Backyard Dungeon Chapter 1

I am SOOOOOO EXCITED to put this book out.

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Westherst, Ohio, was a small town not far from Cleveland and just a little south of Lake Erie, and it had the feel of a modern Mayberry, but with more rednecks. The place reminded me of every small town in Ohio, where I was born and raised, with a family run ice cream stand, a little hardware store, and enough churches and bars for a town twice its size. In Cleveland, where I went to college, my old, rusty truck stuck out, but here my old Chevy fit right in.

As I pulled onto the street on the outskirts of town, I looked at the hodgepodge of houses of my new neighbors that sat on the edge of a hilly wilderness. Most of the homes looked to be around a hundred years old, which was typical around here, but some were newer. The cars parked in the driveways were all over the place too, in age and quality.

There were six houses arranged in a cul de sac, each with a long semi-rectangular lot behind them, and some of the yards were larger than others. The house in the center of the semi-circle had the biggest allotment, but mine was on the right hand side. Beyond the houses was the ever present tree-line, marking the edge of civilization before it gave way to the Ohio wilderness.

The house to the right of Grandpa’s place had a crisp lawn and several well maintained flower beds, as well as several tasteful lawn ornaments, including a concrete duck, dressed in a flowery cloth dress, that was a sure sign an older woman lived there. The house on the left was also well kept, with trimmed bushes, a couple of kids’ bikes left in the yard, and white wicker chairs on the porch.

But the yards were all tidy and well kept, and even the older cars looked to be well cared for, except for one or two that had been parked in somebody’s yard and left to the elements. All in all, though, this seemed like the perfect place to start my “adult” life, and I couldn’t wait to get a load of my grandfather’s old place.

Then I pulled up to a mustard yellow double wide trailer that was just starting to rust around the edges. The yard was overgrown, and scattered around were large chunks of rusting metal that had come from old cars or farming equipment. Rust was the ever-present scourge of life in Ohio, since it was a cool, damp environment, especially this close to the Lake.

I smiled to myself as I stopped the truck and looked at the old place. I’d never really known my grandfather, but mom always called him an eccentric, and I could see why now. The debris in the yard seemed to be mute evidence of dozens of unfinished projects, and while the backyard was surrounded by a wood privacy fence, I assumed it looked about the same as the front.

I got out of the car, took a selfie in front of the house, and sent it to my friend Jay with the caption, A man and his castle. Then I looked at the picture and grinned.

No one really likes pictures of themselves, me included, but I knew the sight of me standing before my newly acquired, and somewhat dilapidated, home and grinning like I’d just struck gold would get on Jay’s nerves.

Jay always liked to look at things for what they are, where I liked to think of how they could be.

What the hell is that, Eddie? Jay sent back. Hope you’re up to date on your tetanus shots.

What are you talking about? I texted back as I started to walk up to the porch. Wait until you see it a month from now and then try to crack jokes.

Ugh. Just make sure to bug bomb the place before you try to sleep there.

That’s what I like about you, I typed. Always looking on the bright side.

I put my phone back in my pocket and looked around. The porch was solid. Maybe it needed a good sanding and a new coat of stain, but none of the boards were loose. That was a good start.

“Hey,” I heard a man say behind me.

I startled a little, turned, and saw a man with a short beard and brown hair. He was dressed in a nice pair of jeans and a baby blue polo, and he came up the walkway toward me. He had a friendly smile on his face, and I guessed he was in his early thirties.

“Hi there,” I said as I came down the steps of the porch to meet him.

“I’m David Miller, I live next door,” the man said as he extended his hand for a shake.

I reached out and took David’s hand as I got a better look at him. David had a pleasant kind of roundness about him, and an uncalloused hand, so I guessed he worked in an office or something that didn’t require much physical activity.

“It’s good to meet you,” I said as I smiled back. “I’m Eddie Hill, and this is my place now.”

“Oh,” David said as his eyebrows raised. “I didn’t realize the place had been on the market.”

“Nah,” I replied. “I inherited it from my grandpa. A lawyer got a hold of me last week to tell me the old guy left it to me.”

“You’re Albert’s grandson?” David said before he thought to cover his surprise. “Sorry, I don’t mean any offense. You just don’t look anything like him.”

