Digging Santo

For your Halloween weekend enjoyment

Hey! If you like some (not even all!) of my fictions and/or philosophies, take a minute to share The Dispatches with some people, and tell them to subscribe. It’ll be one less thing to feel guilty about.

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I wrote this story a number of years ago, then shoved it into the digital drawer, which is where the vast majority of my work lives.

Then, a week or so ago, as I was rooting around for a good Halloween-appropriate thing to publish this week, well actually I realized that a lot of the things I write are vaguely Halloween-appropriate.

Still, this one seemed like the best option.

I hope you’ll agree.

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Santo woke up one night to crying. Not in his apartment, though that was his first thought, with the half-awake dread that keeps your eyes open until they're stinging dry. Until you're all the way awake and bad dreams lose their teeth.

But he figured pretty quick that the sound must have been coming from next door. Not because he could locate it, exactly, but because that was the only explanation that made any sense. He lived alone and he kept his door locked, and anyway what kind of burglar takes a crying break. Not that Santo owned much worth stealing. Maybe that new PS5 he couldn’t afford.

He might not have even noticed the soft sobs if they hadn't woken him up. Which itself was hard to square, since Santo was normally a deep sleeper. But now that he was awake....

They didn't stop, was the problem. He rolled over to try to go back to sleep, but the quiet sounds of human misery wouldn't let him.

So he made himself some eggs, drank the last of the grape soda he'd been saving, and tried to read a book. One of those popular business books with big block letters and a picture of the author on the front.

…maybe Netflix?

Thirty or forty minutes of indecisive scrolling later, he fired up Further Dead II, which was decidedly less good than the first Further Dead, but he didn't like replaying games.

How could a person just keep crying like that?

Morning came hard. Santo wasn't used to insomnia. He'd never had trouble getting to sleep, and he'd never had trouble sleeping. When the day's light finally leaked into his little apartment, he was groggy and frustrated and hated a lot of things a little bit.

But he went to work anyway, because retail is unforgiving, and spent the whole day fantasizing about the moment he’d be able to climb back into bed.

Sammy and Robert could do without him for one night. Besides, it would save him from having to pretend that the new tabletop wasn't bad, with character stat breakdowns that were way too busy, and a downright painstaking combat system. If Santo wanted to do math he would have gone to college.

So when he got home a little after seven, it suited him just fine to eat some Doritos and go to bed alone. He even forgot about the crying from the night before. Head firmly pillowed, he let the air roll out of his lungs and the late afternoon glow settle him into the doze that would melt into a deep sleep.

"Hello?"

Santo's eyes opened. His heart beat that hard rhythm of waking too suddenly and too soon. He was so tired. A few seconds of deep breathing would calm his pulse again, and he'd be able to...

"Please."

The voice was so clear that it got him out of bed.

His apartment wasn't big, but he did have a nice little front room with a rickety old desk he used sometimes. Or anyway he would use it sometime. Eventually. Whenever he got around to tackling the pile of Things that covered it.

He couldn't be sure this was where the voice was coming from, but what else could he do? It wasn't even dark yet. He might as well try to figure this out.

In the silence, however, the pile of crap on his stupid desk sucked his attention back to itself again, and he wondered somewhere down deep where words don't go whether there might be some kind of connection.

Guilt, you see, was one of Santo's default settings. Confronted with a problem of any kind or origin, he first and always wondered whether it might be his fault. This reflexive assumption that everything in his known universe was somehow connected importantly to himself was fairly typical of the underachiever. If he had possessed greater powers of self-analysis, he might have discovered that his feelings of guilt over things that had absolutely nothing to do with him were actually manifestations of his own bankruptcy of ambition.

There was a soft knock.

On the floor.

He stared.

When it didn't come again, he got down on his hands and knees and put his ear on the scarred and dusty planks. If he held his breath, he thought he could hear a kind of deep pulse, but maybe that was his.

knock-knock-knock

Santo fell back partway, caught himself, and watched the floor through his beating heart. He didn't blink, or move.

