NOTE: This is just a rough draft.  Any criticism is welcome. 

The pills had their affect quickly. Martin watched his mother nod off to sleep. He sat at her bedside and listened to her breathe. He held her hand and stared at the at the IV stuck into the heavy blue veins that criss-crossed the back of it. It was a biological patchwork that fascinated him.

With a final squeezing of her hand, Martin stood up. "I love you," he said.

He walked down the steps to the first floor. He listened to the utter silence of the house. His own breathing sounded tinny in the strange silence.

Martin opened the cellar door and took a deep breath. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a blue rubber ball. He held it in his hand and stared at it. Then he closed his fingers around it. He clutched it like an amulet or a talisman- something with power. He held it as if it would ward off all that lay in the darkness before him. He held it with the unwillingness to let go of a child on his first day of school, clutching his mother’s fingers and crying. The irony, of course, was that- whether its power was real or only the desperate hope of a desperate boy- Martin had no intention of keeping it. In fact: he opened his hand again and knelt at the top of the stairs. Then he tossed the blue ball into the darkness.

He watched it bounce down the first four or five steps. Then it was gone. The darkness, as if it had hands, appeared to reach out and steal the ball away.

Martin stepped back from the doorway. He folded his arms across his chest and sighed. "There," he said. "There. It’s done."

From the freezer in the laundry room he pulled a plastic bag. In it he found the parcel, still wrapped in butcher’s paper. From a drawer in the kitchen he retrieved a butcher’s knife. He held it in his right hand and slashed at the air with it once or twice until he felt comfortable wielding it. Then, of course, he realized that one never feels truly comfortable carrying such an instrument. As he returned to the cellar doorway with the parcel in one hand and the knife in the other he suddenly thought better of his armament. He retraced his steps and left the knife on the dining room. I won’t need it, he told himself. It won’t hurt me.

Of course, doubt was never far away from his mind, no matter how steely his resolve. His reservations returned as Martin stood at the top of the stairs with his hand on the doorknob. He gazed down into the dark cellar. It lay in waiting for him, whatever it was. This was a certainty for Martin and not simply suspicion. Suspicion would have been a welcome thing for the boy. Suspicion allows for the possibility of being in error. But Martin was not merely suspicious of the hunger that the thing in the darkness felt for him, he knew it to be true and his entire body trembled with the knowledge. As he stood in the cellar doorway staring down into its musty darkness, he had never known such fear.

"I lost my ball," he said. He let the inky darkness swallow his words. "That’s all. That’s all I need. I know you know where it is."

He heard something in the darkness. It was a scratching sound. It reminded him of their old dog, Lucy, and the way she would scramble across the wood floor at the sound of the doorbell. But, of course, this sound was not Lucy- not by a long shot. Lucy was in the backyard in a plastic bag buried deep in the ground next to the lilac tree she had so enjoyed lazing under during the summer months. Lucy’s footfalls had been absent the house for almost a full year. Martin stepped forward. His toes rested just at the edge of the top step.

"I’ve got something for you," he said. "I thought we could trade."

He held up the package wrapped in brown paper. In his hands he felt its coldness beginning to subside. It had begun to thaw. He shook the package.

"I said… I thought we could trade."

He wanted to throw it down the steps into the darkness. Fully aware, however, that this wasn’t the process he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Sweat had begun to bead across his pimpled forehead. He licked his lips. He felt his stomach tumbling over itself. He let his eyes drift to the club shaped package in his hand and he willed his arm to stop trembling.

Stop it. Stop it right now. It just wants to be fed. As long as it has food I’ll be fine.

It had been true in the past. He hoped it was still true. He prayed that nothing had changed. Ruling out other unforeseen circumstances, the outcome was always the same as long as a deal was made- an even exchange.

"Are you there?" he asked.

The hiss that echoed up out of the darkness chilled him to the bone. It was a long, rattling sigh, vaguely reptilian. It tore at the edges of Martin’s thinly veiled calm and he felt his grip on the leg of lamb loosening.

