Beneath the Foundation

The evening after my wife’s funeral, Death knocked on my door.

My mistake was in scoffing at the cape and scythe with a humorless bite. “Nice prank,” I wanted to say, but something about the black-clad guest on my porch stopped me.

The visitor didn’t loom but stood squat, barely reaching my shoulder, face hidden under a hood. The cape covered everything, brushing the ground with a faint rustle from the wind. The scythe was an excessive detail, fudged together from a large rotting branch and a blade that was more rust than metal. Maybe it would have been menacing if it had been clean, polished, and sturdy.

“It’s not Halloween yet,” I spat. “Care to explain what the hell you’re doing here?”

The cape rippled as a hand snapped up out of nowhere, fingers outstretched. I tried swiping it away, but the visitor dodged and lunged for me again.

A gloved finger traced down the side of my neck. The stranger pulled away, displaying a black fingertip stained beige.

“Hiding,” whispered a voice like splintering wood. “Still hiding. He did not heed my warning. He cannot hide forever.”

I caught the stranger’s frail wrist and squeezed. “Beat it before I call the cops.”

A grating cackle erupted from behind the hood as the stranger wrenched free and took a step back. “Too great a risk when he is hiding. Soon he will hide no longer.”

Before I could throw a punch, a hand grabbed onto my neck with ethereal strength.

“Oh, Mark. Don’t you remember what you’ve done?”

***

The morning before my wife’s funeral, a threat appeared at my door.

It took the form of an unlabeled brown paper package with nothing but a neat twine bow holding everything together. Much like the small package left on the porch after our daughter Hope disappeared last month, except longer and heavier.

Only this time, Eve wasn’t here to pick up the package and open it. Now it was my job, and I cautiously picked it up and brought it inside to sit on the kitchen table.

My fingers fidgeted with the bow, pulling the twine loose. Slowly, I started unwrapping the paper as my pulse drummed harder in my head like a clock ticking down to my demise.

Inside was a rusty trowel with a note. Admit it, the note said in cursive on one side. On the other, Stop hiding.

I dropped them both on the table and pushed them away. It was a stupid prank meant to scare me, nothing more. Still, my heart lodged in my throat and stayed there for the rest of the day.

***

The day after my daughter’s disappearance, an answer appeared at my door.

It was a small brown paper package with a messy twine bow that Eve immediately tore into in her desperate search for information about what happened to Hope. She had been frantic since last evening when she realized Hope was gone. I had been trying to comfort her, doing the laundry to ease her stress. I wouldn’t have thought the package had anything to do with Hope if I hadn’t already known that it did.

Inside was Hope’s pacifier with a note. GONE FOREVER, the note said in chicken scratch on one side. On the other, STOP SEARCHING.

Eve screamed and bawled and vowed to find and punish whoever took our baby girl. She smacked my chest when I wrapped my arms around her and she screeched bloody murder. We sobbed together, crying and panicking and blaming each other, locked in the same cycle of dread for different reasons.

We both wanted our child back, but she wanted to get the police involved.

“The police can’t do anything with just a pacifier and a note,” I told her. “For all they know, we’d be suspects in her disappearance.”

Eve didn’t want to listen. Anything, even jail time, was worth finding out what happened to her little girl. She called the police so often that she was given a warning. They didn’t want to investigate further past sending a search party into the wilderness once.

With a property like this, surrounded by plains and forests with few neighbors close by, a missing toddler was likely gone for good. Unless we suspected our estranged relatives in Hope’s disappearance, we reached a dead end.

Eve called to ask about missing children daily at first. She held onto hope for a long time, but it started dwindling after a while. Eventually she called once a week, still clinging to the tiniest chance that Hope might come back.

But I knew she wouldn’t.

***

The afternoon before my daughter’s disappearance, someone forgot to close the back door.

Eve was at work until the evening while I fixed up the back yard. The grass was too long, the dirt under the foundation’s edge had been hollowed out by foxes, and all of last year’s annual flowers needed replanting. Eve had been begging me to fill up the unsightly abandoned fox den for years and nagging at me to cut the grass for a month.

It was easiest to start with the grass, so I got on the garden tractor. The monstrous noise penetrated my headphones, and the tractor tumbled over little imperfections in the lawn with ease. Once, it rolled backwards over a large mound that hadn’t been there before.

It was an accident.

I hadn’t heard her come outside over the lawnmower’s roar. I hadn’t heard her come up behind it when I pushed it in reverse.

Hope was dead before I could jump down to her. She was probably dead even before I rolled the tractor forward. No one heard me screaming for help or crying for God to rewind time. No one saw me cradling her body, sobbing with grief and guilt.

It was an accident.

What was I going to tell Eve?

She’d never look at me again. She’d leave and she’d never come back, and maybe she’d be right to. What kind of person would stay married to someone who killed their child?

