"What's that, Daddy?" Kayla said as we passed the rickety panels that comprised the cellar door.
I turned to glimpse the chestnut eyes framing her cherub face, captivated as always by her questioning six-year-old exuberance.
In this case, though, I did not wish to be encouraging, and almost didn't answer, fearing that she would want to explore the new back yard more thoroughly when I wasn't around to supervise. Sensing my step quickening past the foreboding opening, she responded by dragging her little steps and pulling my arm - a controlling maneuver inborn in every child's psyche.
It worked. I halted and gave the ancient portal my full attention. The reasons she was attracted to the cellar were obvious: The cellar door was in an overgrown area of the house, ominous, and - most importantly - child's intuition told her that it was probably off-limits. The weather-beaten plank door rose at a 40-degree angle from the ground, all of 15 feet in perimeter. The cellar couldn't have been much more than a tiny storage space judging from the door's size - and undoubtedly was flooded most of the time.
But for all its plainness, I had an impulsive insight from the beginning to keep my Kayla away.
"A cellar door," I replied unenthusiastically, bracing for the inevitable response.
"What's a cellar door, Daddy?"
The sincere, determined innocence of her eyes made me smile. As her father, I am her guide and protector. Her role model, her friend. These are duties that I do not take lightly, as my father did.
Sure, my father and I did things. We camped and fished on the weekends. Bonded. To this day I don't think that he even realized that at the same time he was reliving his boyhood with me, he was shutting out Mandy. He ignored her, neglected her - alienation of affection is the proper term, I think.
Most siblings would relish such a situation, to have their father's sole attention. The bonds of misery, though, are stronger that the bonds of happiness, of friendship, of love or passion, or of those between a father and son. At night, Dad was another person towards me, and I felt the sting of his belt as fully as Mandy did. Only in the daytime when his head had cleared and he couldn't recall his rage from the night before did I once again become the favored one.
His inattention to Mandy led to a lack of protection and, ultimately, her demise. After pleading with Dad, he let her tag along on a fishing trip as long as I agreed to watch her. As Dad and I attached hooks to the lines, my left eye spontaneously began to leak.
Leaking isn't the same as crying. It isn't. It doesn't make you less of a man. My left eye leaks naturally - then and now - as a sort of warning system whenever something bad is about to happen.
The warning system did not help that day.
I remember that Mom had knotted Mandy's pigtails up strong, not wanting her silken blonde hair to become drenched with the foul-smelling river water. But the current was strong, too. Unyielding, it dragged Mandy under as Dad and I prepared our lines, adrift some 20 feet from shore before we had turned to see what was happening.
I had one chance to save her. She had been lodged into a rock jutting above the surface of the water near the shore. The current knocked her fragile body into the rock, knocking her out. Without hesitation I raced over to the shore and stretched out for her. Only Dad could swim, so I stretched out as far as my 9-year old frame would allow - but it was too late. As she came to and stretched out her hand to meet mine, the current took her up again. She wordlessly submitted to the ferocity of the current, and the sparkling blue bands around her pigtails were the last things I remember about my precious sister.
The tragic scene had transpired before dad could respond, fight the current, and save my sister. My heart knows that it had been too late for dad to do anything but pull on his beer and watch in horror.
I'd do things differently if given the chance again, though. I would stretch out to her tiny body clinging to that rock and gather her in my arms, and I'd hold her and squeeze her ...
"Daddy," Kayla said, struggling in my arms.
"What, dear?"
"You're squishing me, Daddy." She was twisting with her entire body now, her face pink with the effort.
"Sorry, dear." I said, releasing my grip - when had I picked her up? - and setting her back onto the ground.
"And you still haven't told me about that cellar door."
Now fully out of my daydream, I squeezed Kayla's hand - wondering when I would no longer be able to protect her by simply holding her close - and explained the mysteries of a cellar as uninvitingly as possible.
***
I had been fully prepared to like the guy that my mom had chosen as her second husband.
"He reminds me so much of you, Dillon," Mom had told me over the phone months ago when she announced their engagement.
And he was like me, too. Or, in Mom's mind, did I represent a younger version of him?
Gregory Billington had owned a successful pharmacy for over thirty years. Mom said that she had met him over the Internet - an idea I had thought preposterous at first until realizing how resourceful she had become without Dad. Greg must have struck the right chord with Mom because within months she had moved three states away.
