Satirium

I Heard Him Breathing at the Door, But the Lock Held

The wife and I bought this old house. Built in the 1890s and needing lots of updating, the price was right. So the race was on — fix it up before it falls down.

We had scarcely finished unpacking all the boxes before the daily rants began from You-Know-Who about the abysmal kitchen. Judging from the Linoleum on the floor and the electrical fuse box that emitted smoke when you popped a pizza slice in the toaster, the kitchen was last updated when Herbert Hoover ran for president.

Since I can hammer and I can sling joint compound onto sheet rock with the best of them, I dug out my wrecking bar and the Sawz-all and began ripping out the ancient cabinets. Down came plaster, lath, up came generations of floor coverings — Linoleum, ceramic tile, more Linoleum, a felt material scraped up to reveal beautiful fir tongue and groove flooring.

Then, as the last of the felt came up in a far corner, a trap door just large enough to squeeze through.

Since the kitchen sits over a crawl space instead of the basement, I expected to open the door and look down a couple of feet and see dirt. But when I knelt on my knees and blithely lifted the door, I was hit with a rush of cold, fetid air and an eerie feeling of nothingness. This was no crawl space.

I rocked back on my heels and slammed the door shut. Carlsbad Caverns! Had I just discovered the long sought second entrance to the legendary caverns in the New Mexico desert? Would gawking tourists soon climb up through the trap door into my kitchen, lead by a Park Service tour guide?

I staggered outside and leaned against a tree to catch my breath. Then it hit me. The fetid blackness was a cistern, a genuine 19th century cistern probably used to store rain water. That meant — I shuddered — that I undoubtedly was the landlord for a cistern monster.

I knew all about cistern monsters from my grandparents’ farm. The house was at the bottom of a hill, barns up the hill. A large container made of stones and mortar — a cistern with a wooden cover — had been built into the side of the hill. Rain gutters drained into the cistern and gravity carried water to the bathroom and kitchen sink in the house.

“Don’t you kids dare play on the top of the cistern or the cistern monster will get you,” Gram would warn. Sometimes, she said, the cistern monster might call for help from the cistern troll. “The troll likes to eat little children like you,” she said. She drew her lips back and bared her false teeth to demonstrate his technique.

I returned to the kitchen and stared at the trap door. I knew I should get a light, open the door, and inspect my cistern. How wide was it? How deep? Was there water at the bottom? Dead animals? Some prior owner’s homicide victims? Was I somehow the unwitting host to one of the CIA’s secret prisons? Just to be safe from such possibilities, I rolled the refrigerator on top of the trap door.

When You-Know-Who got home, I excitedly told her about the cistern, pointing out the trap door. “That’s nice, Dear,” she said, supremely disinterested.

I scarcely slept a wink that night, listening for the sound of the cistern monster’s foot on the squeaky stair tread and wondering if a cistern troll could squeeze under the crack at the bottom of the locked bedroom door.

The next morning, the electrician called to discuss rewiring the kitchen. I told him about the cistern. Yes, he said, he had a cistern in his old house, too. “Opened up one side of it and turned it into a basement bathroom.”

I nearly dropped the phone. Sitting on a toilet inside a cistern? Wait until the your cistern monster reaches up and takes a bite out of your behind as you sit there.

The plumber was no help when he came to spec out his part of the project. I told him about my discovery and pointed out the trap door.

“How come you rolled the refrigerator over the door?” he asked.

“Well, umm…”

“Yeah, good idea. Don’t let the cistern monster out into the rest of the house.”

So, I wasn’t the only one.

He said he would have to replace the old sink drain connection where it disappeared under the floor into the cistern.

“You’ll have to get a carpenter in here to open up a hole so I can see what’s going on with the drain and get my tools in there to work,” he said.

“Open up the floor? Won’t the cistern be right there underneath?”

He must have noticed the stricken look on my face. “Don’t worry. It won’t be open that long.”
I called the carpenter. He promised to come the next day.

Another dreadful night. Just awful. I heard the cistern monster’s foot on the squeaky stair tread. I could her his breathing at the door, and I was certain he tried the door knob. Thankfully, the lock held.

You-Know-Who snored on, completely unaware, as always.

When he arrived, the carpenter insisted on moving the refrigerator and opening the trap door. I tried to be nonchalant, blasé to the max, but I pressed myself as tightly as I could against the far wall.

Up came the door. The smell filled the room. He shined his light into the inky vastness. He whistled in surprise.

“It’s deep. Really deep,” he called. “Fifteen or 20 feet. About four feet in diameter. And dry. That’s good news.”

“What’s in the bottom?” I tried hard to steady my voice.

“There’s a couple of skeletons. Probably been there a hundred years.”

“What? They probably heard me in Omaha or some place.

“Gotcha!” He cackled. “Anyway, cistern monsters always eat the bones.”

He had more good news. Because the cistern was so narrow, the hole he opened would be outside the cistern, exposing only the crawl space floor.

“Why don’t you come hold the light for me while I make some measurements,” he said, using the psychotherapist skills all good carpenters employ on their clients.

I slithered across the floor, took the light, and shined it into the abyss. It was as he described it, nothing more than a mortar and stone cylinder built into the ground.

“Shine the light over here,” he said gently.

“Sure.”

His saw screamed to life.

That night I slept better, not great, but better. I heard the cistern monster on the tread a couple of times, but I don’t think he ever came to the door.

The kitchen is in now. The trap door has been sealed with 50-year caulk and the kitchen sink cabinet is sitting on top of it. But I’ll tell you this. Every time I go into the bathroom, I give the toilet a preemptory flush before I sit down. Just in case.