Cathy in the Crawlspace

Cathy tossed the remnant butt of her Pall Mall Orange cigarette to the brittle grass and began twisting the knob to the lock of the crawl space. A former lock from a high-school locker – one she was given by her son, Jeremy, after he graduated – secured the crawl space; its door composed of old, cracked, white-painted wood. It was a little rusted, and didn’t like to work. She continued tugging at it, twisting the knob into the location she knew was correct. She tugged at the lock, but it was no use. She yanked it again in childish frustration.

Looking back, she saw the cigarette butt, still smoking in the dry grass. It would die soon, she knew that – it was the one thing she appreciated about these new-fangled “fire safe” cigarettes. She tried at the lock again, this time –though her hands were still shaking with vexation – making sure to click the nob into just the right place.

It worked. The door sprung ajar, revealing the dank, musty interior of the crawlspace. The air hung heavy, a lingering, stagnant smell of thick, gaseous dust forever permeating the cavernous hole.

She stepped in, immediately swatting at a cobweb entrapping her face, and looked around. The place looked as it usually did – ancient, dry powder covering the natural dirt and rock of the floor. Dust filled cobwebs lined every corner and crevice. An old table, which housed the family’s lawn care equipment, sat brittle and limping – as if to soon collapse – against the cinderblock wall. Looking down, she noticed the cap to the gas can had been left open.

“That damn boy, Raymond,” she said aloud to no one in particular, “I would never throw one of my ciggies in here; I’d like to set the house ablaze!”

She heard a giggle from the corner of the crawlspace, back in the dark corner, where nothing dwelled other than some spider crickets and maybe the occasional mouse.

“Who… who’s there?” she said, gripping the edge of the wobbling table as if to stabilize herself.

More giggling, and then a scuffle of movement. Particulate matter kicked up into the air, but other than that, Cathy saw nothing. She stood frozen with fear. Eventually, the airspace directly in front of her face became warm. She felt the hot, putrid push of rancid breath. Then she again heard a giggle, one that came from right in front of her face – but there was no one there.

“Gahhhhhhh!” she screamed, backpedaling, tripping into the old white door and out into the saving daylight of the outside world. She scampered backward like a frantic crab away from the crawlspace, staring – once achieving a distance she considered safe – and thinking, her chest heaving. Nothing made any sense. What in the ever-loving heck was that?

She didn’t dwell about it much more after that. She must be a bit crazy, she assumed – everyone was, anyway. No biggie.

* * *

Raymond sprang through the front door and threw off his backpack, right in the middle of the narrow foyer. Raymond was Cathy’s other son, the younger.

“Hey, mister!” yelled Cathy from the kitchen. She couldn’t see Raymond – her back was turned as she diced an onion at the counter – but she knew the sound of that bag sliding to the ground, “Pick that up and hang where it’s supposed to go!”

Raymond, sprinting through the creaky, wood-floored hallway, stopped abruptly and turned to pick up his backpack. While hanging it on the coat hanger near the front door – still not where his mother preferred it – he looked back at her in frustration:

“Come on, mom! This yards growing like a dang weed! I need to get out there and trim it!”

Raymond, for reasons his mother couldn’t understand, loved mowing the yard. He cut the grass at least twice a week, even now – in the kindling of crunchy summer. Cathy knew to accept his habit for what it was, though. It wasn’t the cheapest thing, buying all of that extra gas, but at least he kept the yard looking nice.

“All right, all right,” she said, “I didn’t mean to slow you down!”

Raymond then sprinted out the back door. Cathy went back to dicing the onion. It was getting to her, for some reason – burning her eyes – that didn’t usually happen to her. Not with onions, anyway. Garlic, sometimes, but not onions. She had to take a step back and wipe her damp, sweaty face. At this rate, she thought, she would never get through the peppers, celery, and okra. The Brunswick Stew would never be finished.

Suddenly, she heard the wrenching latch of the opening door to the crawlspace. It had been a few days – she had forgotten. She was just being crazy, right? There was nothing down there! Horror crept up her spine. Her eyes – still burning from the onion – widened, further drying them out. She didn’t notice the pain. She was too paranoid to notice.

* * *

Raymond stepped into the crawlspace. He grabbed the metal gas can, opened it, and lifted it into the opened lawnmower gas tank. It glugged out in spurts – stopping and starting again as gas collected in the bottlenecked stoppage of the curvature of the plastic nozzle. The tank filled up. Raymond was happy. He loved the smell of gas. He loved mowing the lawn.

