The Thing in the Cellar
It was a large cellar, entirely out of proportion to the house above it.
The owner admitted that it was probably built for a distinctly different kind of structure from the one which rose above it.
Probably the first house had been burned, and poverty had caused a diminution of the dwelling erected to take its place.
A winding stone stairway connected the cellar with the kitchen.
Around the base of this series of steps successive owners of the house had placed their firewood, winter vegetables and junk.
The junk had gradually been pushed back till it rose, head high, in a barricade of uselessness.
What was back of that barricade no one knew and no one cared.
For some hundreds of years no one had crossed it to penetrate to the black reaches of the cellar behind it.
At the top of the steps, separating the kitchen from the cellar, was a stout oaken door.
This door was, in a way, as peculiar and out of relation to the rest of the house as the cellar.
It was a strange kind of door to find in a modern house, and certainly a most unusual door to find in the inside of the house?—?thick, stoutly built, dexterously rabbeted together with huge wrought-iron hinges, and a lock that looked as though it came from Castle Despair.
Separating a house from the outside world, such a door would be excusable; swinging between kitchen and cellar it seemed peculiarly inappropriate.
From the earliest months of his life Tommy Tucker seemed unhappy in the kitchen.
In the front parlor, in the formal dining-room, and especially on the second floor of the house he acted like a normal, healthy child; but carry him to the kitchen, he at once began to cry.
His parents, being plain people, ate in the kitchen save when they had company.
Being poor, Mrs. Tucker did most of her work, though occasionally she had a charwoman in to do the extra Saturday cleaning, and thus much of her time was spent in the kitchen.
And Tommy stayed with her, at least as long as he was unable to walk.
Much of the time he was decidedly unhappy.
When Tommy learned to creep, he lost no time in leaving the kitchen.
No sooner was his mother’s back turned than the little fellow crawled as fast as he could for the doorway opening into the front of the house, the dining-room and the front parlor.
Once away from the kitchen, he seemed happy; at least, he ceased to cry.
On being returned to the kitchen his howls so thoroughly convinced the neighbors that he had colic that more than one bowl of catnip and sage tea was brought to his assistance.
It was not until the boy learned to talk that the Tuckers had any idea as to what made the boy cry so hard when he was in the kitchen.
In other words, the baby had to suffer for many months till he obtained at least a little relief, and even when he told his parents what was the mattet, they were absolutely unable to comprehend.
This is not to be wondered at because they were both hard-working, rather simple-minded persons.
What they finally learned from their little son was this: that if the cellar door was shut and securely fastened with the heavy iron Tommy could at least eat a meal in peace; if the door was simply closed and not locked, he shivered with fear, but kept quiet; but if the door was open, if even the slightest streak of black showed that it was not tightly shut, then the little three-year-old would scream himself to the point of exhaustion, especially if his tired father would refuse him permission to leave the kitchen.
Playing in the kitchen, the child developed two interesting habits.
Rags, scraps of paper and splinters of wood were continually being shoved under the thick oak door to fill the space between the door and the sill.
Whenever Mrs. Tucker opened the door there was always some trash there, placed by her son.
It annoyed her, and more than once the little fellow was thrashed for this conduct, but punishment acted in no way as a deterrent.
The other habit was as singular.
Once the door was closed and locked, he would rather boldly walk over to it and caress the old lock.
Even when he was so small that he had to stand on tiptoe to touch it with the tips of his fingers he would touch it with slow caressing strokes; later on, as he grew, he used to kiss it.
His father, who only saw the boy at the end of the day, decided that there was no sense in such conduct, and in his masculine way tried to break the lad of his foolishness.
There was, of necessity, no effort on the part of the hard-working man to understand the psychology back of his son’s conduct.
All that the man knew was that his little son was acting in a way that was decidedly queer.
Tommy loved his mother and was willing to do anything he could to help her in the household chores, but one thing he would not do, and never did do, and that was to fetch and carry between the house and the cellar.
If his mother opened the door, he would run screaming from the room, and he never returned voluntarily till he was assured that the door was closed.
He never explained just why he acted as he did.
In fact, he refused to talk about it, at least to his parents, and that was just as well, because had he done so, they would simply have been more positive than ever that there was something wrong with their only child.
They tried, in their own ways, to break the child of his unusual habits; failing to change him at all, they decided to ignore his peculiarities.
That is, they ignored them till he became six years old and the time came for him to go to school.
He was a sturdy little chap by that time, and more intelligent than the usual boys beginning in the primer class.
Mr. Tucker was, at times, proud of him; the child’s attitude toward the cellar door was the one thing most disturbing to the father’s pride.
Finally nothing would do but that the Tucker family call on the neighborhood physician.
It was an important event in the life of the Tuckers, so important that it demanded the wearing of Sunday clothes, and all that sort of thing.
“The matter is just this, Doctor Hawthorn,” said Mr. Tucker, in a somewhat embarrassed manner.
“Our little Tommy is old enough to start to school, but he behaves childish in regard to our cellar, and the missus and I thought you could tell us what to do about it.
It must be his nerves.”