Amid the Recesses: A Short Story Collection of Fear (9 page)

Desirae sat in silence. She
burst from her place on the ground and kneeled in front of the
cracked window. The birds began to disperse. Something shuffled
behind her. Her small hands clutched the inner sill of the window.
Her curiosity took her and overcame an intensifying fear—she turned
around. She kept her eyes on the carpet. She saw large, brown
leather boots, soiled and stained with thick, unknown muck. Her
eyes rose. She saw torn denim overalls and a checkered white and
red shirt. Her eyes rose. She saw the sewn mouth and large button
eyes. Her eyes rose. She saw scraggly black hair under a large
brimmed straw hat. She saw Sam.

RETURN TO THE TABLE OF
CONTENTS

At the Bottom

The camera focused in and
out. The cameraman zoomed in on the grinning face, the long, greasy
hair. It was a wild man’s grin. It was uneasy.

“
Am I okay?” He had a deep
voice. “Should I move?” He adjusted without
recommendation.

“
No, no, Eddie. You’re
fine.”

“
Yeah?”

“
Alright. This is simple.
We’re just going to ask you some questions and you’re going to
answer them. However you like. No stress.” The cameraman
said.

“
No stress.” Eddie laughed
and nodded. Sweat covered his head. He fidgeted. The red light of
the camera stared at Eddie like the devil’s eye. He pulled at his
collar as the questions began.

“
Alright, Eddie. How long
have you been a compulsive hoarder, would you say?”

Eddie paused. “Five years?
That’s when things…” He gestured behind him.

The cameras followed the command of
his gesture.

Stuffed animals and board
games, porcelain trinkets and trash, old magazines and newspapers,
toys and gardening equipment—a large room made small. Piles of
items merged into shapeless masses. The smell of trash overwhelmed
the sight of it. Eddie sat in a silence so thick that he heard the
spinning gears of the cameras zoom.

“
This is me.” His twisted
grin faded to embarrassed solemnity. “Can we stop?”

The cameraman looked around
the camera to Eddie. He lowered the camera, but the red recording
light remained lit. “Eddie, we just started. You’re gonna to have
to be patient, alright?” The cameraman smiled. “I know this is hard
for you.”

Eddie shook his head. “You
sure?”

The cameraman sighed. “Work
with us. Let us swing these cameras around a bit, answer some
questions and we’ll get you help you need. It’ll come free of
charge. Nothing out of pocket. We get a show, you get some relief,
alright?”

“
Right.” Eddie’s grin
returned. He combed a hand through his hair.

The camera lifted. “Five
years ago? Did something happen, Eddie
?
When it started?
”

Eddie nodded. “Yeah,
something.”

The cameraman stuck a
thumbs up out from the side of the camera.

“
I worked as a private
investigator. Small town, eh?” He coughed out an anxious laugh.
Sweat ran into his eyes.

“
Yeah?” The cameraman
watched Eddie during the monologue.

“
We had five kids disappear
in a year. Five.” He showed five soiled fingers to the camera. His
brows rose and his forehead wrinkled in a portrait of his age. “I
couldn’t find anything. Nothing that year. No leads. No suspects.
No kids, you know?” Eddie pulled his leg up and set his ankle at
his knee. He looked away from the camera. His eyes glossed over. “I
felt like in a town this small, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be
able to fix something like that, right? Or find something. But I
didn’t and I quit.”

“
Quit being an
investigator?” The cameraman urged. He pointed to one of the other
cameras. It began to surf the piles and stopped at a side angle
near Eddie’s face.

Eddie saw the coil and
contraction of the lens as it zoomed in on his tearing eyes. He
blinked the gloss away. He stared at the camera in front of him.
“Yeah. I left. I saved a lot of money in the time I worked. I lived
by myself mostly. I didn’t have my own kids to worry about, or a
family. I felt empty, you know? Nothin’ to find anymore.” He
gestured again to the mountain of nonsense behind him. “I,
uh..”

