Pt 3 - The Crawl Space

The footsteps overhead were muffled. It was hard for Declan to determine how many individuals there were- four, maybe five. The concussive steps swirled about as in some sort of strange dance. They were the steps of the careless, of the heedless. Mostly, it appeared, they were in the foyer, though at least one had gone off into the kitchen. They could hear someone rummaging through the drawers.

“What are they doing?” Tara whispered.

“Quiet,” Declan barked in a hushed tone that nevertheless conveyed his frustration. He did not need to see her face to know the look of fear that marked it. It had been the moments when faced with that helplessness that had stung him the most as she was growing up. Now, here, in the dark, he felt all but helpless again.

Their knees sunk into the wet sand of the crawlspace. Every movement was met by a wave of cobwebs so thick as to nearly impede their advance. They hung closed to the wall where they could cling to the studs and avoid venturing out too far into the damp mire. Though for years he had avoided going down here unless there had been a problem with the sump pump due to his intense distaste for all things creeping and crawling, he now gave no second thought to the discomfort. Fear necessitates compromise.

Into the punishing dark came only slivers of light from the narrow slits between the slowly warping boards of the stairs which descended directly overhead. Age had cracked and shifted the wood, time and age- the omnipresent enemies. There was not enough of a gap to see through, not even shadows or silhouettes, but only to allow enough light in to punctuate the darkness with pinprick starlight.

He felt his daughter push in tighter against him as the footsteps descended the basement stairs. A few- however many intruders there actually were- remained on the main level while at least one had gone to the upper. Now one had reached the basement landing. He leaned hard against the panel where they had entered the crawl. If anyone was to explore the crawl they would have to push the panel in and off the side. Declan positioned his body to make this impossible or at least improbable. An explorer should meet with the resistance and assume that the way was simply sealed. At least he hoped they would. They had not had much time to plan their escape. All of their possessions, those precious necessities such as food and water, were still upstairs. Beyond that, everything else, the trappings of life- the photos, the keepsakes, and the albums- sat on shelves that were now at the mercy of faceless raiders. He reached back in the dark for Tara’s hand.

She was the one who had seen them coming. Foolishly, he had been negligent, out in the back tracing out the dimensions that would be their garden, their little Eden. He heard too late the tinny shatter of windows as the raiders pillaged a house down the street. There had been little chance of escape and less of success in a direct confrontation. Tara, who had been up in her bedroom, the one room in the house that still retained the appearance of normalcy, as if nothing had ever happened, saw them approach. She ran to the back door and gestured wildly in a strange pantomime until he, who had been laying out some salvaged lumber for a raised bed, recognized her attempt and immediately understood the peril. As he pushed past her into the house, he took hold and pulled her on.

Now, only silence. Unnatural silence. Then, footsteps on the tile floor. He heard Tara’s muffled, panicked breathing. He fought to silence his own. In the pregnant distance between breaths there was only emptiness and malice. Each hesitating step reverberated in the cavernous expanse, still more in the void within in his mind. Still he clutched desperately to his daughter’s trembling hand.