SPARROW COURT

©2009 by Richard S. Crawford

about 5,100 words

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“There are holes in the middle of things…. Right in the damn middle of things!”

–Stephen King, “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut”

“Aw, hell!”

The voice drifted in through Lawrence Stanley’s open window, and it was so loud that it brought him out of sleep just as surely as his alarm clock would in just a few moments. The voice belonged to Charles Holck, who lived next door to Stanley at 2212 Sparrow Court, and who worked early mornings at the Hunt’s Cannery across town.

Lawrence heard Charles’s wife Anna-Marie next. “Keep quiet, Charles!” she shouted at her husband. “You’re going to wake up the neighbors!”

Too late, Lawrence thought. His alarm clock – an ancient thing which he had picked up twelve years ago as a freshman at UC Davis and which still woke him and his wife up with its intermittent buzzes promptly at six each morning – chose that moment to sound. Erin swung up her arm from her side of the bed and brought it down hard on the snooze button. These days, she did that almost automatically, without even waking up at all. Erin rolled over in the bed, pulling the covers even further off of Lawrence, and mumbled something about Easter eggs.

“Well, how the hell am I supposed to get to work this morning?” Charles’s thick voice carried in from the street. “What the hell is this thing?”

Lawrence thought that Charles’s voice was remarkably civilized this morning. Normally his speech contained far more invective and expletives. Charles had come over to California a few years ago from Scotland where, presumably, he had taught Irvine Welsh how to swear.

“Well, keep your voice down,” Anna-Marie said. Her own voice was an American one. Positively red-neck. “I’ll call the police,” she drawled. POH-leece.

Charles cursed again, softly, so that Lawrence couldn’t hear exactly what was said, and his voice drifted away.

Erin shuffled under the blankets again and muttered something else about Easter eggs. Apparently they were in the garden. Lawrence decided not to even try to get back any of the covers, and got up carefully out of bed. This morning, he decided, he would make the coffee. And maybe this morning, for a change, it would be drinkable.

# # #

“What happened to the street outside?” Erin asked him when she came downstairs half an hour later. Lawrence had heard the alarm go off and get snoozed again two or three times before he finally heard his wife’s stomping footsteps in their bedroom. She wore a thick white robe now, drawing it close about her. Even though it was late spring in Davis, and the temperatures would probably get as high as 86 or 87, it was still cool in the mornings, and the morning breeze – which Lawrence figured would probably become one of the famous Davis spring winds before noon – made it even cooler.

“What do you mean?” Lawrence asked. “What’s wrong with the street?”

“There’s a great big hole in it,” Erin said. She shuffled over to the coffee pot and poured herself a cup. “Yeeeugh,” she muttered. “Did you put the whole can in or what?”

“I like my coffee to actually have some taste to it,” Lawrence said. “What do you mean, a hole in the street? Like a manhole?”

“No, a great big hole. Charles was complaining about it, I heard him. Go take a look.”

Lawrence shrugged. “Sure. Make me some toast, okay?”

“Lazy.”

“My personal defect.”

“One among many.”

Lawrence made a hmph-ing noise at his wife, and grabbed his T-shirt from over the back of the chair where he had left it the night before. Then he stepped outside.

Erin had been right: there was a huge hole in the street, much larger than a simple manhole opening. In fact, the hole was almost the size of the cul-de-sac itself. Lawrence saw that the source of Charles’s anger earlier had been the fact that enough of the asphalt had disappeared to make driving impossible without driving half on the sidewalk.

“What the – ?” Lawrence wondered aloud.

The hole itself was black and apparently bottomless. Lawrence peered hard, trying to see the bottom of the pit, but had no success. Its edge was right up against the curb next to his own driveway, which meant that he was as effectively trapped as Charles was.

“Where the hell did it come from?” Charles’s voice came across from the other side of the cul-de-sac.

Lawrence looked up. He hadn’t seen Charles standing there in front of his own house, dressed for work in jeans and a pale blue work shirt.

“You can’t even see the bottom of it,” Charles continued.

“I wonder how deep it goes?”

