Zolan's Blog

Amazingly I've already, as of the time of writing this, have had two requests for me to add this story. Though the title of the story is great I'm not completely sure it is anywhere near as good as the other two previous stories.

This story happens a few weeks after 'Finding Grandpa' and quite a while before 'Bomb Squad'. It does require some back story though, prepare yourself for another flash back.

Tracey had a gentleman that was going to take stuff off her property, sell it at an auction and give her a cut of the profit. Not sure if he was just a low life scoundrel or not, but his morals really don't come into play at all in the story so it really doesn't matter now does it?

While he was walking through the red house he took one step towards two of the far bedrooms and to his surprise his leg fell thigh deep into the floor and he still had no ground touching his foot. Obviously startled he pointed out the hole to Tracey and told her that this house wasn't safe. He apparently was an ace at pointing out the obvious.

Tracey remembering that there was a hole which, at the time, was assumed to be a well was generally scared of the red house. We ended up working our way in and I did some scouting around, found the hole. To me it was rather terrifying for one reason or another but mainly because I have a wild imagination. But I'll explain my theories in a bit.

We were very careful in the red house and the whole 'Finding Grandpa' incident went by in it's own shocking fashion. After that incident we took a week or two off and decided we wanted to finish that house.

To make sure we weren't going to die I grabbed a very long stick and started breaking away the floor next to the hole. After about 30 minutes of work I discovered that the opening to this... hole... was only about 3 foot by 3 foot. but the rest of the hole was covered by concrete. Still not sure if I trust the concrete to this day but it's much better than nothing. I ended up covering the hole with a nice sturdy door that happened to be laying in the house and that made the place a bit safer, at least I thought it did.

Now, I'm going to have to switch off topic for a moment and explain what was going through my mind at the time. When I first started working on this property Tracey had made a joke about us probably finding a dead body somewhere. This joke never left my mind...

After gathering more information about the size and depth of the hole (15' x 10' x 15' deep) I also noticed that there was no way in our out. No ladder down into it. No outside staircase.. This was just a big cement room under the house. What could have been going on down there?!

I expected to find many things. I expected to find a dead body or two. I expected to find a dungeon where people were tortured. Have you ever seen the movie 'People Under The Stairs'? I expected that sort of stuff to happen. Damn near kept me up at night. Occasionally we would go back to the houses and find out that they had been broken into and I would expect some punk kid had fallen in in the dark and was slowly dieing down there. Gruesome? Yes. Paranoid? Probably. Scary? You bet your ass!

So what did we find at the bottom of this big hole?! Did we find the remains of a body where the person ate their own arm to survive?! Did we find shackles on the wall and a plethora of torture devices?! Well... No... We found nothing except for the debris that fell into the hole which was a few cinder blocks, flooring, and general crap.

What does this have to do with the story?! To tell you the truth, this hole really doesn't have anything to do with finding any skulls... It just makes the actual story about the skull a little more interesting! With all that said, how about I get to the real story...

Tracey and I had decided we were going to finish cleaning out the entire red house. We had made it through the living room and were working on the room in which we found grandpa. The work was going as could be expected when cleaning out a old decrepit house with dust and mold and probably literally a hundred other things that could kill us. I was heading into the room for another load when my foot went a little further down than it should have and there was a nasty breaking cracking sound.

Luckily for you, the reader, Tracey and myself I have the reflexes of a sloth and the grace of a dachshund on crack, but I managed to not get hurt anyway. Looking down where my foot had been the floor was dented in and there was a crack that showed I was breaking all the way through. Well, I wanted to make sure the rest of the floor we were walking on was stable so I started breaking away the old floor with one of Tracey's grandpa's old tools.

To my surprise there was about a seven to eight foot drop under the hole that I had made. I inspected it and was surprised to find that it was a rather large cement rectangle with a dirt floor. I was bewildered. My imagination immediately took over once again you'll have to wait for it because I first have to point out Tracey's shocking discovery.

She grabbed a flashlight and peered into the hole. After a minute of scanning the floor she said, "Oh my god, that's a skull!" My imagination kicked in double time. I grabbed the flashlight and peered into the hole and she was absolutely correct. There was a skull and possibly the skeleton of a medium sized animal. For size comparison lets say a very large cat or a medium sized dog. I may add that from what I could see, there was no way in our out of this hole... Now for what my imagination was concocting.

First thing that came to my mind was, this cement room is about the perfect size for a coffin or a body. And that was true enough. Now if I were to bury someone, I would expect there to be that whole smell of death thing right? What would be a better cover up than throwing some animal down there to rot? Sorry officer, that dog must have crawled in there unseen and that's what you smell... This was scenario one.

Scenario two is that we really don't know where the 'found' grandpa's wife is buried. Perhaps that is why grandpa was left in that room... The animal skeleton was either a strange, 'Whoops, didn't realize we built a house on the remains of a dead animal!', or that happened to be grandma's favorite dog that they decided he would rather die than live without her or died and was not quite properly buried with her.

There is the boring scenario number three in which they just decided to put a strange cement room under the house to confuse the people that tore the house down 80 years later. That one doesn't explain the animal...

Only one thing is for certain. Before we build this house and live in it, I'm going to find myself a young priest and and old priest and let them go to town on the property. I might even look for some really short fat lady named Tangina that is willing to lead all the lost spirits towards the light... I'll be damned if my soon to be stepdaughter starts looking at a fuzzy TV and telling me, "They're Here!!!" Hell, I might even employ some wiccans to purify my land while I'm at it.

So, this concludes the third of the original house building trilogy... There are a few other stories that I do need to tell and some new stories that have yet to unfold. I will try to keep you all informed as more crazy stuff happens... In the mean time I think I'm going to start a few stories of my past.