Eddie stood from the chair.
The cameras backed away to catch his movements. He dug through the
epidermis of the filth, tearing away tattered scraps of paper and
plastic from stinking trash bags. He pulled from it a
doll.

“
See this?”

It had long, stringy red
hair and a patchwork dress. The doll’s face was made of porcelain
and the paint that designed its face was applied poorly. Its
twisted smile and widespread eyes stared dumbly at the
camera.

“
What’s a grown man doing
with dolls anyway, right?” He put the doll back into the pile.
“Talked to one of the parents of the kids that went missing and
they said she collected dolls. Gave me that one right there.” He
stared at the figure for a long time in silence. The cameras zoomed
and buzzed.

The second camera searched
the room for other dolls. Dolls sat throughout, on chessboard
thrones or beneath lamp cover tents. Their desperate stone faces
stared forward and empty like Eddie’s. Eddie sat down.

“
I bought ‘em. Anywhere I
could. Whenever I could. I thought she would have liked them, you
know? I bought a lot of things that I knew they’d like. The
children. It was, uh—“ He rolled his shoulders and his eyes swelled
again with tears. “—kinda my way of saying sorry for not finding
them in time.”

The camera moved in for
those tears. Eddie let them fall.

“
In time, Eddie? Did they
find them? The children?” The cameraman asked.

Eddie shook his head. “No. No, they
didn’t.”

“
What do you think happened
to them?”

Eddie didn’t answer.

The camera adjusted with
its mechanical indifference. The cameraman tried a different
question. “You blame yourself, Eddie? For them not being
found?”

Eddie peered away from the
center camera to the one at his side “Yeah. I do.”

The cameraman lowered the
camera and the red light went out. Eddie released a breath he’d
been holding for some time.

“
I guess we’re done here?”
Eddie’s voice shook.

“
Yeah, Eddie. We’re going
to look around the house a bit, alright? Just document a couple
things.”

“
Document?” Eddie stood and
crossed his arms. “Document’s a nice word for expose, ain’t it?” He
laughed.

“
It’s alright, Eddie. If
you get uncomfortable, we’ll shut down shop and continue tomorrow,
okay? We’ll take it as slow as we need to. We’ve done this a
hundred times. I understand it isn’t easy.”

Eddie smirked. “You know
that?”

The cameraman grinned and put a hand
on Eddie’s shoulder. He said nothing.

Eddie followed the sound of
coughing into the kitchen. There was a single path through the
house that led there, a trail carved within broken chairs and
burdensome pottery.

“
What’s that smell?” One of
the other crew members covered his nose with his shirt.

Eddie charged in and spoke
in a hurry. “I haven’t cleaned up in here in a long time. I don’t
know anymore, really. I’m sorry about that, that’s, uh—“ He pointed
to the refrigerator. “I haven’t opened the fridge in months.” He
tried to swallow. His mouth dried.

The cameraman pointed to
the refrigerator. “Open the fridge. Get some close-ups on the food
in there. Anything rotten or expired. Plenty of footage of
that.”

Eddie jumped in front of
the crew member that went toward the refrigerator. “Should I try to
get something out of there first?”

“
Oh no, Eddie. Nah, we want
all of that. Relax, man. It’s alright. It’s alright.”

“
Yeah, you keep saying
that.” Sweat built at his head. The ball in his throat rose and
fell and he smacked his lips.

Eddie stood at the back of
the kitchen while men climbed across the landscape of trash. They
recorded the clogged sink. They opened cabinets stuffed with
hundreds of piecemeal plate sets. There was the occasional slip of
the foot and the consequential landslide. Eddie shouted like an
anxious bird taught a single phrase, “Be careful, please. Be
careful, please.”

The crewmembers apologized
and closed the cabinets. “Somewhere else we should go,
Eddie?”

Eddie shook his head. “Not
today. Please, no more today. I need some time.”

