The Birth of Bane (12 page)

My mother hadn’t
heard and kept half-leading, half-dragging us around the side of
the house toward the basement access, which abutted the same wall
as the downstairs bathroom in the back, only it was
outside.

Eli led the way,
skipping and bouncing about, brimming with a boys’ sense of
adventure, saying again and again, “We found it, me and mama. Oh
yes, we found it, my mom and me.”

He sounded like
something out of Dr. Seuss, but I was forced to put him out of mind
as we descended the steep staircase into the basement

My mother let go
of me, but held onto Valerie as if she were afraid my sister would
bolt at any second.

I found I could
see readily. All four of the light fixtures had been outfitted with
bright 100 watt bulbs. The entire chamber was better lit than my
bedroom at night. We hadn’t changed much in the basement since
moving in, aside from adding two sections of three-foot shelving my
mother was using to stack the firewood she’d been gathering from
all the landscaping projects going on. There was some other stuff,
mostly camping gear, a few tarps and anything else my Mom had
decided to put down there in lieu of the attic or one of the other
sheds.

The retro-fitted
Pot Belly system was fully automated, so after a crash course from
one of the guys at the Gas Company, there was little else to do,
except make sure we kept up with its’ maintenance schedule. Even
that wasn’t much, all we had to do was call out a tech twice a
year. They’d do all the rest.

We hadn’t
managed to get to the huge bookcase and a medium-sized pile of
boxes left behind from previous owners. Everything was stacked
neatly in the northeastern portion of the underground room. I saw,
the moment my feet hit the basement floor, my mother had been busy
in that very corner.

All of the boxes
had been moved aside and the massive bookcase had been “walked”
about six feet away from the wall it had been resting
against.

Only, when I
looked closer, I realized, yes, there was a wall there, but there
was also a door. I’m not talking about your average,
run-of-the-mill house door either. No! What I saw on that early
winter afternoon was the sort of door I had described over and over
when playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends. It appeared old,
and I’m not saying that because I was a teenager and everything
older than thirty seemed ancient to me. This thing was medieval. It
stood about six feet in height and was nearly the same in width.
Its’ huge oaken planks were bound with iron, shod into the wood
with large rivets. The lever was no more than an iron ring attached
to a latching device that opened when pulled in a downward fashion.
It was crude, but did the job. The hinges were thick and rusted
looking, but they couldn’t have been because between my mom and
Eli, they’d managed to open it wide.

“
How did you
find it?” I asked, amazed. It was the coolest door I had ever seen.
I wanted to draw it to ensure I’d never forget it.

“
Guess,” my
mother said mischievously.

“
Another dream?”
wondered Valerie like she was walking on thin ice. Her eyes were
stuck like glue to the door. There was palatable apprehension with
every move she made.

My
m
om nodded sagely.

“
Did you go
inside?” I asked, a trace of uncertainty in my tone as
well.

“
Of
course.”

“
What’s in
there?” I had to ask.

My
m
om pulled Valerie. “Let me show
you.”

“
No, mom!” said
my sister resisting. “I’m wearing my school clothes.”

That brought me
up short too. The hallway beyond did look like it would be adverse
to nicer fabrics.

Valerie was
wearing a pleated, dark blue mini-skirt, matching knee-high socks,
her oxfords and a sky-blue, button-up.

I’d gone more
casual to school. I was wearing a pair of tan-colored,
waist-cinching
Rags
, a matching OP t-shirt
made of thick cotton and a pair of slip-on Vans, cocoa-colored. It
was my beach bum meets designer clothes look.

Hey, it was the
80’s
, remember?

Yeah, Valerie
was right.

“
Oh, come on,
you guys! Where’s your sense of discovering the unknown?” pleaded
my mother.

“
I would like to leave my ‘unknown’,
unknown
, if you don’t
mind.” My sister wasn’t backing down.

My
m
om shook her head. “What about
you, Jer? Will you let me show you what your brother and I
found?”

I
paused.

Valerie was
shaking her head “no” at me.

But, my
clothes…

“
Come on, Jerry!
Pleeeeease,” begged Elijah.

As usual, it
worked. “Ok.”

To my surprise,
my m
om actually
clapped.

My mother
grabbed a flashlight resting on the top of some boxes and switched
it on. Its’ steady beam cut through the darkness beyond the
door-from-a-bygone-era with ease.

As I approached,
I could see there were more stairs, leading down another nine feet.
They were concrete, not as wide as the stairs leading down to the
basement, but wide enough for two people to walk
abreast.

We all went down
without talking.

I could see the
passage beyond wasn’t finished as was the basement proper. Its’
walls were rough-hewn, dug out what looked like sandstone, held up
by support- and cross-beams every five feet or so, but not much
else. The ground gave way to hard-packed dirt. The topmost layer
was really a thick layer of dust over sedimentary rock upon closer
inspection.

I followed the
smaller form of my mother as she strode through the threshold
boldly. Eli was at my side, holding my hand, his face alight with
playful eagerness.

About ten feet
into the passage, it began to curve to the right. This went on for
another twelve feet or so until we reached another door. If the one
behind us was the stoutest I’d ever seen, then the one before was
the exact opposite. It consisted entirely of one-by-six boards held
upright by a crossing pattern of one-by-fours on what I assumed was
its’ back side, the side we saw first.

It was
ajar.

My Mom stepped
passed the flimsy obstruction, half-turning to beckon me
forward.

I came without
hesitation, not really keen on staying the dungeon-like hall for
longer than was necessary.

