Penpal by Dathan Auerbach
I twisted my body and tried to look around with the light, but I couldn’t see much of anything. The foulness of the rotten air now lined my throat, and I coughed and spat reflexively to remove it. I needed to hurry up so I could leave this place. Reaching my arm forward, I wrapped my fingers around a support block to pull myself forward, and as I did that, I felt something that made my hand recoil.
Fur.
My heart sank, and I prepared myself emotionally for what I was about to see. I crawled slowly so I could prolong what I knew was coming, and I inched my eyes and the flashlight past the block to see what was on the other side.
I staggered back in horror and disgust. “Jesus Christ!” escaped my trembling mouth. It was a hideous and twisted creature, badly decomposed. Its skin had rotted away on its face so the teeth were revealed in an ever-present sneer that made them look enormous. Its eyes had either sunk back into its skull or were simply gone altogether, but I still felt like it was looking right at me. The smell radiating from it was unbearable.
What is it?! Are you okay? Is it Boxes?
I reached for the walkie. No, no I don’t think so.
Well, what the hell is it then?
I don’t know.
I shined the light on it again and looked at it with less fear in my vision. I chuckled, though I felt bad for doing so.
It’s a raccoon!
Well keep looking. I’m gonna go into the house to see if he might’ve made it in there somehow.
What? No. Josh, don’t go in there. What … what if Boxes is down here and runs out?
He can’t. I put the board back.
I looked and saw that he was telling the truth.
Why’d you do that?!
Don’t worry, man; you can move it easy. Doing it this way makes more sense. If Boxes ran out and I missed him, then he’d be gone. If he’s down there, then it’ll be easier for you to grab him, and then you can just radio me, and I’ll come move the board. If he’s not down there, then you can move it yourself and meet me in the house.
I thought of the times that my mother had tried to catch Boxes either running out of the house or sprinting around the backyard; Josh had a point. In fact, this plan seemed more thoroughly thought-out than our entire mission. Still, I liked the idea of him being just outside, even if he wasn’t doing anything productive – it was just good to have him there. But we’d save time this way, and we needed all the time we could get; both of Josh’s parents got up early, and I would still have to try to clean my clothes after crawling around under the house. I didn’t want him to abandon his post, but there was always the chance he wouldn’t be able to get in anyway.
Hesitantly, I radioed him back.
Okay. But be careful, and don’t touch anything.
Don’t worry, man; I won’t touch your Barbie collection.
I laughed. You remember your way around inside, right?
Yeah, I think so. Where do you think I should look?
I thought for a moment. He used to sit on the washer or dryer sometimes, but if he’s not there, then try my room. There’s a bunch of my old clothes still in boxes there; check to see if he crawled in one, I guess. And make sure to bring your walkie.
Roger that, good buddy, Josh replied.
I realized only then that it would be pitch-black in there; the power would have been turned off since no one was paying the bill. With any luck he’d be able to see from the streetlights on the other side of the house that might cast some light inside – otherwise, I wasn’t sure how he’d find his way around, or how he’d find Boxes, for that matter.
Before too long, I heard footsteps right over my head and felt old dirt raining down on me.
Josh is that you?
chhkkkk Breaker. Breaker. This is Macho Man coming back for the big Tango Foxtrot. The Eagle has landed. What’s your 20, Princess Jasmine? Over.
“Asshole …” I muttered to myself. Macho Man, you know that you don’t have to make the walkie-talkie noise when we’re actually on the walkie-talkies, right? And my 20 is in your bathroom lookin’ at your stash of magazines, good buddy. Looks like you’ve got a thing for dudes’ butts. What’s the report on that? Over.
I could hear him laughing without the walkie, and I started laughing too. I heard the footsteps fade away a little – he was on his way to my room.
Man, it’s dark in here. Hey, are you sure that you had boxes of clothes in here? I don’t see any.
Yeah, there should be a couple boxes in front of the closet.
There aren’t any boxes; let me check to see if you maybe put them in the closet or something before you left.
I knew that I hadn’t done that. I started thinking that maybe my mom had come back and gotten the clothes and just given them away because I had outgrown a lot of them. But I remembered leaving the boxes there – I didn’t even have time to close the last one up before we left so abruptly that summer.
While I was waiting for Josh to tell me what he found, I felt a tingling on my foot and thoughts of spiders surged back into my mind. I kicked out my leg quickly, and the sensation subsided. There were no spiders – my leg had fallen asleep due to the position I had been laying in. As the feeling returned to my foot, I became aware of the fact that it was now resting on something other than mounds of dirt. I turned my head back and stared, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.
My foot was resting on a bowl that lay among a scattering of other bowls. I turned my body, crawled a little closer to the collection, and saw that most of the bowls were lying on a brown blanket that was quite difficult to see in this darkness, since it was earth-colored. The blanket smelled moldy, and most of the bowls were empty, but one had something that I recognized still in it.
Cat food.