“None taken,” I said lightly. “We weren’t close. I was actually surprised he left the place to me. I hadn’t seen him since I was a kid.”

“Well, Albert always was… surprising,” David replied in a polite tone before he plastered on a smile. “What do you think you’ll do with the place so far?”

I saw him glance back at the house and knew he must have wondered why anyone would want to live in an old mobile home from the 70s that looked like it was one angry storm away from being a pile of rubble.

“I thought I’d start with getting the yard cleaned up,” I said as I looked around. “I haven’t seen the inside yet. Probably some work to be done there, too.”

“That’s good to hear,” David said with obvious relief. “I know Mrs. Whitmire on the other side will be glad to hear that, too. Her and Albert used to go rounds about the yard. She lives on the other side.”

“Did you know my grandpa well?” I asked.

I’d never really gotten to know him, since he and my mom weren’t on speaking terms, but I had always wondered about him.

“Not really,” David said with a shake of his head. “Albert kinda kept to himself. But he was always friendly enough the few times I did speak to him. Mostly he’d just wave and say hello if he was out in the yard. Anyway, I won’t keep you. But if you need anything, Jessi and I are just next door. It was nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” I said as I shook David’s hand again.

As the bearded man walked back to his place next door, I turned, went back up the porch, and opened the door to my new home.

The first thing that hit me was the smell of cigarettes, so I guess grandpa had been a smoker. I stepped into the front room and glanced around, and I noticed everything here looked like it had come out of a time capsule. The shag carpet was green and gold, and it was matted with time and use. The couch had a wooden frame, and the cushions were off white with brown and orange ferns.

And of course, the walls were wood paneling.

Despite the layer of dust on everything, the manufactured home was fairly clean, if cluttered. There was a heavy wooden end table that sported a dingy lamp made from a large piece of wood, and it was carved to look like a cowboy leaning against the trunk of a tree. The decorations on the walls were equally kitschy, including one of the singing basses that had run out of battery.

I moved through to the kitchen, which was also straight out of 1970. I walked past mustard colored formica countertops, pea green appliances, and dark orange linoleum as I went out to the backyard, and then I looked out across the half acre of land the property included on a long, thin lot.

There was a shack of an unpainted shed, a stand of overground, flowering bushes, more rusting junk, and plenty of weeds where flowerbeds had once been. But the grass was nice, if also overgrown, and I could see some real potential here. If I removed the cement slab that served as a back patio, put down some paving stones, cut back the bushes and put in a trellis, and fixed up the shed, this could be a really nice spot to hang out and drink a beer.

In the shed, I found an old riding mower, a weed whacker that looked like it hadn’t been touched in a decade, and an assortment of old fashioned yard tools. I pulled out the mower, and was pleasantly surprised when it started. Mowing around all the junk would be a pain, but hopefully I’d be able to have it all hauled away once I found regular work.

I decided to get started right away since I didn’t have anything better to do. I’d paid my way through school by taking a series of odd construction work jobs, and I had a little savings tucked away until I found regular work as a graphic artist. But until I heard back from some of the places I’d applied to, I had a little time to relax and settle in before the student loan payments started rolling in.

It took about an hour to mow the whole yard since I had to dodge around the old motors, pieces of farm equipment, and other assorted junk, but I was pretty happy with my work. After I knocked back the weeds from the walkway, porch, and back patio, I grabbed an old pair of garden shears from the shed and walked over to the bushes.

I paused as I looked at the flowering bushes and thought about how far back I wanted to trim them. I’d already worked up a sweat in the summer heat, and I wasn’t looking forward to the task. I figured the thing to do was to get in there and see what I was working with, so I ducked and moved into the branches to try to see how many plants made up the brush.

But when I got to the center of the growth, I was met with a surprise.

There was a large stone inside the growth of bushes, and in the middle was a boarded over hole. I looked at it closely and decided it must have been an old mine shaft. Ohio was coal country, after all, but I didn’t know if there had been a lot of mines this far north.

“Huh. This is weird…” I was overwhelmed with curiosity, so I went back to the shed to see if there were any tools I could use to pry up the boards. Old mine shafts could be dangerous, but if I was careful, I’d be able to get an idea of what the hole was. There was a possibility it was an old rum-runner tunnel, since Ohio had also been known for moonshine during Prohibition, and with Cleveland being only an hour or so away, it was just as likely as a mineshaft.

