Something's Under the House

Something's Under the House

         Even during the heat of the August Texas day it was cool and shady beneath the aluminum carport attached to the south side of my grandmother's house. Twin ribbons of concrete led from the street to the metal covering, just wide enough for the tires of grandpa's truck plus a little.

         Between the concrete tracks was an area of dirt about four feet wide and twenty feet long. The texture of the dirt was very fine; excellent for playing marbles or creating battles with the green plastic soldiers my friends and I bought in large cellophane bags. My best friend, Gary, and I were both ten this summer of 1957, and spent endless hours playing outside during all seasons, inventing games instead of watching television.

         Evening was a magical time. Kids from all up and down the block would chase lightning bugs and imprison them in glass jars with screw-on lids. Holes were punched in the tops with an ice pick in a vain attempt to keep the fireflies alive. We ran around with our insect lanterns playing games only a child could understand.

         Bugs were plentiful. Wasp and yellow jacket nests hung from shrubs and high in the eaves of houses, and seldom did an entire week go by that I didn't get a burning sting from one of those dive-bombing creatures. But never without cause. Bees were everywhere, as were butterflies. More frogs, more horned toads -- more life. These critters were our familiar playmates.

         Another common insect, which also enjoyed the fine dirt under the carport, was the doodlebug. Not the small crustacean that rolls itself into a protective ball when threatened --though many people call those doodlebugs. Those hard-shelled relatives of lobsters are pill bugs, or sow bugs.

         No, the doodlebug, or ant lion, digs funnel-shaped depressions in the dirt and lies in wait at the bottom for ants and other small insects to stray into the conical trap. About a third of an inch long, and dirt colored, they blend perfectly with their surroundings. They have powerful, sickle-like jaws and make short work of victims falling into their two-inch deep craters. Insects try to crawl out, but the fine, loose dirt flows beneath them, creating mini-landslides to draw them nearer the waiting jaws at the bottom.

         Like most kids, we were endowed with endless curiosity and a cruel streak.

         Gary pushed his shock of red hair off his forehead. "Drop another ant in," he said, as we lay on our stomachs and watched the doodlebug come out for another meal. Or we would take a twig, move it gently in the funnel and sing-song, "Doodlebug, doodlebug your house is on fire. Come out and see where your children are." It never failed to produce a doodlebug.

         But there were many games we played . . .

         "I shot your army man, Gary. The one by the rock," I said.

         Gary shook his head. "Unh unh. Your guy missed."

         I stood up and brushed soil from my shorts. "I always miss, according to you. I don't want to play anymore."

         "Yeah, me neither. Want to hunt for soda bottles?" Gary asked, something we did nearly every day. At three cents a bottle we could load up on penny candy if we found a few in the high grass by the busy road on the other side of the railroad tracks. We weren't supposed to play there, but boredom made us do many things which were forbidden.

         "Nah. Got any caps left?"

         Gary shook his head. "Nope. We popped 'em all yesterday, Jimmy."

         I sighed deeply. "What can we do?"

         Gary kicked a rock. It twanged against the two-foot square of chicken wire covering the entrance to the crawl space beneath the house. "We could go under your house and explore. I heard a kid on the next street went under his house and found a little box with German medals, and a pin with one of them swastika things, and a real bayonet. His dad took it all away from him and told him to keep his trap shut . . . but he told some other kid and that kid told me."

         "Neat," I said, finding new enthusiasm. "Come on." We got on our knees beside the opening and peered inside.

         Darkness. Inky, solid black, with a graveyard smell of damp earth.

         "What can we get these nails out with?" Gary asked, pulling on the wire.

         "I'll get Grandpa's hammer." I ran inside the house, closing the screen door gently, and went to the cabinet in the kitchen where my grandpa kept his tools in a wooden tomato crate.

         The hammer was right on top of the stack of screwdrivers, wrenches and odds and ends. I picked it up and headed for the front door. With luck, Grandma wouldn't hear me. Mom and I lived with my grandparents. Mom worked during the day, so Grandma watched over me. "Jimmy?" she called from the back bedroom before I could escape the house. So much for luck.

         "Yes, Grandma."

         "If it starts to get too hot, you come on in," she warned me for about the billionth time.

         "I will. But it's okay under the carport."

         "All right. Have fun . . . and be good."

         I escaped, letting the screen slam this time. Seconds later I sat beside Gary arguing over who would pull out the nails. We compromised. I would pull out the top one, since it was my house and my hammer, and Gary would pull out the bottom nails.

         We removed the rusted nails from the right side of the wire and rolled it back out of the way, leaving it attached to the left side of the entrance. "Me first," Gary said, already on his hands and knees. He poked his head into the dark and moved forward. I was right on his heels. There was plenty of room above our heads, though not enough to allow us to stand straight. We could, however, duck-waddle.

