The Shed

The Shed

by,

                                     

    Zachary Burlingame

         “This key goes to the front door and this one goes to the back. This big silver one is for the padlock on the cellar door and this ones goes to the truck. Now this one, this key right here, goes to the shed. And remember, you must never ever go into the shed.”


         Henry Saunders is forty-six years old and returning to his childhood home for the first time in over a decade. He wonders if the house has changed as much as he has in the past ten years. Henry himself has gone almost entirely grey and put on a few pounds since his last visit home, for the first time in his life his 5’8” frame could be considered pudgy, something the chronically skinny boy he once was would have found both shameful and hilarious. As he pulls into the driveway a flood of memories come rushing forward.


1.
         Henry is four or five years old. His mother has hung up the sheets to dry. They billow  around her like ghosts trying to grab her. Suddenly he notices a rabbit, he watches it slowly amble through their small garden. As the rabbit starts to dig into one corner it is with a sense of pride that he scares it off, defending his families garden. Curiosity quickly takes over as he watches the rabbit scamper off. He takes chase and the rabbit bolts towards the shed in the backyard, it reaches it and quickly squirms through a gap under the door. “Henry, get away from there before you father sees you snooping about.”

2.
         It is probably later that same year, he can’t remember exactly how long after but he  knows he could not have been older then six. His mother is cooking dinner and he is  rummaging through the couch cushions looking for pennies. He suddenly feels something metal, he pulls it out, and it is his father’s key ring. The chain normally tethering it to his fathers belt is still attached, it must have ripped straight through the loop. He slowly counts the five keys. He looks them over carefully, he has never seen them up close. He then shifts his attention to the pocket knife also attached to the key ring. Trying his hardest to pull out the blade, not quite getting enough grip. His father, who had been over their neighbors house drinking, can suddenly be heard stumbling onto the porch. Henry listens as his father pulls the screen door open to fast, hitting himself with it, then flings it open, slamming it into the house.
         His father enters Henry’s view of the kitchen where his mother is. His father is six feet tall and muscular, not gym muscular, it’s more of the hard labor and heavy drinking muscular. His slicked back black hair is greying a bit above his ears and thinning enough that you can see the veins strumming in his temples. His white t-shirt is covered in beer and food stains and is coming untucked from what used to be his nice brown pants. Henry watches as his father starts to grab at his mother in her private areas, he knows he isn’t supposed to see this and begins to walk towards his bedroom when he remembers the keys. He starts to shove them back into the cushion  when he hears his father scowl “bitch.”
         He turns to see his mother push his father away. His father just glares at her, that vein strumming even faster. “I’ll be in the fucking shed,” his father says flatly as he reaches for the keys noticing their absence for the first time, checking and rechecking his pockets, searching for the chain. “You took them, you hid them you fucking bitch.” Henry knows his father is about to hit his mother, it’s a scene all to common to him. He grabs the key and runs as fast as he can to his father, waving the keys. He trips and goes sprawling unto the kitchen floor, two of the keys tear into his hand. His father silently bends over and grabs the key ring, scraping the keys deeper into Henry. His father heads directly to the shed. Henry does not see him again till late the next day.

3.
         It is his tenth birthday, he remembers because he was so excited to hit double digits. That meant he was a big boy now. His father even let him have a party in the backyard. They were playing baseball when Doug, Henry’s friend from down the street, hit a ball directly into the single soap-fogged window of Henry’s father’s shed.  Twenty minutes later any trace Henry’s birthday party ever took place was gone. It was the first and only time Henry ever had any friends over the house.