When I was accepted into pharmacy school - a profession I had chosen before knowing Greg - I never realized that passing the courses would be so difficult. I quit my job as a pharmacy technician, but we soon found that raising a six-year-old on my wife's meager salary was suicide. When Mom suggested that we move in, I transferred to Magnolia State's School of Pharmacy. Was this a perfect opportunity to get a new lease on life?
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
"So when are you going to move your crap to the guesthouse?" Greg asked, sweeping his arm past a nearby stack of non-descript cardboard boxes. Other stacks piled around the living room.
I felt his glare on my back as I turned to survey the stacks and simultaneously allowed myself to sink deeper into the overstuffed couch.
"Well, Greg, I thought - "
"Most folks around here call me Doc. Doc Billington. You can call me Gregory."
I peered at him suspiciously. Was he reaching out or merely setting boundaries between us?
"Gregory, I didn't know that you had a guesthouse, but I can move our storage boxes later this afternoon."
"Good. See that you do." His pause and continued stare suddenly created an intense awareness of my hands. I shifted on the cushion but only sank lower into the couch, awaiting Laura's rescue. She was in the bedroom chatting with Mom, though, and probably wouldn't emerge for hours.
"So why can't you work and go to school at the same time?" Gregory stretched a bony finger to his temple, pretending to scratch. His toupee lurched forward hideously. His chest retracted as he spoke, dry leather stretched across bones.
He subconsciously sucked a dollop of saliva from a corner of his mouth as he continued, never allowing me to answer. "Why in my day we'd have to work even if ..."
He meticulously described a typical day in his youth, painting himself as the hardworking hero and provider for his first wife - couldn't mistake a lingering fondness for a red-headed woman named Claire. However, the words fell short of their mark like arrows seeking a target just beyond reach. With every succeeding sentence of his fairy tale story, a loathsome feeling crept into the pit of my stomach and festered there. An awareness that I'd be living with this guy, this stranger, for at least three years while I finished pharmacy school. His fist smacked the air to punctuate his important points, but my thoughts wandered.
Where had Kayla gone?
Earlier, she helped move the smaller boxes inside - God knows the new dad didn't offer to lift a finger - but disappeared once the boxes left were too heavy for her.
Beads of sweat popped onto my forehead. I wiped with a trembling hand, looking for an opportunity to politely extricate myself, but no relief was in sight. Another punctuating fist smacked the air while skin flapped from a once-proud bicep, as flaccid as a two-week-old helium balloon.
I had to go look for Kayla. I had dropped her into an unfamiliar place, and she could be in trouble right now. This minute. And I'm powerless to protect her because I am trapped in conversation. Greg's gaze adhered to my eyes. His eyes glistened as he spoke to perhaps the first captive audience he had had in months.
Oh, how could Mom stand this guy?
More importantly, how could I excuse myself to look for Kayla?
He stopped briefly to stretch a bony finger toward my left cheek. "My word, son, you're crying."
Ignoring my embarrassment, I wiped clean the salty moisture and allowed the old pharmacist to ramble.
Greg was preaching that the unworthiness of today's youth stemmed from their parents' failure to administer discipline. I wanted to administer some discipline to him. A smack upside the head would have been a good start. Instead, I continued to nod politely as his words rattled past. Surely he realized I wasn't paying attention. Surely ...
A light palm on my right shoulder startled me. I spun around, severing the connection - the hold - that Greg had on me. He continued to prattle on without noticing while I examined my precious child for signs of distress.
Her hair was a mess, and her clothes were disheveled and soiled. A bright smile leaked across her face, matching the radiance from her eyes. She was otherwise fine, as far as I could tell, at least until she spoke.
"I made a new friend, Daddy."
Although she never had many playmates back home and I had wanted her to develop good social skills, her words instantly put me on alert. No way she could have met anyone so fast, especially since Greg lived in the country.
"You've been gone for two hours, Kayla. Who did you meet?"
Catching the wariness in my eyes, she took a step backward. "I didn't do anything wrong, Daddy. His name is Chester. He's real friendly, and I've been talking to him this whole time. He knows I'm lonely here and kissed me a bunch - to take away my loneliness."
"Where? Where were you?" I asked, no way to cover my excitement, but trying to be civil in this stranger's house.
