I’m writing this from a hospital bed in Allentown, PA.
The psychiatrist here has been coming in every few hours. She asked me to write down “what I think happened.”
Well, I’ll do you one better, Dr. Oberg. I’ll tell everyone exactly what happened.
Two days ago I was pulled from the rubble of my home after being trapped for nearly 20 hours.
But if you want to know what caused that to happen, we’ve got to go way back. To 5th grade. To Mrs Barshackey’s math class.
--
Sometimes she’d pass out these calculators - huge, clunky things in hard leather cases. They were the size of a brick and seemed dated even in ‘96.
I hated math, but the calculators were a source of muted fascination - like some hefty, expensive thing we weren’t allowed to play with at home.
But then I figured out how to make them scandalous… and they were much more fun.
One day I’m sitting in class. Bored. Mrs. Barshackey clomps over to the supply closet in her loud heels and lifts out the milk crate full of calculators.
She places one on my desk.
I flip open the leather case. It’s still facing away from me, but I start pushing buttons anyway.
As the little upside-down LCD digits appear on the screen I notice something - some of them look like letters.
What interesting things might I spell?
I started with the usual curse words, of course.
No luck.
Probably half the class later, I figured out that if I typed in 1-1-3-4, the little upside-down LCD digits spelled out H-E-L-L.
If you grew up in the 90’s and also did this on your calculator, you’re welcome. I started it.
I’ll admit I was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t spell a real curse word on my calculator, but the H-E-L-L trick was a hit with my classmates.
Except Mara.
Mara was weird. She didn’t talk much. Her family was very religious, and Mara most certainly did not dress like the rest of us. She wore long, dark-colored skirts, thick dark socks, clunky shoes, baggy sweaters, and perhaps worst of all, a Minnie Mouse watch.
One day, I was passing around my corrupted calculator - prompting giggles from my classmates and side-eye from Mrs. Barshackey.
Then someone passed it to Mara.
From behind, I watched her head of thick dark hair look down at it. She kept it for a long time.
I rolled my eyes. More giggles from friends.
Then she spun around to face me.
Her dour face and dark eyes held a mixture of judgment… and something else, which I realized after a long awkward moment, was fear.
She pressed the clear button and handed the calculator back to me. She stared.
Its tiny display now showed a lame little “0”. She had wiped my orthographic masterpiece from the face of the Earth.
That arrogant creep.
That week I worked a little harder than usual to ensure she was ostracized.
But then I felt bad.
Not because I had started an uncouth, nationwide calculator trend that was spreading like wildfire among the nation’s 10-year-olds, or because I bullied Mara in the subtle way “nice” kids bully other kids, but because of… the sinkhole.
I grew up in the suburbs of Allentown. It’s a cookie-cutter, suburban landscape of developments that’s immensely boring… save for one thing - now and then the Earth itself opens up and swallows whatever lies on its surface.
Be it livestock, a home, a car, or an elementary school like mine.
We were in math class and I’d gotten my calculator. I’d just uncovered its cute little solar panel, powered it up, and typed in those vile numbers again… 1-1-3-4.
I’ll never forget the sound.
They say tornadoes sound like freight trains. I’ve never been in a tornado, but I can tell you that a sinkhole opening up sounds just like a freight train.
The deep rumble started quietly, almost imperceptible. I noticed the heavy, wooden classroom door thudding lightly in its frame.
Then the sound climbed up the classroom walls. It moved through the carpet below my feet. I felt it as much as I heard it.
That classroom door now shook so violently that it sounded like it was being slammed over and over.
It all built to a deafening crescendo. Then the building bent.
The wall behind the chalkboard separated from the ceiling and revealed bright, blue sky.
The clock above the door rattled on the hook that held it in place. Its fat, short hand pointing halfway between 11 and 12, and its long, skinny hand almost touching the 7, but not quite.
11:34.
Mara spun around and stared.
Then a huge, cement wall fell towards her.
I ducked under my desk.
I never did the calculator trick again.
—
As a teenager in the 2000’s, our oven had one of those LED clocks with the yellow numbers. I hated that clock - mostly because I often noticed that it read 11:34.
There was a reasonable explanation for that. It’s just what time in the morning this lazy teenager emerged from his bedroom on a summer weekend, shuffled downstairs, poured himself a huge bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios, and happened to glance at the oven clock.
And then I’d remember… Mara never got to be a teenager.
When I was up late, maybe gossiping with a friend on the phone, and would come downstairs for a glass of water, I’d never look at that clock on the stove.
I already knew what time it was.
I’d shut the lights off and run upstairs. As if the number itself was going to grab me by my ankles and drag me screaming into a chasm under our house.
—
Now I’m in my 30’s.
This glance-at-a-clock-and-it-says-11:34-thing has gone on most of my life now. I used to joke with myself that it’s probably just what time I’ll die - one day I’ll step off a curb, look down at my phone like a jerk, notice it’s 11:34, then promptly get hit by a cross-town bus. I was kind of at peace with it.
And I didn’t cause a sinkhole to open up anyway. Right?
My wife and I had been trying to buy a house for over two years, but houses were at a premium and all seem to be at the top of our budget.
There was this one house though that came up all the time in our searches. Ugly cream-colored siding, dark on the inside, but it was huge with a basement and a little backyard in a nice neighborhood, despite being a bit close to the train tracks.
It was almost half the price of every other house in the area.
For two years, my wife said the listing must be a mistake, or that there must be something seriously wrong with it, I’d nod and agree.
But I agreed mostly because of the address - 1134 Clayton Ln.
Then we got desperate.
It seemed like all the houses in the world would be gone and we’d be stuck renting a tiny apartment forever.
I called the listing agent. We went to see it. It was everything we ever wanted. Why had we waited so long?
Our offer was accepted and I was ecstatic. We moved in two months later.
My wife found a box of the previous owner’s stuff in the basement. We called the agent, but the family never came to pick it up. I told her never to take it out again.
--
The sounds started recently. A few days after we moved in. My wife said it was the freight train tracks nearby.
Every night, it got louder. She’d sleep peacefully through it.
I didn’t.
Because I knew it wasn’t a freight train.
The other night, she slept quietly beside me. Lightly snoring, as she often does.
But the clattering and banging was getting too loud. The noise was enveloping me.
I stepped quietly from my bed and moved down the stairs.
The walls began to shake.
I opened the basement door and peered into the darkness. It peered back.
I pulled the chain on the lightbulb over the stairs. It swung back and forth wildly… because our house was now shaking… wildly.
I moved down and into the darkness. Into the room where the furnace roared.
The dark brown leather box left by the previous owners sat where I told my wife to leave it.
I opened it.
A heap of newspaper articles with bold headlines that blared words like “tragedy” and “loss” above pictures of the wreckage of my elementary school.
I moved them aside.
A portrait of a girl with dark eyes and a dour face stared back at me.
Under it was a Minnie Mouse watch.
Its second hand ticked. Its fat hour hand pointed halfway between 11 and 12. Its minute hand nearly touched the 7.
The last thing I remember was Minnie Mouse. Smiling at me as the walls fell in.