The Basement Floor

(Mention of passing of a family member.)

It was a sad affair. Evelyn, the matriarch of the family, had passed. Kiley was the beneficiary who had inherited the house, she was the favorite grandchild of Evelyn’s, though there were many. Grandma always had favorited her, they were close. She was always around to help whenever Grandma needed it. They would go shopping together, bake together, have dinner parties at each other’s houses. Everyone knew she was getting up there in years and even though she was in good health, her body gave out and she was gone.

It had been months since Grandma passed and Kiley already had been through the house cleaning for a while now. Threw out old food, donated most of her clothes, swept and mopped, dusted. She couldn’t bring herself to move any furniture out, or touch any of the pictures on the walls, it felt wrong. It was a lovely house, just not Kiley’s style, the decor was very old-lady style.

The family gathered at Evelyn’s home and held a celebration of life, as per her request. There was sharing of photos, videos and stories about Evelyn, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying. Different families had brought food for the event, mostly Grandma Evelyn’s recipes. It was a good time, for the most part. Kiley felt it almost brought the family closer together. Some family members asked to take some belongings of Evelyn’s to remember her and Kiley let them. It was easier to let go of something when you knew it was going to someone who cared. The house was empty by 10 o’clock that night, all except Kiley and her mother, who had stayed behind to help clean up.

“So, have you decided on whether or not you’re going to sell?” Kiley’s mother inquired while wrapping a green bean casserole in plastic wrap. 

“I’m not sure, yet. I know it’s been months but… I have good memories here.” Kiley responded, leaning onto the kitchen island counter and sighing.

Kiley’s mother, Lisa set the casserole on the fridge then stood beside Kiley, placing a hand on her back to console her. “You could always make more here, or let someone else make their memories here.” Lisa said softly.

Kiley sighed again and leaned her head against her mothers shoulder. “I can’t make a decision now.” She shook her head as her eyes welled up with tears.

Kiley and her mother took to the living room and talked for a while longer, just the two of them sat on the couch and reminisced about Evelyn and the memories they shared. They had come to the conclusion that Kiley should stay the night there a few times to see if she would be comfortable living there without waking up to the scent of Grandma’s pancakes in the morning. Eventually Lisa left the house, giving Kiley a big hug and a kiss on the cheek.  

The young woman decided to sleep there that night. Of course, she slept in the guest room, as she always did. When she awoke the next morning she did not smell the sweet aroma of Grandma’s pancakes, which was weird. It only reminded her of the passing of the lovely elderly woman. It didn’t stop her from getting up and starting her day. In the kitchen sink she noticed some dishes. “I must’ve missed some last night.” She muttered to herself and shrugged it off. It was a big day yesterday. Kiley washed and dried them, and put them in the cabinets. 

It might be kind of nice living here, the house was already stocked with shelf stable pantry essentials, dishes, silverware, furniture. Everything already had a place too. Kiley began to walk around the house and actually take the time to look at it, see if there was anything that needed to be fixed or to see if there was anything she had never noticed before. 

Kiley had noticed the ceilings in this house seemed a little tall so she went and grabbed tape measure from the garage. Turns out she was right, 10 feet tall. Grandpa had built her this house when they were young adults, just before starting their family. She decided to check the other rooms too. Second and first story were 10 feet, but the basement was only 7 feet. The brunette furrowed her brow and made a small ‘hmph’ sound. She looked up then went to the staircase leading back up to the ground floor. As she slowed ascended the stairs, she ran her finger along the structure where the the first story foundation met the basement ceiling, she sized it up. The woman stood back to really look at it from a wider angle then pulled the tape measure out. Standing in the middle of the stairway, where she could see both the first story floor and the basement ceiling, she measured it. Eyeballing it where the first story floor was. It was about three feet. Was that normal? Maybe if it was built with storage space with an attic in the basement?

