The teeth in his skull

None of them knew how long he had been there. I’m sure experts could work it out, from hair or skin samples or something, but these were just three forty-somethings who never had any interest in science. By now, they worked with spreadsheets and on computers and barely knew how those worked, and even when they were students, their parents put pressure on their teachers to push them into good universities. They would admit that this wasn’t really their thing, bodies in wall cavities, but no one else was around to help out.

They all thought the same thing. They all looked around for someone who was low enough on the pay grade to clear this up without their involvement. Someone who might sweat and pant as they carried the body out of here. They would never admit this to each other, but they wanted someone poorer than them to clear up this mess. Someone whose place it is to deal with this sort of thing.

Without any form of help, without someone to blame for a body found in a wall cavity, they looked to each other for someone else to blame. There were three of them; three forty-something with the same short dark hair and the same softened edges that they promised they would firm up in time. One of them owned the house, so the other two, neighbors from either side, silently declared that this was this homeowner’s problem. They must have realized this at the same time because the two men sprang into action, bouncing off each other as if they were trying to perform a badly choreographed dance. The homeowner followed, unsure why they were running so quickly, and fearful that they had seen something that might tear or bite them.

There was only one door to escape through, because it was a basement; usually in basements the only way out is up, although this hadn’t, of course, been the case for the poor person stuck in the wall cavity. All three men pushed and shoved their way, but they did it gently, with an attempt to preserve civility, of course, because their kids were on the same baseball team.
The two neighbors made their escape. They were foolish, they told themselves, for ever accepting a beer from the homeowner. And then, when they spoke of saving on expenses by renovating the homeowner’s basement themselves, they were foolish to take it in turns to use a sledgehammer to smash at that wall. They found a body in the wall cavity, and that was bad enough, but they could have ended up with the entire house collapsing around them.

They were happy to leave the homeowner behind so he could figure out what he needed to do about the mess. And maybe that’s exactly what the homeowner was thinking when he paused at the basement door, glancing back one last time. If only he had left without looking back. If only he had called the police straight away, so they could take away the body and start their investigation without him ever seeing that deathly leer. Because that’s what it was. The body was smiling or grimacing at the homeowner, and it had not been when they first found it.

Those teeth. How could they shine so brightly if they had been hidden inside this wall cavity of dirt and dust?

That smile. Because that’s what it is. He has decided that it is too wide to be a grimace, it is definitely a smile. A smile is an invitation, a welcome to someone, and for some reason, this person has chosen him. It has chosen his house, and so he realizes that he has something that other people in Rotherwell do not. He knows that this isn’t the usual thing that the other dads brag about as they watch their sons play baseball. Usually it is the latest custom-colored Jeep, and then it was the latest Tesla until things got all political with that, and the quick-witted switched to a Rivian. No one talks about a body in a wall cavity, no matter how welcoming that smile.

Finally, someone poorer than him steps into the basement; someone who might clear up this damned mess. The homeowner doesn’t usually curse, but he has been transfixed by this smile for too long, and he has work to get on with (spreadsheets and computers he barely understands). It is a police officer, and he wonders what is happening, and the homeowner switches into homeowner mode, lacing each sentence with the unspoken [premise] that he can afford a million-dollar house in this neighborhood and the police officer can’t. Ergo, the police officer should roll up his sleeves and cart this corpse away, and the homeowner shouldn’t.

After the half-hearted investigation, after the clear up, he has to clear things up with his wife. She wants to move. She never wants to set foot in a house that had a body in a wall cavity, even if it was in the furthest reaches of the basement. But he won’t hear of it. They could never afford another house in this area, not since the house prices skyrocketed. They will just have to put this in their past and move on. Didn’t they do that when he found out about her fitness instructor? Didn’t they do that when he realized, too late into an unplanned pregnancy, that she had a dependence on opioids? He doesn’t like to hold this over her, but he does, and her head hangs low in shame as they move on from the debate about this house.

This house. It was never about the corpse in the wall cavity. It was the house that smiled at him. The roof beams, the walls, they stretch into the widest smile that welcomes him in. Of course, he would never reject this. Why would he? This house welcomed him in, and he accepted that invitation. And so he settles in, and he brings his wife and children. He tells them that they can no longer leave. It is what the house wants, and it is what he wants. He hopes one day that this will be what they want, but that is less important to him right now. All that is important is the daily trip to the basement, where he sits and stares at that wall cavity that once held an offering of sorts. It has since been boarded up; ugly plywood hammered by someone into the walls. The homeowner hopes that these nails don’t hurt the house any more than the ugly plywood offends his sensibility. Such ugly actions for such a beautiful house.

He tries to make things better by smiling at the house. He smiles as widely as possible, as that corpse once smiled at him. This homeowner wants to show the house that he understands, that he knows what he must do.

He finds a hammer in his garage. He tends to get poorer people to keep his house fixed so he can’t think of a time that he has ever used this implement. A crazed thought flashes before his eyes. He sees blood splattered all over the hammer, and he thinks of what he might have to do if his wife and children try to escape this house. Then he corrects himself. These are what they call intrusive thoughts. He has heard about these, and they are harmless. In fact, they say that having these thoughts makes you diligent because you don’t want these horrible things to happen. He silently congratulates himself for his diligence, and he wonders if any of the other dads on the Rotherwell baseball team can say that they are diligent.

The homeowner returns to the basement with the hammer, and he uses the claw end to lever off the ugly wood. He likes the squeal of each nail as it slides from the wood, and he likes even more the sense of mastery he feels when what he attempts to do actually works. He rarely feels this at work, with all those spreadsheets and computers that tend to go wrong more often than they go right. He has felt the pressure from his boss, and the homeowner knows that he would be fired if his boss didn’t play golf with his father. You go way back with him, the homeowner keeps reminding his boss. Didn’t he know you when you were in middle school? He thinks about how old that relationship is, and he wonders if that is as old as the age of this house. He was never good at math, so he hasn’t a clue, and he doesn’t really care enough to follow the thought that pops into his mind and trails off out of his ear.

He finds himself in the wall cavity. He already had the ugly plywood thrown to the floor of the basement, and now he has squeezed himself in. He just wants to take a look. He is certain that the house has only invited him, and that is an honor, and, more importantly, that is a competitive edge over the other dads in Rotherwell. And isn’t that all that matters, after all? To push ahead of the others, so that you and your kids don’t get left behind or stepped upon. So they don’t end up biowaste to feed someone else’s greed. Because that’s the biggest problem, isn’t it? The greed of others. It is never about your own greed, because that is just appetite. I’m just trying to survive, you would say. I’m just trying to give my kids the best start in life. But it’s hard to keep saying this when you use it to justify so many forms of debauchery. There was that masseur last year, and the year before that. Things that you can push into the voids of your mind, but perhaps, only for so long. It only takes one careless or curious person to burrow through and reach the truth.

He squeezes himself further in, certain he can see a light further along the wall. It could be a room full of jewels, or a script revealing secrets in a code he must decipher. He will probably need help if it is code, and that might be a problem when he doesn’t trust anyone enough to share secrets with. In Rotherwell, in suburbia as a whole, trust is to be mocked. Trust is a liability. You don’t trust anyone with details about the sports your children are trying out for. You don’t share with anyone about their strengths and weaknesses, any more than you would share with them details about the fractures in the state of your marriage. Without trust, he is alone, stuck in the cavity of a wall and trying to shuffle his way towards the light. If he trusted someone enough to accompany him with this, they might have told him that the last thing he should do is go towards the light.

BB Clifford