"I didn't do ..."
"Yes, yes, I know," I said, bending over and gently holding her, conscious that Greg had finally shut his trap and was on full alert to the developing situation.
Greg was evaluating how I would handle this.
"You said that you didn't do anything, but I want to know where you've been."
"Well," she whispered, stalling, looking into Greg's ghost-white face for help.
"You're not in trouble," I said, grimacing. She very much was in trouble, though, letting some boy kiss her. Didn't I have years before I needed to worry about such things? A thousand horrible thoughts ensued, but I squared my face in an expression of trust. For now, I would bestow no punishment until I could reprimand my child in private.
But would our family ever exist in privacy again?
"Well," she repeated. Then softly, "in the cellar."
"Oh, Kayla, I told you not to go down there. How could you disobey me?"
Before she could answer, Greg was on his feet - pretty spry for a creaky old man. "Chester was in the cellar?" He asked Kayla, his face ashen and hollow. Then, he was out the back, sending the screen door crashing on its hinges.
I followed with Kayla in tow, and he already had one door of the cellar open by the time we caught him.
"Where is the lock for the cellar doors?" He asked Kayla, his face pinched and contorted. I really wanted to smack him upside the head for the tone he used with my child.
Turning to me, he explained, "I've had the cellar padlocked for the past five years. I used to keep this as a wine cellar, but..." He paused as if wondering how much he should say. "I don't use it for wine, anymore."
"The door was already open, and I heard something whimpering," Kayla said.
We walked down the three steps to the bottom of the cellar, the boards creaking and splintering under my weight. Immediately, I clamped my nose from the damp, earthen odor. A putrid smell. At first I thought it was mildew, but an undeniable smell of decay lurked underneath.
Neither Greg nor Kayla seemed to notice the odor at all.
Kayla snapped her head from corner to corner, looking bewildered. "Chester's not here Daddy. He's not here. He must have come looking for me when I stopped playing to check on you."
Checking on me, I thought. Then, to her, "Who is Chester, honey? What did he look like?"
"He's short and brown with hair that hangs to the ground. His tongue felt like sandpaper when he kissed me."
So my six-year-old wasn't spending time with any boy this afternoon. I expelled a burst of air, not realizing that I had been holding my breath.
Her face, all worry lines and platter-eyes, begged for my attention. "But daddy, maybe he wandered outside and got lost when I went in to look for you."
A voice from outside the cellar called, "Dillon... Kayla? Why are you in the cellar?" Laura's search party had finally arrived.
Something about Greg's bone-face and hollow eyes glistening with tears needed explaining - a man-to-man explanation.
"Honey," I said, both caressing the nape of Kayla's neck and urging her toward the door. "Why don't you go stand with your mom while we look for - what did you call him?"
"Chester."
As she hurried outside, Greg turned to face me, his closeness uncomfortable.
Did he not smell that horrible odor permeating the cellar?
"Chester," he hissed, as if no one had the right to even say the name except him, "was the name of my Cocker Spaniel. I lost him about a month ago during a rainstorm. He scratched to be let out and play early one afternoon, but I lost track of the time. After a thunderstorm passed that day, I went out to search for him. I placed ads in the local paper, but no one called. Poor Chester was never found."
Greg continued to ramble on about his dog Chester, but I was distracted. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness - though I didn't think my sense of smell would ever recover - and were drawn to one corner of the cellar.
Bones were strewn around a canine skull centerpiece; patches of fur were even attached in places.
Greg followed my line of sight and gasped, "Chester, oh Chester, she really did find you!" Immediately, he was hunching over the pile of bones, gathering them up to his chest while the intensity of the cellar's stench tripled. Greg rocked on his haunches, whimpering himself now, with the only intelligible words uttered: "Chester, Chester, Chester... I'm so sorry, Chester."
Leaving the cellar door open, I gathered my own family back into the house lest they witness the scene.
In retrospect, I probably should have gathered my family all the way back to Tennessee, then and there.
***
Two years into pharmacy school and I had accepted the fact that we were there to stay until graduation. However, I never would have suspected that Greg would assist me in so many ways. He allowed my family residence in his house - though grudgingly at first and charging a monthly rent - but he opened doors for me at the college by pulling a few connections. More importantly, he proved to be a doting and reliable grandfather for Kayla.
At least I thought so before the incident.