Kiley sat down on the steps of the basement staircase and pulled out her phone. She did some research and found that it was not common for that space to be there. How did she never notice this before? The white, textured drywall stared back at her as she sat there, her eyes went from her phone to the wall. There was an eerie feeling creeping up her spine, she decided to raise a fist and knock on the wall. It was hollow. This motivated her to get up and go upstairs to search for a floor hatch of some kind. When she didn’t find anything she went back to the basement. She scanned the ceiling of the sub ground floor with a flashlight. The basement was Grandpa’s domain, after he passed about 10 years ago, they made sure there was nothing of importance left behind and no one had been there since. Grandma couldn’t go down there anymore with her bad hip anyway. This was the one place in the house Kiley was unfamiliar with. There were two closets in the basement and the one that looked like it was never used to store anything was the one of them that had a hatch door on the ceiling.

No one ever spoke of this hatch door, at least not to Kiley. So she texted her mom, sent her picture of the hatch door and asked her about it.

Kiley: ‘Did you know grandma had a hatch door in the basement?’

Lisa: ‘Yes, grandpa built it when they put in the basement.’

Kiley: ‘Why didn’t I ever know about it?’

Lisa: ‘We cleaned it out when grandpa passed, there was no reason for it anymore, with her not being able to go down those stairs.’

So it was empty, not very interesting, but Kiley decided to look anyway. She pulled the foldout stairs down, extending out of the doorway of the closet. Dust fell out and spread across the vicinity of the basement, and along with the dust came a polaroid picture. It landed face up and Kiley could see from where she was standing, it was a picture of a family, a mother holding a baby and a father holding a toddler. She knelt down and picked it up, wiped the dust off with her sleeve and read the familiar handwriting on the bottom of the picture. “Robert and Evelyn with Michael, 3 and Mary, 6 months, 1965.”

It was from before her mom was born. Kiley smiled and looked at the faces in the picture, they were standing in front of this house. She took a photo of it and sent it to her mom. She then set her phone and the picture down and opted for the flashlight to take with her into the storage space. She panted one foot on teh first step and put some weight down on it to make sure it was sturdy before continuing up. Her head peeked over the floor of the storage space and saw a few photos then she took another step up and saw even more photos, just laying loose in piles. The flashlight beam moved across the space and illuminated hundreds of pictures, all thrown haphazardly into this little crawl space. Her brow furrowed as she found this, wondering why all these pictures had been left behind in the crawlspace. With an empty box she found in this crawlspace she began gathering them, making sure to shake them off before putting them into the box, she could look through them later in better lighting. 

Once all the pictures had been gathered, she took another look around. There was another box in a corner all the way on the other side. Kiley crawled over there, trying to avoid splinters on her way. On her way over she noticed there were more boxes up here around the corner of this three foot tall crawl space. She grabbed the first box she saw and looked inside, there was a wadded up blanket and a dirty cup. Being the clean freak she was, she decided to start with the first two boxes, the one with the blanket and cup, and the one with the pictures. 

Before she continued cleaning out the crawl space that her mother said they had already cleaned out, she wanted to look through the photos. Some were obviously family gatherings, holidays, birthdays, weddings. And others were candid photos, some were outside, some were inside. There were a few that were taken from far away. Kiley noticed a pattern, that some of these photos were taken when no one knew they were being taken. Sometimes a bush was in the corner of the picture as if someone was using it as cover. Some were taken through a window. These photos spanned decades, and then she saw one that made her freeze. It was a picture of her and her grandmother going shopping for the past Christmas together. It almost looked like a paparazzi shot, the photographer stealthily catching a photo of her and her grandma. “What the actual fuck?” She whispered, setting this photo aside. She started digging through the other photos and found more creepily shot photos of her family. Did they have a stalker? After going through almost all the photos, the last few she looked at were taken very recently. One through the front window of the house. Just yesterday when the whole family was here to honor Evelyn’s memory. All the odd photos Kiley had set aside and decided to start sending to her mom, asking her if she knew anything about them. The last one she saw was one of her, alone. It was also taken last night. She was fast asleep in the guest bedroom.