A grim quiet filled the house. It stunk of spilled beer and filth from countless shoes.
Gabe stood alone in the living room, staring vacantly out the window as it began to rain. Through the open front door, he could hear the pick, pick, pick of the drops hitting the empty plastic cups scattered across the lawn.
He visualized John’s clean-cut face slamming into the unforgiving ground, his neck snapping in an instant. The sheer, abrupt senselessness of the tragedy sent a shiver down Gabe’s spine. Just hours earlier, John had been full of vim and vigor, eagerly serving beer to legions of partiers in the basement.
The basement.
A damp wind blew in through the house. It swept past Gabe, down the hall, toward the kitchen. He followed it.
Gabe descended the basement steps and went to the closed boiler room door. Like an electric charge, something in the air seemed to pull at the hairs on his arms.
He had never cleaned the room. Brad, of course, would be incensed. He would rant that everyone else had done their part, and Gabe had totally blown off doing his. And Brad would be right. So disgustingly right.
The thought of Brad’s face — that smirking, cocky face — lit a ravenous brushfire of wrath in Gabe. He fixated on the corroding, metal door, unable to control his thoughts.
* * *
Morning came. Gabe hadn’t slept a single minute.
He lay in his bed and listened for Casey and Birdman to leave for their early classes. Once they were gone, he went downstairs and sat at the kitchen table.
There he waited.
Some time later, footsteps descended the stairs. Brad came into the kitchen, a backpack slung over his shoulder. The sight of Gabe brooding in the corner startled him.
“Gabe, what are you doing?” Brad said. “Don’t you have class?”
“Cancelled.”
“Um, ok. You all right?”
“Brad, guess what?”
“What?”
Gabe looked up at Brad for the first time. “Last night I cleaned the boiler room.”
“Good. Would have been nice if you had done it before the party, but whatever.”
“Want to see it?”
Brad opened the cabinet and grabbed a granola bar. “Nah, I gotta get to class. Running late as it is.”
“No, really. You need to see what I did. It’s amazing how different it looks.”
“No, dude. I’ll see it later. Gotta go.”
Gabe forced anger through his sleepless daze. “Look, man, you made me clean that godforsaken hole. The least you could do is take one measly minute to see what I did.”
Brad gawked at Gabe. “Okay, fine. Whatever.”
They went downstairs.
Gabe opened the boiler room door. “I changed the bulb, but I think there’s a blown fuse, so still no light. You can still see what I did if you take a look.”
Brad stepped inside. “Damn, well, it sure doesn’t smell any better.” He leaned forward to inspect the space behind the furnace. “You lying bastard, you didn’t clean anything!” he snapped, turning around. “And why is there a rope tied to the ceiling pipes?”
Gabe slammed shut the metal door. He took a padlock from his pocket and quickly secured it to the latch.
“Hey!” Brad yelled, rattling the door. “Open this goddamn door! What the hell are you doing?”
Gabe calmly walked up the basement stairs. He grabbed his acoustic guitar from the living room on his way out the front door. Taking a seat on the porch couch, he began to play, the sweet melody concealing Brad’s muted shrieks.
The rain intensified into a downpour.
An older man carrying an umbrella walked by. Gabe played louder. “Nice weather we’re having, huh?” Gabe joked over his strumming. The man gave him a polite smile and walked on.
Over time, Brad’s screams wore down into sporadic shouts. The shouts became tormented sobs.
Suddenly, the weeping ceased.
Gabe stopped playing his guitar. He listened carefully for any trace of human sound, hearing only the steady babble of the rain. He loved a nice, early-autumn storm, the way it washed away all the dirt and debris and left the air smelling earthy and alive.
He checked his watch. It was 3:42 p.m., about 15 minutes before Casey usually got home on Mondays. The rain began to subside, and as the sun peeked through the breaking clouds, Gabe went back inside to take his padlock off the boiler room door.
About Chris W. Martinez
One Comment
I take it the gist of the story is that there is a prescence in the house taking over people and making them do things they nornally wouldn’t. At the end you are left with the spirit taking over the one friend and then taking over the other to cause him to hang himself. I like the concept. I wasn’t too particular taken by the beginning which moved slowly but once it got going it was good. I didn’t care too much about the golf seen and thought it was a good scene outside if this is building on something else for the future. That is my take on it. Otherwise I like the concept behind the story. Nice State College reference.