He closed his eyes and found it deep in his gut- remnant self-confidence, like the tattered flag above a fort as the battle comes to an end. He felt it in his gut and he held on to it with his mind. It won’t hurt you. It knows you, Martin, and it wants you. But it won’t hurt you. He wasn’t sure if he believed this. He wanted to but the doubt remained. He thought of his mother and the scars that made her almost unrecognizable now. In a way he felt certain that if it could do that to her it would recognize no boundaries with him.

He remembered her screams. They crept up his spine. They set every hair on end. He questioned the necessity of this. It’s a ball. A blue rubber ball. Blue rubber balls could be found anywhere. It was replaceable.

Still, the ball had nothing to do with it. The ball was completely beside the point. It was the principle. It was a test. He knew he shouldn’t be testing it, but in a way he had to know the truth. He had to know if there was any sense of recognition left and if that recognition was enough to stop the thing from its desire to consume. It hadn’t been enough for his mother. He thought of the bandages wrapping her head and her body. He thought of her perpetual state of pain. It was enough to bring pause to his actions but not enough to reverse them entirely. He would live his life in fear if he didn’t face the thing down there in the darkness. He already had to cope with the daily pain of his mother. Fear was an emotion which he didn’t feel capable of handling in addition to everything else.

"But a living thing is always better," Martin said. He spoke softly. He cast his eyes down at the parcel in his hands. "Warm blood is always more desirable."

Still, this was what he had, whether living or not, whether warm and supple or frozen solid. He took the first step.

The cellar stairs had been warped by warm, moist summers and equally frigid winters. The wood beneath his feet creaked and groaned. Somewhere beneath the steps he heard the scratching sounds again. They were frantic, scurrying. They scattered into a distant corner somewhere below and behind him. That, at least, was a mercy. He continued his descent and felt the moistness of the raw meat, now thawing, as it soaked through the butcher’s paper. He breathed deeply through his mouth. He had learned by reflex to breathe in this way. The stench of death and rotting flesh in the cellar was something that had lingered in his nightmares for many years after he first encountered it. Martin’s steps were determined and his focus as the darkness began to consume him was the only buoy he had left. One step after another he let the darkness swallow him. The affect was otherworldly. At the top of the steps normalcy persisted, but the light did not reach him as his feet came to the cold, dusty floor. The creature hated light and became violent if not deadly in the presence even of a candle- his mother had learned that.

Martin shuffled across the floor slowly, uncertainly. He reached out his hands to feel the thick air before him. He felt the cold, clammy sweat under his arms and running down the sides and back of his neck. He felt the heat of his own fear in contrast to the frigid cold of the offering he carried with him.

Then- as his foot inadvertently kicked it- he heard the strangely hollow thud of a bone skidding across the floor. His stomach dropped to his knees. His tongue curled with a sudden dryness and for a moment he forgot his resolve. He heaved a breath through his nose. Acid forced its way up to the back of his mouth and he bent over with a heaving motion. His mouth hung open and saliva dripped from it but nothing more. The acridity was even more alienating than the impermeable darkness.

In his mind Martin envisioned the cellar’s approximate layout. It would approach him but not until he had taken a position of passivity. His outstretched hands grasped at the air. His feet shuffled across the dirt covered concrete. When his hands finally grasped the marred wooden surface of the chair’s back he fumbled with it and pulled it toward him. He sat and took in a deep breath, careful to breathe through his mouth. The parcel lay in his lap and, though he could not see even a hand in front of his face, he closed his eyes.

Martin waited.

He thought of things. Terrifying things. In the cellar it was impossible to escape the fear of what he well knew might be his last moments. It was a curiosity that had grown in him over the years and which recent events had stirred once more. For so long they had fed the thing in the basement and kept it from harming others- that was his mother’s calling. "It is our duty to protect the rest of the world," she once said. "The duty was once solely mine but now it is ours. If we do not protect and take care of it, Martin, it will go out into the world and it will cause terrible things to happen."