Putting in his earbuds, he took his iPod from his pocket and began wheeling it around, looking for a song. It was one of the classic, colorless models. His mom had given it to him. It used to be his father’s, but dad was dead, now. He had been dead for a while. After some thought – Raymond loved music, and hated choosing the wrong song for any occasion – he settled on Hey, by Pixies.

As the bassline, simple vocals, and screeching guitars crept into his nervous system, Raymond slid the iPod into his pocket, for the first time looking up and noticing the damp emptiness of the crawlspace.

There was a figure in the back of the room. A shadow. It moved. It rustled around uncomfortably, lifting dirt and dust from the ground up into the stagnant air – clouding its already shadowy appearance.

“He… Hello?” said Raymond.

The figure giggled. It stood up – it was only about four feet tall, so it could stand fully erect even in the crawlspace – and planted itself snug against the wall, as if to blend in. As if to hide. It looked nervous, almost paranoid.

“Excuse me, sir!” said Raymond, “Do you need some help?”

The figure giggled, this time letting out an unintentional, booming, anxious cackle escape. The figure raised its arms – which were nearly the length of its body – and let them down, dragging them against the soft, earthen floor. It then raised them again and covered its mouth in flustered embarrassment. Releasing them, its face was covered by two interlocking, dusty handprints. The figure grinned in discomfort, its teeth pointed and carnivorous.

Cathy heard the sound faintly from the kitchen. Her eyes still burning from the onions, she grabbed the thickest kitchen knife she owned and sprinted frantically out the back door:

“Raymond!” she screamed as she ran – the knife’s blade shifting up and down through the wind as if to slice up an invisible ham.

She made it to the door. Raymond, as content as he was on mowing the lawn, had pulled the mower out of the crawlspace and into the yard.

“What’s wrong?” shrieked Cathy.

“There’s a man in the crawlspace.” Said Raymond, more nonchalantly than Cathy supposed the situation should warrant.

“A man?” she screamed, pushing Raymond out into the yard, “Get back, son – get back!”

Cathy then crept nervously into the crawlspace. She saw nothing. Only gray darkness.

Then she heard another, quickly muffled giggle. Then a deep breath and an uncoordinated scramble across the room.

Cathy screamed again. She turned to run out of the crawlspace, unintentionally bumping her head on the short, wooden entrance to the underground hole.

She fell unconscious onto her knife. It pierced directly into her liver. She awoke instantly in shrieking pain.

She groaned, wailing around as blood pooled everywhere: into the dry grass and – on the other side of the doorway – into the gray dust of the crawlspace. The dirt began balling up and solidifying, like some sort of morbid dough.

Rolling around in agony, Cathy noticed the scampering sound of something grabbing and licking at the blood cakes. She once again felt that hot, rancid breath. It smelled like spoiled blood and dying organs.

She scrambled in the dirt, trying to lift herself. She heard more scampering, and more giggling. The creature – invisible to her, though clearly audible – jumped from the blood cakes directly on top of Cathy’s body, holding her down hard against the ground. The creature snickered again, only inches from Cathy’s face. It was the first laugh she had heard from it that felt actually confident, which was somehow more terrifying than the frantic, paranoid laughter she had heard previously.

The creature stayed on top of Cathy. She couldn’t see it, but she felt it pressing her against the ground. It was strong – too strong for her. Every time she tried to escape, she lifted her body an inch or two from the ground – her skin sliding up against the embedded knife – only to be slammed back to the chalky crawlspace floor. The knife was sliding around inside of her – destroying her internal organs. She was well aware of that excruciatingly painful reality.

“Raymond!” she squealed, “Raymond! Go get Mr. Waters! Please! Go get him now!”

Raymond, until then standing stone-frozen in the dry grass outside the crawlspace, turned and sprinted screaming next-door, to the Waters’ house. He climbed spider-like up their wooden back porch and started banging in panicked rhythm on the glass storm door.

Mr. Waters quickly answered. Raymond, though babbling nearly incoherently, conveyed the severity of the situation. Mr. Waters followed Raymond off his porch and toward the crawl space.

“Raymond… son… What happened here? What happened to your mama?”

Mr. Waters knelt by Cathy’s pale, now lifeless body; his hands soaked with blood; his mind soaked with panic. The creature, still sitting frog-like on top of Cathy, continued licking at her blood. It again giggled, this time in triumphant lethargy, as if finally well fed. Mr. Waters didn’t hear that, nor did he see the creature. He only saw Cathy, bleeding out. Blood drenched his hands as he helplessly attempted to plug the wound. He turned to Raymond, wide-eyed and frantic:

“Son, did you do this? What did you do?”

Raymond stared at the creature kneeling frog-like atop his dead mother. It looked at him. It smiled big.