Chapter 7 - What Lay Beneath
The crawlspace beneath 114 Lillian Street was cold, dry, and low. The scent of dark, unexposed dirt filled my throat, mixed with the sharp, dusty smell of ancient insulation.
I shone my small keychain light through the darkness.
The foundation was built on rough-hewn cedar posts and limestone blocks. Ten feet ahead of us, Clara was crawling on her hands and knees, her denim jacket caked in dark brown soil, following the sound of Elliot's heavy breathing.
"Elliot?" she called out, her voice muffled by the low floor joists above us.
A soft whine answered her from the far corner beneath the front living room.
We crawled toward him, our elbows dragging through decades of dry dust and old spiderwebs.
When my flashlight beam hit the back corner, I saw Elliot.
He was standing on his hind legs, his front paws pressed against the underside of the subfloor planks directly beneath where the living room armchair would have been. He was nudging a specific section of tongue-and-groove pine with his nose, barking softly into the seam between the boards.
Clara reached him first. She shone her phone light up at the ceiling.
"Look," she whispered.
The floor joists beneath the living room were dark, oil-stained pine. But right above Elliot's head, one four-foot section of the subflooring had been cut away and replaced with a square piece of modern exterior plywood, secured to the joists with eight bright, zinc-plated steel screws.
The screws weren't rusted. They had been driven into the wood recently—within the last few months.
"Look at the corner," Clara said, her finger pointing to the edge of the plywood square.
Someone had taken a heavy black permanent marker and written two words across the seam:
ROSIE'S BED
"This is where Margaret put Rosie's orthopedic mattress," Clara said, tears choking her voice again. "In the corner by the front window. When Rosie got too old to walk up the steps, Margaret made her a bed right over this spot."
Elliot whined again, reaching up with one broad paw to scratch violently against the edge of the plywood. His nails left white, fresh score marks in the soft wood.
"He wants us to open it," I said, crawling closer.
"We don't have tools," Clara said, her fingers searching the flat head of the zinc screws. "These are star-head screws. We can't turn them with our fingers."
I reached into my pocket. Alongside my car keys was a small metal multi-tool I carried for fixing dog crate latches at the shelter. It had a fold-out screwdriver attachment with a flathead bit.
"It's not the right bit," I said, jamming the flat edge of the tool into the star-shaped recess of the first screw. "But if I wedge it hard enough..."
I put all my weight into my palm, twisting with everything I had.
The rusty wood groaned. The screw made a loud, snapping sound as the threads broke free from the cedar joist.
CRACK.
For twenty frantic minutes, working in the cramped, freezing crawlspace while Elliot stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us, Clara and I worked the tool until six of the eight screws were backed out of the wood.
I pulled down on the corner of the plywood square.
The wood gave way with a long, tearing screech of nails, swinging downward on its remaining fasteners like a trapdoor.
A heavy, dark object slid out of the joist cavity and fell with a dull, heavy thud into the dry dirt between Clara’s knees.
It was a rusted steel lockbox, twelve inches long and six inches deep, sealed with a heavy brass Master Lock that had been wrapped in thick layers of black electrical tape to protect it from moisture.
Elliot stepped forward, reached down, and gently touched his nose to the cold steel box.
May you like
He let out one long, quiet sigh, lay down in the dirt beside Clara's knee, and rested his chin across his front paws.
His search was over.