It was a different kind of food than we gave to Boxes, and initially I couldn’t understand why it would be down there of all places. Suddenly, I understood. If Boxes had ever escaped our backyard, there would have been a very good chance that he might have gotten hurt since he didn’t have his front claws. My mom must have set up a little place for him under the house to encourage him to come here instead of running around the neighborhood. That made a lot of sense, and it explained why Boxes had scampered under there as frequently as he had toward the end of our time in the house. Knowing about this place, it seemed even more likely that Boxes would have come back to it. That’s so cool, mom, I thought, as the sound of static came through the walkie.
I found your clothes.
Oh cool. Where were the boxes?
Like I said, there are no boxes. Your clothes are in your closet … They’re hanging up.
I felt a chill. This was impossible. I had packed all my clothes. Even though we weren’t supposed to move that day, I remembered having packed them weeks before and thinking that it was stupid for me to have to get clothes out of a box only to put them back in. I had packed them, but now they were hung back up. Why though?
Josh needed to get out of there.
That can’t be right, Josh. They’re supposed to be in boxes. I put them in boxes. Stop messing around, and just come back outside.
No joke man. I’m looking at them. Maybe you just thought that you left them all packed up … Haha! Wow! Talk about an ego!
What? What do you mean?
Your walls, man. Haha. Your walls are covered in Polaroids of yourself! There are like hundreds of them! What’d you hire someone to—
Silence.
I checked my walkie to see if I had switched it off somehow. It was on. Looking at the frequency knob to see if it had been moved, I could see that it was on the right channel. I could hear rapid footsteps in the house above me, but I couldn’t tell exactly where Josh was going. I waited for Josh to finish his sentence, thinking that his finger had just slipped off the button, but he didn’t continue. He seemed to be stomping around the house now. I was just about to radio him when his words whispered through the crackling walkie-talkie.
There’s someone in the house
His voice was hushed and broken – I could hear that he was on the verge of tears. I wanted to respond, but how loud was his walkie turned up? What if the other person heard it? I couldn’t take the chance that I’d lead this other person right to him, so I said nothing and just waited, hoped, and listened. What I heard were footsteps – heavy, dragging footsteps. I tried to discern where they were going, but they seemed to be walking around aimlessly. Finally, they stopped.
After only a moment there was a loud thud a few feet above me, and I could hear the dirt and sand raining down from the underside of the floor onto the ground of the crawlspace.
“Oh God … Josh.”
He had been found; I was sure of it. This person had found him and was hurting him. I couldn’t move. I wanted to run home. I wanted to save Josh. I wanted to go for help. I wanted so many things, but I just lay there, frozen and racked with guilt over the fact that I was failing my friend. It wasn’t at all that I was unable to help him – as if I had tried and failed and felt I had let him down. As if I had tried to scramble out of this pit and rush inside to rescue him only to be thwarted and defeated – it was that I couldn’t bring myself to try anything at all. I hadn’t moved one inch, and he was my best friend in the world. He was my only friend, next to Boxes.
I broke out in tears at the thought of Josh’s fate and at the knowledge of my own impotency when he needed me. And I cried even harder from the selfish fears that were stirring up inside of me as I realized that Josh might have told this person where I was hiding and that there was nothing I could possibly do. As I struggled to compose myself, I felt my heart flutter when I heard Josh’s voice through the walkie, but this relief was short-lived.
He’s got something, man. It’s a big bag. He just threw it on the floor. And … oh God, man … the bag … I think it just moved.
Josh hadn’t been discovered, but I knew he soon would be by the man with the bag. It was hopeless. As I lay there unable to move, my eyes focused on the corner of the house that was right under my room – right under where Josh would soon be discovered. I moved the flashlight. My breath hitched at what I saw.
Animals. Dozens of them. All of them dead. They lay as a heaping pile of fur, claws, and teeth. Time and weather had fused some of them together into grotesque chimeras, their snarling mouths telling the world of their dissatisfaction at the union. Could Boxes be among these corpses? Was this what the cat food was for? For a moment, I thought to move closer. Perhaps, if he was there, I could see him and know the truth.
A heavy footstep above me broke my shock; I knew I had to get out of there, and I scrambled to the board. I pushed on it, but it wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t move it, and I couldn’t get my fingers around it since the edges were outside; Josh had put it back the wrong way. I was trapped.
“Goddamn you, Josh!” I whispered to myself. I could feel thunderous footsteps above me. The whole house was shaking. I heard Josh scream, and it was matched by another scream that wasn’t full of fear.
The storming above continued as I clawed at the board. Their footsteps were tracing patterns on the floor and charting a map of their routes in my mind. They ran from my bedroom, to the living room, to the kitchen, to the front door, and around and around. They ran until I didn’t hear any more running.
I pushed on the board as hard as I could, and I felt it move, but I knew it wasn’t me who was moving it. I could hear footsteps above me and in front of me and shouting and screaming filling the brief silences between the stomping and shuffling. The board moved a little more, and what little ambient light there was outside poured through this new opening.
Walkie or flashlight? I had to make a decision of which to use to defend myself. It was still so dark outside that I feared I couldn’t make it back to Josh’s without the light, but if I broke the walkie-talkie, then Josh and I would be separated completely. The board moved more. I didn’t have time to wager any longer. The walkie seemed sturdier so I moved back and clutched it, ready to strike with all of my might. The board was thrown to the side and an arm shot in and grabbed for me.
