The Year's Best Horror Stories 11

MRS. HALFBOOGER’S BASEMENT by Lawrence C. Connolly

Lawrence C. Connolly is another of the new writers in the science fiction/fantasy field who got a start in the pages of the patriarchal Amazing and the late Fantastic during the heroic struggle of former editor Elinor Mavor to keep the companion magazines afloat on a budget that wouldn’t feed a parking meter. Connolly’s fiction has also appeared in Twilight Zone Magazine, and a story he published there previous to “Mrs. Halfbooger’s Basement” was selected by Martin Greenberg for his upcoming anthology, 100 Great Fantasy Short-Short Stories. Connolly, who now lives in Pittsburgh, has worked as a newspaper reporter, print shop manager, folk singer, and studio musician. He is also a poet. When asked for biographical information, Connolly reports: “This is all quite a shock. I really thought I would grow up to be a folk singer. Maybe I would have if I hadn’t given it up a few years ago to write scary stories. My novel will be done any month now—at least, that’s what I keep telling myself.”

It was early summer. It was early night. And Mrs. Halfbooger hadn’t been out of the house in nearly a week, the group of nine-year-old boys noticed.

Buckeye was thinking seriously about going home when Max Swanson got the window open. Lanny Rosenberg looked at Max’s puffed cheeks, then up at the window, then back at Max. “Can’t you do any better?”

Max stopped straining against the window and looked down at Lanny like he was looking at a maggot. “Maybe you can do better, booger face.”

“Maybe I can but don’t want to.”

“Maybe I can come down there and break your nose.” Max was standing on an old 7-Up case that Buckeye had found lying by the creek. Buckeye had picked it up, figuring it was valuable, but Max had taken it from him. Max was one of the bad things that had entered Buckeye’s life since being thrown out of Mother of Christ Elementary School. If it hadn’t been for Max, Thomas Edison Elementary might have been heaven. Most of the new friends he’d met there were pretty wimpy, except for Max.

“Sure don’t look very wide, Max,” said Willy Haynek, standing on his toes to get a look at the open window.

Max gave another push. “I think it’s warped, or something.”

“Can you get through?” asked Lanny.

“What do I look like? A rail?”

“What about Sean?” asked Lanny. “I bet Sean could get through.”

Max smiled. “Hey, yeah.” He looked around. “Hey, Buckeye! What’re you doing over there, Buckeye?”

That was another thing Buckeye didn’t like about Max. Max called him Buckeye like it was something creepy, and it made him feel like a weirdo every time the fat kid said it. He was beginning to wish he’d never told anyone at Edison that his old friends had called him Buckeye.

Not that it mattered. Max went through life looking for things to pick on, and Buckeye, who’d had an accident with a garden rake a few years back, was an easy mark. It’s hard not to be obvious with a left eye that looks like a horse chestnut.

“Hey, Buckeye! You dreaming, or what? Get over here.”

“What?”

“You’re going inside,” said Max.

Buckeye looked at the tight space between window and window sill. The light was bad. The sun had gone down. The round summer moon wasn’t up yet. And there wasn’t much to see—a thin strip of darker shadow in the dusk-grey wall of old Mrs. Halfbooger’s house.

The house was an old thing with peeling wood and sagging gutters. And it leaned—though that wasn’t so noticeable up close. Up close it just looked old—almost as old as Mrs. Halfbooger, who was at least a hundred. You could tell she was a hundred by the way she walked. Mrs. Halfbooger was the stoopingest woman in West Fenton.

The four of them had been watching her nearly three weeks now, sitting across the creek, on a tree-covered hill almost as high as the one Mrs. Halfbooger lived on. They would sit in Lanny’s tree fort, drink Orange Crush, and fight over Buckeye’s telescope.

There wasn’t much to see. Her name was Eva Hofburger. Calling her Halfbooger had started as a joke. No one laughed at the joke anymore, but the name lingered out of habit.

She was fifteen years a widow and all her life lonely. Albert Hofburger had “lived away” for the better part of the marriage. They had no children. And all the boys ever got to see from their across-the-creek tree fort were the comings and goings of an old, empty-eyed woman. Sometimes she would return home carrying packages from Kiddy Mart. Other times she would go out an hour or so before dark and not return until after the boys had gone home…

But these were mysteries too mundane for nine-year-old boys looking to fill an empty summer. They watched her because the tree fort made it handy. They made her a witch because she was old.

