Crawl Space

Most people live a hard life. Or a good life depending on how you look at it. You have children without shoes, food, or water on one side of the globe. And on the other, you have people addicted to drugs and self misery; although living a “comfortable” life of easy essentials and commodities.

Josh had one of those lives. Everything would’ve looked perfect on paper, yet he lived an arguably hard life. His immigrant parents were very strict and religious and, growing up, he never felt like he was allowed to love who he loved.

They never had very much money and he had to work very hard at a young age to help his parents make ends meet.

Even now, as a 35-year-old married man he still supported his parents and paid most of their bills. Supporting a family of four on top of that, he always held himself to a very high standard of work ethic and would stop at nothing to help him and his husband achieve the life they had always wanted for their family.

This is what drove him to the latest endeavor for him, and his family, as he made them move from their city home into an old farmhouse built in the 1900’s on a vineyard he had bought from a foreclosure auction. They had already done most of the major inspections and renovations; just enough to make it liveable.

Although the big house with two stories and a wine cellar had beautiful architecture, it seemed like they found a new problem every day since they moved in. He had thought the inspections had shown him everything he needed to know but now, he was starting to think he had gotten in over his head.

It felt as though his money were now being poured into a blackhole and he had moved his family to that blackhole.

What he found today only made all of that worse.

“A crawl space? How do you miss a crawl space?” Jared asked Josh as he put their 3-year-old, Jinny, in her highchair.

“I wanna go in the crawl space!” shouted their 6 year-old, Jacob, from his spot at the breakfast table.

“No one’s going in the crawl space,” he replied. “I’m calling Tim to see how they missed this on the inspection”

Now Josh remembered what he had said to his son. No one’s going in the crawl space. It was comedic to him as he crouched down in the dirt, shining a light into the small opening. It had been filled in with dirt and vines had been growing over it for years, making it nearly invisible to the men who were overwhelmed at the amount of puzzle-like architecture to inspect.

Josh’s best friend and renovating partner, Tim, had already had a demolition crew tear out the wall covering the opening to the crawl space. Them and Tim’s younger brother, Mark, all stare into the black tunnel that was too dark for them to see the end of even with their flashlights.

The tunnel, which was barely wide and tall enough for someone to crawl through, had been walled off with a thin layer of sheetrock. The opening they had initially found was only small enough for maybe a small dog to crawl into. Small enough to stay hidden, but big enough to be found.

“Looks like the tunnel goes pretty far under the house, we ought to check it out to see exactly how far” Tim diagnosed.

“We? C’mon man, you know I’m not good with small spaces” Mark, who was new to the construction industry, whined.

“Don’t worry, I’ll go in after Tim and we’ll tell you everything we see from out here” Josh put on a brave face, although he too got chills from the small, dark hole.

Josh watched as Tim’s torso, legs, and finally, feet; disappear as he army crawled into the dirt lined tunnel.

He was next. He crouched down, shined his light in, and thought one last prayer before shimmying his way into the void.

Luckily, his claustrophobia ended much faster than he had anticipated as the tunnel opened up into a large room.

Tim was shining his light on one side of the room, where tall shelves lined the walls. The shelves were filled with large books, old leather binders, jars full of bolts and nails and jars full of some mysterious dark liquid.

Josh walked to the other end of the room, shining his light on an old workbench stacked with old papers and mail that was too water stained to be read. One shelf next to the desk displayed what was hopefully, a fake human skull for decoration. He looked at the faded pictures hanging above the desk that were unframed and too discolored to make out completely. One picture seemed to be of a family standing in front of the house when it was first built.

He leaned in closer and could make out a man with his wife and their two children. The man looked vaguely familiar somehow and Josh tried to wipe off some of the dust and look closer.

All the other faces in the photo were too hard to make out but the old man was preserved just enough to recognize. Josh thought he might be seeing things, but the old man looked exactly like his father.

“Josh come look at this” he jumped, startled out of his fixation.

He walked over to the corner of the room where Tim stood illuminating his findings. The side of the room was almost completely empty, aside from some spider webs and something an animal must’ve been eating. The only object there was a small, shoe-sized box.

The box looked as though it had been frozen in time and didn't seem to have been in the room as long as everything else in there. The brown paper it was wrapped in was still intact, and it barely had any dust on it at all. Although, it couldn’t have been put there recently, as the amount of spider webs surrounding and on the walls behind it hinted that it hadn’t been moved in years.

“You guys okay in there?” They heard Mark yell to them from the warm sunshine where he still stood.

