The Grubbs by Mike Ramon
The Grubbs
Mike Ramon
© 2014 M. Ramon
This work is published under a Creative Commons license (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs). To view this license:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
If you wish to contact the author you can send e-mail to:
[email protected]
Web addresses where you can find my work:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/m_ramon
https://www.wattpad.com/user/ZeroTheHero
1
The Grubbs moved into the old Funkhouser house on a Sunday. It was early summer in Cedar Falls. Paul watched from the front porch of his own house, which was right next door. A man and a woman, and a girl who Paul assumed was their daughter, made trips back and forth between the moving truck and the house, carrying boxes, chairs, beds that had been broken up into pieces, frame, headboard, box spring, mattress. Paul thought the girl looked like she was maybe around fifteen; if he was right, that would make her three years older than himself. He was a little disappointed. He hadn’t been best friends with Jerry Funkhouser or anything, but it was nice having a boy next door who was around his own age to hang around with sometimes.
As the family was carrying the last few boxes off the back of the truck Paul moved to go back inside his own house, but stopped and looked back at the truck. The passenger door was opening. That meant there was one more member of the family who Paul hadn’t seen yet. In the seconds between when he saw that door swinging open and when he saw the passenger drop down, he had just enough time to hope. That hope was rewarded. The person who climbed down from the cab of the truck was in fact a young boy, and he looked the right age.
Paul hopped down off the porch and ran over to the other boy, eager to make a good first impression. As he came closer to the boy he was able to notice things that he hadn’t been able to from the porch. The boy was smaller than Paul, maybe a year or two younger. He looked very pale, and he was thin as a whip, looking sickly and frail, like his bones might collapse under their own weight. Something about the boy’s frailty unsettled Paul, and he stopped in his tracks, having second thoughts about introducing himself. It was too late, though; the other boy had noticed him. Paul forced a smile that felt fake and moved his feet again, walking up to the boy.
“Hi; my name’s Paul,” he said. “I live right there.”
Paul hooked a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of his house.
“Hi,” the boy said; it came out almost as a whisper. “My name’s Ken Grubb.”
“Grubb?”
Ken nodded his head, as if it was too much effort to reply with his voice.
“Isn’t a grub some kind of bug or something?”
The thin boy shrugged his shoulders.
“Hey, sport,” a husky male voice spoke out, “your mom wants you to go inside and help her unpack.”
Paul turned to see the man of the family.
“Hello, sir,” Paul said. “Are you Ken’s dad?”
“I sure hope so; if not, Mrs. Grubb has got some explaining to do.”
Mr. Grubb laughed at his own joke, and Ken laughed softly along with him. Paul was unsure if he was supposed to laugh. It wasn’t the type of joke grown-ups usually told to kids, and it made him uncomfortable.
“Hey,” Mr. Grubb said, “it looks like you two are gonna be friends. What do you say, Junior?”
It took Paul a moment to realize that Mr. Grubb was addressing him.
“Um, yeah. My name’s Paul, by the way.”
“Paul Junior?”
“No; just Paul.”
“Could’ve sworn you looked like a Junior.”
Mr. Grubb laughed again; apparently he had made another joke.
“Well, Pauly, me and Ken had better get inside, or the ladies will jump down our throats. Come on, Ken.”
Ken gave Paul a feeble wave goodbye, then followed his dad into the house. Paul stood there for a minute in the failing light, looking at the place he would have to start thinking of as the Grubb house instead of the Funkhouser house.
“My name’s Paul, not Pauly, you jerk,” he whispered.
Paul went back to his own house. Dinner was almost ready, and it smelled good.
2
That night Paul had trouble getting to sleep. It was a hot, muggy night, and he lay in bed with nothing on but his boxer shorts, the sheets kicked off the bed and a sheen of sweat coating his body. He tossed and turned, trying to get comfortable. The pillow felt hot against his face. He felt like drinking a cold glass of water, but he was too lazy to get out of bed and walk to the kitchen, so he just kept on tossing and turning.