They would watch her driving away, spotted hand perched on the steering wheel of her ’47 Buick, and they would scare themselves silly with made-up stories about where she was going—about things she was going to do. They filled their stories with monsters, and ghouls, and werewolves, and bloodsuckers…

But they didn’t start getting close to the real horror until one day when Mrs. Halfbooger didn’t go out. That had been Tuesday.

They didn’t see her Wednesday either.

They saw her Thursday evening. She came out dressed in neat old-lady clothes and stood by the Buick. She looked sick. Lanny had the telescope, but the other three could tell just as well without it. She put her hand on the hood and stared down the hill, out toward the road that led to Kiddy Mart, out at the setting sun and the hazy glow that was Philadelphia. She stood that way a long time. Then she wiped her eyes and went back inside.

She didn’t come out Friday.

Saturday it rained. The tree fort didn’t have a roof, so they got together at Willy’s and told stories about her.

When she didn’t come out Sunday, Max said they ought to see if she was dead. But they didn’t.

Nor did they go when she didn’t come out Monday.

But when it was Tuesday again—when the long boring afternoon began fading to dusk, they decided to have a look. And a look was all it was supposed to have been until Max got the window open.

Buckeye stared at the window and wondered if being part of this was such a good idea.

“I don’t think I’ll fit, Max.”

“Don’t be a creep. You haven’t even tried.”

“What am I supposed to do if I get in there?”

Max jumped down from the 7-Up case. He was fat—probably the fattest kid Buckeye had ever seen. There were a few older kids at Edison who could get away with calling him Maximum Swanson or even Tiny Tuba. But the only nine-year-old who’d ever tried it had ended up having to eat a green fly before Max would get off him. That kid had been Buckeye. And the green fly had been worth it.

“When you get in there,” said Max, “you open the front door and let us in.”

“What if it won’t open?” said Buckeye.

“Don’t be stupid. It’s a door, isn’t it? It’s just locked—that’s all. All you have to do is slide inside and unlock it.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to,” said Willy, who’d been looking at the house and thinking there might be Dangerous Things inside. Dangerous Things to Willy usually meant animals. It didn’t matter what kind. If it was larger than a squirrel it was a Dangerous Thing.

But Max wasn’t taking arguments. His arms were already wrapping around Buckeye. “Naw, he wants to go in there. Don’t you, Buckeye?” Max heaved him up and set him on the 7-Up case. Buckeye looked down and saw the red-lettered slogan between his summer-torn sneakers: YOU LIKE IT, IT LIKES YOU.

He looked through the open space below the window, “It smells funny in there.”

“C’mon, Buckeye. Try it!”

Buckeye stuck his head through the crack. The room smelled old.

“What do you see?” asked Willy.

Buckeye looked through the dimness. The room was full of old furniture. A table. Chairs. A sofa with its insides starting to come through. The wallpaper was water-stained—in some places it had crumbled away. Flaking paint hung from the ceiling. The floor was bare, and in it, below the window, was a grill-covered hole that went through to what looked to be the basement.

“Looks spooky,” said Buckeye.

“Can you get through?” said Max.

“I don’t know. It’s awful tight.”

“Like fun!” said Max, and Buckeye felt the fat boy’s hands close on his ankles, lifting him off the pop case.

“Hey!”

Buckeye slid forward until he dangled from the waist, looking down at the floor. Something slipped from his shirt pocket. It fell, landed on the floor, stood on edge… It teetered, a one-legged dancer going off balance. And then it fell—sideways, right through the grill-covered hole in the floor.

“My key!”

“What’d he say?” asked Max.

“Monkey!” shrieked Willy, thinking of Dangerous Things.

Max climbed up beside Buckeye, looking through the dirty glass. “There ain’t no monkey in there.”

Buckeye knew there was no way out of it now. He was going inside. The key was his mother’s only one to the front door. She’d given it to him earlier that day so he could let himself in while she was up the street having tea with Mrs. Gruber. It was a silly thing, always having to lock the door. His mother was a lot like Willy. Everything scared her—especially things she read in the newspaper. Lately she’d been worrying about Buckeye not being home by eight-thirty each night. It had something to do with the Philadelphia Missing Persons Bureau not being able to locate some missing kids. Usually Buckeye got in the house at a quarter to nine, and usually he got strapped for it. He wished his mom would stop reading the paper.

And he wished he’d remembered to return the key when she’d gotten back from Mrs. Gruber’s.