“Yeah, we’re good!” Tim sighed, sounding relieved. “Well we saw what we needed to. Let’s get the hell out of here”

He kneeled down and began his crawl into the tunnel and back toward the light of day.

Josh started walking towards the exit when he suddenly stopped in his tracks, and felt a chill.

“Take It” he heard a voice whisper.

He spun around and shined his light all over. There was no one there. Maybe he was just hearing things. But still..

He suddenly felt an urge that he couldn’t shake. He walked over to the unsullied box and pulled it from its nest of cobwebs.

Josh and his friends stood around the strange box that was sitting on their counter, debating whether or not to open it.

“What’s the worst that could be in there?” Jared asked his husband as he handed him a cold glass of spiked arnold palmer. “Y’all weren’t too scared to crawl into a cold black hole that had been walled off for years, but you're scared of a box?”

“Well boxes aren’t exactly my thing, which is actually how I ended up with you in the first place!” he joked as he winked at his husband who was always setting him up for the perfect zinger.

“Ha ha, you’re so---o clever!” Jared joked back as they stared into each other’s eyes before sharing a kiss.

“Alright, alright” Mark interrupted. “Enough with the cheesy shit, let’s find out what the hell is in this creepy box that you felt so compelled to bring up from the mysterious hidden room under your house!” he laughed.

“Okay, okay. Fuck it! You’re right, what’s the worst thing that could be in there?” he asked, unable to hide the skepticism in his voice.

He picked up the box. It was light. He shook it, trying to see if anything would be heavy enough to move around and hint at what could be contained inside.

“It’s not a Christmas present!” Jared pressed. “Just open it!”

Josh turned the box to it’s side and started tearing the paper where it was folded. He tried to act calm, but his hands were shaking. What could possibly be in there that was so important for him to have? Had he really heard someone telling him to bring it or was he just imagining things? He definitely wasn’t imagining the feeling he had in his gut that had made him think it was so important.

He pulled back the brown paper to reveal a box that was a similar shade of brown. It had a fold-in lid that was tucked in, and the cardboard looked clean and unbent as though it had never even been opened.

He pulled at the little tab and unfolded the stiff lid to reveal the contents of the box.

Inside was a stack of papers that looked old, but definitely more well preserved than the documents he had seen on the desk in the hidden room. They each took out a paper and tried to identify exactly what it was they were looking at.

“This is dated 1907” Mark observed, decoding the old calligraphic writing.

“Wait a minute, I can make out a name here.” Jared squinted through his reading glasses. “It says Sir.. Aldenis.. Barros.”

“Barros?” Tim grabbed the paper, staring at it inquisitively. “That’s strange. I wonder if there could be any connection.”

“To me?” Josh asked, perplexed. “How could that possibly be my ancestor, my parents were the first generation to come to the United States. That doesn’t make any sense.”

They waited for a response while Tim looked over the paper intently.

“Josh. I’m not exactly sure here.” He started.

“Sure about what?”

“I mean you would have to take it to your bank or lawyer or something to be sure.”

“Tim. What is it?”

“I think this is the last will and testimony for Sir Aldenis Barros, and this was apparently one of his many estates. It was written so long ago, the language is a little different but I’m pretty sure this names his heir as the son of his son. Let me see that other one” he said as he took the paper Mark had been clutching.

“This says here that his son, Sir Aldenis Barros Jr., had run off to South America to be with a girl whom his family didn’t approve of. In the event that he should have no other successor by the time he die, he appointed his son’s son the sole beneficiary of his estates and finances. Let’s see..”

He ruffled through the box, pulling out what must have been the continuation to the page.

“This one is in a little worse condition than the rest but the successor and heir to the Barros fortune is the bastard son of his son who was named Antoine.”

Josh looked up. Then suddenly he jumped to Tim’s side, eager to see for himself.

“Antoine Barros. That’s what it says” Josh looked at his husband, disbelief in his eyes.

“Antoine?” Jared asked. “Antoine as in Tony?”

“Antoine as in Tony” he replied, still unable to believe it himself.

“Wait, I don’t get it” Mark asked, not understanding what they had caught onto.

“Tony. Antoine Barros. That’s my dad.” Josh answered. “My dad is the son of Sir Aldenis Jr. and, if this is true, the rightful heir to his fortunes and estates.”

They sat in silence astounded by their discovery, until Jared broke the silence.

“I’m gonna go call that estate lawyer we used for nanna’s will!” he smirked as he excitedly walked out of the room and pulled his phone out

Everything was about to change.