         It was so dark I couldn't see Gary, but I knew he was only inches from me. "We need a flashlight," Gary said.

         "Yeah. Can't see anything. Wait. Did you hear something?" I asked, surprised to hear myself whispering. "A scratching sound?"

         Gary's chubby rear end bumped my face as he crawled backward. "I-I'm not sure."

         "There!" I exhaled, hearing the sound again. Closer. I began to wonder what secrets the darkness hid. Could that be a pair of eyes, glowing dimly, a few yards away?

         As if thinking with one mind, Gary and I both crayfished backward toward the hole we had entered, where only meager light shone through. Then that light disappeared. Darkness so thick it seemed to have weight crushed in upon us. Something was there. I could almost feel its shriveled hand on my throat!

         Something curled around my ankle. Tugged. "Ahhhh!" I screamed, kicking hard to free my leg from whatever creature had me in its grasp.

         "Ahhhh!," Gary echoed, frightened by my screech.

         "Jimmy! Get out of there!" Grandma shouted, squinting into the crawl space, her body blocking out the sun. She gripped my ankle in her hand.

         Gary and I retreated hastily. Gary's freckled face was blood red and embarrassed looking. I'm sure my face mirrored his.

         "What are you trying to do, get bit by a spider, or a scorpion or even a snake? No telling what's under there," Grandma warned.

         Then her voice changed. It took on a tone that I knew from years of experience meant she might be stretching the truth. Her next words captured our attention. "The boogeyman is said to live under a house. In a deep hole that goes all the way down to his home built of skeletons. No one knows which house. That's why Grandpa put that wire up there . . . to keep you out . . . and to keep things in."

         Swear to God, I heard a scuttling sound come out of the opening at that instant. It threw frozen shivers down my spine. Gary must have heard it, too, because we both inched closer to Grandma. She had activated our vivid imaginations and sent them speeding in high gear along the course she had chosen.

         "Something?" she whispered, cocking her head as if listening.

         I grabbed the hammer and pounded the slightly bent nails back through the chicken wire, securing it to the wooden framework of the now yawning entrance to the unknown. I brushed the loose soil from my shorts and the muddy smudges from my knees.

         Grandma reached into her apron pocket. "Here's a nickel. You boys run down to the store and get you a Popsicle to split."

         Nothing like a Popsicle to erase the horrors of the boogeyman. Or whatever was under the house.

         The next morning Gary came to my door. His eyes were red and moist. "Jimmy, you seen Blackie?"

         Blackie was Gary's year old Labrador retriever, a frisky, smart dog full of licks, wags and dog-grins. "Unh unh. He get out of the yard?"

         Gary nodded and wiped his nose on the hem of his T-shirt. "He must'a got out last night. He didn't eat his food like he always does. My dad's looked everywhere for him."

         "Hope he didn't get hit by a car," I said, bringing up a possibility Gary must have overlooked. His lip trembled. He turned, jumped off the three-foot high porch and ran toward his house, directly across the street.

         Over the next few weeks several more dogs and cats came up missing. Signs, made from cardboard and nailed to telephone poles offered rewards for some of the animals, prompting Gary and me to scour the neighborhood in search of the pets. We didn't find any of them. Gary talked constantly about Blackie.

The weather took one of those curious turns that we Texans take for granted. A torrid August turned into a wet, cool September, keeping Gary and me indoors. Then October arrived, producing a new curtain of melting heat. Mirages shivered over the asphalt on the streets, and the pungent smell of bubbling tar filled the air.

         The subject of the boogeyman was never discussed between Gary and me, but, by some unspoken mutual consent, we avoided the space beneath the carport since the day Grandma put the fear in us. Now, though, the heat drove us once again to the shade beneath the carport for our after-school play.

         That's when we noticed the chicken wire hanging loose. It no longer covered the hole leading under the house.

         "S'pose something came outta there?" Gary asked, straining to see through the darkness, without getting too close.

         "Can't tell. Could'a been pushed from the inside. Or pulled from the outside."

         Standing close together, our hands on our knees, we bent to examine the wire. It was ripped away from the nails. One nail was broken in half. A cloyingly sweet smell wrinkled my nose. Grandpa had found a dead rat out back in his workshop once. The smell of that rat was mild in comparison to the stench emanating from beneath the house. "Ugh! Something's dead under there, Gary," I said, backing away. "Maybe one of those dogs or cats that went missing."

         "Blackie?" Gary gasped, his eyes growing larger.

         "Nah. Probably just a rat. Blackie will find his way back any day now, Gar," I fibbed, seeing the pain in my buddy's eyes.

         We moved what we considered to be a safe distance from the hole and set up our army men. Neither of us wanted to sit with his back to the hole and, as if the hole were a magnet and our eyes were made of iron shavings, we kept looking at it, drawn to it, our imaginations filling us with fear -- even in the light of day.