It had never acted out until she made the mistake- silly, for she had known better- of carrying a candle down into the darkness. Amidst the brutality that ensued Martin’s mother had been battered, bruised, beaten to within an inch of her life. Strangely, as she lay unconscious before the thing it suddenly stopped. It appeared to make the decision to retreat into its seclusion. The candle’s wick was cold. It lay next to her body in the dust. That was where Martin found it as he came quickly to her side. By that time she was conscious but only enough to grip the railing as Martin hefted her body into the light. She very nearly died. He thought of her in the bedroom two floors above. He thought of the machines hooked up to her and the doctor’s solemn promise, per his mother’s whispered instructions, that nothing was to be done to it.

"It won’t die," she said. "No matter what you do, you cannot kill it. And if you cannot kill it then it will go out into the world and it will find what it really wants."

A living thing is always better. Martin swallowed. He tried to do it quietly but it sounded as loud as a thunder clap.

He waited.

His legs were numb with the cold of the thawing meat.

"I have something for you," he said.

It did not respond. He could hear its breathing. It was still distant, still in its corner. But it was watching him. He could feel its eyes on him.

"Do you know where my blue ball is?"

It hissed. The sound rattled in the thing’s throat and died deep down inside of its belly.

"May I have it? It’s mine."

He heard the tapping of the thing’s long, sharp nails. They scurried across the floor. Closer. Closer. Martin licked his lips. His tongue felt like sand paper. He clutched the parcel in his lap and opened his eyes.

His sight had begun to adjust to the darkness. It didn’t mean that he could see anything remarkably well, but he could make out silhouettes. The dark shapes of long forgotten furniture rose out of the darkness. There were areas in his vision that were darker than others and tiny reflections of light off of unknown objects. He searched for a shadow amongst them which moved but he couldn’t make out anything.

"May I have my ball please?"

The thing hissed again. Martin heard a very soft sound and felt something tap against his shoes. He concentrated on the darkness and tried to determine what it was. He had seen nothing move. Then he heard the scurrying of the creature’s nails on the floor again. It was moving closer but it was not yet close enough to touch him.

Martin reached down to the floor. He touched the blue ball, grasped it with his fingers.

Quickly he sat upright. He slipped the ball into his pocket.

"The deal is not finished," he said. He marveled at the evenness of his own voice. How calm he sounded. "You have not taken what is yours." He held out the parcel. Bloody water dripped between his fingers onto the floor. He felt droplets spattering his shoes. "Aren’t you hungry?" he asked.

It didn’t respond immediately. Martin fixed his eyes on the darkness. He thought of the moment his curiosity had gotten the best of him. It happened when the creature retreated rather than ripping his mother’s throat out. Martin had watched it from the steps. He had watched it slink away. It looked back once. Twice. But still it dragged itself into seclusion again as if it knew what Martin had always believed it could never know. It was as if it recognized the hand which had kept it sated for all these many years.

"Mother says you weren’t always like this," said Martin. He didn’t know if the creature understood him. He was talking now as a reminder to himself that he was still alive. Martin felt the cold, wet parcel held out in front of him and he shivered out of fear. "Are you going to claim this?" he asked.

The shadows moved suddenly. A tall, lanky shadow came into view. It was hunched over and thin. Martin could just make out the bony, angular features of the thing’s face as it appeared before him. He felt its tough skin against his arms as the creature reached out to take the parcel. It dropped it to the ground and tore into the paper. Then came the sounds of flesh tearing- flesh which was still partially frozen. It sounded like a melon cracking in two. Martin felt the acid rising in his throat again.

The creature knelt only feet away from the chair where Martin sat. It hunched over the bundle and ripped flesh free of the bone. When it looked up at Martin again light glistened off of the blood and water dripping from its mouth. It opened its jaws then and Martin could see against the light casting shadows on the wall next to the stairs the jagged teeth and the long, protruding tongue. It flicked the air with enthusiasm.

Martin’s hands, now free of their bundle, gripped the sides of the chair anxiously.

"There is a story in the north of a spirit that possesses people," she had told him. "It comes upon them and takes them captive and it makes them do terrible things unless they are strong enough to resist. Eventually, they give in. Always they give in."

