IT LIVES IN THE BASEMENT (2 page)

Sighing in frustration, he said, “
My guts telling me Pat and John didn’t take their cats and walk off somewhere.  Their car is here, but we didn’t find any car keys, and the house was locked, from the inside.  Remember?  I had to cut the screen on the front door to use the key.  The refrigerator is stocked and there are eleven cans of beer from a twelve pack.  There isn’t a single reason I see that would make two people just up and leave.  Hell, even their rent is paid for almost a month.  But still, we have two people missing, and three cats.  I wish I could find whatever it was I noticed before.”

From the bedroom doorway Daniels said, “Well, the landlord
’s gone, Lieutenant.  He said he wouldn’t know if there were any missing items anyway, except the cats.”  With a trace of awe in his voice, he said, “Christ.  This place is like a library.  Why would they have so many damn books?”

Smiling tolerantly, Flynn explained, “Well Daniels, you see, people who enjoy reading tend to collect books so they can reread them on occasion.”

Turning, the young, uniformed Officer stared at the tall bookshelves lining the walls of the living and dining room.  With incredibility he said, “You mean they’d read the same book more than once?  Why would anybody want to read the same book more than once, if they didn’t have to?”

Flynn said softly, “it’s apparent to me Officer Daniels, you
’ve never squandered your valuable time on the elements of higher education, nor on the dubious and possibly, to someone of your density, dangerous aspects of deep thinking.”

Beaming a proud smile,
Officer Daniels said, “Why, thank-you, Lieutenant.”

Turning away, Mickosky coughed into his hand, trying to hold back the chuckle he couldn’t stop.

Daniels asked, “Uh, do you figure these people just left, Lieutenant?  I mean, their car is still here, and the house was locked from the inside, their clothes are still here and that looks like a purse on the floor over there next to that bookcase.”

Snapping his fingers, the salt and pepper
-haired man jumped up.  “That’s it.  Right out the mouths of babes.  Thank-you, Daniels.  Good work.”

As Flynn rushed past him out the door, Daniels blushing, said, “Uh, thank-you, sir.”  When the Lieutenant was gone, he leaned toward his partner and asked, “Uh, Mick, what did I say?”

Smiling, Mickosky patted his shoulder. “Oh, Daniels.  Don’t worry about it, you did fine.  You’ll –-.”  He was cut off as a call for squad car 306 blared from his radio.  Mickosky went to find Flynn, who was kneeling on the floor next to the television, a large, black purse dumped out on the brown carpet.  “Lieutenant, do you need us any longer?  We have a bad accident a few blocks from here.”

Flynn glanced up at him. “No, Mic
k.  Go ahead.  And thanks for your help.”

Mickosky ginned, nodded and gave a two-fingered salute, then headed for the front door, talking into his radio co
nfirming car 306 was enroute.  Looking out the front window, Lieutenant Flynn winced as their squad car squealed down the street sideways, lights flashing, sirens blaring.  Daniels was driving, a big grin across his face, while white-faced Mickosky clung to the dashboard.

Shaking his head at their foolishness, Flynn knelt back down.  Using his ballpoint pen, he shuffled the contents from the purse around.  He unsnapped the suede
-covered wallet and flipped it open.  Inside was a checkbook, three credit cards secured in glassine envelopes and a blue pen in a slot, with gold lettering on it saying “Patricia Forbes”. 

Checking the account balance in the back of the checkbook, he said softly, “Okay, Pat.  Talk to me, girl.  You didn’t leave and forget to take your purse.  Not with three current credit cards and more than seven hundred dollars in your checking account.  So where are you?  And where are John, and your three cats?  C’mon girl, talk to me.”

Pushing a few more items around with his pen, he used his handkerchief to pick up a key-ring
with a large silver tag and a Libra sign stamped on it.  Striding long-legged to the front door, he used the first key on the ring to lock/unlock the front door.  He stepped out into the cold toward an old, rusty, red Mustang hatchback.  Using the round key, he unlocked the hatchback and stared inside: an old paintbrush, a worn-out pair of gloves, a few empty beer cans, and sacks from some fast food joints.  Nothing else. 