I found a crowbar mixed in with some other odds and ends in a box near the back, and then I went back into the bushes to see what was in the tunnel. If there was an old still or something down there, that could be worth something now. People loved to collect that stuff, and I’d be able to make a little money.

Back in the bushes, I started to pry up the old boards. Some of them were pretty rotten, so it didn’t take long before I was looking down into the darkness. Then I pulled out my phone, turned on the flashlight, and looked into the hole. I could see the dirt ground, and there was a ladder built into the side of the hole, along a stone wall.

I put my phone back in my pocket and started to climb down, and I discovered there was only a few feet before the entrance of the hole opened out into a small, round space. I pulled out my phone again and looked around. While the floor of the small cavern seemed to be dirt, all the walls were stone.

That was weird.

I’d expected dirt walls, maybe some clay, and old wooden supports or something. This area wasn’t known for being particularly rocky, since we were miles away from the Appalachian mountains, but the walls were solid stone, and I could see tools marks from where this unnatural cavern had been carved out.

I looked around and saw a tunnel that led into the darkness toward the back of the property, and I started to walk. Everything seemed pretty solid, and I didn’t notice any large cracks in the rocks, so I felt it was pretty safe. Worst thing I expected was maybe a family of angry groundhogs, and I couldn’t help but wonder where the tunnel let out.

“Well, here goes nothing,” I muttered.

The flashlight on my phone only provided a few feet of light and did little to dispel the darkness around me, but this gave exploring the tunnel an exciting, spooky kind of vibe. The thin layer of dirt or dust that covered the floor of the tunnel didn’t show any signs of animals that might have called the tunnel home, and it felt like I’d been down here for twenty or thirty minutes before I finally came to the first, small cavern.

The tunnel opened up into a circular chamber that didn’t have any of the tool marks I’d seen previously. This was a natural space, and I could hear the sound of water dripping somewhere nearby. The cave was maybe fifty feet long and thirty feet wide, and as I walked forward, the sound of my footsteps echoed loudly in the silence.

“Woahhh.” I slowly made my way around the chamber, moving from left to right, to get an idea of what the chamber looked like.

On the far side of the opening where I’d come in, there was another opening, and then two others, evenly spaced, along the far wall of the cave. Next to the opening furthest to the right, there were several large rocks. I still hadn’t seen any footprints or scat of animals, but I kept an ear out for any squeaks of bats or other rodents.

As I rounded the rocks, I wondered about the lack of life in the cave, and that was when I saw one skeletal foot peeking out from around the back of the outcropping.

“Fuck,” I gasped as I stumbled back a step.

Now, I’d never seen a skeleton in real life before, but the bones of the toes seemed unnaturally long to me.

“Shit. Shit. Shit.” I could feel my heart start to race. Had this actually been a rum runner tunnel? Did I just stumble across an almost century old crime scene? As I wondered whether I was supposed to call the police to report the remains, I came around the outcropping and saw what was, up to that point, the most horrific thing I’d seen in my life.

The skeleton was not human.

The skull was elongated, and two huge fangs descended from the center of its mouth, flanked by two only slightly smaller canines. Its bony face was flat, with a large, inverted heart shape where a nose had once been, and the long arms and short legs stuck out at odd angles.

But the weirdest thing was the two, massive, skeletal wings that laid in a crumpled heap around the creature.

My breath caught in my throat, and I felt a cold sweat prickle my brow. This… couldn’t be real. My rational mind tried to offer up dinosaur fossils as an explanation, but these bones weren’t encased in rock. They were white, with dark brown streaks I assumed to be old blood, and while the skeleton wasn’t exactly fresh, I knew it had to be fresher than several million years.

And the fucker was pretty big, so I didn’t even want to think about what could have killed it.

I turned and ran back the way I’d come, away from the monstrous creature. Even though I knew it was dead and gone, the very idea that it had existed refused to register in my rational brain.

I raced back up the tunnel toward the daylight, where things made sense and there weren’t any skeletons of six foot dead bat creatures. By the time I got back to the ladder, I was dripping sweat and cursing under my breath.

What the fuck was that thing and how had it gotten into a tunnel in my backyard?

