IT SEEMS TO HAVE SEEPED INTO THE BASEMENT by Greg Lammers
The old textbooks had plenty to say about infectious diseases. There was a lot to learn about viruses and bacteria. And so far none of it had done him a bit of good.
Jerry sat at his kitchen table pouring over the books he’d found in the nurse’s house. She was gone, she wouldn’t be using them anymore. On his table alongside the textbooks, and ancient printouts of research papers was the journal he’d found in the artist’s shed. Like the nurse, the artist would not be using it any longer. So Jerry had no qualms about making off with it.
The journal was a heavy black leather number. Roughly the first third of the book was filled with page after page of crisp, fine handwriting. The observations were mundane. The last third of the journal was blank. Maybe Jerry could use it himself someday, if he had time.
The middle third of the journal was the interesting part. As the handwriting grew more chaotic, the subject matter grew more bizarre. There were observations of extreme, micro-level weather events, and creatures skulking around rocks and trees and buildings.
It was all fragmentary and read like some kind of disordered and deviant tale of wonderland. Jerry believed every word of it.
Jerry was a realistic and grounded person. His wife had made a habit of referring to him as boring. Though he hadn’t worked in the field for a few years, the economy being what it was, he had a degree and background in engineering.
He wasn’t into new-age or postmodern diversions and he wasn’t a particularly religious or spiritual man. But he had eyes and ears and a keen mind, for now anyway. And he trusted that the things he’d seen, at least most of them, were not hallucinations.
Water had never gotten in the house before that spring when the basement flooded four times. Jerry had ripped the carpet up to make for easier cleanup. His wife would have objected. She would have found the bare concrete basement floor ugly. Jerry found it ugly too, but it had to be done as long as the flood waters kept coming in. And his wife wasn’t here to tell him to do or not do anything.
He went down to the basement to grab some peroxide and rubbing alcohol. His eyes watered and his nose was running. He wiped his face, looked down at his hand, and saw red. He calmed himself, it wasn’t too late, it couldn’t be too late. There was that noise, he’d heard it the last time he’d been down here. Clicking, or chirping?
He found the peroxide and alcohol and started back toward the stairs. He passed over the line where the carpet used to lay between the utility room and the finished part of the basement. On the naked strip of carpet tape sat a large brown cricket.
These crickets had been here, in the basement, when Jerry and Andrea moved in seven years previous. They’d be here when Jerry left, in whatever manner. They were brown and long-legged. They liked the dark and seemed to be able to sit immobile for days. He’d read that they didn’t see well. When startled, often they would leap – not away from the disturbance – but towards it.
Jerry could walk around the basement and avoid them. But every once in awhile, either from carelessness or because he didn’t see it, he got too close to one and BAM! It sprang through the air at what seemed an outrageous speed and bounced off of him. He nearly felt his heart stop every time.
The cricket on the exposed carpet tape wasn’t going to jump at him. The tape was a strong and durable adhesive. He couldn’t pull the cricket up off the adhesive without tearing it apart. The cricket had landed on its death.
He stepped on it with his running shoe. He didn’t like to kill a living creature if he didn’t have to, not even almost blind dimwitted ones. But there was nothing else to do. It took 3 stomps and twists of the foot to get this one to stop moving. The sound it made when he stepped on it, he could swear it was different than the simple crunch he’d heard when stepping on the basement crickets in the past. He shrugged, so many things were strange now, the sound of dying crickets shouldn’t be exempt.
At just about the first stair, a cricket hit his bare arm. He jumped, nearly dropping the alcohol and peroxide. He composed himself and continued on. As he hit the second stair he looked down and saw the eyes. Countless tiny eyes stared nearly sightless up at him.
Instinctively he jumped back and lost his footing on the wooden stair. As he was falling he could feel the crickets jumping at him, bouncing against his pants, shirt, and his face.
He landed with a thud at the bottom of the stairs. He hadn’t caught his fall too well, with the bottles in his hand. His head had hit the linoleum. He was dazed. He shook his head and struggled to regain his senses. He was covered with crickets two or three times larger than the ones he’d seen before, they were in a frenzy, bouncing off of every part of him, biting and tearing into him. He screamed.