“Hey!” I shouted… but a low shout. The last thing I wanted was for Mrs. Richland to hear. “Hey, if you’re in there, get back! I’m armed!”
There was nothing, but I still stood there with the flashlight in my hand, paralyzed with fear. Of what? The unknown, which is the scariest thing there is.
Shit or git, Charlie, I imagined Mr. Bowditch saying.
I made myself turn the key. The arm of the lock popped up. I took it out, swung the hasp, and hung the lock over it. A breeze ruffled my hair. I opened the door. The hinges squalled. It was black inside. The light of the outside world seemed to enter and just fall dead. On the tape he’d said there were lights, although there was certainly no power line going to the shed. I shone the flashlight on the right side of the door and saw a switch. I flipped it up and two battery-powered lights went on, one mounted high up on each side. Like emergency lights for when the power goes out in a school or movie theater. They made a low humming sound.
The floor was wooden planking. In the far lefthand corner, three boards were placed in a row with cinderblocks holding down the ends. I swung the flash to the right and saw something so horrible and unexpected that for a moment I couldn’t comprehend it. I wanted to turn and run, but I couldn’t move. Part of me was thinking （so far as any part of me could think in those first few seconds） that it was a macabre joke, a horror-movie creature made out of latex and wire. I could see a single coin of light where a bullet had gone through the wall after going through the thing I was looking at.
It was some kind of insect, but almost as big as a full-grown cat. It was dead, with its many legs sticking up. They were bent in the middle, like knees, and sprouted coarse hairs. A black eye peered sightlessly. One of Mr. Bowditch’s bullets had caught it in the abdomen, and its pale unknowable guts lay around its torn belly like weird pudding. A fine mist was drifting up from those innards, and as another gust of breeze slipped past me （still frozen in the doorway, my hand seemingly welded to the light switch）， more mist began to rise from the thing’s head and from spaces the armor plating on its back didn’t cover. The staring eye fell in, leaving an empty socket that seemed to glare at me. I uttered a little cry, thinking it was coming back to life. But no. It was dead as dead could be. It was decomposing, and the fresh air was speeding the process.
I made myself step inside with the flashlight in my left hand, trained on the carcass of the dead bug. The gun was in my right. I didn’t even remember drawing it.
When you’ve had a shufti, as the Brits used to say.
I guessed that meant when I’d had a look. I didn’t like stepping away from the door, but I made myself do it. The outside me did it, because it meant to have a shufti. The inside me was basically gibbering with terror, amazement, and disbelief. I moved toward the boards with the blocks on top of them. On the way my foot struck something and when I shone the light on it, I gave a cry of disgust. It was an insect leg, or what remained of one; I could tell by the hairs on it and the knee-bend. I hadn’t struck it hard, and I was wearing sneakers, but it broke in two. I thought it was part of the one I’d heard early on. It had died in here and this was all that was left.
Hey, Charlie, have a leg! I imagined my father saying, handing me a fried chicken drumstick. It’s the best in the land!
I started to gag and put the heel of my hand over my mouth until the urge to throw up passed. If the dead bug had stunk badly, I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to hold back, but it seemed to have little smell, maybe because the decomp had progressed beyond that point.
The boards and cinderblocks were covering a hole in the floor, about five feet across. I first thought it was a well left over from the days before city water, but when I shone the light down between two of the boards, I saw short stone steps spiraling down the shaft. There were scuttering sounds and a low chittering deep in the dark. Half-glimpsed movement that froze me in place. More bugs… and not dead. They were retreating from my light, and suddenly I thought I knew what they were: cockroaches. They were giant economy-sized, but they were doing what cockroaches always did when you shone a light on them: running like hell.
Mr. Bowditch had covered the hole, which led down to Christ only knew where （or what）， but either he’d done a bad job—which wasn’t like him—or the bugs had managed to shunt one or more of the boards aside over a long period of time. Like since 1920? My dad would have laughed, but my dad had never seen a dead roach the size of a tomcat.
I took a knee and shone the light between the boards. If there were more big roaches, they were gone. There were just those steps, spiraling down and down. A thought came to me then, at first odd and then not odd at all. I was looking at Mr. Bowditch’s version of Jack’s beanstalk. It went down instead of up, but there was gold at the other end.