On one of those rare nights with no impending exams, Laura and I decided to indulge ourselves with some rest and relaxation - dinner and a movie. A date. Greg had even offered to sit with Kayla, so we were ecstatic.
He promised to keep her away from fascinating places for young kids - like cellars, for instance.
After waiting for a full hour before the entree was even served, our collective patience deteriorated as quickly as a kid strapped in a grocery cart. Then for Laura, the tested patience turned into worry. What if Greg and Mom had fallen asleep in front of the television? What if poor little Kayla choked or fell down the stairs or - God forbid - found her way back to the cellar and locked herself inside?
Any number of horrible events could have transpired; and as Laura's worries became contagious, I suggested we skip movie, request a carry-out, and drive home to check on Kayla.
I don't recall who had been surprised more when we walked through the door.
The soft amber glow from Mom's upstairs television beckoned Laura up the staircase to inform her that we were home.
Since Laura went upstairs, that left downstairs as the only viable option.
As I descended the short flight of stairs from the foyer, an odd smell - yet vaguely familiar - seeped into my subconscious. Shadows, airy but almost palpable, seemed to loom nearby as I made my way through the living room, and then down the skinny adjacent hall.
At the end of the hall, just prior to reaching the kitchen, the single closed door captured my attention.
Greg's bedroom door.
I hesitated a moment, then crashed the door open with a quick thrust of adrenaline-powered shoulders. The room's contents, mist and perfume, spilled into the hallway. The perfume had been pelting me with its pungent odor ever since descending the foyer. As the mist cleared - damned if it wasn't actual mist coming out of the room - I was frozen by the spectacle. Greg was dressed in a velvet, ruffled nightgown. A hideous pair of mascara streaks ran down his hollowed, age-worn face.
He rose to his feet on the opposite side of a card table, held fast under my furious gaze like a rabbit trying to outwit a snake. Greg's sudden movement caused another blast of the perfume - the perfume his deceased wife Claire had worn - to fill the air with its cheap stench.
Greg had placed a half-dozen lighted candles in some indistinguishable, archaic form on a card table in front of the bed.
Kayla sat on the opposite side of the table. She sat perfectly still, staring blankly at Greg. My hands reached out reflexively to gather her in my safe embrace. As I spun her to face me, I withdrew upon sight of her eyes. The once-pristine chestnut eyes had transformed into glassy, opaque, sightless orbs.
Greg rushed me. I cradled Kayla's head in my hands and buried her face into my chest to cover those eyes. All motion throughout the room ceased. Greg froze in mid-leap, his jaw agape. The lights from the candles were extinguished, and the mist that had been seeping from the room disappeared.
At that instant, my eyes followed the direction of Greg's changed gaze. In one corner of the room, a swirling circle of mist disappeared as the molecules scattered. The amorphous mist had been holding the features of a human female with red hair. I now know it had to have been Claire, Greg's late wife.
Greg's actions were not the most disturbing, though, because his words chilled me more. They were directed toward Kayla. He moaned as the last vestiges of the mist-form of Claire vanished, "Let the child bring her back."
***
My eyes leak less now, partly because we have moved and partly because I have finished college. The stress of pharmacy school and of having to live in close quarters with a stranger is over. We have moved on.
Although we were strangers as we lived together, my mother and I have since begun to grow closer again. I would like to think that much of our failure to rekindle family bonds could be blamed on Gregory Billington, an interloper who himself has also moved on.
Mom calls me almost every day.
In fact, I hear the phone ringing and emerge from my home office to answer. Laura will not answer it since she spends much of her time at her new job.
It is mom on the phone; although I would like to converse, now is not the time. I happen to be in the middle of something.
Kayla follows me into the kitchen as I try to extricate myself from the conversation. My daughter's chestnut eyes - changed from their opaqueness just seconds ago - gleam as she asks to talk to her Grammy.
A sigh escapes my lips as I realize that the spell must be completely broken, but no matter. Kayla and I can pick up where we left off as soon as this conversation is over. Greg may have considered me beneath him, contemptible and unworthy, but I have figured out secrets that he could not.
And by unlocking those great secrets, my entire family will soon be able to reunite again.
watching kayla talk to her grammy on the phone, i swell with pride. she is innocent, sweet and perfect - right down to the sparkling blue bands wrapping her hair in pigtails.