I’d already started to question what I’d seen when I came out into the warm, summer air a half minute later. Could it have been a trick of the light? It was really dark down there, and my phone flashlight wasn’t the best, so maybe it was more than one skeleton, all piled together, and it just looked fucked up.

But then the memory of that skull came back to me. There wasn’t any getting around that.

I’d spent my life in Ohio, which meant lots of hunting and time spent in the woods. I had seen all kinds of animal skulls, but I’d never seen anything like that. Accept for a bat, but those were tiny. I’d never seen one with more than an eleven inch wingspan, and at a guess, that thing would have had a wingspan of seven to eight feet.

What.

The.

Fuck.

I burst out of the bushes and put my hands on my knees to catch my breath. Was I just losing my mind? I had heard about gas pockets in old mines, maybe I’d been hallucinating.

“Yoohoo!” I heard a cheery, if husky, voice call out.

I looked up to see a wrinkled, sallow face with dark eye make-up and improbably long lashes sticking up over the fence, and I had to stop myself from recoiling. The shock of the skeleton in the cave hadn’t worn off, and for a moment, the old woman with her hair teased up to its limits seemed just as monstrous.

“Oh, hi there,” I panted as I gathered myself. “You must be Mrs. Whitmire.”

I stood and walked over with my heart racing and my mind still on the thing in the tunnel. All I wanted to do was get back in the house and process what I’d just seen, but I also didn’t want to make the neighbors think I was insane on my first day here, so I decided to play nice.

“And you must be Albert’s grandson, Eddie,” the old woman weezed.

Mrs. Whitmire sounded like she’d smoked a pack a day for the past fifty years, and I could see her claw-like hands gripping the fence. Her gnarled fingers were tipped with gaudy pink, press-on nails, and the skin around them was yellowed with nicotine.

“Yeah,” I said, still half dazed. “Got here just today. How’d you know that?”

“News travels fast in this town, hun,” Mrs. Whitmire rumbled. “It’s good to see someone taking care of the old place.”

As I looked at the fence, and the woman peeking over it, I realized she must have been standing on something on the other side to see over the tall privacy fence. I remembered what Miller had said about the woman next door and Grandpa going rounds about something, and I wondered how often she perched up there to spy into the yard.

“Are you fixing up the place to sell?” Mrs. Whitmire asked with mock sweetness.

“Uhh, no,” I replied, and I was a little caught off guard by the whole interaction. “I’m planning on staying. At my age, already owning a half acre seems like a pretty sweet deal.”

“Oh,” the old woman said, and I saw her face fall slightly before she recovered her mask-like, neighborly smile. “Well, I just hope you’re not one of them partiers. We have enough trouble with those two hooligans down the street, blasting their music at all hours of the day and night.”

Mrs. Whitmire laughed, or cackled more like it, as if she were joking, but I could tell she wasn’t going to be a pleasant neighbor, and I started to feel more antsy about getting back into the house.

“No,” I said. “I’m a pretty quiet guy. Kinda got all of that out of my system pretty early. If you’ll excuse me, I could really use a shower.”

“Oh, of course, dear,” Whitmire said with an understanding nod. “But if you’re thinking about putting in a garden, I’m more than happy to help. My roses have won prizes at the Garden Club and the county fair five years in a row.”

“I just might do that,” I said to appease the old woman. “You have a good day, ma’am.”

“You, too,” she said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Nice to meet you, Eddie.”

I hurried back into the house and locked the door behind me, and already my nosy neighbor was fading from my mind.

I had more pressing matters to deal with than a bored old woman.

What the fuck had that thing in the tunnel been, and how did it get there? What else was in those tunnels? This was something out of those crazy documentaries they play after ten on the History Channel, and I couldn’t wrap my head around the whole idea.

I had grown up with Bigfoot stories, but I’d never believed in anything like that myself. It was just something the older people would bring up at family gatherings, after everyone drank a few beers.

I walked into the back of the house, found a bedroom, one room filled with junk, and finally the bathroom. It was small, and the shower/tub was surrounded by an old shower curtain with bass and salmon printed on it. It was clean enough, just dusty, like the rest of the place, so I grabbed my overnight bag, turned on the hot water, and tried to clear my head under the steaming jets.

