I said her nameagain. Quietly. I don't know why I thought that I could avoid the Thing hearing; itcould read my mind. It could do anything.

Still I whispered, shaking her slightly until she awoke. "What," she said, tooloudly and groggily. I heard a thump from David's room. I put my hand over hermouth.

"Mmmf," she said. I shook my head, put my finger to my lips.

"I can't take it anymore," I whispered. "I've got to tell you something!" How longhad we lived there at that point? Five years? Seven? Longer than most peoplemake it, I know now.

"What?" she asked. Maybe she could see it in my eyes. She could see something, because she was quiet and stared at me. In the small sliver of moonlight thatmade it through our skylight I saw her eyes. She licked her lips, nervously.

"Since we moved in here," I began.

I couldn't talk. I felt the air suck out of my lungs. I felt my eyes water. I felt thepressure change in my head, like when you dive underwater and go too far down before leveling off. I couldn't even think for a second. I saw spots.

"What is it, Jude?" She looked scared. I shook my head.

"I'm okay," I said. "I just need to tell..." and it stopped. Again, the air was suckedfrom me and my vision went temporarily black.



I heard a laugh. A cackle.

"Jude," she said, more urgently. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," I said. I noticed I could talk about anything but what I wanted to talk about. "I guess I just couldn't sleep," I said, and looked around the room. There was still a low snicker from David's room as I heard the sound of David puttingon his shoes. Clumsily. He was asleep.

Her hairbrush said "It's definitely tomorrow" and my resolve crested. I turned totell Melissa again and began to talk, and felt like something had kicked me in thestomach. My skin went cold. I felt my head spin and I felt nauseated. I leanedover and threw up. The door opened to our room. It was flung open.

"Don't try to tell her" I heard. The door closed again. Melissa looked from me tothe door to me and stood up out of bed.

"Melissa," I said, and choked again. I was having trouble seeing anything butspots before my eyes. I heard David's clumping footsteps going down the hall. Iheard Angie wake up, yelling "Mommy," and then "David?"

Melissa looked at me again, and I tried to talk. I felt a shooting pain in my headand throat and fell out of bed.

"I'm calling an ambulance," she said, as Angie screamed "Mommy!" Melissaturned around and ran out of the room.

I stood up and tried to breath. I could barely get air into my lungs using all my willpower. I gasped for breath and staggered towards the bedroom door, to where Angie was crying and Melissa was trying to calm her down.

I walked, unsteadily, to Angie's room. I knew what was going on in that room andI knew what I had to do.

I swung the door open, and saw Angie hugging Melissa. Melissa was saying "it'sonly a dream" over and over. Angie was gasping and sniffling the way youngerchildren do when they're almost worn out of crying. She sucked air between words.

"Standing . . . by me. . ." Angie said. Melissa rocked her back and forth.

One of the most common visions I had was of the Thing In the Basement in Angie's room. It was standing over her while she slept. It stood over her while shelay on her stomach and bit out the back of her head, blood spurting all over.

Imagine seeing that almost every day for years.



I saw Melissa, too. I saw the Thing going after her. It held her down and clawedand chewed at her face, shredding and tearing her skin off of her a little at a time.

I looked around the room for the Thing as I opened the door. Melissa was only

half-turned towards me. Angie had her head buried in Melissa's shoulder. I knew I wouldn't be able to see the Thing, but I thought I might see signs of it, where it was standing, or something. I darted my eyes around and took another step intothe room.

Angie opened her eyes and saw me. She screamed and wouldn't stop screaming. At that, I heard the rush of blood from the hallway, and felt a wet, cold wash onmy feet. I heard Angie screaming and looked around wildly.

"Where is it?" I yelled. Melissa turned around. I yelled again. "Tell me where it is! Where do you see it?" Melissa yelled something like "see what" but all the thingsin the room were talking and Angie was screaming and there was the river of blood and my heartbeat and a cackling. I didn't quite hear what she said.

I didn't quite hear what she said, and it was the last thing she ever said to me.

Angie kept screaming and I ran towards the window to close it and trap the Thingin the room, but the door was open and I turned around and began to go to closethat. A weapon. I needed a weapon. I grabbed Angie's lamp off her dresser andpulled the shade off of it as I closed the door behind me.