The cameraman looked at the
crew. He nodded and gestured them out of the kitchen with the tilt
of his head. “I understand. No problem. We’ll get out of your hair.
We’ll be back tomorrow morning with the psychiatrist, alright?
Maybe we’ll look around some more? Your bedroom, maybe?”

Eddie nodded. “Yeah. Yeah,
sounds good.”

They left.

When the crew arrived the
next day, Eddie was outside. He wore a cheap black suit with grey
pinstripes. His hair was greased back into a helmet on his head. A
cigarette threatened to breathe fire at his lips. He stared at the
crew’s van with a disdain thick enough to unscrew its
tires.

“
Lookin’ good, Eddie!
What’s the occasion?” The cameraman asked.

Eddie ducked around the
cloud of smoke. “My Momma used to say—“ He inhaled and stared
through the man, “—that if you’re goin’ down, you best go lookin’
good, Eddie.” He grinned his primal grin. He rose and dropped his
cigarette to the dirt. He stamped it out and it whispered a
rebellious hiss. He went to the door. “Can’t get any lower than
this. Goin’ down lookin’ good.”

The cameraman stood silent
and dumbfounded. He scanned the crewmembers behind them before he
waved them in. Again they were immersed in the stench. Again they
were buried in the filth. The light of the sun outside faded away,
curtained by piles of refuse clinging to the windows.

“
What’s the plan, Eddie?”
The cameras scanned the alien landscape of Eddie’s
apartment.

“
Someone supposed to fix
me, right? Eddie asked. His back was to the camera and his eyes
were on the basement door. He turned around and grinned.

The psychiatrist arrived a
few minutes after the crew. She was a pretty woman in business
dress. Eddie’s eyes and the red eye of the camera followed the
woman as she entered the house. She avoided the piles of refuse
with a conspicuous professionalism. She focused on Eddie like a
hawk on a small rodent.

“
You must be Eddie.” There
was a trained enthusiasm in her voice. “I’m Doctor Gregory.” She
extended a hand to him.

Eddie took her hand a shook
it. His handshake rattled a few strands of his hair to the front of
his face, hair that he swept back after he stepped away.

“
I’m a clinical
psychiatrist, specializing in cases of OCD and extreme
hoarding.”

“
Like a crazy-people doctor
then.”

“
I wouldn’t say that,
Eddie. I help people with disorders, like yourself. We’re here to
help you, alright? Now, why don’t you tell me a little bit about
what’s going on here?”

“
I was kinda hoping you
were going to tell me something about that, miss.”

He explained his situation.
The kids. The investigative work. The failure. She listened
affirmatively. Her head bobbed like a dash board character. She
smiled and showed pretty white teeth. Straight. Orderly.
Organized.

“
Well, it’s apparent that
Eddie has suffered some sort of serious trauma as result of his
investigative work. He wishes to make things right. Unfortunately,
the struggle has resulted in a severe hoarding case. It’s a
sanitary issue. It’s a mental health issue. It’s caused strain on
his personal relationships.” The psychiatrist said.

The camera centered on
Eddie.

“
I look alright?” He asked
as he adjusted his suit.

“
Yeah, Eddie. You look
great. Now Eddie, when was the last time you had someone over?” The
cameraman asked.

Eddie leaned back into his
seat. He placed a hand on each of his knees. “It’s been years. I
had a girlfriend when this started. Wasn’t easy on us. Things
didn’t work out. How could it? Some times were worse than
others.”

“
Do you think she would be
interested in an interview with us, Eddie? We like to interview
ex-girlfriends, family members. They add to the whole scene, you
know? Speaks to the sickness.” The cameraman said.

Eddie sat stunned. “Oh, no.
No, I don’t think so.” Eddie’s eyes shot around. “Have you seen my
glass of water?”

The cameraman shook his
head.

“
She’s been gone a long
time. I don’t know where she is. It’s too much for her.” He
shrugged. His head swiveled as he searched for his
water.

The psychiatrist winced as
she listened. She gestured to him. “How would you say her leaving
changed things, Eddie, if at all?”