“I said, my key. It fell through the floor.”

She was going to kill him this time. She was going to take the television and pitch his comic books. She was going to put a lock on his bike and make him be an altar boy like wimpy Stevie Steedle. She was going to come down on him the same way she had the morning after he and Tommy Baker broke into the Catholic school looking for vampires—only this time it was going to be worse…

He didn’t realize he was all the way inside the house until he turned around and saw Max staring at him through the dirty window.

“He got through,” Max was saying. “You see that? The little creep went right through.”

Buckeye looked around. The room looked creepier from all the way in. There was a closed-up smell, like the room was full of last year’s air.

He got on his knees and looked through the grill on the floor—nothing there. Nothing but darkness. He was going to have to look in the basement.

Max banged on the window. “Hey, Buckeye! How about the door?”

He looked up. All three boys were standing on the pop case now—their faces pressed against the dirty glass. Willy was on one side, his uncombed hair sticking out everywhere. He looked scared. Lanny was on the other side, looking more sure of himself. Max was in the middle. Buckeye thought they looked like Moe, Larry, and Curly.

“C’mon, creepo! The door!”

He stepped out of the room and moved into a wide hall. There was a light switch on the wall. He snapped it. A bulb came on in the high ceiling. Weak forty-watt light oozed down the faded walls, spreading out over the floor. He could see the wallpaper design dimly now. It was a flower design, flowers and children dancing in floor-to-ceiling helices—all but scrubbed away from too many washings. This ceiling was the same as the other room’s, cracked and peeling. The floor was the same too, bare and wooden.

He came to the front door, wrapped his hands around the knob and tried turning. It wouldn’t turn. He tried pulling. Pulling didn’t work either. He kicked it with his foot and hit it with his hand. No good. It was locked on both sides.

He kicked it again. It was like kicking a tree.

Buckeye went back to the window.

“It won’t open,” he said.

Max looked mad. Lanny and Willy looked ready to leave.

Max said, “Maybe we should smash in the window.”

“Isn’t that against the law?” said Willy. And, when Max didn’t answer: “I’m going home.”

“Hey, wait a minute!” Buckeye leaned out the window. “We gotta find my key.”

“How’re we gonna do that if you won’t let us in?” said Max.

Willy said, “Let’s go home, Max.”

Max pretended he didn’t hear. “What’s it like in there, Buckeye?”

“Just an old house.”

“Is the witch in there?”

“I didn’t see her.”

“This isn’t even fun,” said Lanny, who was now standing where, a short time ago, Buckeye had been thinking about going home. “Come on, Sean. Get out of there and let’s go.”

“But my key!” said Buckeye.

“Is it that important?” asked Willy.

“They’ll kill me!” he said.

“You guys are a bunch of queers,” said Max.

“Okay,” said Lanny. “We’ll wait for you.”

“Hurry,” said Willy. “I don’t like it here.”

“I don’t like your face,” said Max.

And Buckeye slid his shoulders and head back through the window. He looked one more time through the glass, then turned back into the hall, wondering why this stuff always happened to him.

This time he turned the other way, moving deeper into the house, passing a dark second-floor stairway. There was a room at the end of the hall. The weak ceiling light spilled into it, and he could see a table, some cabinets, and—dimly at first—hear water running. He thought of turning back, forgetting the key, taking his chances at home…

The water stopped running. Footsteps moved toward the hall. A little face peeked around the door.

For a brief, gut-stabbing moment, Buckeye was sure he was going to pee his pants. Then the initial fear vanished, and, as the after-shocks echoed through him, he realized it was a little girl.

They looked at each other for a long time. Buckeye expected her to call the old woman. But she didn’t. She only stood there, and finally she asked, “Are you new?”

“Huh?”

“What happened to your eye?”

Her hair was dark. She was pretty. “I had a fight with a vulture,” he said. It was the usual story he used to impress people. “I had to break its neck.”

“Oh.” She had a glass of water in her hand. She drank some and poured the rest on the floor. “I heard you moving around. I thought maybe you were Billy or Paul. But I don’t know you.”

“I just got here.”

“You didn’t come with her?”

“I came with Max.”

“Max Palmer?” she asked.

“Uh-uh. Max Swanson.”

“I don’t know him either.”

“I—I’m really not supposed to be here,” he said. “I lost my mom’s key, see. And I think it fell into your basement.”

She looked confused.