"Please help me."

The voice was so soft.

"Who's that?" he asked dumbly. The blood in his ears made his words hard. He was very afraid. He wasn't sure why, but it didn't matter.

"Please, I can't..."

The voice was female. Soft and high, so at first she sounded like a child, but now Santo thought she sounded somewhat more mature. A young woman, maybe, but probably not an older one.

"Who are you?" He couldn't get past that question.

More crying. "Please..."

Santo dove to his hands and knees, like he was trying to catch a mouse and said, "Hello?"

He held his breath a long time. So long he got dizzy.

And then it came. “H-h-hello?"

He swallowed. "Yes, I'm Santo."

Another long pause. This was it, he thought. If she said his name, he would know he wasn't crazy.

But instead, “Hello?"

He bent closer, so that his breath pushed flecks of dust away and left condensation on the smooth wood.

"Yes, hello, this is Santo--hello?"

Listening as closely as he could, he thought he could hear the girl beneath his floor open her mouth to speak, but then close it again to stifle another sob.

"Hello? Are you alright," he tried.

"I--I can't get out."

She fell back into unresponsive crying. A few more times, he tried to talk to her, but it was no use. All he could do was listen. Just listen.

Eventually, he stood back up, figuring he might as well get something to eat.

Peering into his fridge, Santo felt a muted thrill at having saved that half a burrito from the day before. As he reached for the cold food, his brain called up the cute girl behind the counter who made it, which was certainly what elevated the otherwise unappealing leftovers for him. He remembered being proud of himself for smiling at her. Yes, her back was to him, and his nerve collapsed and took the smile down with it as soon as she turned. But there had been eye contact. It was a win.

What would it be like to be more confident? He fantasized about being the kind of guy that could get that kind of girl’s number. The cute girl on the other side of the counter, across an ocean of social incompetence.

There was that girl a few weeks ago, leaning on a brick wall at the foot of the stairs below his apartment. Oh man. That time, he hadn’t even managed eye-contact. Just sort of a dead stare to the side as he passed. Grateful his legs kept moving. Little atomic warheads blowing up his brain and turning him numb.

He obsessed about her almost every waking moment for the next two weeks. And hated himself. Not for obsessing, but for wanting someone so far out of reach. For being the dude for whom a girl like that would always, always be out of reach. A casually, outrageously hot girl studying a pinched blunt less than twenty feet away from his front door. Where he LIVED.

When Santo came back to himself, he realized he was holding the takeout box with that half-eaten burrito next to the still-open fridge. He shut the door and shoved the box into the microwave.

He was hungry for two things, but only one of them had a name. The other one just kept his mind wandering.

DING!

He was careful not to touch the burrito with bare fingers as he transported it back to his living room, where persistent crying still emanated from his floor. It was hard to eat under the ambience of misery, but he did his best, waiting for some kind of inspiration.

After he’d eaten half of the half-finished burrito, Santo put it down, wiped his mouth, and got into a crouch. Might as well try again. “Hello?"

The sobbing subsided. "I'm sorry."

The answer surprised him with some fresh guilt. He berated himself for his impatience. Let the girl cry, why don't you.

"No no!" he protested. "No, it's OK. I was just going to ask what's wrong. You said you couldn't get out." He put his hand on the floor. "Where are you?"

"I--I don't know. I'm so--" hiccup "sad. Alone. Like I… I’m alone. I can’t see anything, or… I don’t know.” Her voice started retreating again. “I don’t know anything…”

As he listened, Santo felt a pull. A pinch. A yawn of need.

"Hang on," he told her.

He bolted out the door and clambered down the stairs to neighbor's front door. He knocked.

Norwegian death metal played so loud Santo was surprised he couldn't hear it in his own apartment. He knocked louder.

The music withdrew a few decibels, and then a young man opened the door. White-haired, shirtless, lean and muscular. He had two wings tattooed on his shoulders.

Santo felt a shock of intimidation.

The winged man didn't say anything, just waited for Santo to speak. So he did.