Charles shrugged. “Hell if I know. All I know is I can’t get my car out of my driveway, and I don’t know how I’m going to get to work.”

Lawrence looked back down at the edge of the hole, to where it came within two feet of his driveway. He could see the layers of the street: asphalt, concrete, dirt. Various pipes and tubes looked as if they had been cut neatly in two with a hacksaw. Further down there were rocks, and then more or less solid stone. The hole was very deep: the bright sunlight could not illuminate its bottom.

“Must be city work,” Charles said. “Public Fucking Works, some shite like that.”

Lawrence shook his head. “There would be signs or cones or something like that if it were,” he said.

Then Lawrence realized that he had the same problem as Charles did: the hole blocked his driveway and would prevent him from pulling his car out of his garage and going to work.

What the hell, he thought. It’s a nice enough day. I’ll bike.

“City Works,” Charles repeated himself forcefully. “I saw where they’re doing some shit up on Covell Boulevard. They’ve got this long trench, and those white concrete blocks up on both sides of it. And this long black hose goin’ all the way down from a manhole to this big white truck. You ever seen that X-Files movie?”

Lawrence looked up, surprised by the apparent non-sequitor. “What?”

“The X-Files movie. Some kids in Texas found this hole in the ground with some alien shit in it, and then the government came in with all these big white trucks, and then…”

“I have to get dressed,” Lawrence interrupted Charles. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Yeah, right,” Charles said in his thick brogue, and went inside his own house, cursing softly.

Lawrence turned to go back into his own house, but as he did, he saw a curious thing. The neighbor’s dog, an ancient yellow Labrador named Dan, sat on the neighbor’s lawn, idly gnawing on his left front paw, the way that old dogs sometimes do. What was curious about it, though, was the way the dog seemed to be shimmering, as though Lawrence were looking at him through the hot air above a stove. Not only shimmering, though; faded, too, as if the old dog were an old Polaroid photograph, turning a faded sepia with age.

Lawrence rubbed his eyes and took a breath. When he looked up at Dan agin, the dog was staring back at him with his old droopy eyes, as if to say, “Yeah, life’s a bitch, but what can you do about it, huh?” The shimmering was gone, as was the faded coloration. Now Dan looked as he always did, an ancient yellow Lab with more grey than yellow around his muzzle, paws, and tail.

“God-damned heat,” Lawrence muttered to himself, and went back inside his own house to get ready for work.

# # #

He spent the day at his office at the University, hammering out the details of a new union contract with lawyers from the University’s main offices in Oakland. The weather had turn out hotter than he had expected, and the dry, hot winds from the south made biking home nearly impossible. Halfway to his house, he simply gave up, and walked his bike the rest of the way up Anderson Road in the dry heat.

He had expected work crews from the city to be surrounding the hole in the road, perhaps even have it taped off with yellow “CAUTION” ribbons. But there was nothing of the kind. Sparrow Court looked absurdly empty to him, even abandoned, in spite of the number of cars which sat in driveways in front of the houses.

Then it occurred to him: there were no sounds here. Sparrow Court was relatively isolated from the sounds of traffic on Covell and Anderson, but today it was utterly silent. Even the wind when it rushed past his ears and disturbed the trees along the sidewalks, could not shake the feeling he had the silence reigned supreme here.

Lawrence went over to the hole in the street and looked down it again. He still could see no bottom to it. And now he almost felt a coolness rising up from it, as though it were filled with ice water. Overcome with a sudden chill, Lawrence shivered and backed away from the hole.

Erin was in the kitchen when Lawrence walked in. She was standing before the open doors of the pantry, staring blankly at the cans of soup and bags of dried pasta. Her arms were folded across her chest and her thick dark hair with its few grey streaks was pulled back into a heavy horse-tail which hung halfway down her back. She made no sign that she had noticed Lawrence coming in until he came up behind her and touched her lightly on her bare shoulder.

Erin gasped, jumped, and spun around. “Jesus!” she cried, falling back against one of the pantry’s two doors.

“I’m sorry,” Lawrence said. “I thought you heard me.”

