The next day I felt a series of waves cresting and breaking against the existence I’d made for myself. The reality I’d curated. Each one took a little piece of that existence with it as I willed it back out to sea.
I didn’t awake to an epiphany about the afterlife or hauntings or anything like that (though I could feel one coming). It was just the sense that… I’d already lost. That my life was over. Despite the statistical assurance that I likely had fifty, sixty or even seventy years left.
What was the point?
I conducted an internal inventory of what might be missing. We hadn’t decided against having kids. We hadn’t decided for it, either. So that was still on the table. I loved my husband. My job… not so much… but it paid more than half the rent. I hadn’t been abused as a child (I didn’t think so, at least). I had been finding joy in books, friends, movies. I had been known to drive around singing at the top of my lungs. Overall I had a better life than most people in history had ever known. I had joy… right?
Why was it gone all of the sudden?
Was this just straight up depression? I hoped so because the one thing I couldn’t deal with was the absolute clarity and certainty regarding the futility of carrying on.
I worked from home, so after my husband departed for the day I tried to wriggle into the crawlspace on my own – if for no other reason than to extinguish the newly lit fire in my brain.
Boomer was against the idea. He stood firm at the imaginary threshold in the hallway, whining at me as I lifted the grate to the space below. ‘Don’t do it. Don’t. Do. It.’
I could only fit my head, one arm and a shoulder inside. I dangled down like a broken marionette. What felt like all of my blood rushed into my brain… I saw dirt… cobwebs… a giant pile of lint (seemingly our dryer was emptying under the house)… and a dark, thickened patch of mud just at the edge of the space. Right by the wall. It almost looked like a scab. My eyes lingered on it. Was it… moving? Was the light just dancing across it or was the goddamn spot trying to form a bubble? Like a stew about to boil?
I could feel my hair dragging along the dirt. Visions of spiders – or god forbid, that little girl’s hand snagging my locks and wrapping them around her fist – flashed upon me. *‘Oh my god, what if one of those scabby spots is right beneath me and my hair’s in that’?
I pulled myself back into the relative safety of my home, checked my hair for debris and/or insects in the bathroom mirror, and tried to continue on with my day.
Around lunchtime Boomer pawed at the door. I let him out into the yard without even thinking about it, only to be rewarded with a sharp series of barks. I opened the door again and saw my neighbor standing in the middle of the yard.
In his Seventies. Wearing shorts with black socks that highlighted the sores on his crepe-like calves. Clad in a light Hawaiian shirt with dark, yellow pit stains. A plastic spoon lodged into his mouth like an oversized toothpick. His leathery skin glowing orange with nicotine.
My landlord.
Boomer stood two yards away. Bellowing at him.
The man garbled his words, not bothering to remove the spoon from his mouth, “any work you need done, just let me know.”
I grabbed Boomer’s collar just in case. I didn’t need a lawsuit or eviction co-mingling with my newly found sense of dread.
“Of course. Will do,” I said before turning back to the house with Boomer in tow.
“What I mean is… you see anything wrong… don’t touch it.”
I stopped and turned back to face him. “I won’t.”
My eyes darted above him for a moment and I caught a glimpse of a face behind one of his grimy windows. Wide eyes. Scared. The details otherwise obscured by filth. Maybe his wife? I’d only met her the one time but it didn’t really look like her, as much as I’d like to believe that it was.
I shut it down. “There’s lint underneath the house,” I said. “From the dryer. I think it’s a fire hazard.”
He nodded. “Heard you screaming last night. Just know that if anything catches you by surprise… maybe it’s there to keep something worse away.”
I was about to ask him about the girl but he cut me off as soon as I opened my mouth.
“Just general advice,” he said as he turned back to his house, ending the conversation.
My husband was in an awful mood when arrived home that evening. Lack of sleep perhaps. He hid it well enough but when I mentioned my newfound despair he cut me off. “We’re both tired, okay?”
We ate a quiet dinner and watched Netflix after. It was his night to pick the show, so I mainly stuck to my phone, searching the records of the house to see if anyone had died in it. I couldn’t get an answer, which I supposed meant “no.”
Washing my face before bed, I smelled something putrid in the sink. Like food rotting. Or a dead animal. I glanced down the drain and saw a white fungus lining the pipe… it looked like a throat but pale… as though it had been choked long ago.
I looked around the room, trying to get a sense of the geography as it related to the crawlspace beneath me. Was the sink above the wet, dark spot in the dirt? If so, great news, it was just this shit dripping down onto it and not some kind of living scab.
But it wasn’t.
Getting a sense of things… the scabby section of earth would be right behind me… right behind the shallow closet… not the sink.
I poured some liquid drainer into the porcelain orifice and checked the closet on my way back to the bedroom. It was bone dry. Nothing dripping. Nothing to birth the spot below it.
I never even fell asleep that night.
My husband did. Quickly. I was jealous until I considered the possible effects on his mood tomorrow.
Instead of sleeping, I stared at the ceiling, worried that if I closed my eyes I would wake to the sight of the girl by my bed.
But I didn’t have to sleep for this to happen.
I don’t even remember letting my left hand spill over the edge of the mattress. In fact, I was pretty sure I was keeping it guarded against my chest. But at some point my vigilance must have wavered because my hand was now outstretched into what might as well have been the void.
I felt her cold, dead palms cupping it.
I slowly turned my head to the side and there she was. Knelt beside me. Almost in prayer. My hand held between hers. I think she tried to smile… but her teeth had rotted to the point where it could have just as easily been a menacing leer.
I did not scream. As soon as my eyes met hers I knew that she meant no harm.
I knew… in that moment… that my husband would attempt to rid the house of her if this happened again. Either by getting me some kind of treatment or indulging in a supernatural fix (likely the former, knowing him).
I also know that without her… this house would be far more dangerous.