At some unknown time in the early hours of the morning Paul, still wide awake, found himself lying on is back with his eyes wide open, staring up at the dark ceiling that hung above him, wishing that he was in Alaska, or someplace else where it wasn’t so frigging hot. A flash of light lit up the room, coming in through the bedroom window. Paul’s first thought was that a thunderstorm must be approaching. There was no report of thunder, however, and the light hadn’t looked like a lightning flash. It was had been a sickly green color, like the way things glowed in movies when they were contaminated with radiation.
Paul looked toward the window, waiting for another flash of that strange light. After a long minute with no return of the flashing light, he looked away and rolled over on his right side, so that he was facing away from the window.
There came another flash, lighting up the room again. Paul turned over quickly and climbed out of bed. He went to the window and crouched down so that he could see outside. All he saw were the dark windows of the Grubb house. He could hear the sound of insects and the motor of a vehicle rumbling along Low Street. There was nothing else. Then there was another flash, and Paul squinted against it. The flash faded away, leaving a green afterimage that took a moment to fade. The flash of light had come from the basement window of the Grubb house. Darkness for a minute, and then another flash.
Paul wondered what the source of that light could be. His curiosity getting the better of him (as it so often did, despite his mother’s repeated warnings about what curiosity did to the cat) he decided to find out. He moved quickly, putting on a pair of jeans, his battered pair of shoes and a white tank top before climbing out his bedroom window and starting for the Grubb house. There was no fence separating the two properties, so Paul didn’t have to do any climbing.
As he got near the house the dead black basement window flared again with that green glow, and from where he stood Paul heard a deep rumbling noise rise and fall in time with the flash of light. The sound disturbed him, though he couldn’t say why, and he stopped. He waited for the light to return, curious if the rumbling noise would return with it. The window stayed dark. Paul took three more steps forward, and the light beamed out again. That noise returned as well, and this time Paul thought he could feel the ground itself rumbling, could feel the rumbling run up his legs. He panicked then, no longer wanting to see what was in the basement of the Grubb house, and he ran back to his house, climbing through the window and jumping into bed fully dressed, covering himself with his bed sheet. After a while he threw the sheet off, feeling ridiculous for having covered himself with it, just like some dumb little kid who was afraid of the boogeyman.
The light didn’t flash again, and the rumbling sound didn’t return, and by morning, when Paul had wakened from a thin, fitful sleep, he had almost convinced himself that he had dreamed the whole thing. Almost convinced himself, but not quite.
3
When Paul’s mom asked if he wanted to come with her as she took a welcome basket to the new neighbors, Paul told her that he didn’t want to go.
“Why not, honey?” she asked. “Sue Ellen says sh
Paul shrugged as he munched on a piece of toast.
“I just don’t want to go. Maybe you shouldn’t either.”
“Don’t be silly.”
When she went next door Paul watched her go from the living room window. He leaned with his face pressed against the window so that he could see her as she climbed the porch next door. He saw her knocking, and a moment later she disappeared inside. Paul had decided that he didn’t like the new neighbors and it made him nervous that his mom was over there, inside their house. Alone. He knew that he was being silly, just like his mom had told him, but he couldn’t help it. Just thinking about the night before, about the light and the noise, and that rumbling in the earth (which was the worst part) made him shiver.
“Hurry up, Mom,” he whispered to no one.
Paul kept an eye on the clock above the mantel. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. At twenty-fife minutes Paul couldn’t wait any longer, and he left the house, walking over to the Grubb house and climbing the porch steps slowly. He knocked on the door. A few seconds later the door opened and Mr. Grubb stood in the doorway.
“Hey Junior, how ya feeling today?”
“Uh, I feel fine.”
“Good to hear.”
They stood staring at each other for a moment.
“Um, is my mom in there?”
“Oh, your mom; yep, she’s here. Her and the missus have been chatting it up. You want to come