"Hi um." He gathered himself. "Do you--is there a...girl? In there?"

The expectant blankness of his neighbor's face turned into a confused frown. "Why d'ya ask?" He had an accent Santo couldn't place.

"Oh, I just...um. There's this girl...have you heard anyone crying?"

"Crying?"

"Yeah, just...you haven't heard anything?"

He smiled big. It was a good smile. Open, affable, neither giving nor taking offense. "My jams."

"Oh, you probably couldn't hear, I guess. But what about last night?"

"You heard my jams last night?"

"No, I mean did you hear anyone crying?"

He shook his head. "Nah."

Santo sensed the window for polite interrogation closing. He thought perhaps the girl was stuck somewhere between the floor of his own apartment and the ceiling of the apartment occupied by this attractive alpha-male. Primal competitiveness made him hope this white-haired man-angel wouldn't hear her. Santo would find a way to rescue her himself.

"OK. Well, if you hear anything, could you just come upstairs and let me know? 207."

Angel Man flashed that smile again, "I'll do that. My word on it." He nodded once, waited for Santo to nod back, then closed the door.

The Norwegian death metal climbed back up to full volume as Santo made his way back upstairs, envying and fearing and loving the young man who clearly possessed the confidence and charisma he lacked.

As soon as the door closed behind him, the girl in his floor made a bewildering observation.

“You can hear me,” she said.

“Yes!” Santo almost shouted. Not because this was surprising information, but because it was the first truly coherent thing she had uttered. And then of course he had to follow it up with something that wasn’t. “Can you hear me?” Feeling foolish, he tried to correct, “I mean—“ but she cut him off.

“Can you get me out?”

Desperate to keep the conversation going, Santo blurted “Yes!” again without thinking. “I think so,” he adjusted. “Where are you?”

That stupid question made her cry again, squeaking out the words "I don't know" over and over.

“No, it’s OK! I think— I think—“ It was so difficult, though. What could he—

He could dig. That was it. Of course—he could, he could—pull up the panels on his floor.

“I’m gonna get you outta there.” He meant it as much as he could mean it.

But he didn’t have any tools. Not even a hammer. Whenever he needed one he borrowed it from Daren. And the tools Daren had were crappy. Besides, he wasn’t sure Daren would understand.

This was Santo's opportunity to be a hero maybe.

He had a car and a little bit of money on his credit card, and those facts rushed him out the door. “I’ll be right back!” he shouted just before he slammed it shut.

The hardware store was always uncomfortable. Like a Man Club to which he did not belong and was not welcome. The guy standing stock still in the plumbing department, comparing two functionally identical pieces of PVC pipe—that was the guy who belonged.

“Can I help you?” Santo swung around to see a girl with purple hair and a lip ring. He was absolutely certain she knew more about this stuff than he did, and yes, she could absolutely help him.

“No I’m good."

“Alright, well, let me know if you need anything.”

Of course he already hadn’t let her know.

Instead, he wandered the store with low-burn anxiety for half an hour, then finally settled on a hammer, some nails (he flattered himself with ideas about putting the floor back together at the end), a flathead screwdriver, and a crowbar, which made him feel like a badass.

Santo saw Angel Wings again as he headed back up to his apartment. He was leaning in the doorway, a casual half smile as he kept his eyes on the ground, off the cocktail dress on the PYT he was talking to. His body language described the dynamic: she was begging to get inside. He had her on strings.

The girl didn’t notice him as he walked past, but when Angel Wings’ eyes flicked up to catch him, Santo stumbled.

Finally back inside, he set the small bag of tools down, the crowbar having stabbed through the plastic on the way up the stairs, and knelt on the floor.

“Are you still there?”

After a few moments more, she answered, “Where else would I be,” with the unforced incredulity of despair.

Santo thought maybe if he understood anything about the stages of grief, he would know what to say.

“I brought some tools,” is what he did say. And then he set about detangling them from the twisted plastic bag.

“Ok...”

“I’m going to get you out.”