“Well, I didn’t. Lawrence, you scared me half to death!” She was pale, and Lawrence suddenly noticed the dark red rims to her eyes.

“Erin, is something wrong?” he asked her.

Erin looked puzzled for a moment,as though she had never expected to hear him ask her that. Then she regained her composure, and cleared her throat. “No,” she said, “there’s nothing wrong. I’m just tired, that’s all.”

“Then why don’t you go up and get some rest?” Lawrence suggested. “I’ll make dinner.”

Erin shook her head. “No, don’t worry about that. I’ll be fine. You go work.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Go on, now.”

Lawrence leaned over to Erin and gave her a quick kiss. “You’re beautiful, do you know that?”

Erin pushed him back gently, smiling faintly as she did so. “You get working,” she said to him.

Smiling, Lawrence went into the den, and turned on his computer. While he waited for it to start up, he picked up the remote control for the television and turned it on. White snow filled the screen of the TV, and static poured from its speakers. Lawrence surfed through the channels, but there was no change; swearing, he punched the Power button on the remote, then set it down and put a Gilbert and Sullivan CD into his stereo.

“Honey!” Erin called from the kitchen. “Do you want ranch or bleu cheese dressing on your salad tonight?”

Barely thinking, Lawrence answered, “Ranch, please.”

Lawrence turned back to his computer and his files and began to write. Halfway into his grievance summary, just as the Pirate King was about to begin his song, Lawrence heard a loud, deep moan.

Instantly, he looked up. “Erin?” he called.

Erin did not answer, but the moaning sound came again. Lawrence turned down the volume on the stereo so he could hear the sound better. It was like an animal’s moan of pain: deep, drawn out, and somehow hollow. There was an echo to it as well.

Lawrence stood up and went into the dining room. He found Erin standing at the kitchen sink, looking through the window to the street outside.

“What was that sound?” Lawrence asked.

Erin shook her head. “I have no idea,” she said. “It’s coming from outside. I think it’s coming from that hole.”

Lawrence raised his eyebrows in surprise. “From the pit?”

Erin nodded.

Lawrence stood next to her for a moment or two, then turned to go out the front door.

“Where are you going?” Erin asked.

“Out there,” Lawrence replied. “I think maybe someone fell in.”

Erin gasped. “You don’t really think so? That’s horrible!”

Lawrence didn’t answer that, but went outside, pausing only long enough to grab a flashlight from the utility drawer. Erin came after him.

Outside, Lawrence leaned over the edge of the hole. The cold chill he had felt earlier was stronger now, and much more definite. He could feel a slight breeze on his face.

The moaning sound was much louder here, and was definitely coming from the hole. He shone his flashlight down and called out, “Hello?”

There was no answer.

Charles came out of his house and stood by Lawrence. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“I think there’s somebody down there,” Lawrence said. “Can’t you hear that?”

Charles peered into the pit. “Yeah,” he said. “Sounds like a dog or something.”

Lawrence stared at Charles incredulously. “A dog? A dog wouldn’t make a noise like that!”

“I saw Dan earlier today,” Charles replied. “He was looking pretty sick. His foot was all mangled.”

“Didn’t you go to work today?”

Charles shook his head. “Nope. Called in sick. I couldn’t drive my car out of here anyway.”

The moaning started up again, louder than before. Charles peered down the hole and swore. “Shite, there’s a bleedin’ light down there.”

Lawrence looked down. Sure enough, there was a dim light source about fifteen feet down the hole. It was like someone had hidden a lamp in a small recess of the hole’s lining.

“There is someone down there,” Charles said, sounding almost amused.

Lawrence leaned over the edge of the hole and shouted. “Hello! Is there someone down there?”

No response came back, save for another deep, moan that was almost gutteral. “Whoever it is,” Lawrence reported, “I think they’re badly hurt.”

Charles nodded. “I’m going to get some rope,” he said. “See if we can’t get them out.”

Lawrence turned on him. “You will do no such thing,” he admonished. “I’m going back inside to call 911.”

Charles looked at Lawrence angrily. “You do that,” he said slowly.