         "Whew, it's hot. Want a Coke?" I asked Gary.

         Busily involved planning his next offensive, Gary just nodded.

         I went inside and got two familiar green bottles of Coke from the refrigerator and pried off the caps with the "church key" Grandpa kept hanging from the wall by a string. Then, as an afterthought, I got Grandpa's big, silver-colored flashlight from the tomato crate, stuck it in the back of my jeans, and returned to the carport.

         I was just in time to see Gary's red sneakers disappear into the boogeyman's hole.

         He wasn't crawling. His toes were up, heels down, digging furrows in the soft dirt. His right knee bent once, and he kicked feebly. Then he was gone.

         I dropped the bottles I was carrying. They hit a grassy area and didn't break, but the black, carbonated liquid fizzed and spurted, emptying the bottles in seconds, like some foul vomitus spewing from small, pouting mouths. My heart thumped and bulged in my chest. A swooning dizziness rolled over me, but I fought it off. I didn't want to be unconscious in this place.

         Gathering courage I didn't know I had, I tugged the flashlight from my pocket, clicked it on, and ran to the opening of the Boogeyman's lair. I shined the strong light under the house. The yellow beam cut the blackness. About fifteen feet from the opening I could see the white rubber bottoms of Gary's sneakers. They were moving farther away. Fast. The thing that had Gary was indistinguishable. Just a slightly lighter smudge against the darkness.

         Dropping to my hands and knees I took a deep breath and went under the house. The smell of death was so strong it burned my eyes and tripped my gag reflex, but I crawled forward, the light held in my right hand. "I'm coming, Gary," I said, more to myself than to my friend.

         Gary disappeared.

         One second I had him in the flashlight beam and the next instant he was gone. "Gary!" I crawled faster.

         White, worm-looking things clung to the palm of my hand. Maggots.

         I was crawling so fast I almost toppled into the hole. A funnel-shaped depression about twelve feet deep and the same distance across lay before me. Now I knew where Gary went.

         Down.

         To the boogeyman's skeleton house, like Grandma said.

         I had to help him before he smothered beneath the ground, if he was still alive. I swung the light all around me looking for something to use as a weapon. All I saw was a chunk of concrete and, a few feet away, partially buried beneath a mound of dirt, a discarded piece of lumber, split at one end, forming a jagged point. I pulled it out of the dirt. It was a 2 x 4 stud, about eight feet long. I carried it to the edge of the crater and, though the wood was termite eaten it was only soft and flaky in a few places -- the point was hard.

         I stood up as straight as I could in the low space and gripped the end of the 2 x 4 in both hands. The flashlight lay on the damp soil beside me, angled down into the pit. A pit I suddenly recognized, even though it was many times larger than those I was accustomed to seeing everyday. No boogeyman hole after all.

         I stuck the board against the side of the crater and stirred -- back and forth.

         And I sang. "Doodlebug, doodlebug, your house is on fire. Come out and see where your children are."

         The dirt at the bottom of the pit began to move, sliding in upon itself. The huge, gray shape, its mandibles gnashing with a clacking noise like marbles striking each other, came forward. It was six foot across, two foot high and, once it was completely exposed, I figured it must be ten feet long.

         I continued to stir the soil until the doodlebug approached the end of the board, then I pulled it up and held the back of the board in one hand and the middle in the other, like a clumsy spear.

         The creature scuttled right up to the top of the pit and raised its head above the rim. The sickle-like jaws reached for me. I flinched backward and my shoes slipped. I fell onto my back. The great moving maw hung over me, dripping unspeakable fluids over my face. I closed my eyes and thrust the sharpened board as hard as I could into the monster's gaping mouth.

         The spear hit its target with a satisfying "thuck". More fluid oozed over me. The smell reminded me of peaches left to rot on the ground.

         The ant lion pulled away, swinging its head, but the stake remained buried deeply in the gray flesh. The creature backed up, burrowing rapidly. "No!" I screamed, aware that if it didn't die now, Gary surely would. He had to be running out of air. My eyes fell upon the segment of concrete beside me. Scrambling to my feet, using every ounce of strength in my skinny arms, I lifted the heavy, rock-like mass and heaved it at the doodlebug.

         I was lucky.

         The concrete smashed into the creature's head and mushed it into a lopsided mess of sludge. The doodlebug collapsed against the side of the pit.

         I leaped over the side of the crater, sliding downward on my rear. At the bottom, I dug frantically. "C'mon, Gary! Where are you, buddy?" I said aloud, shoveling the dirt between my legs. My hand struck something solid. I pulled and it came up . . . too easily. A long bone, possibly the foreleg of a large dog emerged from the soil. I tossed it aside and kept digging.

