I can’t see much from the top of the stairs. It’s dark down there. I can hear something coming from the basement, though. I walk forward. I see a white string hanging to my right as I pass through the door. I pull it and a single bulb buzzes on. I hear the sound from below more clearly now. A dull creak, sharper, higher pitched than the hinges. A hushed, whiny, repetitive grind.
I’m curious to see the basement. Jake said his parents don’t use it. So what’s down there? What’s making that sound? The water heater?
The stairs are uneven and precarious. There’s no banister. I see a trapdoor made of floorboards is held open on the right side with a metal clip. The stairs would be hidden under the trapdoor when it’s closed. There are scratches, like the scratches on the door in the living room, all over the trapdoor. I run my fingers over them. They aren’t very deep. But they look frantic.
I start down. I feel like I’m entering a sailboat’s lower deck. Without a banister, I use the wall as a guide.
At the bottom I step onto a large slab of concrete. It’s atop the gravel floor. There isn’t much room down here. The beamed ceiling is low. Ahead of me are several shelves holding brown cardboard boxes. Old, damp, stained, and fragile. Lots of dust, dirt. Rows and rows of boxes on shelves. There’s so much locked away down here, under the trapdoor. Buried. “We don’t use it” is what Jake said. “There’s nothing down there.” Not totally true. Not true at all.
I turn around. Behind me, past the stairs, I see the furnace, a hot water tank, and an electrical panel. There’s something else, a piece of equipment. It’s old, rusty, not operational. I’m not sure what it is or was.
This room really is little more than a hole in the ground. Probably normal for such an old farmhouse. I imagine it floods in spring. The walls are made of dirt and large hunks of bedrock. They aren’t really walls the same way the floor isn’t really a floor. No bar or pool table. No table tennis. A few seconds here alone would terrify any kid. There’s a smell, too. I don’t know what it is. Dank. Uncirculated air. Mold. Rot. What am I doing down here?
I’m about to head back up when, at the far end of the room, just beyond the water tank, I notice what is making the sound. A small white oscillating fan sitting on a shelf. It’s so dark I can barely see it. I should really get back upstairs, back to the table.
I don’t think Jake wants me to see this. The thought only makes me want to stay here longer, though. I won’t take long. I carefully step off the slab and toward the fan. It turns back and forth. Why is there a fan running in winter? It’s cold enough as it is.
Near the furnace is a painting on an easel. Is that why the fan is on? To dry the paint? I can’t imagine being down here for long stretches, painting. I don’t see any paint or brushes. No other art supplies. No chair. Does the painter stand? I’m assuming it’s Jake’s mom. But she’s taller than I am, and I almost have to bend over so as not to hit my head on the ceiling beams. And why paint all the way down here?
I get closer to the painting. The piece is full of wild, heavy brushstrokes and some very specific detail. It’s a portrait of a space, a room. It might be this room, this basement. It is. It’s dark, the painting, but I can see the stairs, the concrete slab, the shelves. The only thing that’s missing is the furnace. In its place is a woman. Or maybe a man. It’s an entity, an individual with long hair. Standing, slightly bent over, with long arms. Long fingernails, really long, almost like claws. They aren’t growing longer, sharper. But they look like they are. At the bottom corner of the painting, there’s a second person, much smaller; a child?
Staring at this picture, I’m reminded of something Jake mentioned on the drive tonight. I’d been only half listening when he said it, so I’m surprised by how clearly I’m recalling his words now. He talked about why examples are used in philosophy, how most understanding and truth combines certainty and rational deduction, but also abstraction. “It’s the integration of both,” he said, “that matters.” I was looking out my window at the passing fields, watching the bare trees fly by.
“This integration reflects the way our minds work, the way we function and interact; our split between logic, reason, and something else,” he said, “something closer to feeling, or spirit. There’s a word that will probably make you bristle. But we can’t, even the most practical-minded of us, understand the world through rationality, not entirely. We depend on symbols for meaning.”
I glanced at him without saying anything.
“And I’m not just talking about the Greeks. This is a pretty common thread, West and East. It’s universal.”
“When you say symbols, you mean . . . ?”
“Allegory,” he said, “elaborate metaphor. We don’t just understand or recognize significance and validity through experience. We accept, reject, and discern through symbols. These are as important to our understanding of life, our understanding of existence and what has value, what’s worthwhile, as math and science. And I’m saying this as a scientist. It’s all part of how we work through things, how we make decisions. See, as I’m saying it I hear how it sounds, which is very obvious and trite, but it’s interesting.”
I look at the painting again. The plain face of the person. Nondescript. The long nails pointing down, wet, almost dripping. The fan creaks back and forth.
There is a small, dirty bookcase beside the painting. It’s full of old papers. Pages and pages. Drawings. I pick one up. The paper is thick. And another. They’re all of this room. They’re all of the basement. And in each drawing there’s a different person in place of the furnace. Some with short hair, some with long. One has horns. Some have breasts, some penises, some both. All have the long nails and a similar knowing, paralyzed expression.
In each picture there’s the child, too. Usually in the corner. Sometimes in other places—on the ground, looking up at the larger figure. In one, the child is in the stomach of the woman. In another, the woman has two heads, and one of the heads is the child’s.
I hear footsteps upstairs. Delicate, soft. Jake’s mother? Why did I assume she does the painting and drawing down here? I hear more footsteps upstairs, heavier.
I can hear someone. Talking. Two people. I can. From where? It’s Jake’s mom and dad, upstairs. They’re arguing again.
