The Other Side
I watched him from my bedroom window every afternoon when I got home from school; I had a perfect view of his backyard. I rushed past my sleeping mother and ascended the stairs quickly. I threw my books and my black cotton gloves at the foot of my bed and took my post at the window. He strolled out onto his back porch at 4:00 p.m, the screen door clapping shut behind him. He was never early, and he was never late. He always appeared in his red and black plaid shirt at the exact same time. The yard sat in a way so that my window had the only neighborly view. He would walk out into the center of the yard and disappear into a hole. A hole he had been digging for months was now a hole he entered every afternoon.
Today was the day, the day I had been planning for weeks, the day I would follow him into the hole. What was down there? He lived by himself, so there was no other half to this secret. Or perhaps it was just that good; he simply did not want to share it. But I tend to think, it was that he had no one to share it with, not that it mattered anyway. Today I was going to figure it out, the guessing was over. Today I was going to follow the red and black plaid rabbit down the hole.
I changed into an old pair of Levi’s and threw on a black hooded sweatshirt. I checked and made sure my mother was still snoring on the couch and then snuck out the front door. The late afternoon was cold, but my blood boiled with excitement. I slipped around the house and made my way along the cement block path towards his tall wooden fence. The large autumn sun threw swords of orange light through the gaps in the pickets. I lifted myself up to chin level and peered into his square yard. His back porch consisted of a glass ashtray and a wooden rocker. Long shadows from surrounding trees crawled across the grass, but the hole was untouched. A small streak of sun snuck through the swaying pines and lit the hole, leading the way.
I heaved myself over and pushed my back up against the yard side of the fence. I listened for any suspicious noises coming from his house, or his hole, but only the murmur of a distant lawn mower hung in the air. I turned my head up towards my window; it looked closer from down there, and somehow I knew he had seen the blinds split by my wandering eyes on more than one occasion.
I took one more glance around the yard and made a move. As I approached the hole, I began to feel an even stronger pull towards it, a magnetic power somewhere deep in my bones. Then, I was above it. I peered down into it, nothing but darkness. I crawled feet first into the abyss and reached down trying to find something to step on, nothing. I began to pull myself back up when the loose earth around the lip of the hole gave way and I fell down into the black.
I landed just four feet past where my feet were dangling. There was a faint light flickering deep within what appeared to be a small crawl tunnel. I crouched down in the dirt and began crawling. The tunnel became brighter and brighter and I could now hear the systematic tick of a wall clock. I started moving faster as the claustrophobia began to take hold. The end of the tunnel flickered yellow-white only a few yards away. As I reached the end, I frantically dumped myself out onto the ground. I shot up quickly and took the room in even quicker. A clock, wooden pendulum swinging, black shadowed wall, lit candle holder, and him. He had his back to me, and he was looking down at something, something shimmering in the candlelight.
“I know you have been watching,” he said suddenly without turning around or looking up.
“Yes, I’m just curious,” I replied quickly.
“Hmmm, it is interesting.”
“What is it?”
He then hunched down into a squatting position and looked deeper into the shimmer.
“What are you looking at?” I asked
“A puddle.”
“A puddle?”
He reached down and nipped the surface of the shimmering puddle with his index finger, sending candlelit ripples along the ceiling.
“I think I’ll go in now,” the man in red and black plaid said quietly. He crawled into the puddle headfirst dissolving first up to his waist, and then with a wiggle, his toes disappeared, only a tiny splash and more ceiling ripples left in his wake. I sat momentarily stunned before crawling across the room towards the bottomless puddle. When I looked into it, it seemed no deeper than an inch. The water reflected my face within its tired ripples. The face remained my own, but there was something different, it was slowly changing. The puddle swirled and my eyes lost focus. I leaned closer. A blur of candlelit skin and the white flecks of flame poured into me, and I fell into the shimmering puddle.
I could not find the man in black and red plaid on the other side, but there was much else to see.
Ryan Hardgrove has been surviving for 24 years and hails from Pittsburgh, PA. He writes poetry and short stories for now and has been published in several literary zines. This is his second publication in Spilling Ink, the first one being a piece of short fiction entitled “The Fisherman”, which you can find in the third issue. He is also an aspiring film maker.
