Ever-creepy basement shadows haunt “A Justified Murder of Crows”

Author's note: When Rhonda Ramos Benson moves with her family into their new home in the quiet town of Patton, Colorado, she's rattled to find that they've bought a place brimming with ghouls—of both the living and the non-living variety.

True to their word, the painters arrived at 10:00 A.M. sharp. Rhonda showed the three of them into the house and pointed out the walls she wanted painted. She had a few paint samples from Patton Hardware. It had taken her about two hours to decide on colors, and the salesman had finally given up and gone to take his break. She was either color blind, or all the greens looked the same. Rhonda handed Doug, the painter, an older guy with a shock of white hair and a beard to match, the color swatches she'd chosen.

"You sure?" he asked her.

"Yes, I think it'll go well with the warm beige color I picked for the other walls, and the red that I picked to outline the niche alcoves."

He looked at her over his half-frame glasses, "Ma'am, are you 100 percent sure?" Rhonda nodded. Doug sighed. "Then goose turd green it will be." He held the swatch up to the wall. His white coveralls were a choppy rainbow of past jobs.

"It's called Cactus Green, I think?" Rhonda took the swatch from him and held it up next to her second choice, Moonlit Jungle. There was little difference in her eyes—they both looked, well, dark green. She tilted her head and studied them. "Do you think Moonlit Jungle would work better in this space? I mean, it's just an accent wall..." She held Moonlit Jungle next to the swatch that would cover the rest of the walls—Tantalizing Toast, with the niche accents in Colonial Red.

"Oh, hell yeah," said Doug. "Anything works better than goose turd. In my opinion it looks as if someone walked through a golf course and then smeared their shoes on the wall."

"You're the expert," she said, handing the swatches back to him. "Moonlit Jungle it is."

Doug took the swatches, stuck them into his pocket and yelled out the door to his coworkers who were unloading ladders and drop cloths. "Hey fellas! Eighty-six the goose turd!" He turned his back to her and went to meet his crew out on the front stoop. "Shit, I hate that color," he mumbled, shuffling off.

Rhonda giggled and headed up the stairs to get the laundry. The shared washroom facilities were accessed through a door outside which led to the basement. The kids' laundry hamper stood outside Carlos's closed door, filled to the brim with pants, shirts, underwear, pjs, and the stinkiest socks this side of Commerce City. She picked up his hamper by the handle, tucked Bailey's pink laundry basket under her arm, and inched past the painters out the front door and toward the basement entrance.

Doug was having a smoke next to the porch but didn't see her come out. "If I have to paint one more wall goose turd green, I'll throw myself into a volcano. Why the hell women like that godawful color is beyond me." He threw the butt of his cigarette to the ground and crushed it as if it were a poisonous, goose turd green insect.

Rhonda snickered, turned the corner before he could spot her, and set down the laundry. Still grinning, she keyed open the door to the cellar and flipped on the light. A fine coating of dust covered the bare bulb, giving the basement a yellowish hue. Descending the wooden stairs that looked as if they'd been around when dinosaurs roamed the earth and which creaked and protested under her weight, she thought once again about a baseball bat. Her sisters used to hide under stairs exactly like these at her grandmother's house. They'd wait for her to come down and then scare the crap out of her by grabbing her leg through the open stairs. No wonder she had a fear of ankle-seizing bad guys. Thanks, Carla and Jenna. Sheesh. Sisters.

She dropped both baskets by the washer and looked around. The basement was a testament to years gone by. There were bikes and tools, fishing poles, boxes and old paint buckets, and a shelf of jars of what looked to be various canned vegetables and fruit.

Tendrils of inky black shadows filled the corners and crept up the concrete walls, giving the illusion of movement as the bare bulb swayed and slowly calmed. The air was stale and smelled damp. The scent of mildew and earth blanketed the space, and there was something else, something she couldn't quite place—something ripe.

The jars of vegetables were on an old metal shelf, and their contents looked fairly new; Rhonda picked one up. The label had a floral sticker which read, "Made with love by Edna Hansen." Smiling, she placed it back onto the shelf and went to check out the stone-age appliances. They'll probably have a sticker that says, "Made with love by Fred and Wilma Flintstone." Nope! Whirlpool, circa 1972. She was surprised it didn't have one of those hand crank wringers.

After sorting the darks from the lights, she shoved half the laundry into the tub of the washer. God knows why she bothered sorting them, the colors were beyond bleeding into one another—they were all kid-clothes colored. She ticked the knob to start, and a thunking sound which reminded her of a bowling ball rattling around in the back of a pickup truck filled the room.

"Good grief." The old washer bucked like a rodeo bull. Rhonda lifted the lid. Sure enough, the tub was filling with soapy water and seemed to be working just fine, although the old Whirlpool was protesting loudly about it. She had brought a paperback with her, thinking she could sit out the washing time and read. She looked at the title. Zombie Janitors From the Boiler Room. Perfect. She snorted and shoved it into her back pocket. Why did she read this garbage? Oh well.

