How Firm A Foundation

The place was said to be haunted before the previous owner received a toe tag down at the morgue. But John Ember wasn’t afraid of a ghost. Generally you needed a house to be haunted, the lot of 644 Margo Lane barely qualified.

The previous owner had perished during a freak fire. It took six fire departments over four hours to fight the blaze. The resulting investigation said it was most likely an electrical fire, stemming from an appliance of some sort. Such things were unusual, but they still happened, John thought, without the aid of the supernatural.

The two-story house had been completely razed from the ground down. Only the foundation remained, a black slab in 644 Margo Lane’s fenced-off lot. A job was still a job, John told himself, and contract work had slowed down considerably given the nature of the housing market. His employers wanted to rebuild the house, complete with a basement. John was just grateful for the work.

Unfortunately, finding help on this particular job proved to be a particular challenge. Everyone wanted to steer clear of 644 Margo Lane because of the stories. John put the notions out of his mind. And less help meant a bigger paycheck in the end.

The downside was, it also meant a lot more hours. John Ember didn’t mind. He wasn’t a young man anymore. Between his comb-over hair, his tight shirt pulled over a pot-belly, and tan, sun-worn features, John knew he only had a couple more years left in him before age caught up with him. Thus, he needed to make as much dough before that happened.

Ghost or no ghost.

John came to the lot with his tools and immediately began working on clearing the basement. He hammered into the plywood surface day in and day out, but the damn foundation wouldn’t give. He knew it was plywood because he could see the surface bounce with each blow from his sledgehammer. Still, it wouldn’t give. John decided to try a buzzsaw. The result sent corkscrew wood chips spiraling everywhere, but the buzzsaw broke an hour later, jammed up by a pinging metallic sound.

The previous owners had reinforced the foundation it seemed. Most likely they had used steel or metal. What was their game here? The foundation had been up to code before, so why go through all the trouble of adding even more reinforcement to the foundation.

What the hell were they trying to keep out…or what the hell were they trying to keep in?

A chill ran down his spine at that last thought but John quickly put it out. He had no use for ghost stories. Instead he donned his welder’s mask and went to work. The blue flame cut through the frame like butter. Within an hour, he had removed all traces of resistance. Two hours later, he had cleared the foundation.

That was two hours after sundown. John didn’t want to risk distracting the neighborhood any more than he already had. The last thing he needed on his hands was a noise complaint. Still, he was curious.

The floor plans didn’t mention a previous basement, but then again, the floor plans looked too new for a home from this area. Most lots had houses with histories stretching well back in the 1900’s, if not earlier. The floor plan John had been presented with looked far too new by comparison, as if it had only been completed in the 1980’s, if not later. There had to be previous owners. Perhaps they made the modifications he had encountered. In either case, John was curious. After he peeled away the plywood, he immediately found a series of stairs leading down into the darkness. So the owners must have had a previous basement. John turned on his head lamp, producing a small bright light from his forehead. He then descended into the basement depths.

The first thing he noticed was the smell. The thick, putrid scent of decay immediately overpowered his nostrils. He scanned the room for the source of the smell, but soon he wished he hadn’t. At first he thought they were tree roots, with their long, slender limbs stretching on into the shadows. But then John remembered there were no trees on the property. What he saw, instead, with the long bony reach of a long dead skeleton. Several of them were intermingled along the corner. John needed to get out of here. John needed to call in the police.

But impossibly, the skeletal corpse raised its head and emitted a lungless cry, revealing two twinkling lights in its pupilless skull. John immediately turn and ran, hitting the stairs at a powerful speed. Too powerful as it turned out.

One wrong step later, he fell, smashing his head into the cold wooden stairs. He had broken his neck, and was killed on impact. An unseen force dragged his body back into the shadows.

One more ghost for the pile.

John Ember was never seen again. After his disappearance, no more contractors were eager to take the work. Instead, the plywood was hastily affixed back onto the foundation without so much as a search of the content below.

The lot on 644 Margo Lane sits fenced off and empty too this day. Of course, the exact contents of the lane are far from empty, and far from resting.