         Something touched my fingers --clawed at my knuckles. I grasped it with both hands and pulled -- hard. A small hand poked up through the soil. I fell backward, leaning, straining, pulling for all I was worth. Inch by inch Gary appeared from the dirt at the bottom of the pit. Once his head was free he coughed, spitting up wads of filthy mucus. Soft dirt ran from his nose and ears. He opened his eyes.

         Gary wasn't home. The terrified boy sitting at my feet was vacant-eyed. He stared right through me. "Gary, we have to get out of here. Can you help?"

         Nothing.

         I shook him by his shoulders, but he didn't respond. Then I said the only thing I could think of that might get through to him. "Hey, Gary . . . my army man just shot your army man."

         Gary blinked rapidly several times and shook his head. He swayed and nearly fell over, but caught himself. "Unh unh . . . he missed," Gary growled, his throat raw from eating dirt. He was back.

         "Let's get out of here," I said, trying to climb the cascading wall of the pit. Just as the ants couldn't make the top, neither could I. And I wanted to be back in the safety of the sunshine. Now. Just in case the over-sized ant lion I killed wasn't the only one of its kind.

         "Help me, Gary. We have to climb up on top of the doodlebug." Together we managed to scale the soft-bodied creature and stand on its ruined head. We were still five or six feet from the lip of the pit.

         Gary coughed and put his hand on my shoulder. "Now what, 'Cisco'?"

         "Can you reach the top if you climb up on my shoulders?"

         He shrugged. I made a cradle with my linked fingers and he put his foot into it. Several times we tried, but the doodlebug's head was slippery and my feet kept sliding. Also, every time Gary touched the wall of the pit the dirt showered down over both of us.

         "Jimmy, I'm scared. Think of something," Gary sobbed.

         "If you hadn't gone too close to the crawl space entrance we wouldn't be in this mess," I accused.

         "I heard something after you went inside. I thought it might be Blackie. When I bent over to look, the thing grabbed me in its jaws and drug me in. I-I couldn't . . ."

         I clamped my hand over his mouth. "Shhhh!" Something was approaching the pit, making a rustling noise like millions of dried leaves blowing down the street in the fall. Gary's eyes were huge.

         Then I saw our way out -- I hoped.

         I removed my hand from Gary's lips and moved close to him, whispering, "Help me pull the piece of wood out of the doodlebug's mouth."

         Together, we took hold of the board and pulled. It came loose with a thick, slurping noise. I set the flat end of the board on top of the creature's head and leaned the sharp end against the wall of the crater. The board protruded a good foot above the rim. I motioned with my thumb for Gary to climb the 2 x 4. As soon as he was over the top, I shinnied up in record time.

         The flashlight was still burning at the edge of the pit. I snatched it up and aimed in the direction of the rustling noise. "It's another one, Gar! Run!" I shouted, already duck-walking as fast as I could. The square of light leading to the exit got closer.

         Fifteen feet.

         Ten feet. Gary screamed. I turned to help him. When I did, he passed me, crawling on his hands and knees.

         The doodlebug was coming fast, this one even bigger than the other. I dropped and crawled as fast as I could.

         Five feet to the light.

         Gary went through the hole.

         Three feet.

         Two feet. My sneaker was ripped from my foot. I hoped my foot wasn't still inside.

         Inches to the light.

         I exploded from the hole, collided with Gary and we fell in a tangle of arms and legs, breathing like Wayne, the asthmatic kid down the block.

         The doodlebug hit the opening. Only its mandibles pushed through. It was too large to escape from beneath the house -- unless it burrowed under the house and came up on the outside! We ran screaming for my grandpa.

         At first disbelieving, grandpa finally came with Gary and me to the side of the house. The doodlebug wasn't evident at the entrance to the crawl space, but once grandpa got a whiff of the odor coming from under the house he called the police.

         The police used a chain saw to dismember the dead doodlebug and pulled the pieces out with ropes. Lots of activity and a short period of notoriety descended upon us.

         The other doodlebug wasn't found beneath our house, or anywhere else. The whole neighborhood was searched, but no other wonders of Nature turned up -- except Blackie -- who wandered home three days after our adventure.

         I was unharmed, but Gary didn't escape his ordeal unscathed. Over the next week his red hair turned snowy white. He thinks it's kind of neat.

         In the weeks that followed, I began to forget my experience, certain the world would never see another giant doodlebug. But then I made the mistake of looking up "doodlebug" in the school encyclopedia.

         Sometimes knowledge is a bad thing.

         Seems the doodlebug I killed was in the larval stage. During the spring they pupate in earth-covered cocoons. The adult emerges in June and resembles a dragonfly or damselfly.

         Based on its larval size, the doodlebug that got away could have a wingspread of sixty feet.

         And they're predacious.

         Yeah. I wish I didn't know that.

The End

DMM