He’d start with the hammer and screwdriver.

“…how?”

Her despondency triggered the heroic optimism in Santo better than her helpless pleas.

“I can hear you! You’re right under my floor.”

He got to work.

First, he positioned the flathead perpendicular to the floor and tried to hammer it in. He hurt himself a couple of times, but he kept going.

When he’d splintered out a sizable crack, he picked up the crowbar. The faux wood veneer came away easily, but the particle board underneath was more challenging. Santo spent a good half hour boring a hole into the material with a combination of his tools, but he was exhausted by the end.

Pink insulation splayed out from the hole like dirty cotton candy. He looked around. Maybe if he pried up a lot more of that wood paneling, he could find an edge to all that particle board. He grabbed his hammer.

“What are you doing now?”

He'd been so focused, he hadn’t noticed the absence of conversation with the voice in his floor.

“I’m—I’m gonna get you out of there.”

“Can you see me? I can't see anything."

He opened his mouth, but wasn't sure how to answer. "Well, not right now, but..." He gave up.

“Please hurry.”

He did. And in his rush, cut himself on the veneer. Not tough by nature but toughened by the occasion, Santo wrapped his hand in toilet paper and kept on.

He was right about that edge, but it was back toward the wall. His living room was already a horrific mess, so he barely hesitated before wedging the back of the hammer under the nails that held it down.

Once he got a few of them out, he could drive the crowbar under the board, and start prying.

Sweating, grunting, prying.

POP. CRAAAAACK.

Santo stumbled back as a huge section of particle board tore away from the floor. He dragged it a few feet and sort of leaned it up against one of his walls.

There wasn’t anything on them, anyway. He’d had a Star Wars poster at one point, but it kept falling down, so he rolled it up and put it in the corner, with a promise he’d find a better way to hang it soon. In typical fashion, soon never came.

And so the jagged, broken section of particle board was free to scar the living room wall without damaging any of Santo's personal possessions.

Now he had to figure out how to get under all the insulation.

The stuff made his hands hurt. He wasn’t sure why. And it made him cough. But taking it all out wasn’t hard. Like thick yoga mats unrolled between the support beams. Or those cheap mattresses you’d find on a cot at summer camp.

“AYE!”

Santo jumped and dropped the insulation mattress, sending up a cloud of eye-stinging dust. He let out an involuntary cough.

And then the pounding started.

“What you doin in there? Raisin that noise, eh?”

It was Angel Wings. Pounding on his door. Asking questions.

Santo froze. He couldn’t open the door even a crack. His neighbor would see the mess and call the building manager. What was he thinking? Santo cursed himself. He should have just called the police. Hello? I think there’s a girl in my floor.

“Aye! Open up!”

“Uh—“ Santo choked. “I—I’m just moving some furniture…”

“Right then. Stop. Got me that fit trick in the digs, eh?”

He must have meant the girl Santo saw outside earlier.

“Sorry.”

Angel Wings said an angry word in a language he didn’t understand, then Santo heard him light down the stairs.

Santo couldn’t just stop, but he’d be quieter. He’d be quieter.

"You have to hurry," she said.

Her cryptic warning sent shivers up his neck. “Don't worry," he said. "I’m almost there."

He lifted the yoga mat of insulation up again, rolled it carefully and set it aside.

Underneath was a black tarp. Santo crouched down. He noticed that it wasn’t flush against the support beams at the edges. Instead, it fell away on each side.

He reached his hand out to touch the tarp—

And then he heard the doorknob of his front door jiggle.

He stood up and crept toward it. At first he thought it must be the manager, trying to use a key to come in. But why was it taking so long.

“Hello?” he squeaked.

The knob went still.

Then it started again in force, tumblers assaulted in the lock, scratching and creaking. The handle shook.

Then turned.

Santo jumped up like he’d been bitten, deadbolted his door and stumbled away.

BANG.

After a beat of angry silence, the lock-picks got to work on the deadbolt.