It was an accident.

She’d get me sent to prison for manslaughter or child endangerment, or worse. Years or even decades in prison, for one horrible mistake.

But it was an accident.

Maybe I could spare her the grief and pain of knowing her only child is dead. Maybe I could spare her from my failings.

I still needed to fill up the fox den and plant new flowers. Eve never worked in the garden because of her scoliosis. She wouldn’t go digging through anything I buried in the hole under the foundation. Hope’s pacifier felt heavy in my hand.

Eve came home when the sun was setting and I was in a new change of clothes, planting bulbs into a fresh layer of mulch with a trowel.

“Where’s Hope?” she asked from the back door. “Has she come down at all?”

I wiped my brow with my forearm, blinking sweat, and only sweat, out of my eyes. “I don’t know. I’ve been working here all day. I thought you left her to nap.”

“She would’ve woken up if you were mowing.”

I paused. Nodded. “I didn’t see her.”

“I’ll go check in her room.” Eve smiled. “You finally filled up that hole.”

I nodded and looked down. I couldn’t tell her what I filled it with.

***

The morning before my wife’s death, she opened the shed door.

Eve usually never touched my gardening equipment out of fear of the looming garden tractor. I had thought it was a silly fear until Hope ended up under it. Since then, I didn’t touch my tools either, leaving them to rust in the shed. After a few weeks of turmoil and uncertainty about our daughter, Eve occupied her anxious mind by berating me to get rid of the weeds.

“I’ll do it myself,” she had threatened.

I didn’t take her seriously until she was swinging a dirty, rusty trowel at my head in the kitchen.

“Eve!” I screamed after barely dodging her blow and backing away. She came after me with manic eyes. I threw my hands up, backing toward the stairs. “Eve, please—”

She shook the trowel at me. “What are all those bones doing under the house? In the hole you filled. On the day Hope went missing.”

“Eve—”

“I trusted you.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she screamed and charged for me with the trowel again. I caught her wrist and wrenched the trowel out of her hand and dropped it.

“Eve, listen,” I begged. “You’re delusional.”

She struggled in my grasp, her small body little match for my strength. “Liar!” she screeched, cursing and screaming through her sobs. “You killed her!”

“They’re animal bones. I—”

Eve stopped struggling for a moment and bored her bloodshot eyes into me. “You still think I’m so stupid,” she seethed. “You lie and you lie and you lie. You left her pacifier at the door so I’d think she got kidnapped. I smelled the rot in the shed. I saw they weren’t animal bones.”

I shook my head, fighting back tears. “It was an accident.”

Eve clenched her jaw. “Let go of me.”

I let go. She relaxed and stepped back. Then she lunged for my neck.

Eve’s fingers clung to my throat, trying desperately to squeeze the life out of me. I pushed her away, but she kept clawing and screaming about how she wanted me dead. I shoved her harder, but she kept chasing me even when I frantically climbed the stairs. She latched onto my neck in a last attempt to throttle me.

It was an accident.

I pushed her again. Her back caught the bannister and her body slipped over it.

Eve lay gasping on the floor, her mangled spine destroyed by the fall. I watched for the few seconds it took her breathing to stop. Then I went into the bathroom to wash my hands and dig through Eve’s makeup to smear her foundation on the blooming bruises on my neck.

It was an accident. Like all accidents, it was not my fault.

Maybe it was even a suicide.

The police believed that when I called in tears and told them I came home from gardening and found her like that. Either that or they didn’t want to waste their time solving a delusional woman’s death. The grief of losing her child pushed her over the edge.

Not many people showed up to the funeral a week later. Our neighbors were few and far between. Still, some came for concern for me losing my two family members a month apart.

I told them I was fine. I was cleaning, doing laundry, and gardening to quell my grief.

***

The evening after my wife’s funeral, Death shoved me by my neck through the front door.

I staggered back. “Hey, you can’t just—”

“Hiding, he is,” the stranger spoke. “Hiding his bruises. Hiding his actions.”

When the intruder lunged again, I grasped the hood and tore it back.

Eve glared at me, her skin mottled and lifeless, teeth bared in a snarl. “Did you like my present, Mark?” Her hand wrapped around my throat, only this time she was too strong. “I didn’t like yours. I gave you a chance to not lie this time.”

“It was an accident,” I croaked. “You were both just accidents.”

Eve pressed her cold fingers harder into my skin, a creaking, humorless laugh bubbling in her throat. “It stopped being an accident the second you started hiding it.”

“I’m sorry,” I wheezed. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” She pushed the blade of her rusty scythe to my cheek. “No amount of ‘sorry’s will bring back Hope.”

“It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t see her.”

Eve leaned in close enough for me to smell her rancid breath. Her fingers squeezed harder and harder until everything disappeared except her whisper.

“It’s your fault you lied.”