THE CAT'S MAW

CHAPTER XIII

XIII: OF BASEMENTS AND BLOOD

Billy's leg twinged as he slowly descended the first planks of wood that formed stairs down to the cellar. He tugged on a string dangling from a bare bulb that hung from cobwebbed beams. A wedge of dull light filled the passage, and the boy eased the door shut behind him.

The snoring and the skipping phonograph disappeared in the underground vacuum. The only sounds beneath the house were the hollow thumps of his footsteps, and an unnerving whistling in his nose as he breathed. Reaching the bottom, Billy inhaled sharply and limped onto the cellar's earthen floor.

Grey shafts of sunlight poked down through the narrow windows at garden level, enough to see the room with. To the left were cardboard boxes, which Billy had helped Mrs. Thomas to bring down and stack the previous summer. He had spent weeks watching her fill them with yellowed magazines, old clothes, and some of her dead husband's things.

'Can't part with it just yet,' she had said. 'Besides, basements are a good place to hide treasures, don't you think?'

The sump pump, furnace, and water heater were off to the right, where Billy needed to go. It was darker there and the ground sloped. He ran his fingers along the stone foundation on the front of the house to keep his bearings. The machines loomed on the far wall like misshapen monuments, and the boy imagined himself as a lone explorer on the verge of unearthing a long-lost tomb.

Billy reached the furnace, and leaned against its blocky metal shell. The steel groaned beneath the weight of his shoulder, echoing through the room as he removed his pack. He pulled out a flashlight from the front zip-pocket and clicked it on, sweeping the ring of blue-white light across the wall, around and behind the dusty contraptions.

If the drawing in the book was accurate, Billy thought, then this is the separating wall of a split cellar. There must be a way to get through.

There were glints of light from the machines, and nets of cobwebs strung between them. The stone wall glistened with moisture, olive and muddy brown veins snaking across its surface. Billy followed the wall and swept his beam along it, hobbling past the water tank. The light breached the darkest corner of the room, grazing the edge of something that Billy hadn't noticed before.

A short wooden bureau stood flush against the wall. It had three large drawers with black iron handles, and a flat desktop that protruded above them. Its caramel finish was rough and scratched, but Billy could still discern a pattern along its edges.

There were waves etched into the wood, curved and interlocking, rising up the bureau's sides and flowing onto the surface of the desk. The waves met on the back face of the desktop, converging in a woven ring around an intricate carving of an old sailing ship.

I keep seeing this, he thought, running his fingers across its sails. In my dreams.

Billy removed his pack. He took out his sketchpad, tore off a sheet, and laid it across the carving. Then he took a piece of charcoal, and rubbed it back and forth across the paper as he had done so many times in the graveyard on the hill. He pressed hard, charcoal splintering in his fingers and smearing them black.

The desk wobbled under the pressure and tilted forward as he pushed down to finish the impression. Another gust of air struck his face, colder than the first, with a noxious smell. He put his weight on the wood and leaned the bureau away from the wall, shining his light behind it.

A hole.

Billy carefully placed his artwork between blank sheets of paper, and slid the sketchbook back in his bag. With the flashlight between his teeth, he gripped the sides of the desk and pulled it away from the wall. The thing was heavy and scraped across the dirt. Billy strained, digging his heels into the earth as the pain awakened below his knee. At last, there was just enough room for him to move behind it. He crouched on all fours with his backpack in one hand and flashlight in the other, crawled to the mouth of the opening, and shone the light inside.