Kristen Reece
Badger in the Basement
It started with the holes. Not metaphorical ones—the actual kind, behind the furnace, under the stairs, in the corners where the house still smells like drywall dust and mouse traps. She found the insulation piled like tufts of fur, the dirt rearranged into strange semicircles. He said he was checking for leaks. His voice was calm, almost gentle. But there was soil under his nails and a line of grit across his forehead like war paint.
He used to shower in the mornings. Now it’s every other day, and sometimes he just wipes his face with a wet towel. The hair on his arms has thickened. He walks shirtless, humming, chest furred and matted. The skin around his eyes has gone soft and dark. She tells herself it’s just winter air, the furnace dust, the way men let themselves go.
When she asks about the smell, he says, “That’s the house breathing.” She googles carbon monoxide poisoning. Negative. She lights a candle anyway, just to see how the flame behaves. It dances just fine. The smell lingers, musky and sweet, like mulch left too long in rain with a bit of wet dog folded inside.
He’s been bringing home snacks: jerky, raw carrots, a carton of earthworms sealed in plastic from the bait shop. “Protein,” he says. “Sustainable.” She nods. She doesn’t argue anymore. She used to love his language, the way he’d quote marketing slogans in bed, whispering taglines against her neck. Finger-lickin’ good. Built Ford tough. Now he just grunts when he comes, if he comes at all.
The kids think it’s funny. “Dad’s going camping again!” they shout when he disappears downstairs. They think it’s a game. She says, “Don’t go down there.” She doesn’t tell them she’s scared he’ll start sleeping in the insulation.
At night she hears the scraping. Long, deliberate, rhythmic. Not frantic like a rat, but purposeful, architectural. She times it with her heartbeat. Once she flicks on the basement light and sees two yellow pinpricks looking back. The bulbs blow instantly. The electrician checks the wiring. “Fine,” he says. “Probably a power surge.”
She starts hiding things: the good towels, the sugar jar, the silverware. He’s taken to collecting shiny objects, lining them up on the basement steps like trophies. She finds her wedding ring there one morning, beside a spoon and a nickel. The band is dented with teeth marks.
When he speaks now, the words come out heavy and wet, thick with dirt, a muffled mumbling. Sometimes she catches him rubbing soil into his palms, whispering to it like it’s an old friend. His gums are red. She dreams she’s brushing his teeth, and the bristles come back full of mud.
She takes photos while he sleeps, just to prove something to herself. In the pictures, he looks smaller, compressed, as if the bed itself is swallowing him. His shoulders are rounder, arms shortened somehow. His feet blackened. His eyes, when open, glow amber in the flash.
The neighbors stop coming by. The kids whisper that they hear growling through the vents. She moves their beds upstairs, closer to her own, closer to the exits. When the furnace kicks in, the floor vibrates.
One afternoon, animal control parks in the driveway. She hadn’t called them; someone else must have. Maybe the mailman, maybe the woman next door who heard something under the porch. The officers stand with nets and tranquilizer guns, smiling politely.
“We got a report of noise,” they say. “Scratching. Possible infestation.”
She tells them there’s been a misunderstanding. No, she doesn’t need a trap. No, there’s no wild animal here.
That night she goes down with a flashlight. The beam cuts through the dust. The basement’s colder than usual. She steps over the old treadmill, the Christmas boxes, the kids’ outgrown shoes. There’s a smell she can’t place—meat, maybe, or mushrooms. She finds the den behind the water heater. He’s built it out of her winter coats, old blankets, newspapers. The sports section. The obituaries.
He’s crouched there, eyes half closed, face streaked with dirt. His nails—no, claws—dig absently at the concrete. She kneels, whispering his name.
He looks up, blinking like someone waking from a long nap. There’s soil on his beard and a beetle crawling across his collarbone. “You should go upstairs,” he says softly. “I’m almost finished.” She stands there until the flashlight dies.
In the morning, the basement door is nailed shut from the inside. The house smells like loam. She tells the kids he’s gone camping for real this time. She serves them cereal and listens for the scrape below, the slow movement of earth against earth. By the end of the week, mushrooms bloom along the baseboards. The furnace breathes heavier. The house feels warmer, alive, as if there’s something under it pushing up.
Kristen Reece is a Canadian writer who works in the oilfield. Her work often explores loss. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee with work appearing in Puerto del Sol, ANMLY, Bull, Miracle Monocle, Sky Island Journal, NUNUM, and elsewhere
Banner Art:
Photo by Rob Griffin, Unsplash, 2024