I found myself
in a space roughly seven feet wide and sixteen feet long. I was
surprised to see the wooden ceiling was held in place by a good
number of bracing, four-by-four boards made of what had to be
redwood, because they had no water or termite damage that I could
see, and they were old. I frowned when I saw we were completely
surrounded by a strange assortment of shelving. They weren’t flat
as one would expect shelves to be. Rather, they were drawer-like as
if they were supposed to hold something in place, allow nothing to
fall onto the floor.

I walked toward
one and peered within.

It was
empty.

“
These are
weird,” I commented aloud.

“
They’re like
that on purpose,” replied my mother right away. “They’re made deep,
so they can hold four to five inches of soil.”

“
Why?”

“
In the old
days, people used to grow crops that didn’t require sunlight in
places like this. Although,” she continued rubbing at her chin,
“you don’t see very many still built underground.”

“
What would they
grow, mama?” Eli had climbed up one of the lower-lying shelves and
was peering into the same one I had.

“
Oh, I don’t
know - mushrooms, potatoes if the ground above was too hard -
things like that.” She paused to rummage atop one of the higher
shelves. “They’re also used for storage, because the air stays cool
and moist. You can put carrots or beets and other vegetables roots
in place like this for a long time.”

I nodded,
looking about.
The old owners
must’ve saved a ton of money on electricity.
Then, I realized why someone would go through all
the trouble of building one in the first place. There hadn’t been
electricity back then!
Duh,
Donny Dickhead!

My
m
om coughed out some dust, her
face stern with concentration. “I asked Bruce about this cellar
when Eli and I first found it. He said it was also used to store
the Gates’ stockpile of hooch during Prohibition.” I could tell she
was smiling even though I couldn’t see her face. She had a
different way of speaking through lips drawn tight.

“
What’s ‘cooch’,
you guys?” Elijah was so darned cute sometimes.

My mother and I
both laughed.

“
Not ‘cooch’,
son. ‘Hooch’ and it means Mr. Booze.” My mom always had a way with
explaining things to us in a way we could understand, even when we
were young like Elijah.

“
Yeah, ‘cooch’
is something else you’ll wanna know about when you get older…,” I
muttered to myself.

My mother tossed
an old rag at me, her eyebrows raised in outrage. It fell pitifully
short.

I laughed,
shrugging. “Well, he will.”

She wagged a
finger at me. A silent warning, ordering me to keep my mouth
shut.

My smiled
broadened.

Elijah’s head
was tilted almost horizontal. “But why would they put their Mr.
Booze in dirty, ole’ place like this?”

She smiled,
deliberately, pushing aside my rude comments. “I knew you were
going to ask that question,” she said to my brother, pointedly not
at me. “There was a time, Elijah, when Mr. Booze was against the
law to drink.”

“
Really?”
He said it the way
he’d say things when he thought whatever we were talking about was
tremendously interesting.

“
Yeah.”

“
Pretty dumb,
huh, big guy?” I asked, earnestly. Prohibition was a waste of
everyone’s time and only gave rise to some of the most powerful
crime lords we’d ever seen in the United States.

“
But if it kept
people from getting drunk, then it might’ve been a good idea… for
certain people, right?”

I always knew
Elijah was a genius.

My
m
om went still.

He kept talking.
“I mean, if Dad couldn’t drink, then… well… Um, wouldn’t that be a
good thing?”

It was so
innocent, I wanted to cry. Forget all the macho bullshit drilled
into us boys since we’re old enough to walk. What Elijah said right
then, right there under the earth, made more sense to me than
anything else in the world. His logic, the simplicity, the purity
of the thought, made it ironclad-
real
in my mind.

I knew what went
on in our household was affecting him more than the rest of us,
aside from my mother. Though, it was true, I had borne the brunt of
the idiocy for more years than anyone other than my mom, Elijah was
the baby of the family. He was the one who should’ve been spoiled
rotten, protected to the point of insanity, shielded by all that
was bad in the world. And yet…

God, you’re such
an asshole, Dad!

…
He got hit for
no reason. Life shouldn’t have shown its’ ugly face as early as it
had for my beautiful, little brother. It seemed so
unfair.

My
m
om was staring into one of the
shelves, unmoving.

To this day, I
don’t know how I was able to see the tears fall from her eyes,
stream briefly onto her cheek and then tumble into the wooden bin
below. Maybe the light of the flashlight was angled in such a way I
could see them – clearly. Maybe they were bioluminescent. Maybe,
they were magic.

I like to think
it was the latter.

I answered for
her. “I think that would be great, Eli.”

“
Yeah, it
would.” He sounded like a seventy-year-old man.

“
Hey, what’s
this?” wondered my Mom. She wiped her eyes, her hands disappearing
over the edge of the drawer-like shelf she’d been gazing into as
she wept.

We boys moved
closer.

I could see the
muscles in her arms straining. Whatever it was, it was
heavy.

“
Want me to
help?” I asked.

She grunted,
“Yeah.”

I used the edge
of a lower shelf as Eli had minutes prior, my perspective changing.
I looked down into the bin and realized it was ladder - about nine
feet long, sturdy, with metal braces on one end and some sort of
bracketry on the other. “I wonder where this thing
goes.”

Together we
yanked it up and out of its’ resting place.

“
From the way
its’ made, it looks like it fits in the ground somewhere.” My mom
peeped over her shoulder at Elijah. “Son, grab the flashlight and
see if you find any metal stuck into the ground.”