Even in my shocked state, I noted the water pressure was good. But everytime my mind wandered, the picture of that inhuman skull popped back into my head, and try as I might, I couldn’t convince myself of a reasonable explanation.

I thought I should call someone about it, report it to some official agency, but who? Animal control? The police? Who would even believe me? They’d probably think it was a hoax of some kind. People always think there’s money to be made in that kind of thing, but usually, the person who made an extraordinary claim just ended up looking like a whack-job.

I avoided the back yard for the rest of the day and tried to busy myself with other things. I made a half-hearted attempt to sort through the shit in the junk room, but it was packed with all sorts of useless things like old magazines that ranged in topic from guns to UFOs, a busted toaster, half broken furniture, and a couple of bags of Grandpa’s old clothes.

The few good things I found were some vintage PlayBoys and a record player that still worked, so it wasn’t a complete loss. But my mind kept creeping back to the horrific skeleton, and I found it hard to concentrate on anything else.

What the hell was down there?

I also found an old, heavy duty flashlight and a box of expired MREs. Seemed like Grandpa had been quite the character, and it was no wonder my straight laced mother and him didn’t see eye to eye.

When I unearthed the flashlight, an idea started to form inside my head.

Whatever that thing was down in the cave, it was long dead, and considering the neighbors were more worried about the state of my yard than monsters coming up from the ground, chances were it had been the only one of whatever-the-fuck it was.

What else might be down there?

Curiosity started to overcome my initial shock, and I found myself planning on going back down. It was early evening, and I didn’t have a job to get to tomorrow morning. Maybe it was worth exploring some more.

I grabbed the flashlight and my old backpack, and I rationalized I wouldn’t be satisfied until I looked at the thing again, just to be sure of what I saw. I figured I just had to go back down as I put some chips and a couple of bottles of water in my backpack.

After all, it would be foolish to just board the hole back up and ignore it. What if Grandpa Albert buried treasure down there? It was a long shot, of course, and I didn’t even know if he’d ever done more than just board the hole up, but the mystery and possibility kept tugging at me relentlessly.

As the sunset, I unlocked the back door but paused as a thought occurred to me. I should really bring something with me for self defence. Better to have it and not need it, right? I thought about what I had that would work. Despite all the gun magazines, I hadn’t found a stash of my Grandfather’s guns, but I did have a really nice, sharp katana from my college days in the truck.

The purchase had felt a little ridiculous at the time, but the Cold Steel blade looked fucking awesome when the dude on the YouTube video cut the hanging pig, and now it was coming in handy, so I had no regrets.

I carried in the few boxes of stuff I’d brought with me and set them in the living room. I’d just thrown things in randomly when I packed, since I didn’t own much at the time, so it took a moment to figure out which box my katana was in. But once I had the sword in hand, I marched out to the back yard and glanced over to make sure Mrs. Whitmire wasn’t still posted up at the fence to keep an eye on me.

The coast was clear, though, so I went over to the bushes. The honeysuckle and lilacs were fragrant in the night air, and I pushed through them to the entrance of the tunnels. When I got down the ladder, I clicked on the flashlight and pushed the scabrad of the katana in my belt. Something about having the sword with me boosted my confidence, and I started back down through the tunnel to where the skeleton moldered in the ominous cave.

It didn’t feel like it took as long to find it this time, now that I had an idea of where I was going, and the bright beam of the flashlight lit up the cave far better than my cell phone had. My heart was still pounding, though, as I approached the rocks in the back of the chamber.

When I shone the beam of light on the skeleton, it was still quite a shock, but it looked just as it had earlier. The terrible, long white fangs were lit up in far better detail, and my hope that the thing was really a jumble of several skeletons was dispelled. The bat creature was well preserved in the dry cave, and it looked like it had been undisturbed since the moment it crawled behind the rock and died.

Or was killed.

I looked the skeleton over carefully, to see if I could tell what had killed it, but there was no way to know since I only had bones to go by. Then, as I moved the light of the flashlight around, a glint of metal caught my eye on the ground next to the thing.

There, laying on the ground and partially obscured by the dirt on the cave floor was a large iron key.

“Holy shit,” I breathed and reached down to pick it up.

