The Monster in the Cellar

Frank and Viola never talked about the monster in their cellar—that just wasn’t how it was done. Certainly they knew about him. They had, in fact, put him there themselves one fine September day when the perfect autumn air left him feeling as sleepy and content as monsters ever got, and they could trick him into descending below.

Once he was there, he was trapped, and the people above never spoke of him again.

It wasn’t easy to live in a house with a monster in the cellar. Sometimes there were horrible groanings from below. Viola would say, “My! These old houses settle terribly, don’t they?”

Sometimes Frank thought wistfully about the amount of space down there. “One of these days, I’m going to turn the cellar into a wood shop,” he said. “I’ve got some great ideas for furniture I’d like to build.” But, of course, he never did. He couldn’t open the cellar without letting the monster out. It was easier to forget about building furniture.

Though they never said so out loud, both Frank and Viola had a vague hope the monster would starve to death down there. Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way. He found lots of tasty monster-things to eat in their cellar, and over time he grew stronger instead of weaker. Frank hesitantly suggested once that they should go downstairs and try to kill the beast before the situation got worse, but Viola gave him a look of such hatred—and burned his dinner, besides—that he never mentioned it again.

The monster groaned louder over the years, so Frank and Viola started shouting at each other instead of talking. The monster found a weak spot in their floorboards where he could stab a claw upward and try to gouge them. Frank and Viola learned to avoid that spot. They learned to avoid lots of spots.

One day, Viola’s friend Marge came over for coffee. In the middle of a conversation about their husbands and their plans for their upcoming retirements, the monster gave a particularly loud groan. Viola didn’t seem to hear it, but Marge put her coffee cup down and said, “Viola—when are you going to do something about that monster in your cellar?”

Viola gasped. “Monster? In my cellar? How dare you!”

“I used to have one. George and I finally killed it, and we’re much happier now.”

Viola stood up. She was so angry her hands shook. She snatched Marge’s coffee cup away and dumped it out in the sink. “Get out of my house. You’re no friend of mine.”

Once Marge was gone, Viola took her coffee cup outside and smashed it against the cellar door. She screamed, “Shut up! Shut up and leave me alone!”

She screamed at the memory of Marge, of course. There was certainly nothing else for her to scream at.

Viola cleaned up the shattered pottery. She went back inside and turned the television on—loud. She calmed down and regained control of herself.

A monster in her cellar. The very idea. Ridiculous. 

A Fair Trade

Tommy was a giant, but he was a very little giant—just now four years old. As such, he was always forgetting things and doing things wrong.

Like his blocks. He knew it was important to pick them all up before he went to bed. The end of the giant day was the beginning of the human day, and if he left his blocks lying around, a human might find them. He knew that. But no matter how hard he tried, it seemed like there were always four or five that got away from him and he forgot to go looking for them.

“You’re going to lose those blocks, Tommy,” his mom would say. “Some human’s going to think they were made for him, and you’ll never get them back.”

“I know, Mommy,” he’d say. “I’ll be careful.”

But he was four years old, and it was hard to be careful. One day it happened just like his mom said it would. Tommy got up in the morning and found that some of his blocks were missing. He discovered them cemented to the ground by the unbreakable bond that happened when a human found a giant object and used it for himself. Humans had built a tiny playground beside Tommy’s blocks. They were lost to him forever.

“Don’t come crying to me,” his mother said. “If I told you once, I told you a thousand times.”

Late that night, Tommy snuck out of bed to spy on his blocks. A man and a little girl came to the playground. They were so tiny Tommy could crush them—except he couldn’t, of course. Giants couldn’t touch humans.

The man sat on one of Tommy’s blocks while the girl played on the swings. Then she came over and climbed around on the blocks while the man told her to be careful.

“They look like a little giant kid left his blocks lying around, don’t they Grandpa?”

Tommy made a fist. So give them back, he thought. But he couldn’t say anything.

The man laughed. “You’ve got quite an imagination there. I’d hate to be standing around when one of those block towers fell over.”

The little girl chewed on her lower lip. “I bet he’s sad we took his blocks.” She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a handful of tiny objects. “I’ll leave him some of my marbles. That way it’s fair.”

The man laughed again. “You’re a card. You sure you want to leave those?” She nodded, and he said, “Okay, then. Let’s go get some lunch.”

Once they left, Tommy snuck out and picked up the marbles she’d left. He had to pinch them between his fingernails they were so tiny, and he’d never be able to use them for anything, but having them made him happy. He went home and put them in a bowl on his display shelf.

He slept well that night. Maybe humans weren’t so bad after all. 

Justice House

The building had originally been a courthouse, but the actual courts had been moved to a modern structure on the east side of town twenty years ago. The old courthouse sat empty and might have fallen into disrepair if it hadn’t been bought by a developer and turned into upscale apartments. Justice House, they called it—studios and one-bedrooms, with a clubhouse in the basement that still had an iron-barred jail cell in the corner. A trendy place to call home.

Jack didn’t care about being trendy, but he had an idea the women he hoped to date would, so he felt lucky to get into an apartment there. It seemed to work. At least one of the women he talked into coming home with him after the bars closed only did it because she’d always wanted to see the inside of the place. “Can we go down to the jail cell?” she asked. “Maybe mess around some?”