Lawrence glared at Charles a moment longer, then decided that there wasn’t time to deal with this. He turned and rushed back into his house.

“What’s happening?” Erin asked him.

“I think someone fell down the hole,” Lawrence told her. “It sounds like they’re hurt badly.”

“Oh my God,” Erin said. “Can you see him?”

“No,” Lawrence said, shaking his head. He picked up the telephone receiver and dialed 911. “I think they’re on a ledge or an outcropping. Shit!”

“What?”

“The line disconnected.” Lawrence clicked the disconnect button and tried again. “Dammit, it keeps disconnecting!”

“Let me get my cell phone,” Erin suggested. “Just a moment!”

While Erin went to the other room to find her cell phone, Lawrence tried the phone in the kitchen, then the one in the living room. Each time, the line was cut off as soon as he was connected.

Erin returned and handed Lawrence her cell phone. Lawrence dialed 911 and pressed SEND. Again, the line clicked off as soon as it was connected.

Lawrence swore and handed the phone back to Erin.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

Lawrence stood in indecision for a moment. “I’ll go round to the neighbors’ house,” he said, “and borrow their phone. I’ll be right back.”

He jogged through the front door of the house, and out onto the sidewalk once again. He saw Charles out in the street once again, near the hole; this time, he was tying one end of a length of rope around a the pole of a streetlight.

“What the hell are you doing?” Lawrence demanded.

“The bloody phone’s not working,” Charles replied, “an’ I cannae get through to 911. I’m going down there to help out whoever is trapped down there.”

Lawrence shook his head. “You’re crazy,” he said.

Charles shrugged. “At least I’m doing something. What are you doing to help?”

Lawrence paused. “What’s wrong with your phone?” he asked. “Is it dead?”

Charles looked over at Lawrence and paused in tying the rope. “It’s weird,” he said. “I can get through all right, but once it connects, it rings off. I can’t get in touch with anyone to talk to them.”

“I had the same problem,” Lawrence said. “What the hell’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Charles said. “All I know is that there’s someone down there that needs help. Are you going to give me a hand or not?”

“I won’t be much help myself. Let’s get Hank from next door.”

“Good idea.”

While Charles finished tying off the rope, Lawrence went over to 2214 and convinced Hank Watterson to come over and help lower Charles down into the hole.

Between Lawrence and Hank, they had enough strength to lower Charles into the hole; they were both fairly large men, and Charles was only middle-sized. It was slow-going, though. Charles was heavier than he looked, and Hank wasn’t much help at all – he had been drinking nearly constantly since his wife had left him two months ago, and was drunk now.

Lawrence had been concentrating deeply on lowering the rope, and had therefore nearly missed the strange, mournful whimper that had come from the yard of the house next to his.

Lawrence looked up, and gasped at what he saw. The source of the sound had been a creature of some sort, slick with what looked like blood, lying on its side in the yard with a face that was remarkably canine. It had no legs, and blood seeped profusely from several points on its body. It looked as though it were surrounded by some sort of faint brown smoke, with red streaks that skittered across its surface.

“What the hell?” Lawrence muttered.

“Hey, up there!” Charles’s voice came up from down in the hole. “What the hell’s going on? You gonna let me down or what?”

Lawrence turned his face from the apparition and started lowering the rope again. “Hank,” he said. “Look over there in the yard next to mine. What do you see?”

Hank looked over and swore. “Good God,” he said. “It’s Dan.”

Lawrence looked over again. The smoke with the red skittering streaks was gone now, and Lawrence could see that the shaking, whimpering thing on the grass was indeed the neighbor’s dog, Dan. “What the hell happened to him?” he wondered.

“He’s gnawed his legs off,” Hank whispered. “Jesus Christ.”

The two of them had stopped lowering the rope again. Again, Charles called up from down below, cursing them for slacking off.

Lawrence and Hank started lowering again, but Lawrence could not avoid staring at the old dog. Had he really consumed himself as Hank had suggested? Then, as Lawrence watched, he saw Dan reach back with his muzzle, and start gnawing on his hindquarters.

