Another Man's Children

The washer and dryer were in the basement. Taking the load of towels down with her, she tossed them into the washer along with the soap and had the machine running when she turned to warily eye the black behemoth of a furnace in the middle of large, cement walled space.

She hated basements. They were cold and damp and shadowy and the corners were inevitably filled with boxes and old furniture that took on sinister shapes when illuminated by a single bare bulb.

Reminding herself that she was an adult, she ignored the set of narrow night-blackened windows high on the wall above the agitating washing machine. The furnace was still running. She could hear the fan or whatever it was that pushed the air to the upper floors. But the air it was pushing was cool.

So was the heavy black metal of the huge contraption when she reached her hand, palm out, toward it.

“Great,” she muttered, then felt her heart knock against her ribs at what sounded like a faint groan above her.

It’s just the house settling, she chastised herself, torn between figuring out what the problem was with the heat, wishing her brother were there and indulging her chronically overactive imagination. She was trying hard not to think about what might be in those woods. She was also trying to avoid the thought that, while she was an adult, she was the only adult around for a lot more miles than a scream could carry.

An instruction manual dangled by a chain from one of the pipes that poked like the arms of a saguaro cactus from the furnace. Spotting it, she pulled it from the plastic envelope protecting it and flipped through pages of schematics and diagrams that were as clear to her as Sanskrit.