It was an interesting night, to say the least.

Despite the perks, living at Justice House had its downsides. The pipes were old. The windows were drafty. And after a month or two, Jack started to suspect there were ghosts.

He didn’t get the feeling they were malevolent, despite the fact they haunted a courthouse, which probably meant they were either criminals or unjustly accused innocents. Jack never felt like he was in danger. He just felt he wasn’t alone, that something he couldn’t quite see was watching him.

He felt it most often in his bedroom. He never saw any ghostly figures, and he never felt an unearthly chill. He’d lie in bed, trying to sleep, and feel the undeniable presence of someone else in the room.

Being Jack, he decided to take advantage of his ghostly infestation. He called the woman who’d been so thrilled by the idea of messing around in the jail cell and asked how she felt about messing around while ghosts watched them.

“Ghosts?” she said. “I’ve heard every story out there about Justice House, but I never heard it was haunted.”

“It sure feels like something’s watching me in my bedroom”

She laughed. “So that story is true! I heard the builder cut peepholes in some of the walls, and left hidden passages available to use them.”

Absurdly, Jack felt less bothered by the idea of his builder peeping at him than he was disappointed to discover he didn’t have ghosts.

It turned out okay, though. His woman friend wasn’t disappointed by the idea of humans rather than ghosts. In fact, she seemed to like the idea. A lot.

Even without ghosts, living at Justice House had its perks. 

Of Wardrobes and Magic

I took this picture because the statue reminded me of my favorite childhood story. You might think I mean Peter Cottontail or The Velveteen Rabbit or The Runaway Bunny, but no. I’m talking about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

If you’ve read the book (or seen the movie, for that matter, though people who watch instead of read make me sad) you remember what the White Witch did to her enemies. She turned them to stone with one wave of her magic wand. I always thought it was a horrible fate—left frozen to be aware time was passing, but not able to join in. I’d have felt better if she’d just killed people.

The moment I saw this statue, I thought he looked like one of the White Witch’s victims. I don’t actually remember if there were any rabbits discussed among her statues, but I suppose my thinking first of Narnia says more about what the book meant to me than it does about this statue’s resemblance to any particular character. Narnia was one of the most important parts of my childhood.

I was seven when I first read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I was 37 when I last read it—it’s one of those stories I have to pull out and revisit from time to time. I imagine anyone who attaches a particular significance to books and literature probably first developed that love during childhood. I would guess we each have a particular story we can point to as the one that first showed us what a magical world books could be.

I remember one of my favorite games in the years after I first visited Narnia. I would go into my closet and shut the door—and how I wished for an actual wardrobe! I spent a minute in there, stumbling around and pretending I couldn’t find the back. When I came out, I pretended I was in the magical land of Narnia, where animals could talk (though my hamster never managed the trick) and danger lurked everywhere.

The magic doesn’t end with childhood books, of course. I still sink into magical worlds, especially if Stephen King or Jasper Fforde is writing them. Nothing matches the wonder of the first time, though—because it was a new experience, because a seven-year-old is more prone to believing in magic. Narnia has earned a forever spot in my heart. It’s what I always think of when I feel surrounded by wonder and have a sense of the world as a thin curtain. And really, the story is a perfect analogy of the magic of reading. You open a book cover instead of a wardrobe door, but you still find a new and exciting world on the other side.

So forgive me if every stone statue makes me feel sorry for the White Witch’s victims and every closed door seems to be an invitation to discovery. I can’t help but see magic in the world—I’m a reader.

Riding the Rails

The question came up occasionally as an ice breaker at parties—what’s the first thing you would do if you won the lottery? Jake’s answer was always the same.

“I’d buy an old caboose,” he’d say. The other people at the party would see the dreamy intensity in his eyes and know this was something he’d put a lot of thought into. “I’d have it set up in the back yard and turn it into my writing studio.”

He knew, somehow, he’d be able to write better in a room like that than in the corner of the dining room he used for his office now. The words would chug right along like a train going down the tracks. He wouldn’t have any more fits and starts, squeezing the words out one at a time with each one causing cramps in his brain. He’d be like King or Oates, so prolific the publishing world couldn’t keep up with his output.

Jake never won the lottery, and he never managed to finish a book, but by the time he was ready to retire he’d saved a nice chunk of change. He found an old caboose for sale and got his wife to agree to the purchase, provided he had it set up where no one could see it from the street. So that was what he did.

On the first day of his retirement, Jake finished his breakfast, packed himself a sack lunch and went out to his studio. He had a place to write and now he had the time to write. He would finally be able to write the way he’d always wanted to.

The words didn’t come any easier. He supposed, deep down, he wasn’t surprised.

That didn’t mean he was disappointed with the caboose, though. The caboose was perfect. Now, when the words weren’t there, instead of staring at a blank wall feeling stupid he could look out the window and pretend he was a hobo riding the rails, or James Bond on the trail of a criminal, or a war hero coming home to his sweetheart. He might only commit 200 words to paper during a day in his studio, but he lived so many stories in his head he felt as if he’d had a productive and adventurous day.

Jake was thankful they didn’t need more money, because he knew he’d never make any as a writer. He was happy, though. When he came back to the house in the afternoons and showed his wife just how happy he was feeling these days, she agreed the caboose was the smartest purchase they’d ever made.