Grandpa Frank's Secret

McLennan - 10

Grandpa Frank's Secret

Crystal refused to do the job half-assed. Training as a nurse coded the work ethic into her DNA as soundly as mother rapping knuckles with the all-day-sauce-stained wooden spoon. Yes, the stairs into Grandpa Frank's basement were filthy, but before the day was done they would be clean. The walls would be clean too, except for the marks that she and Bobby made back in the summer of '78 charting their course to buried treasure. He saved her from marauding pirates that summer; just before he went missing.

Her shoulders slumped and her chest caved inward as the breath fizzled out of her.

She shook her head; brushing the image of Bobby on a milk carton away.

The suffocating must of dust, rotting clothes, and corpses had to go. She'd get the walls, she reminded herself as she heard the handyman's van rumble out the gravel driveway. He had shoveled the junk out of the basement, from halfway repaired bicycles to petrified rats. He had been gracious. He gave them a reduced price and thanked her for the pathway through the junk that lead from the stairs to the opposite wall. He claimed it made the job so much easier to complete. But the pathway was a happy coincidence, as it also lead to the washer and dryer.

She hefted the bottle of bug killer. Tomorrow a fog of bleach would rise through the kitchen floorboards. Nothing says clean like the smell of bleach; ask any nurse. Although, cleaning alcohol runs a close second.

"You little bastards."

The spray from the bottle chased after the insects racing along the cracks in the mortar holding the foundational cobbled stone and brick together of the Civil War Era farmhouse. A few lucky ones got away, or so they thought with their insidious bug-brains. The poison would get them even after it dried. There were far too many insects, even if this house were situated in a Louisiana swamp - which thankfully, it wasn't.

Crystal wasn't sure if it was a snort or a scoff she let out. She shrugged, descending and spraying further into the basement.

Death waits for us all; but sometimes the meeting is arranged. Just ask the Marines.

She hadn't heard that saying since before Jimmy had passed. Her sweet Jimmy. He had gone on a mission to Middle Asia somewhere; no one would say. He never came back. No body, no reason, no nada. Just another MIA - and no pension or life insurance for her and Teddy to live on.

There was that noise again. Scoff; it definitely was a scoff this time.

That's how she wound up here working for a man and murderer she loathed - Grandpa Frank. Blood-ties made the obligation of becoming his caregiver impossible and the money he paid her enticing, easily three times what she would make at the local hospital. And the murder hadn't been proven - yet - so her complaints fell upon deaf ears.

She missed Bobby.

"Looks like it's cleaning up just right." A gravelly voice accompanied by creaking stairs came from above.

She turned, catching a face full of cobwebs and dust the handyman missed. She sputtered and dredged stickiness from greying blonde hair with her turquoise fingernails in need of a redo.

"You shouldn't be down here. Your lungs aren't strong enough to handle this crap still lingering in the air down here. Get back up Poppop."

"I was coming for that." A shaky finger pointed out a toolbox adjacent the washer.

"You don't need to be tinkering right now. You need your rest. Go watch your Jeopardy."

"S'not the same without Alex." He defended. "'Sides, I do need the kit. Oxy tank is fussin'."

Sigh. That sound, was a sigh- not a snort or a scoff. Crystal snapped her wrist sharp enough to send the cobwebs from her fingertips to the floor.

"Go on back to your chair and I'll bring it to you."

The kitchen floorboards creaked and squeaked overhead as she walked to the toolkit. With the scratching of wood against wood, the TV volume dipped, and she swore she could hear his old bones sagging into hand-stitched cushions filled with hand-sheared wool.

Crystal reached for the toolbox and froze. There, plastered next to the handle was a yellow-bordered sticker of Darth Vader with a name scribbled in third grade markered penmenship: "Bobby." No escaping the past.

She cradled the casket of tools and tromped up the stairs.

"What in name of St Michael are you doing with Bobby's toolbox?" She demanded. Only her footfalls were stronger as she crossed the kitchen into the living room.

Grandpa Frank reached forward clicking the remote. He didn't turn to face her. The volume didn't decrease.

"I said what are you-"

"I heard you the first time. I'm not going deaf. And is that anyway to talk to your elder?"

Crystal fumed slamming the toolbox onto the table next to him. She slumped into the sofa, leering at him.

He lifted the lid of the box and fished out pliers. Adjusting his glasses with one hand he prodded the oxygen tank with the pliers.

"I bought this box for Bobby. It's my remembrance of him. You think I don't miss him too?" He fidgeted the hose of the tank. "Your tone suggests you think I shouldn't have it. Why?"

"I always thought...Bobby was my....We used to..." She couldn't grasp the proper thought there were too many rushing back to mind.

"You think I had something to do with his disappearance? His death?"

She nodded dumbly. Glared at him through narrowed eyelids.

He settled back into the oversized cushions of the chair with an equally long and heavy sigh. "Yeah, I had something to do with that business. We all knew it needed to happen."

Mouth agape, she could only look at him through glazed eyes.