4.
         He’s thirteen, it’s a beautiful afternoon in the late fall. His mother is gone for the weekend, a rare trip to visit her sister. Henry’s father sits cocked on the couch. His father’s foot is broken One morning the previous week Henry woke up early,  before the sunrise, and going to the kitchen to get a glass of water, discovered his father passed out slumped half off of the couch. His father, half asleep, gestured for Henry and through a series of gestures and grunts seemed to want Henry to help him onto the couch. It was when Henry went to slide his father’s lower half up onto the couch that they both quickly discovered the break, Henry through site and his father through excruciating pain.
         Henry’s father yells across the house to him “I’m out of goddamn booze.” Henry walks into the living room. His father is sprawled across the coach wearing just some gym shorts, his leg in a cast. The next words he says startles Henry so much he can’t process them immediately. Hist father just repeats them louder and angrier, “look son, go to the shed. Right when you go in their should be a few bottles of booze on the shelf to the left. Don’t go fucking snooping around.” His father extends his hand and Henry has to look at it to realize what he is doing, he is passing they keys to him. As Henry goes to take the keys his father grabs his head and glares at him for a few seconds. This silent warning terrifies Henry.
         Henry’s palms are sweaty as he heads out the shed. His palms are sweaty and his hands are shaky. The shed has always been forbidden, so much so that it seemed sinister. He feels a sharp pain and realizing he is gripping the key so tightly it’s digging into his flesh. Suddenly, too soon, he is at the shed. Henry reaches out holding the key like a holy relic. It slides into the lock and Henry is turning the knob and pulling open the door before he even realizes it. He pictures similar scenes in every horror movie he has ever scene.
         It takes a second for his eyes to adjust but he soon notices a tarp lying in the middle of the floor. It is covering something, something with round contours. It seems to sprawl in several directions under the tarp. He notices a thick acrid smell. “What the fuck is taking you so long boy!” His father is impatient for his booze or maybe Henry has been staring at this mysterious tarp covered object for longer then he realizes. Either way he wants to get away from the shed as soon as possible. He looks to his left and sure enough their are several bottles of whiskey on a shelf. He grabs one, thinks it over, then grabs another.

5.
         Henry was seventeen when the shed burned down. Actually it more or less blew up. Henry and his mother were off on a three day weekend visiting their Aunt so Henry didn’t see it happen. Henry’s father was the only witness and he only gave his version of how the days events unfolded once. From what he can remember his fathers explanation went as followed; Henry’s father ran out of booze on Saturday and decided to go to the liquor store. Instead of going to his regular liquor store he decided to go to the one a couple of towns over so that he could stop at his favorite deli for a sandwich as he has not made himself a meal since the day he got married,
         Upon returning to the house Henry’s dad noticed what appeared to be smoke coming from the garage. He tells them he immediately ran inside to call the fire department. It was during this call he says he started to hear the explosions. A few old gas cans he forgot he had, and never bothered to tell anyone why he had had, blew up. The shed was demolished. By the time the fire truck arrived there was nothing to do but hose down the ashes.
         By the time Henry and his mother got home any sign of the shed, besides a large  burn mark in the yard, was gone. Henry’s father had cleaned out every last remanent in the day and a half since the fire. Henry remembers hearing his mother asking “why didn’t you leave it for the insurance people to come and check, the shed was covered and they probably would have paid for a new one.” Henry’s father just mumbled something about doing it himself because of some of the personal things he was hoping to recover. He never elaborated on what.

6.
         It wasn’t until Henry was twenty-three and living in the city that his father built a new shed. Henry first saw it when he spent the weekend at his parent’s for Thanksgiving. He noticed it before he had even pulled his car into the driveway. It stood exactly where the old one had and looked to be the exact same dimensions. The only difference was this one had a fresh paint job. Henry didn’t think twice about immediately asking his dad about the shed. His father seemed proud of his handiwork and readily answered questions about material, technique, and costs. It was when Henry asked what his father built if for that he got quite and stone faced and mumbled “what the fucks does it matter to you,” before grabbing a beer and turning on the football game. Henry knew better then to further pursue it.




         That was the last time Henry had ever spoken to his father about the shed. Henry would go to his parents to visit from time to time and of course the shed was always there. Henry knew his father would never talk about it and thus never brought up the subject. Now Henry was fourty-six and he stood just feet from the shed. In his hand he is holding his father’s key ring. The chain has been taken off but all the keys are still on it, the pocket knife too. Henry’s father died the previous month. His mother moved out of the house and asked Henry if he would like to look through his father things before the bank took over the property. The keys felt like relics to him. They felt powerful. He is literally holding the key to his father’s secret, whatever it was. It takes Henry only a few seconds of standing there, holding the keys and thinking of all his memories centered around this shed, that he knows what he must do. Henry gets into his car and drives away, tossing the keys out the window and into the woods. His father was a prick, their is no way around that, but Henry knows he still loves the man somehow and keeps telling himself he wants to keep it that way.