Martin closed his eyes as the creature’s hissing continued. It let out a series of barking sounds and then settled back on its haunches. Martin opened his eyes again. The creature was staring at him. Martin’s eyes had fully adjusted to the lack of light now and he could see something thick dripping from its jowls.

"May I go now?" asked Martin.

It sniffed the air and appeared to smile. Its jagged teeth bore themselves in a strange grin.

"It’s a fair trade."

The thing crouched low and moved slowly forward. Martin’s heart leapt into his throat. His hands grasped the chair and he leaned back slightly. The chair’s front legs came off the floor. Yet Martin could not close his eyes. They were fixed on the creature as it leered in front of him. Its breath bathed Martin in a hot mixture of terrible smells. He could feel the moisture on his skin. The smells filled his nostrils. He felt light-headed.

It gripped Martin’s forearms and leaned in to his body. It sniffed his clothes and his hair. It studied his face with eyes which hadn’t seen light in many years. It must nearly have been blind. Still it knew. It was aware of everything.

Martin felt his own sickness dribbling down his chin. The creature’s claws tightened around his forearms. Its head lowered and it sniffed the nape of Martin’s neck just above his collarbone. Martin heard its mouth open. He felt the flicking of the creature’s tongue against his neck. He felt its warm breath. It erupted around Martin’s face and snuck down through the neck of his shirt.

"Please," said Martin. "You have what’s yours." He didn’t know where the nerve came from. "Please let me go. Please."

He felt the sharp tips of the creature’s teeth and envisioned what he could not see. Its mouth was opened wide. Its mind was calculating its next move. It was thinking. He heard a gurgling sound come from within the creature.

Martin wanted to cry but he had no tears. He wanted to scream but his voice would not sustain it. He thought of the knife on the dining room table, and then he thought of his mother’s words. No matter what you do, you cannot kill it. Martin closed his eyes and he waited for the moment- his last moment.

He found the will to say it then. He found the words. "Papa, please," said Martin. "I’m scared, Papa. You’re scaring me. I don’t want to die."

The creature lingered there. Its claws tightened momentarily on Martin’s forearms and then, suddenly, they let go.

Martin opened his eyes and stared at the creature who stared back at him.

"He met the dark spirit on a road in a northern countryside when he was traveling on one of his adventures shortly after we married," his mother had told him once. "The spirit brushed past him in the cold and the snow and it entered his body. It possessed him. It possesses him still. Someday he will give in entirely and then it will do no good to beg. It will rip us both stem to stern, I’m afraid. But we are the protectors of the rest of the world. As long as we keep it satiated, trapped in the darkness, it cannot harm any others."

The creature appeared to sigh. It tilted its head to the side and considered Martin.

"I’m scared of you, Papa," said Martin.

The words struck the creature then. It slowly averted its eyes to the floor and began to slink back into the darkness. It dragged the leg of lamb with it. The butcher’s paper scraped across the concrete floor.

Martin stood and stepped gingerly toward the stairs. He looked back only once and saw the thing, like a frail demon, crouched in a shadowy corner of the cellar. It watched him but it did not move. Quickly, Martin mounted the steps into the light, having escaped- at least for now- the executioner.

While I have no problem with calling myself a customer service representative (among other things), I do have my limit.  I work at the front desk of a hotel which means that I can tell you about our amenities, I can point you in the direction of the work related seminar taking place at our property today, I can give you information about the day's features at our restaurant and also make or cancel a reservation for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.  I am completely capable of changing your method of payment at any time during your stay, I can get the extra towels that you requested, give you a duplicate room key (after you show me a driver's license, of course, for your security), I can get change for that $20 you just passed me, I can set a wake-up call for you and cancel the one you no longer need.  I can notify housekeeping that you don't want your room serviced today.  I can make copies of the memo that you need to pass out to your 60+ employees.  I can make sure that your luggage is delivered to your room- ditto that regarding your laundry, your package from Amazon, a toasted bagel with cream cheese, or the Wallstreet Journal.  I can make sure that you have a great stay in every possible way which is within my power.