Arguing might be too strong, but the conversation is not cordial. It’s heated. Something’s wrong. They’re upset. I need to get closer to the vent. There’s a rusty paint can by the far wall. I move it directly under the vent. I stand on it, balancing myself against the wall. They are talking in the kitchen.
“He can’t keep doing this.”
“It’s not sustainable.”
“He spent all that time to get there, just to quit? He threw it away. Of course I worry.”
“He needs predictability, something steady. He’s alone too much.”
Are they talking about Jake? I put my hand higher on the wall and rise up on my tiptoes.
“You kept telling him he could do whatever he wanted.”
“What was I supposed to say? You can’t get by day after day being like that, shy, introverted . . . so . . .”
What’s she saying? I can’t make it out.
“Needs to get out of his own head, move on.”
“He left the lab. That was his decision. He never should have started down that path in the first place. The thing is . . .”
Something here I can’t make out.
“Yes, yes. I know he’s smart. I know. But it doesn’t mean he had to go that route.”
“. . . A job he can keep. Hold down.”
Left the lab? So they are talking about Jake? What do they mean? Jake’s still working there. It’s getting harder to decipher the words. If I can just get a bit higher, closer.
The paint can tips and I crash against the wall. The voices stop. I freeze.
For a second, I think I hear someone move behind me. I shouldn’t be down here. I shouldn’t be listening. I turn to look back toward the stairs, but there’s no one there. Just the shelves full of boxes, the dim light coming from upstairs. I don’t hear the voices anymore, not at all. It’s quiet. I’m alone.
An awful feeling of claustrophobia settles over me. What if someone were to close the trapdoor covering the stairs? I would be stuck down here. It would be dark. I’m not sure what I would do. I stand up, not wanting to think about it further, rubbing the knee I banged into the wall.
On my way back up the stairs I notice a lock and latch on the trapdoor, the one that hides the stairs when it’s closed. The latch is screwed into the wall beside the stairs, but the lock’s on the bottom of the trapdoor. You’d think it would be on the top side, so they could lock it from the top. The trapdoor can be closed and opened from either side, either pushed up if you’re in the basement, or pulled up if you’re on the landing. But it can be locked only from below.
—Do we know the official cause of death?
—Bled out, from the puncture wounds.
—Awful.
—Bled for hours, we think. Quite a bit of blood.
—It must have been terrible to stumble across.
—Yes, I imagine it was. Horrible. Something you’d never forget.
The dining room is empty when I return from the basement. The table has been cleared except for my dessert plate.
I poke my head into the kitchen. The dirty plates are stacked and rinsed, but not washed. The sink is filled with grayish water. The faucet drips. Drips.
“Jake?” I call. Where is he? Where is everyone? Maybe Jake is taking out the table scraps to the compost in the shed.
I spot the stairs to the second floor. Soft green carpet on the treads. Wood-paneled walls. More photographs. A lot are of the same elderly couple. They’re all old photographs, none of Jake when he was younger.
Jake told me he would show me the upper floor after dinner, so why not go check it out now? I head straight to the top, where there’s a window. I look out, but it’s too dark to see outside.
On my left is a door with a small stylized J hanging from it. Jake’s old bedroom. I walk in. I sit down on Jake’s bed and look around. Lots of books. Four full cases. Candles on top of each bookcase. The bed is soft. The blanket on top is what I would expect in an old farmhouse—knitted and homemade. It’s a small bed for such a tall guy, just a single. I put my hands out beside me, palms down, and bob up and down, like an apple dropped in water. The springs squeak a bit, showing their age and years of use. Old springs. Old house.
I stand. I walk past a heavily used, comfy-looking blue chair, over to the desk in front of a window. There’s not much on the desk. Some pens, pencils in a mug. A brown teapot. A few books. A pair of large silver scissors. I slide open the top drawer of the desk. There’s the usual desk stuff in there—paper clips, notepads. There’s also a brown envelope. It has Us printed on the outside. It looks like Jake’s handwriting. I can’t just leave it. I pick it up, open it.
Inside are photos. I probably shouldn’t be doing this. It’s not really my business. I flip through them. There are about twenty or thirty. They’re all close-up shots. Body parts. Knees. Elbows. Fingers. Lots of toes. Some lips and teeth, gums. A few extreme close-ups, just hair and skin, pimples maybe. I can’t tell if they’re all the same person or not. I put them back in the envelope.
I’ve never seen photos like that. Are they some sort of art thing? Like for a show, or display, or some installation? Jake has mentioned to me that he’s into photography and that the only activity he did outside of school was art lessons. He said he has a really nice camera that he saved up for.
There are lots of photos around the room, too, scenes, some of flowers and trees, and people. I don’t recognize any of the faces. The only one of Jake I’ve seen in the house is that one downstairs by the fire, the one he claimed was him when he was a kid. But it wasn’t. I’m sure it wasn’t. That means I’ve never seen a photo of Jake. He’s shy, I know, but still.
I pick up a framed photo from a shelf. A blond girl. She has a blue bandanna headband, tied in the front. His high school girlfriend? She’d been deeply in love with him, or so Jake claimed, and the relationship had never quite meant the same thing to him as it had to her. I bring the photo up to my face, almost touching my nose. But Jake had said she was a brunette and tall. This woman is blond, like me, and short. Who is she?
In the background I notice someone else. It’s a man, not Jake. He’s looking at the girl in the photo. He’s connected to the woman. He’s close and is looking at her. Did Jake take the photo?
I jump as a hand touches my shoulder.
It’s not Jake. It’s his father. “You startled me,” I say.