Stifling a retch of disgust, Lawrence turned away, wishing he could let go of the rope long enough to grab the remains of the dog and take him away… or even to put him out of his misery.

“Holy shit, this is deep!” Charles called. “I’m probably down fifteen feet, and I still can’t see the bottom. How did this get here?”

“Are you close to the light?” Lawrence called down.

“Yeah, I’m nearly at it.”

The moaning began again from the hole in the ground, louder this time. “Hang on, I’m coming,” Lawrence heard Charles say.

A moment later, Charles called to Lawrence and Hank to stop lowering. “I’m here,” he called up. “Hold me steady.”

“What do you see?”

“It’s a bright light,” Charles called up. “There’s someone moving… It’s like a cave or something.”

“Are they hurt? Who is it?”

“It’s…” Suddenly Charles stopped.

For a moment, there was silence.

“Charles?” Lawrence called.

Silence only for a moment. Lawrence was about to call down again when suddenly Charles let out a long, bloodcurdling scream. The sound was terrifying to Lawrence, and he heard Hank draw a breath and his grip weakened on the rope.

“Shit!” Lawrence said loudly. “Hank, PULL!”

The two of them started to pull on the rope, lifting Charles back up. Hank moved slowly at first, as though the scream had weakened him. But he picked up speed as he moved, and they had Charles up within five minutes.

“Charles!” Lawrence called. “Charles, are you okay?”

Charles did not respond. Instead, he hung limp from his end of the rope, as though asleep or dead. His eyes were wide and staring, though, and his mouth worked slightly, as if he were trying to talk.

“Sweet Jesus,” Lawrence muttered, and bent over to pull Charles out of the hole.

Charles was heavy and difficult to lift. After five minutes of struggling, he was able to pull the heavy Scotsman up onto the asphalt. “I’ve got you,” he told him. “You’re okay now.”

Charles lay on his back, eyes wide and staring up at the dim sky above. On impulse, Lawrence looked up; the stars in the sky were bright, but Lawrence got the impression that they seemed swollen, almost heavy, and somehow… bloated. “What the hell is going on here?” he wondered aloud.

His attention was drawn back to Charles, who began to take sharp, deep breaths, as if trying to suck air back into his lungs through swollen windpipes. Lawrence’s vision wavered again, and Lawrence got the impression that Charles was shimmering, as the dog Dan had appeared to. The sensation filled Lawrence with a greater sense of dread, and he shut his eyes against the vision. When he opened them again, though, the shimmering was still there.

Erin’s voice sounded in his ear, startling him. “Is he all right?” she asked him.

Lawrence turned to face her, and was about to answer her, when Charles let loose another warbling scream and began thrashing his arms and legs. Lawrence found himself forced backwards and fell down hard onto his rear. Hank, whom Lawrence had forgotten about, was also forced back, although he managed to recover his balance and raise himself to his feet.

“Charles!” Hank cried, but to no avail. Charles scrabbled crazily on the ground, gasping and crying out in whimpering sobs as he did so. He pulled himself to his feet, and stood in a half-crouched position, his arms and legs apart and his eyes darting back and forth crazily. Lawrence was strangely reminded of John Belushi acting out Jake Blues.

“Charles, quit it!” Lawrence shouted, but Charles did not respond. Instead, glaring at Lawrence, Charles suddenly brought his own hand to his mouth, and brought his teeth together through two of his fingers. Blood poured from his mouth.

“Holy shit,” Lawrence found himself blurting out involuntarily. He tried to raise himself to his feet, but found that there was no strength in his lower body. From the corner of his right eye, he could see Hank swaying unsteadily, and then he heard running footsteps as Hank darted back to his house, then slammed the door shut behind him.

Charles worked his teeth and tugged his hands a few times. The fingers came off, and Charles flailed his mutilated hand in circles while he chewed.

Lawrence swore again, and finally managed to stand up again. Charles stared warily at him.

“Charles…” Lawrence began, but Charles suddenly rushed at him, his face suddenly filled with rage. Lawrence managed to side-step him, and Charles rushed past, letting out a scream that sounded full of fury and pain.

“Lawrence…” Erin started.

