Living down under

copyright 2004 Dale Hansen no reproduction without permission


When my brother became engaged, my father decided to build up the basement into a little apartment for the new couple.

It wasn’t so little after all, and with dark paneling and plush carpets it was another home below ours. It was beautiful. They moved in and lived there for a few years, until my brother went to graduate school in Chicago, leaving an unoccupied, but fully furnished basement. The basement was then regulated to double duty, both as a guest house and a repository for dilapidated furniture.

It became a sort of family museum to walk around in the basement. The couch Dad had set on fire was next to the chair the old cat had shredded. They were both behind the coffee table that someone had gouged with a belt buckle when he played on it, even after I had been told not to.

At the age of 12, I was convinced that I had become an adult. I couldn’t remember the exact time and circumstances of my remarkable transformation, but I remember thinking “ So this is what it’s like to be a grown up.” Filled with my own conviction of maturity, I decided I needed to get out and live on my own.

I was angry and appalled to find no one would rent an apartment to me – just because of my age! This was anti-youth prejudice in the worst way! Being without any income was awfully inconvenient as well. This was just another injustice for the very young!

As a response to overwhelming age-ism, I decided the basement was now my own apartment. Here was the perfect starter apartment. And I didn’t even have to pay rent.

The hard part was going to be convincing my parents.

I approached my mother with all the delicacy and tact of that any bomb disposal unit would use when approaching an unknown package. I realized that she could blow at any moment, but hoped she wouldn’t.

She gave me the shock of my life. She said, “Okay.” That was all! No argument, no questions, no delays. I was moving into a greater world of independence and self-sufficiency! I was going to have freedom and autonomy! And my mommy said I could.

After 12 years, I still hadn’t learned how devious and crafty mothers can be. This would be the lesson that would forever flavor my perception of motherhood.

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The big move

All that day, I moved items from my room into the basement. I had inherited a kitchen, a living room with a fireplace and a master bedroom (master!) in which to organize all the garbage I had collected over my long lifetime.

I was thankful for all the burned, scratched and broken furniture exiled to the recesses of the basement, or I would have had a little pitiful pile of a very few items in the corner of a very big emptiness.

Each armload I carried required a strong resolve to push down my natural reaction to being in “THE BASEMENT". After all, I was a grownup now.

Besides, this was my room, my space, my sanctum sanctorum. This was now where I would go to escape from the world, the one place where I could be safe and nurtured. It was MY ROOM, with all the fierce pride and solidity that means to a 12 year old.

It most assuredly was not, NOT a dank, creepy, scary, bug infested, strange noises, musty, terror-filled hell hole.

Of course not.

Armload after armload made it’s way downstairs as I told myself that over and over it again. It became my mantra, my battle cry. I almost sang it: “ Not a dank, creepy, scary, bug infested, strange noises, musty, terror-filled hell hole. – of course not!”

Later that day, I decided to join my family for the evening meal. It was more social, after all, and not too far to travel. After dinner, it was time to repair into my – ahem – apartment.

Because this was my first evening, I decided that I should share this experience with my best friend..

My dog.

After much calling, coaxing, cajoling, ordering and meat flavored bribes, I resorted to picking up the little beast and carrying him downstairs. He was going to share this moment with me if it killed him! After all, what are friends for?

There is a special relationship between a boy and his dog. A dog instinctively knows when his owner is upset or worried or scared. Not that I was, of course, but if it should happen, he would have known. I knew this for a fact because every dog on TV always knew how his boy was feeling. This was an unbreakable bond.

As soon as his paws hit the carpet, he flew up the stairs and into the kitchen.

I tried again, but this time I closed the door behind me. I thought he and I could watch TV. He thought that if he sat at the door at the top of the steps and howled, someone would let him out.

Obviously something in the basement frightened him, I mean what else could it be? Dogs are more sensitive to ghosts and monsters, aren’t they? They can see things no human can see, right? There must be a reason he didn’t want to stay. What unspeakable horrors from the basement did he detect?

I let him out and called him a traitor. I returned to the basement and resolutely basked in the cold glow of the 12 inch black and white TV that was slightly older than I was. I stubbornly stared into the TV and refused to think about what mutating horrors may have driven the dog away. The big sissy.

I spent the rest of the evening chasing shadows with quick movements of my eyes. By the end of the night I had made myself more than a little dizzy.

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The long night

Finally, the truth that I could no longer deny, the decision I could no longer put off:. It was… …it was time to go to bed.

Going to bed meant turning of the TV.

Going to bed meant going into the bedroom of my little apartment.

The bedroom that had a single door and no other way out.

The bedroom that was all the way from the stairs across the basement.

It was a death trap.

If the monsters came, they would come through the door. I knew this because they always did in the movies.

I’d have to run through them to get out alive. Not just through the door, but through the multitude of monsters crowding the rest of the basement waiting their turn to get in the room.

I left the basement door open. I’d seen that movie! I also though I’d leave a few lights on. This meant turning on every light I could find and bringing down every lamp I could get from upstairs.

I got into bed and closed the bedroom door. The silence engulfed me. Except that it was too bright, I almost began to sleep, lulled by the false sense of security so vital to any fatal trap.

B-B-B-BANG!

It sounded like it was from the little basement kitchen.

Didn’t the old fridge make that noise during the day?

Maybe that was it. Sure that had to be it!. That or a large group of snarling, rabid wolves who had come out of the woods because they were half crazed with hunger and searching for a young, tender, 12 year old morsel like me.

No, it was the fridge, I could hear it running. It had a soft purring noise. I began to relax again.

I had forgotten that the water heater was located just behind the head of the bed, on the other side of some thin paneling. I was straining as hard as I could, listening so intently to the fridge, that when the water heater turned on it sounded like the trumpets of Revelations announcing the end of the mortal world.

I had only just gotten my heart back into the habit of beating, when the worst noise of all threatened to stop it again. Foot falls. There was something there, I knew there was. I heard it come to the bedroom door and stop.

I wanted to say something like “Mother? Is that you? Is everything OK?” the closest I could get my mind to wrap around was “Mom?’ The word came out sounding more like “Erk?”.

No, whatever it was, it wasn’t human , I could hear it sniffing at my door, it’s breath seemed to pull my life force through the door jamb.

It was my dog! It had to be! I left the basement door open and he had come down to be with me! My faithful and loyal friend, my comfort and my joy. If he spent the night with me, I knew that everything would be fine.

But what if it wasn’t him? There was still that pack of wolves to consider.

It was several long lifetimes before I heard “it” leave again. I felt guilty for shutting the dog out of my room (if it was him), but guilt wasn’t exactly the strongest feeling I was having at the moment.

When I thought the danger had passed, I grabbed my blanket and ran up the stairs, bed clothes following behind me, flying like an ejected parachute and doing just about as much to help my headlong flight as the braking parachutes of a drag racer.

I kept thinking that the blankets would be the first thing that a monster would grab when trying to “get” me. But maybe that would buy me some time.

I slammed the basement door shut and ran to my old room. I spent the rest of the night on the old mattress, my pillows and sheets were still in the basement left to fend for themselves.

The next day I moved my stuff back. Moving back was quicker than moving down because all that next day, I heard the monsters laughing at me.

Years later I found out that when my older sister had complained about my getting the basement to myself, mother told her, “He won’t last the night!”.

I would like to be offended, but she was right.

I think that may be the most offensive part.