However, among other things I am not a meteorologist, nor am I God.  I know that at least the second one will shock and amaze you.  I cannot tell you what the weather will be like when you need to catch your flight, though I will look up the forecast.  Don't expect any great knowledge about weather fronts, high or low pressure systems, why Mother Nature is conspiring against you to make your traveling life as painful as possible, nor do I know how your luggage ended up in Albuquerque when you never even passed over New Mexico.  I have no control over the weather, unfortunately, so I cannot stop it from snowing no matter how much it inconveniences you.  I am not in the position of parting the clouds, halting precipitation, calming the petulant winds, or ensuring that your flight arrives on time, departs on time, and does not contain screaming kids who will keep you awake despite your most earnest attempts at sleep.  I will listen patiently as you tell me these things, but I can offer only a shoulder to cry on.  I am not the head of the company- much as I might like to be- so I am unable to tell you why we do things exactly as we do them.  No matter how many times you look at me condescendingly, squint your eyes and try to read my name tag to make sure you have my name right- I promise you that in all my life my name has never changed from "Chris", and I welcome your letter to management concerning the fact that I cannot help you to locate the things that were stolen from your hotel room because you gave a key to a drunk woman in the bar with whom you were formerly unacquainted, told her to go upstairs and make herself comfortable until you got there, and who then proceeded to steal everything you brought with you.  I can call the police, if you'd like, so you can report the problem.  No, I'm not trying to talk down to you, but I am trying to figure out how you imagine this will go over with your lawyer when you try to file a lawsuit against the hotel for not having better control over what you do with the keys we gave you at check in after you walk away from the desk.  Yes, I understand that you have spent more money with us than anyone else in the history of our hotel and I agree that you are very important, but no matter how important you are I simply cannot create another double bed room for you and next time, to be absolutely certain that when you come in at 4 in the morning looking for the hotel room that we owe you because you are a "member" of our rewards program, you may- in the future- consider actually making a reservation before assuming we have plenty of rooms that we were waiting anxiously for you to occupy.  I am not a computer programmer, nor do I know why our "high-speed internet connection" is not connecting to the piece of *&%#ing foreign crap that you bought from the pimple-faced kid who gets paid too much to hawk this kind of shoddy machinery.  I don't have "connections" and I don't even know where to begin in regards to you finding "company" tonight, nor do I want to know the finer details of the transaction if and when it takes place.  Believe me, you do not have to tell me that this isn't Times Square, New York City, New York.  I can name countless other places that this is not, or were the cornfields not enough of an indicator for you?  And if the level of customer service that I give is not good enough, might I suggest that next time you plan your meeting in one of the places that this place, evidently, is such a far cry from.

I like to think of myself as a patient person.  I like to think of myself, even, as a gracious host and capable of giving great customer service.  I agree when people say that there is no such thing as "good service" anymore- or I agree in part.  It definitely is hard to find.  But that's why it irks me even more when good service is encountered, taken advantage of, and then goes unrecognized.  Case in point, I wished someone a "good morning" today and asked how they were doing and the individual in question didn't smile, didn't say anything, didn't even nod.  He stared at me as he walked out to have his morning cigarette, but apparently couldn't deign to be polite even though I did after eight hours of number crunching, guest satisfying, and putting on a smile for every customer.  It takes no time at all to return the gesture that is indicative of good customer service and, for the person who is on the receiving end of that return, it makes them want to continue to serve you well.  It's the simple things.  That's what we've always been taught about great customer service.  The small things make a big difference.  That's true all the way around. 

Sometimes it's better to remember all the things that people can do.  I'll gladly do whatever it takes to be helpful, but I've got news, there are certain things which are out of my hands and all the condescension on the planet isn't enough to change that.  Still, it seems that condescension is the one thing that more and more people are becoming skilled at.  It's not particularly attractive, nor is it terribly productive. 