“Let’s go, man! Now!”
It was Josh. Thank God.
I scrambled out of the opening, holding the flashlight and the walkie, and we ran as fast as we could to the fence as the long grass whipped against our legs. I was the first one over the fence with Josh close behind me, but when Josh hit the street-side of the grass, I heard him curse. His walkie’s strap had caught on the metal tension wire at the top of the fence and pulled loose from his arm, falling on the bad side of the barricade. Quickly, Josh went to climb back over the fence to retrieve it, and reflexively I grabbed the back of his shirt, yelling, “Forget it, man! We gotta go!”
Behind us, I could hear yelling, though they weren’t words, only sounds. Without discussing it, we, perhaps foolishly, ran for the woods in order to get back to Josh’s house more quickly, while hopefully being somewhat harder to follow. We tore through thick patches of foliage, which tore back through us, albeit unequally. My arms were stinging with fresh cuts and scrapes from the woodland blockades that attempted to slow us down. The whole way through the woods Josh kept muttering,
“My picture … He took my picture …”
I began to feel physically ill from the guilt that this caused in me. I knew the man already had Josh’s picture – from when we played as boys in The Ditch. I supposed Josh hadn’t thought about that day since it happened; maybe he still thought those mechanical sounds were from a robot. Aside from Josh’s mutterings, not a word was shared between us as we hustled through the woods back toward Josh’s house.
We made it back into his room before his parents woke up. I didn’t know how to use his washing machine, and even if I did, it would have made too much noise. After my attempt to scrub the dirt out of my shirt and pants with water from the sink proved unsuccessful, I borrowed some clothes from Josh and reluctantly snuck back outside to throw the incriminating clothes into the large, green city trashcan that was sitting by the curb.
The fact that there were so many trashcans lining the neighborhood road told me that garbage day was somewhere nearby on the calendar, and when I lifted the lid to Josh’s trashcan and saw it filled with garbage bags, I was relieved that the day hadn’t already come. I hesitated for a second – taking a last look at the lizard on my shirt – then shoved the clothes underneath one of the bags and crept back around the house and through Josh’s bedroom window.
We sat in silence for a while, and it started to become uncomfortable. Finally, to break the quiet in the room, I asked him about the big bag in my old house and if it really moved – he said he couldn’t be sure. He kept apologizing about dropping the walkie-talkie at the house, but obviously that wasn’t a big deal, all things considered. We didn’t go to sleep that night. Instead, we sat peering out the window, waiting for the man with the bag, but he never came. We agreed to never tell anyone about what happened – no good would come from that. After a couple of hours, the sun pushed the darkness out of the sky, and my mom came to get me a couple of hours after that.
She asked me about the clothes I had on, and I told her that Josh had liked the shirt I had been wearing and asked if he could borrow it. She said that was nice of me. As we were pulling out of Josh’s driveway, my eyes lingered on the trashcan at the edge of their yard, and I caught myself whispering, “I thought I closed the lid …” I considered that the garbage truck might have just put the trashcan down with the lid open, but it didn’t matter. The evidence was gone, and I breathed easy.
Until very recently, my mother didn’t know about what Josh and I had done that night. Of course, I spared many of the details when I told her, but I thought that if I told her something she didn’t know, maybe she would reciprocate. By the end of the story, my mother’s eyes had glossed over. I asked her why she lied about bothering the new owners to stop me from going when there weren’t any new owners at all – why had she tried so hard to stop me from going back to our old
When she realized that I wouldn’t leave, she sat back down, and she answered my question. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it harder than I thought her capable of and locked her eyes to mine. She whispered through clenched teeth as if she was afraid of being overheard:
“Because I never put any fucking blankets or bowls under the house for Boxes. You think you were the only one to find them there? Don’t you tell me that I lied to you about there being someone in that house, goddamn you.”
I felt dizzy. With those few sentences, I understood so much. I understood why she had looked so uneasy after she brought Boxes out from under the house on our last day there; she found more than spiders or a rat’s nest that day. I understood why we left almost two weeks early. I understood why she tried to stop me from going back.
She knew. She knew he made his home under ours, and she kept it from me, and as I walked out of her house, I could only think of what else she might know. I left my mother that night without saying another word. I didn’t finish the story for her, but I want to finish it here, for you.
When I got home from Josh’s house that day, I threw my stuff on the floor, and it scattered everywhere; I didn’t care, I just wanted to sleep. I woke up around nine o’clock that night to the sound of Boxes’ meowing. My heart leapt. He had finally come home. I was a little sick about the fact that if I had just waited a day, none of the previous night’s events would have happened and I’d have Boxes anyway, but that didn’t matter; he was back. I got off my bed and called for him – looking around to catch a glint of light off his eyes. The crying continued, and I followed it. It was coming from under the bed. I laughed a little thinking I had just crawled under a house looking for him and how this was so much better. His meows were being muffled by a jacket, so I flung it aside and smiled, yelling, “Welcome home, Boxes!”