It was a simple key, but it looked old as fuck. There weren’t any embellishments on it to indicate where it was from, or what it was for, but given its size, it had to be something big. I stood up and looked around the cave, but all that was there were the three tunnels, leading further into caves.

After a moment of decision making, I pulled out my phone.

There wasn’t any reception down here, but if I was going to explore any further, I figured I should take notes about any turns I took, so I could find my way out again. But I had to pick one of the tunnels to start with. It was a completely random choice, so I started down the one on the far right that happened to be next to me.

This time, I didn’t have the sense of dread I did when I first saw the skeleton. With the key in my pocket, it almost felt more like a treasure hunt. It may take a while to find it, but there was something down here worth locking up. It sounded crazy, and I wasn’t entirely sure the whole day wasn’t just some wild dream I was about to wake up from, but then another thought entered my mind.

If there was something worth locking up down here, that implied there was something else down here to guard a treasure against. I just hope whatever that was, it was dead, too.

“Just call me Indiana Jones,” I chuckled nervously. Then I took a deep breath, started down the tunnel, and hoped for the best.

This tunnel also had toolmarks, which meant someone dug it out, and I wondered who it had been, and if they’d been human.

It seemed anything was possible down here.

After I’d gone a few yards, I started to see other openings that branched off from the main tunnel, but I decided not to explore them yet and stay on the path I was on. If it was a deadend, I could always double back and see where the other openings led. The tunnel I was in seemed to go on for ages, and I listened carefully for any sound that would indicate I wasn’t alone, but all I heard was the drip of water, so I continued on.

The main tunnel twisted and turned, and the floor sloped slowly downward. I was moving further underground, and I wondered how deep under the earth I was now. The air was cool, but it still smelled fresh, and I had just started to wonder how much further the tunnel went, when the beam of my flashlight lit up a larger space at the end of the tunnel.

I felt glad to see an end to the claustrophobic tunnel, so I quickly stepped out into another small cavern. This one was about twenty feet across and another twenty feet wide and there was a large iron door on the other side of the space.

“Oh, hell yeah.” My heart raced with excitement as I examined it.

The door was huge and filled the wall in front of me. It looked ancient, but I didn’t see any evidence of rust or pitting.

What’s more, strange letters were etched into the iron door in a script I didn’t recognize.

“Jackpot,” I said to myself, and my voice echoed back in the silence.

Then I pulled the ring handle, but the huge door didn’t budge. I pulled harder, in case it was stuck, but it still didn’t move.

“What the fuck?” I grumbled, and I wondered if I needed to bring the crowbar or some other tool down here to pry the door open.

As I looked it over, though, I saw a large keyhole, so I pulled out the iron key I’d found next to the creature. The hole and key seemed to be roughly the same size, so I shrugged and gave it a try.

There was a loud, hollow click as the inner mechanism released, and I was able to pull the door open easily. There wasn’t any grinding or groaning from the metal door as it smoothly swung open, and I saw another tunnel beyond.

I was almost giddy with excitement as I stepped through and shone the light around, but then there was a hollow thud behind me as the door swung back shut behind me. I turned and only saw solid rock behind me, and I felt a momentary panic.

“Fuck,” I exclaimed as I looked for the door that had been there a second ago.

But all I saw was solid rock, and my heart nearly stopped. Was I trapped down here now? Was there another way back?

I stopped myself and took several deep breaths. Panic never helped, and if I was going to get through this, I needed to be calm and think things through. There was a door here, I just needed to find it, so I started a careful examination of the rock wall, inch by inch.

After a few minutes, I found the thin, almost imperceivable seam of the door. It had been disguised to match the wall of the tunnel, and whoever had done it did a very good job. I looked for a way to open it again, and I finally came across a crevice in the stone. I felt inside it with my fingers and found a metal mechanism for the key.

Then I pushed the key into it and heard the loud click, and the door swung open again.

“Thank god.” I let out an explosive breath of relief and stepped back as I watched the door close itself again. It must have been weighted so it remained closed, and as I put the key back in my pocket, I wondered why the person or persons who’d made the door had designed it like that.

What could be down here that was worth so much trouble?

I hoped it was some fabulous treasure and not something terrible that the door was supposed to keep locked in, and I turned around with a huge grin on my face as the dollar signs spun around in my mind.