Publication History:
"The Sliding" in Morpheus Tales, Issue #1
"Old Bassler House" in Northern Haunts
Things Slip Through, short story collection published by Crystal Lake Publishing.
***
I’ve been remembering things, lately. Things I don’t want to remember, terrible things that happened long ago. I don’t know why. Actually, I don’t know much about anything, anymore. My writing career is over, I’m on the fourth year of a teaching career I hate, I’ve been drinking way too much, I’m remembering things I’d rather not and I don’t know why.
I’ve tried to talk with Fitzy and Father Ward about it. They were there, of course. But the conversation always fizzles to a dead end and a change of subject. All they want to remember is the day three high school kids trespassed into the old spook house on the
edge of town, and no matter how cleverly I’ve brought it up over the past few years I can’t get their shuttered minds past a certain point.
They think – or NEED to think – nothing happened.
But something did happen. We glimpsed a dark truth: that a shadowed world exists next to ours, one defying explanation. And I’m remembering it.
All of it…
#
August, 1985
I hesitated on the old porch outside the closed window, hand resting on cracked siding. Through the dirty glass the room beyond appeared empty, littered with the usual debris you’d expect in an abandoned house: crumpled wads of paper, old books and magazines, tin cans, beer bottles, broken toys and plates.
“This is stupid,” I muttered. “You seriously want to do this?”
“C’mon. You’re the biggest guy here. You can’t possibly be this much of a wimp, can you?”
I glared at Mike Fitzgerald over my shoulder. We’d been friends since my family and I moved here two years ago, but sometimes he pissed me off, royally. “Listen. Your parents may not care what you do. I cut my hand messing around with this window and Mom’ll have a conniption, then Dad’ll ground me for giving Mom a conniption.”
“Honestly, Fitzy,” Bill Ward said, leaning against the siding, “Gav’s right. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. I mean… that window wasn’t boarded up the last time we came here, and that was almost three years ago. Maybe we should just…”
“Baaaaalls.” Fitzy folded his arms and hung his head, as if mortified at our apparent cowardice. “What made your wangs shrivel up and fall off? C’mon, Bill. We’ve been in there tons of times. There’s nothing even a little creepy about it.”
He smirked at me. “Unless, of course, you’re from out of town like Nancy-Boy, here.”
And that tore it.
Which, of course, Fitzy had planned on.
I shrugged. “Fine. Someone give me a hand, though. Looks pretty stuck to me.” I grasped one corner of the window, and nodded at the other. “Bill… ?” He nodded and joined me.
As we carefully tried to pry open the window, I asked, “So what’s the deal?”
The story was typical, probably the same in small towns everywhere. Bassler House was an old, three story Victorian farmhouse that had been abandoned for years, and eventually all the kids in town embarked on a pilgrimage here to test their mettle.