“It was Max’s idea,” he said. “I wouldn’t even be here except he couldn’t fit through the window… Could you show me where the basement is?”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Oh, my.”

Laughter rolled from the upstairs.

Four boys came tumbling down the steps. Three were riding pillows, one was riding the banister. They got to the bottom and started pelting one another with the pillows.

They stopped when they saw Buckeye.

“What happened to your eye?”

“A vulture,” said the girl.

There were more questions, almost identical to the girl’s.

One of the boys took out a crayon and started drawing on the wall. Buckeye watched. The crayon made a big face with a long nose, squinty eyes, glasses—it was the old woman.

Buckeye asked, “Won’t you get in trouble?”

The face had big lips and a long tongue. The tongue stuck straight out, catching snot from the running nose. The artist said, “What’s she going to do to us?”

“You ought to go upstairs,” said another. “She’s still in bed. Dying maybe.”

“Is she your grandmother?” asked Buckeye.

“Naw,” said another. “She’d just like to be. Silly old bag. Did you really come through the window?”

“Yeah.”

“Then for sure you have to go up there. You’ll scare the daylights out of her, I bet. Get up real close and look at her with your eye. Can you see through it?”

“No.”

“Then just pretend. She hasn’t given a good yell all day.”

Buckeye looked at the stairs.

“Go on.”

There was more laughter upstairs. Girls and boys.

“I’ve really got to get my key.”

“I’ll get it for you,” said the girl. “You go up.”

“She won’t be mad?” he asked. “I mean, I sort of broke in.”

“But that’s the idea,” said the boy with the crayon. “The idea is to get her mad. The old creep.”

Buckeye looked up the stairs. The boys got behind him and started pushing. And before he knew it, he was starting up.

The stairs were narrow and full of the same stuffy smell he’d noticed when first coming into the house. He turned on another light and saw that the stairway walls were covered with more drawings. He moved past them, stepping into the second-floor hall just as another band of kids burst through a door at the hall’s end. They plowed into him, grabbing the banister, making screeching-tire sounds as they turned, starting down. One of the kids looked at him and stopped. “Oh, we got her good this time. Boy, did we ever!”

And then they were gone, tumbling down, spilling into the first floor, laughing, screaming, yelling.

Buckeye looked at the open door down the hall and turned on another light. There was writing on the wall beside the door—large letters in black crayon: HOME OF THE CAVE HOG.

He moved toward it, set his hand on the door, and peeked inside. Mrs. Halfbooger lay in bed, looking old and sick. There was a mound of dirt sitting on top of her, spilling over the bed and onto the floor. They’d gotten her good, all right.

He eased into the room, stepping softly, coming alongside the bed. She looked even older up close, almost like a skeleton. It hardly seemed there was a body under the blankets, under the dirt. She opened her eyes and saw him. He was looking at the dirt and didn’t know she was watching until she whispered, “Which one are you?”

He jumped, turning to look…

“I didn’t bring you here,” she said.

“No,” he said. He looked at her, afraid to say much else, looking at how her faded gray skin pulled across chin and cheeks—the facial bones looked nearly sharp enough to break through.

At last he said, “They put dirt on you.”

She looked down, wincing. It was as though she were seeing the dark mound for the first time. Her head trembled and fell back again, barely pressing a dent in the pillow. “From the basement,” she said. “They’ve made a mess of my basement, you know?” She breathed deep, or tried to. Her face buckled, showing an empty mouth, dark gums. “They spite me,” she said. “All I want is to love them, and they spite me.”

“Are you their aunt, or something?”

“No. I just brought them here. All I wanted… all that I… all that… What’s your name?”

“Sean.”

“That’s a nice name… nice… nice… I bought them things, you know? I would buy them things and go driving. I’d bring things home and wrap them up nice… and I’d go driving… and sometimes I’d see a boy or a girl playing alone, and I’d go talk to them. I know all about being alone, you know? All about it. I’d tell them I had presents and they’d come… to the car. And we’d unwrap things and sing and drive away… Nobody ever suspects an old woman. I’d walk away with them… I’d drive away with them… and nobody ever suspected that… that… Did you tell me your name?”

“Sean.”

“Yes. That’s right. I didn’t bring you here, did I?”

“I came through the window.”

“I should buy you something too, Sean. When I get better we’ll drive down to Kiddy Mart and get you… get you… whatever… anything you want. We’ll wrap it too, so you can open it… like Christmas or a birthday… When I’m better. When the headaches stop. Oh my, but I do get the headaches. Like battering rams…”

“You don’t have to buy me things.”