The only chairs to be seen were a pile of the metal folding type, and a big recliner that looked as if it probably came free with the washer. But the sound was too much for her, and the cellar was too dark to be comfortable for reading. Not only that, the place gave her a good case of the creeps. She'd hide away with her book in her bedroom, or out on the back stoop while the painters worked, and come down periodically to check on her laundry's progress. Turning to leave, she noticed the bare lightbulb which hung from a string, swinging in a brisk circular motion and sending the black threads of shadows that lived in the corners creeping back out from their hiding places. It was as if someone had walked by, reached up and gave the bulb a solid push. The shadows continued their slow escape from the recesses of the cement walls. "Hello?" If no one had pushed it, there had to have been an earthquake. There was no answer, but the empty space under the stairs seeped out darkness as black as deep space.

"I'm done," she declared.

Rhonda fast-tracked up the steps and chided herself for being so easily frightened. The beast inside the ancient washing machine had probably set the bulb spinning. Patton, Colorado, didn't have earthquakes or monsters or Zombie Janitors. All basements held a certain disturbing aura, even well-lit basements with windows. They were buried underground, meaning that when you were down there you also were buried. Rhonda shivered and flung open the door, almost running directly into Anita from unit number three. Rhonda let out a short yelp and just about tumbled back down the stairwell. "Oh dear god, Anita, you scared me," Rhonda said, steadying herself as her paperback fell from her pocket and fluttered to the ground.

"The basement is creepy as shit, right?" Anita said, a cigarette in one hand and Nacho the chihuahua in the other. "I see things moving down there every place I look." She blew out a blast of smoke. "I've been takin' my wash to the laundromat on Pine Street. I can't make myself go down there no more, it's probably fulla haunts."

"Have you actually seen something while you were down there?" Her heart was still playing giddyup-go under her T-shirt.

"Naw, I can just feel 'um, you know?" Anita shuddered, and the flesh on her arms quivered. "You know that feeling you get in the pit of your belly when you know you're someplace you shouldn't be? Same feeling as being in an alley in the dark, or how I imagine it'd be at a carnival at night without no people around, the lights out and the music turned off." She put Nacho down, and he ran around the side of the house. "You'd just know the clowns were still at the circus—they're just sleeping somewheres. That's the feeling I get." Anita tapped her cigarette against the brick, pinched it, and stuck it into the pocket of her dress. "I'd rather pay the money to go to The Pines and do my laundry there."

"The Pines?"

"Yeah, that's the name of the laundromat down the street. I save up my quarters in a spaghetti sauce jar." Anita turned to leave, her pink slippers barely lifting from the ground as she shuffled off. Beneath her house dress it appeared as if her thighs were melting onto her knees. "The cookies were great, by the way. Thanks. I forgot to put them on the counter and my damn dog ate most of them, but the one I got was really tasty." She pointed toward Nacho as he sniffed around the rose bushes. "He's useless as all blazes."

"You're welcome, I'm glad you all enjoyed them," Rhonda called after her. Maybe she'd make spaghetti tonight and save the jar.

"Get in the house, you little rat."

Rhonda cringed. Poor Nacho.

"Oh, and hey," Anita said, turning for a second. "When you're done with that book, can I have it? It's on my list at the library, and I want to read it before some jackass bans it."

Around five-thirty, the painters packed up their gear, cleaned up to the point that the room was cleaner than it had been before they started work, and headed out.

"It'll be wet for a while, so don't you touch it, young man," Doug said to Carlos. "And whatever you do, don't lean on it." Doug shook his head. "Wouldn't want to get goose turd on those nice new jeans."

"I thought we decided on Jungle green," Rhonda asked him.

"Jungle, goose turd, cactus, frog vomit, it's all the same to me." He turned to Rhonda, took off his cap and scratched his head. "Why do so many women like that color all of a sudden anyways?" He threw up a hand in surrender. "Every other house has at least one wall painted olive green, and it's always a woman that picks it."

Rhonda thought for a second. "I guess it reminds us of being outdoors—of plants and growing things."

"Why don't you just go outside?" Doug sucked on his teeth and turned to leave. "Reminds me of camo and duck hunting, but thanks for the business ma'am." He tipped his cap. "You have a nice evening—in your new outdoor-indoors. Honk, honk. I feel like I'm in my brother Marvin's duckblind." He gave Carlos a wink and Rhonda grinned. Doug was grumpy, but he was lovably grumpy.

"I need to get the last of the laundry up," she told Bailey. "Do you want to come with me or stay here?" Both seemed like bad options, although after being up and down the stairs all day the basement no longer sent her skin crawling, and she seemed to be growing used to the mustiness. Who was she kidding? She didn't want to go down there alone. Yep, a five-year-old would save her.

"I'll come with you, Mama—I want to see what's down there." Bailey looked at her with those eyes with the impossibly long black lashes. "Are there toys?"

"Not that I saw, but I didn't explore that much."

"I know there's some and I'm going to find them!"

"How do you know that?"

Bailey looked down at her scuffed sneakers, "I just do." Her daughter paused a second; Rhonda could all but hear her mind working. "Grandma and Grandpa's basement has lots of toys."

Rhonda nodded: this was true. "Come on then. Let's get the last of the clothes and put them away, then I'll start dinner."

"What's for dinner?"

Rhonda thought about her mid-afternoon conversation with Anita. "I'm thinking maybe spaghetti." Rhonda yelled up the stairs, "Carlos! Be back in ten!" She heard a grunted response and a ratatattat! from a video game.

Bailey raced out the front door and headed to the cellar stairs. "Be careful on the steps, they're dangerous!" called Rhonda.

Bailey swung the door open and stopped cold. "You go first, Mama."