Shivering, he shut the hatchback and headed for the warm house.
  At the front door, Flynn turned.  None of the eight people standing around had spoken to him, although they watched his every movement.  Turning, he went back inside, content to leave the eight sightseers standing outdoors in the crisp nine degree air.  He shivered again as he headed toward the kitchen, grateful when he heard the furnace kick on.

In the kitchen, he
took a coffee mug out of the dish strainer, filled it with water and placed the mug inside the microwave, located in the pantry.  After the microwave beeped, he added instant coffee, which he’d found on the counter.  Sitting at the small, tan kitchen table, he lit a cigarette then sipped his steaming coffee.  Leaning back in the kitchen chair, long legs outstretched, he surveyed the room. 

He
’d never seen a kitchen with five doorways.  Two of the doorways were on the east side of the room, one for the backdoor and the other for the bathroom.  Then on the south side of the room, behind where he sat, was a doorway for the pantry and right next to it, the doorway to the basement.  The last doorway was on the west wall, leading into the dining room/library.  The kitchen table sat against the west wall, and when he leaned back, he could see from the kitchen, through the dining room, into the living room.

He sat there, flicking his cigarette into the ashtray, waiting, but not s
ure why.  One thing he felt certain of though, that Pat Forbes wasn’t going to come home and demand to know who the stranger was sitting in her kitchen, drinking her coffee.   And he also felt John Sempek wasn’t coming back home either.  He couldn’t find any hard evidence indicating something was wrong, just some circumstantial clues.  Making a judgment call without some evidence of violence, a break-in or other wrongdoing was difficult.  Yet he knew these people weren’t alive any longer.  He could feel it in his gut, as he sat in their kitchen, sipping their coffee.

To himself, he said, “Well, Flynn, if you’re wrong, it sure as hell won’t be the first time.”  Then he smiled, as he knew his repu
tation over the years had proven his hunches were more often right than wrong.  And when he felt as certain, as he did now, sitting here sipping their coffee, he had never been wrong.

When his mug was empty, he refilled it and placed it
back in the microwave.  As he waited for the beep, he said to the kitchen, “Well, Pat, you’re not talking to me at all.  Maybe John will.”

With a long-legged stride, he went back
into the front bedroom, picking up the spiral notebook Daniels had shown him earlier, then headed back toward the beeping microwave.  As he passed in front of the bedroom doorway, on the south side of the dining room, the old floorboards gave out a protesting squeak.  In one spot, the worn floorboard felt squishy under his foot.

Back at the kitchen table, with his hot coffee, he opened the notebook saying, “Okay, John, let’
s see what you have to say.”

 
John Sempek wrote stories, and what the Lieutenant was looking at was obviously another of his efforts. 

“Well, John, since I have a lack of evidence to go on, and I sure as hell don’t want to go out and talk with your neighbors in the cold, I think I’ll kill some time and read your story.  Let’s see what kind of writer you were.”  He smiled when he realized he
’d used the past tense.

In the notebook were thirteen handwritten pages, the writing in pencil.  He turned to the beginning and read:

‘I hope no one reads this, because that means I’m dead.  I know the cats are, and I’m positive Pat is too.  They were killed by this Thing living in our basement.  I know this sounds crazy, but what I’m saying is true.  I’ve never seen the Thing, but have caught glimpses of it several times.

‘Being a rational man, and knowing the kind of imagination I have, I told myself what I was seeing was my eyes playing
tricks on me, or a trick of the shadows.  For example, when you’re lying in bed in the dark of the night and you see clothing piled up on a chair, though you know those are the same clothes you took off before going to bed, you have one hell of a time convincing yourself, and your frightened mind, that there isn’t someone, or something standing there, watching you.

‘It became easier for me to ignore what I was occasionally seeing, and I had myself half convinced it was our new, black kitten
I was catching glimpses of, as a dark ball of fur darted around.  So, whatever has happened to Pat is my fault.  Because you see, our cats disappeared on Monday, yet early on Tuesday, when I again saw that same dark ball of fur, I still told myself it was Charlie.  I had to.  What else could I tell myself it was?  Please, be patient and I’ll try to explain the best I can.’