Angie was still screaming. "Come out," I yelled. Melissa yelled something. "Comeout," I said again and now Melissa and Angie were both screaming and crying

and I couldn't stand knowing that the Thing was going to get them the way it gotthat little girl and would get me. I looked around trying to figure out where thecackling was coming from and began swinging. I swung and swung the lamp. I hiteverywhere I thought it could be. I smashed the bulb and the dresser and the baseof the lamp eventually was a set of tattered pieces held together by the cord. My hands were bloody and bruised and everything in the room was torn apart andupside down and broken.

I sat down, crumpled down, on the floor. I looked around, trying to catch my breath.

Angie was lying face down on the floor in front of me. There was a patch of blood-soaked hair on the back of her head. I held my breath. I reached out my hand. Ifelt her little arm. It was limp. And colder than my hand.

I looked around more.

Melissa was laying on her side. She looked terrified and her chest heaved. I fellforward onto my knees, looking from the back of Angie's head to Melissa. As I



did, she tried to push back from me and rolled onto her back. The left side of herface was mangled and torn. There were bits of light bulb hanging from what wasleft of her cheek and a pool of blood underneath her head.

I heard, as if through a tunnel, the front door slam shut. Melissa gasped and

stopped moving.

Angie still wasn't moving.

I didn't even bother trying to save them. I knew then that the Thing had won, andthat it would be back shortly to get me. Its sick prophecy would come true.

I got up and walked out of the room. I went downstairs to the first level. Thatlevel looked normal, except for the bloody footprints I left as I walked and got thecar keys.

It would not get me.

I walked out to the garage. The paneling in the hall by the garage was the same asthe paneling in the basement, a little crooked but not so's you'd notice right away. You'd have to look at it a while to see that.

A long while.

I walked out to the garage. I opened the door to the car and got in. I rolled downone of the car windows and started the car.

My CD was in the player. The one with "The Good Times Are Killing Me." I sat

there calmly, still gripping the broken lamp, and listened to the music.


I sat there a long while. The music played. The CD repeated itself, in fact. I beganfeeling more and more sleepy.

For the first time in a long time, I had no visions. Nothing talked to me. Justsleepiness and music.

My eyes grew heavy.


My head fell onto my chest. I jerked it up. It fell onto my chest again.

I heard a cackle.

I died.



And as I died, I felt something pulling, tugging, dragging at me. I actually felt my soul leave my body. I always thought that would be peaceful, although in this caseI didn't expect that too much because I had killed my wife and daughter and wasgoing to Hell, but the Thing had not gotten me, at least.

I was sucked out of my body, out of the car, through the house, like ahandkerchief through a magician's hand.

Into the basement. I was thrown, sucked, tossed into the basement, with all thosespirits.

I landed in the middle, with those other souls lurching and tumbling around me.People who'd hung themselves in the house with ropes still around their neck inthe afterworld. One guy who'd slit his wrists, pale and limp and dragging himself by his elbows with his hands flapping uselessly. All milling around and looking atme, some with a little more vitality than others.

I looked around and around, bewildered. We all do, when we first get here. Ittook me a few moments to realize, and I didn't realize until I saw them.

In the corner were Angie and Melissa. Angie had her back to me and her head buried in Melissa's shoulder. Melissa had her head down and was patting Angieon the back. They were both crying. I felt a surge of hope. Was it a nightmare?Had they survived? Was it just another vision?

Melissa looked up at me. Her face was mangled like it had been in Angie's room.Skin hung off of it. Her jaw hung slack. She sagged to the side where there were

bones broken. She hunched over in pain. As I watched her, she stared at me witha look of such hatred that I could almost feel it. I started to stand up and gotowards her, but she dragged herself away from me and in doing so was so clearly in pain that I stopped.

Angie wouldn't look at me. Has never looked at me. And that's worse becauseGod if she would just look at me at least I wouldn't always have to see that spoton the back of her head where I crushed her skull.

I don't know how long we've been down here, now. New people come in, like you,and occasionally I can talk to them. I'm one of the lucky ones, I can talk a bit.

Some of them can't because of the way they died. If you can call it lucky to bestuck in a basement for all eternity watching some little goblin thing come and goand new mangled spirits arriving while your wife and daughter constantly remind you that they're here, and in pain, because of you...

Was she looking at me now? I'd give anything to just talk to her, to tell her I'msorry.



Not that it matters.

the thing in the basement

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