There was a crazy look on her face—a spastic, thin-lipped scowl. “I be so nice to them and they get like this. They say they don’t want to stay and I have to… make them… and they get like this. You should see the basement. Oh my… I try so hard and they get like this…”

“Want me to push off some of this dirt?”

“Dirt?”

“They put dirt on your bed. Remember?”

She looked up again. “Oh, dear me. I thought that was yesterday… or… Isn’t it something how it’s all gotten outside my head like this. Push it off for me. Oh yes.”

He leaned over and started shoving heaped clay onto the floor. It thumped on the wooden boards.

“You’re different, aren’t you?” she said. “I won’t have to make you stay.”

“Stay?”

“With me. Like a family.”

“Never go home?” he asked.

“This can be your home.”

There was an awful look on her face. Buckeye didn’t like it. “I could come visit,” he said. “It’s just that right now I’ve got to leave and—”

“No!” Her head rose off the pillow. Her yellow eyes turned ugly—like Ol’ Yeller’s eyes right before they shot him.

And suddenly he remembered the key and the three friends waiting outside.

“I gotta go.”

He turned and ran toward the stairs, stopping once to see if she was following. She wasn’t. Her head had fallen back again. Her eyes were shut. But he was scared now. The woman was nuts.

He ran down the stairs, looking for the other kids, looking for the girl who’d promised to find the key. But they weren’t in the hall. They weren’t in the kitchen, either.

“Hey!” he shouted.

No answer. Only his own echo in the lonely house.

There was a door open by the stove—a door with steps leading down. They’d gone to the basement. He leaned inside the door and fumbled for a light. There was no switch on the wall. He looked around. Above his head a dirty string dangled from a bare bulb. He pulled. The light came on. And below him, at the bottom of the stairs, was another string—another bare bulb.

He moved down. “Hey, you guys. You down here? What’re you doing in the dark any—?” He pulled the second string. The second light came on, and at first he thought the basement was empty.

Then he saw them. All in rows. Ten neat little mounds rising out of the basement floor.

And on one of them was the key.

He walked toward it, head spinning. You should see the basement… I try so hard and they get like this…

He fell, dropping to grass-stained knees. What kind of crazy woman would…?

His hands shot toward the key, sinking past it, clawing at the soft mound of dirt. They say they don’t want to stay and I have to make them…

And then he saw.

And then he was up, running, stumbling, falling up the stairs, through the hall. There were no pictures on the wall. No kids in the kitchen.

He tripped and skidded into the dark living room. The moon was up, glowing thinly through the trees, through the window.

He pulled himself up and ran. Scared. Thinking of the woman. Thinking of her coming down the stairs. Thinking of her grabbing him as he squeezed through the window, holding him with cold dead fingers, pulling him, dragging him to the basement. Oh, God, please, this is Buckeye talking. Get me out of here and I’ll be Pope… anything you want… just get me out of here!

He was halfway through, struggling, pulling, praying he wouldn’t get stuck. And then he was falling, tumbling. The ground raced up. He hit and rolled, losing his wind, but scrambling up anyway—scrambling to his feet and running down the hill.

The creek was cold. He splashed through the deep part, forgetting the stones.

They hadn’t waited. None of them. Not even Max—big-talking Max who wasn’t afraid of anything. They’d all gone home. Or maybe they’d been back there hiding, waiting for him to come through the window so they could jump out at him. Maybe they were still back there, wondering what had happened…

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. There was only running. There was only getting away from the house.

He ran past Lanny’s tree fort and then down the hill to the highway and then across the field to home. His stomach hurt. His chest hurt. His clothes were wet from the creek and there were splinters in his hands from falling in the house.

But he didn’t stop. He kept seeing the little face in the shallow grave. The little eyes that hadn’t closed. The little nose. The dark hair. She wasn’t so pretty after lying in the dirt all that time.

And then he was on his street. He was turning the bend, climbing the walk. Home. The door. He fell against the screen, forgetting the key, pounding, kicking…

The television was on inside. Laughter. A family show. Happy people. Happy endings.

His mother moved toward the door. “You’ve done it this time, Sean. It’s after nine. Don’t you know there’s crazy people out…”

But he didn’t hear. There was only the little girl looking at him from the dirt halo. There was only the sound of his own screams.