The Buried and The Forgotten

This is another writing prompt I heard on another writing site I frequent. The prompt is this: write a short story (or whatever) about returning to a childhood home only to find it is condemned. Maybe it's the fact that I'm slightly macabre* in what I write, but this totally feels like the beginning to a horror story or something. So, here it is, for your reading enjoyment:

*Speaking of "macabre", don't you hate it when you only ever use/see a word is in it's written form so you have no idea how to pronounce it? I love this word but I never use it in conversation because either way I try to say it, sounds wrong. Actually, they both just sound pretentious as f@#k, so I try to avoid them.

The Buried and The Forgotten

                "Condemned DO NOT ENTER"

                The words were written across a paper and taped to the heavy wooden door. The sign bulged in the middle, where the brass knocker sat beneath it.

                “Shit,” Penny said, looking over the door. “It’s not that old.”

                “Maybe it’s asbestos or something,” Gerald said and took  a step back.

                Penny darted down the porch steps and looked up at the house. Her short, black hair blew against her hand that shielded her eyes from the sun. “Do you think the cellar’s locked up?”

                “I don’t know. Probably. Can we just get out of here?” It wasn’t his idea to come in the first place.  

                “Where’s your sense of nostalgia?”

                “Nostalgia isn't even a sense, Penny...it’s a feeling,” Gerald said, stomping down the steps. He stopped on the last one and kicked it a few times with his heel. “Hear that? Termites. Place is falling apart.”

                “It hasn’t come down in the last 20 years. I think it’ll last a couple more minutes,” she said. She looked down either side of the street. The coast was clear.  “You coming or not?” she asked before disappearing behind the side of the house.

                Gerald cursed and kicked a divot into the brown grass but followed her.

                Penny knelt over the cellar doors, examining the lock. It was a cheap padlock fixed around a loosely held slide lock. She turned and greeted Gerald with an Oh please look.

                “Heads up,” he said, tossing her a broken chunk of cement.  If you can't beat 'em..., he thought.

                Penny took off her pink cardigan and wrapped it around the cement block. A dull clang echoed through the air and the lock was discarded. Penny held up her cardigan to reveal a gaping hole in the middle and made a face.

                “I thought you hated that sweater,” Gerald said.

                “I do. It’s just...now I have to go buy a new one.” She tied the sweater around her waist and pulled the particle board doors open. They fell to the sides with a thud.

                “Pen,” he said, grabbing her by the arm before she could descend the stairs. “Are you sure about this?”

                “It’s what Mom wanted, Ger.”

                “Yeah but what if someone sees us, recognizes us?”

                “That won’t happen once we’re inside, now will it?” Penny turned back to the black filled hole before her and stepped down the cement steps. “Pass me a flashlight.”

                Gerald shrugged the knapsack off his shoulder, letting it fall into his hand. He threw her the larger of the two flashlights.

                Like a submarine exploring the inky depths of the sea, she descended into the dark cellar.

                Gerald  walked up to the steps. The warm, humid air seeped out like vaporous mildew. He crinkled his nose and followed behind, flashlight poised in front.  His hands followed the cement wall as he took each step. There are some things that stay with you no matter how far away or long ago they were. The feel of course cement, the taste of moist air laden with cement chalk, the sound of a sledge hammer against...

                He was back on level ground, at the bottom of the stairs. Penny was already ahead, searching the cellar. Was she still feeling...nostalgic?

                “It hasn’t changed. Seems smaller now, though,” she said, flashlight searching the room.

                “You were a kid when we left here. I’m surprised you remember it at all.”

                “I wasn’t that young, Ger.”

                “No. But people have a way of forgetting...some things.” 

                Penny shone the light in his eyes, blinding him. “I remember.”

                He threw a hand over his eyes. “Yeah."

                She turned away and went back to looking around.

                Gerald followed her with the flashlight. The stairs were only a few feet away. They were steep and wooden, probably rotted through by now.  Luckily for them, what was under the stairs was what they were here for.

                Penny stood by a wall, examining  the tools and pictures fixed to the wall. The old  man’s things. Gerald had no interest in revisiting them. He went straight for the stairs. Crouching beneath them, he scanned the floor with his flashlight. The outline of the hole was as obvious as ever. A thin layer of newer, course cement spread over a thick layer of plaster of paris. He shook his head at his mother’s amateur notion of masonary.  “Found it,” he called to Penny.

                “There you are,” she said, looking down at the floor. “Think he’s just bones by now?”

                “I don’t know. Probably.”

                “If we bust this up we can’t fill it back in, can we? Not now, like this.”

                “No, we can’t. But they’d find him anyway, if they ever got around to tearing this place down,” Gerald said, knowing that it was never going to stay hidden forever. 

                “So it doesn’t matter?”

                “I didn’t say that. But you’re right. It’s what Mom wanted. Go close the doors,” he said, opening the knapsack again. Finding the rubber mallet and railroad spike was easy. They were two of three things left in the bag.

The little light filtering into the cellar from the hanging doors was snuffed out with a bang as Penny closed up.  The teeth-jarring sound of iron chipping away cement resounded through the dark cellar.

Gerald and Penny would never understand why it meant so much to their mother to be buried along with their father but, like it or not, it was her last wish. And the sooner it was finished, the sooner they could go back to their own anonymous lives and never see the other again.