Lawrence ignored her, and ran to follow Charles, who was rushing to the opening of the cul-de-sac, about to turn right onto Hummingbird Drive. He rounded the corner, and was obscured from Lawrence’s view by a line of hedges which the Sanders family had planted a month before. Lawrence turned the same corner, but he

could see no sign of Charles.

Charles had vanished.

Hummingbird Drive was dark and disturbingly silent. There was no sign of Charles’ passing; not even any drops of blood on the ground, even though Charles had been bleeding profusely from his wounded hand.

Lawrence turned back and headed back down the sidewalk toward his own house. He could see Erin standing in the street, a few feet from the edge of the hole, near the spot where he had pulled Charles out. She stood between him and the hole, looking at him with a worried expression on her face.

“What happened?” she asked.

Lawrence shook his head. “Not now,” he said. He held his hand out toward her. “Come on,” he said, “we’re getting out of here.”

“What?” Erin replied. “What do you mean, we’re getting out of here?”

“We’re leaving. That hole…” and suddenly Lawrence stopped.

Something was coming out of the hole.

A brown mist rose up behind Erin – though it seemed more of a brownish-tinted distortion of Lawrence’s own vision than a proper mist.

“Erin!” Lawrence yelled. “Get away from there now!”

Erin, confused, stood for a moment, then turned to see what had frightened Lawrence. Then she turned back to Lawrence. “What is it?” she said.

Lawrence could not reply. Indeed, he found he could do nothing but stare silently, horrified, as the mist enveloped Erin, and she was engulfed in the distorting shimmer.

Lawrence turned, his chest feeling like a block of ice, and ran, ignoring Erin’s shouts behind him, leaving Sparrow Court behind him.

# # #

Lawrence spent the night in the downtown Econo-Lodge, after running and then walking forty-five minutes to get there.

In the early morning, still terrified, but now filled with shame at himself for having left Erin behind, Lawrence called a taxi, and returned to the street where his home was.

The hole in the street was gone; there was no sign in the asphalt that there had ever been a hole in the ground. Lawrence examined the road very carefully, but found nothing out of the ordinary.

His house stood as it always had. Hesitantly, he went to the front door and opened it. “Erin?” he called. There was no response.

He searched through the entire house, but found no trace whatsoever of his wife. All of her possessions were in their places, but she herself had gone.

Lawrence went next door to the house where Charles and his wife lived. Charles had vanished also, according to Anna-Marie; she had stayed in the house all night, especially when she had heard the horrible screaming, and had only ventured out this morning. The hole was gone, she observed, and so was Charles. Lawrence noted that Anne-Marie said this with little sign of remorse or sadness.

Lawrence himself, however, felt overcome with grief at his wife’s disappearance. He drove around the neighborhood in their Toyota, looking for any sign of her; he wondered if she had been overtaken by madness as Charles had, or whether she had simply fallen to self-consumption, like Dan the dog. Both possibilities made him sick to his stomach.

He traveled throughout the city, contacted Sutter Davis Hospital and the police department, but could not find any sign of his wife. That night, he lay alone in his bed for the first time in five years, and tried half-heartedly to read a book. But relaxation wouldn’t come, and neither would sleep. Eventually, he got up out of bed and wandered over to the window, to look out on the cul-de-sac where the hole in the ground had first appeared, where he had first heard Charles cursing his inability to move his car, just yesterday morning, and where everything now seemed so normal and reassuring. The night air was still, and nothing moved.

Lawrence sighed, and found that he was near to crying. There was no sign whatsoever of Erin, and he knew now that he would never see Erin again.

Nearby, something that Lawrence thought might once have been a dog, howled in pain and rage.

Frightened, Lawrence stepped back from the window, and nearly fell as his footing was suddenly unsupported behind him. He recovered by falling sideways onto the bed, and stared down at what had caused him to lose his footing.

In the floor, consuming wooden floorboard and carpet alike, a hole had appeared. And from its depths, something glowed and shifted.

Lawrence’s vision shimmered.

And then he heard his wife beckon, and he knew then that everything would always be okay.

And God, he was hungry!