It may seem funny that one guy who failed to say the words "good morning" or "doing well, thanks" would lead me to rant like this, but it was a long night.  And yet I still smiled and offered him well wishes.  I'm sure he would have noticed if I just stared at him as he walked across the lobby, and then he would have written an email to corporate talking about how rude I was.  He would've done worse than rant in a blog post.  I'm just saying...

I was talking to my closest friend last night about nothing in particular and we started to discuss things from childhood- our favorite toys, the television shows we used to watch, movies, our favorite books.  The last discussion point brought up a flurry of favorites from me- I've always been a bookish person- and a few names that factored very heavily in my elementary school reading.  I had a wide range of books in my collection- everything from cute books with a moral to creepy books written for a thrill.  I remember, in particular, loving the books of Beverly Cleary who was a staple for just about any kid at that time.  A Cricket in Times Square and all of the other books in that series were really dear to me.  The Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, and so many others.  I adored the Goosebumps series later in my elementary school career, but I never really got into R. L. Stine's series for older kids.  Instead of his older books I opted for Christopher Pike whose ideas were more compelling to me than the kind of stories that filled the Fear Street collection.  By fifth grade I had moved on to more adult reading.  I remember sneaking a copy of Misery by Stephen King down to the cafeteria every day.  I had to sneak because one of the teachers had caught me reading it one day and said that, because of the kind of words that Mr. King is so fond of using- words of the four letter variety- I couldn't read that particular book at school.  That was the closest I came at that age to feeling like a rebel, sneaking my copy of Misery down to the cafeteria in my lunch bag. 

In any case, discussing all of this with Sara brought up another point in my personal history- it may be the most important thing that happened to me in elementary school.  When I was in first grade- this would have been 1989- an author came to our school to talk to us about her career writing books for children.  Her name was Johanna Hurwitz.  I still remember walking into the multi-purpose room, sitting down in front of the stage, and watching her talk about what it was like to write a story and have it published.  I was hooked.  It was the first time in my life that I really knew what I wanted to be.  I remember drawing pictures in kindergarten about what we wanted to be when we grew up.  At the time, searching for an answer the same way that Ralphie in A Christmas Story searches for an acceptable Christmas gift to write his theme on (a football), I had settled on wanting to be a baseball player.  Forget about the fact that (a) I have only ever been to a handful of baseball games in my life and found it mind-numbingly dull every time, and (b) I'm the worst athlete known to man.  I wanted to be a baseball player.  That was my goal until a year later when Mrs. Hurwitz introduced me to the idea of being a writer.  From that day to this, writing is all I've ever wanted to do.

So, why did it take so long for me to track her down?  I don't know.  For some reason I never even considered using the internet to find her, not until last night.  At about one in the morning I put in a very simple search and  found her website and left a comment for one of the most important people in my life.  I say that because it's true.  I remember having truly phenomenal teachers when I was growing up.  They took me under their wing and taught me a lot about myself.  And yet, this writer who certainly doesn't remember me out of all the children she has met throughout her career- she may have had the most profound affect on me out of anyone. 

It reminds me, vaguely, of Mitch Albom's book The Five People You Meet in Heaven.  You never know, from day to day, whose life you might be changing for the better.  I don't know if the idea of writing would have hit me in exactly the way it did were it someone else at some other time standing in front of me talking about it.  I'm sure that someone who speaks in front of children hopes that it will create fond memories for them as they grow, and maybe there's even the hope that some change will come about as a result.  I wonder how often that is actually the case?  I know that I have always been thankful for Johanna Hurwitz and I'm just glad that I found her now, twenty years later, and had the chance to thank her. 

I was thrilled this morning to go to my inbox and find a response from her.  It was a kind of neat inspiration for me because it bridged the gap of twenty years and brought me back to the hard tile floor of the multipurpose room at Espe Elementary.  To make contact with someone that inspired me so long ago to become something that I still strive for is really phenomenal and a blessing.  The last thing she wrote was:

"I'll be watching for your name.  I hope I see it in a bookstore." 

You will, Mrs. Hurwitz.  You will.