Glancing up, Flynn rolled his shoulders then lit another cigarette.  The handwriting was in light pencil, and difficult to read.  The faint writing didn’t make it any easier on his already tired eyes.  He sipped his coffee and began reading again.

‘We already had two big, white female cats, Muffitt and Stuffitt, and a few months ago we took in a small kitten, Charlie, who’d been born wild.  We kept the cats’ food and water bowls in the basement.  Cats are sloppy eaters and a kitten is worse.  Anyway, after we took in the kitten, the amount of dry cat food we were going through more than doubled, and the water bowls were always empty.  Pat and I thought it strange that suddenly we were going through eight to ten pounds of dry cat food a week.  It wasn’t possible for one small kitten to eat five or six times what our full-grown cats did, even when they’d been kittens themselves.  But we thought that had to be the reason, and let it go.

‘Monday, I was home all day until it was time to pick up Pat from work at
5:00 pm.  I’d been in the front bedroom we use as our office, working on my stories, except for trips to the bathroom or coffee.  At 4:05 pm, I went to the kitchen, grabbed a beer and tried to unwind before I had to go fight traffic to pick up Pat.  On each trip from the office, I’d seen at least one or all three of the cats somewhere in the house.   But when I went into the kitchen for the beer, I’m positive I didn’t see any of them.  Their disappearance didn’t register with me at that time, as there have been more than one occasion when all three of the cats were in the basement together.

‘
Feline lovers understand that cats always seem to know what time you get up in the morning and when you come home at night.  Well, all three of them would be there waiting for Pat the minute she set her foot through the door.  They didn’t care about me, but Pat always had to stop and pet or scratch them the minute she came home.  This was an established ritual for them.

‘Anyway, I picked up Pat, and we went to this bar we like to frequent.  We
arrived home around 7:30, and that’s when it became apparent there was something wrong.  We didn’t see any cats.  We searched the house, but they weren’t anywhere.  Pat became really upset.  By the time we went to bed, she was convinced I’d done something to the damn cats, because I’ve always teased Pat about cooking them for dinner and making house slippers out of their fur.

‘The only lame excuse
I had was that the landlord might’ve stopped over after I left, and the cats spooked and ran outdoors.  But we knew my explanation was a crock of bullshit, our cats wouldn’t go near the door as it was damn cold outside on Monday.  Pat cried herself to sleep, hating me, while I laid there trying to remember the last time I saw the dummies.’

Again
, Flynn looked up from the notebook, rolled his shoulders then lit another smoke.  He sipped his cold coffee, and went back to the story.

‘Pat
is a hard worker, and usually gets up at 5:00 am, but many times I wake earlier than her.  Once I awake I can’t go back to sleep, so instead of tossing and turning and accidentally waking Pat, I get out of bed and go work on my stories.  And because I don’t want to disturb her, I usually don’t turn on the bedroom light.

‘On Tuesday, I awoke at 3:10 am. 
I carefully climbed out of bed, and using the flashlight from the nightstand, proceeded to dress.  When the flashlight beam hit my pile of clothing, I thought I saw the Thing again, or at least a part of it, as it disappeared under the bed.  I caught a fast glimpse of something that looked like coarse, brown hair.  Then it was gone.  I stood staring at the spot for a few seconds, then I grabbed my clothes and left.  And God help me, I never looked under the damn bed.  I kept telling myself it was a shadow from moving the flashlight around.  But you see, I never knelt and looked.  If I had, Pat would still be alive.

‘I went into the kitchen and turned the light on, but not the
bathroom light.   After I flushed the toilet, I walked back into the kitchen, past the open basement doorway, and from the corner of my eye, I thought I saw two, round, yellow eyes reflecting the kitchen light back up to me from the bottom of the basement steps.  I stopped and peered down the stairs but wasn’t able to see very far in the dark, so I turned on the basement light.  There was nothing on the bottom step.