"You never wondered why we had such big families? Why we always tried for a seventh son? Bobby was a seventh son, of a seventh son. You know the family tales of the seventh of seventh. You should know the truth of it."

Her brows knit and furrowed, nearly burying her eyes. All that hocus-pocus talk again? She stifled a giggle.

"Ah, you think it's a bunch of horse-hockey, huh? Alright then. Come with me."

Grandpa Frank extricated himself from the chair with effort, using his cane as a lever. She knew that cane, it had given her nightmares as a child - squid-like head with beady amber eyes. He hobbled toward the basement.

"Where do you think-"

The flick of a finger from his other hand silenced her. He shuffled across the kitchen and started down the stairs.

"What do you mean 'we all knew it needed to happen?'" Crystal barely managed a whisper.

"Ah that-"

He drew off the head of the cane. The thin wicked blade gleamed from the shadow and he drove it into the wall. He jerked his hand sideways, and with a click a section of the wall adjacent the dryer swung inward.

"That's a long story. Older than this country, but not as old as our family tree. Short of it is - we have a sacred duty. Everyone learns about it some time. Now's your turn, since your finally interested."

"A what?" She let the question fall to the basement floor dead and followed him in silence.

He struck a match and touched it to the wall. The flame chase around the room in a canal. It didn't smell like kerosene, could it be whale oil?

The room was far older than the rest of the house. Surprisingly, it was clean, even if it didn't smell like bleach. The walls were lined with bookcases. Books in various sizes and shapes old family bibles, photo albums, even the odd scroll or two. The desk was a jumble of a seaman's compass, sexton, maps, a globe, - and a Ouija board.

"You wanna talk to Bobby?" He pointed toward the Ouija board. The pointer was moving, but there was no breeze in the room. "Looks like he's already here. Ask him about our duty."

"Bobby?" She asked.

The pointer stopped on "Yes" then pushed itself to the question mark.

Her mind froze again. There were no words, no thoughts even.

The pointer spelled out "creetur. cave." Then went back to roaming the board in an idle circle.

"This is a trick." She wasn't going to get fooled into a children's spooky tale.

"Sure you're ready for the truth then?" Grandpa Frank asked. "You don't believe it's Bobby, ask it something only he would know. I'll even step out of the room if you think I'm doing some abracadabra." He giggled slightly wiggling his fingers at her mockingly.

Scoff. Yup, that was a scoff.

"Alright then. Bobby-" She looked toward the board. "What did I write on the inside of the treehouse the day I stopped you from stealing candy?"

The pointer circled twice more then spelled out "contrak."

She stumbled back and steadied herself against the wall. She sucked her teeth and nodded. "What's this cave he's talking about Poppop?"

He hobbled over to the opposite wall and shoved the blade again into stone. Repeating the process, another wall gave way to a darkened opening.

Grandpa Frank pointed with his nose. "Get that torch there lit and follow me."

She did as instructed.

He led the way steeply down a rough-hewn narrow staircase. The stone appeared as basalt, not natural for this region, and the carving looked more organic - almost as something had gnawed and clawed upward to the house rather than men digging their way down. It was dank, water dripping echoed in the distance. The stone was cold to the touch, cold enough to feel moist. Crystal had trouble keeping up with Grandpa Frank and studying the myriad of primitive drawings on the walls -images of human sacrifice to beings with the head like squids standing impossibly taller than the trees.

The passage walls fell away as the torchlight caught on a mirror and bounced from surface to surface. In the light the cavern was half a walnut shell with a pit in middle and a hole to match above. Crystal gawked; it was impossibly large for how far down they should have travelled.

"Take a look in the pit, your answer is there." His voice reverberated just short of an echo. He motioned for the torch and she handed it over.

She inched her way forward. Peering into the pit she saw a creature with a head like Grandpa Frank's cane, floating against a field of stars. Her skin crawled as images flashed before her eyes of civilizations, planets, stars devoured by that thing. She willed herself to look away but her eyes stayed fixated upon it. The thing was inhuman, unholy - it should not, could not, be.

"That thing did in my brother Ted. Well, more like he went after it. He's been keeping that thing away for years with Bobby's help."

She felt distant, a spectator watching her own body. She heard Grandpa Frank, but couldn't control her own meat puppet to answer him.

Wordless it beckoned her. She faced it again, set her feet and jaw.

She stomped her foot, finding herself no longer a spectator outside of her own physical form; and the creature blinked - or did it wince?

Crystal felt something claw at her arms. She resisted- she willed her feet to shuffle backwards.

Aghast she gazed at it and pleaded: "Bobby?"

The thing turned away releasing her; sending her reeling back at a startled Grandpa Frank.

Warm spots in the palms of her hands tugged her. She gained her feet before she fell into the old man.

"Bobby?" She whispered.

Familiar laughter of an eight-year-old boy entered her mind, a warm blanket on a cool autumn morning.

Sigh. It was definitely a sigh of relief.