Santo was pale and sweaty. Someone was trying to break into his house, KNOWING he was there. His mind went blank and he stood frozen and staring.

“You’d better call the police,” she said.

Santo spun around. The words didn’t need an answer. He broke the distance to his phone and dialed.

The bolt turned. Santo rushed back to the door and RAMMED it back into place. Then he relocked the handle and panic-searched the room for help.

“Hello?” his phone chirped on the floor.

“Yes—Hello—I’m—my name is Santo—HELP ME—“

POUNDING silenced him. Deep, angry BOOMS on his door.

Adrenaline crimped his veins, and he started moving again. He dragged a big piece of particle board over to his door, and pushed it up against the wall.

The deadbolt slid unlocked again. Santo tried to rebolt the door, but it was jammed. He held the handle desperately as it wiggled and complained.

He flew to his bag on the floor and tore out the package of nails. He fumbled with it until the contents sprayed all over. He grabbed at them and started hammering.

The doorknob went still and silent for a few moments more. The sound of Santo's hammer must have given his attacker pause.

But only a brief one. As soon as Santo started ramming the second nail into place, the lock-picks went back to brutalizing the handle.

Santo could do nothing but hammer nails into the board across the bottom of the door. He discovered they went into the wall too easy and the door too hard, so he worked on the frame.

He had one in on either side before the handle turned and the door stopped against the board. Santo froze for an instant, but shook himself and hammered in a second nail on the opening side.

His would-be assailant started shoving against the door, again and again. The board strained and Santo hammered.

The board would crack despite the nails.

Out of ideas and numb with fear, Santo backed away. The noise was terrible. Some kind of monster was on the other side of that door, angry and devouring.

The hole in the floor caught his foot and he stumbled halfway into it. He looked down at the black tarp.

In an unthinking haze, Santo bent back down to grasp the tarp. It turned out to be a very large bag -- he could pull it up between the support beams. It was heavy. He dragged it onto the floor.

The pounding on the door continued. The big particle board crackled and moaned under the strain.

Santo stared at the long black tarp bag on his floor.

His door burst open. Angel Wings stood in the wreckage, hair like white flame.

They stared at each other. Santo thought his neighbor looked like some kind of carnal god, shirtless and glistening with sweat. His eyes were wild and knowing. He was elemental.

“Please…no…”

Santo was shaken from his rapture by the girl’s impossibly small voice. He looked down at the tarp.

“Is that you?” he asked. Surreality crashed over him like a tsunami, and left him in a stupor.

“What you say?” Angel Wings cocked his head to the side.

Santo looked back up at him. “I heard a girl,” he said simply, and then ran out of words.

The Angel looked at Santo, then down at the bag with a curious smile. Santo knew, somewhere deep down, that he couldn’t or wouldn’t make the first move.

Sure enough, in one confident stride, Angel Wings crossed to the bag and picked it up like it was full of nothing. Maybe it was.

Mind knit up in the anguish of weakness, Santo watched Angel Wings carry it out of his apartment.

After a few eternal heartbeats, Santo heard himself shout "Hey!" before his throat clamped back down.

So he started running.

He took the stairs five at a time. Angel Wings was already at the bottom when Santo lunged and caught hold of the black tarp bag.

It landed awkward on the ground, and Santo, balance gone, went down with it. Angel Wings scanned the area then, before Santo could regain himself, planted a hard toe in his ribs.

Santo had never been beaten before. It was terrifying and exquisitely painful. No matter what he did, he couldn’t escape the blows. Eventually, he learned what everyone learns in that situation: the only defense is to stop moving.

When Santo was still, Angel Wings hoisted the black bag back up on his shoulder and walked away.

Santo dragged his legs toward himself, hearing the denim scrape against concrete as if from a great distance. In another universe, he heard the heavy bag hit the bed of a truck.

Somehow, he needed to get to that other universe.

With a teeth grinding power of will he didn’t know he had, Santo pushed himself off the concrete. Dizzy, unsteady, nauseous and wanting anything but what came next, he stood and faced the truck.

Angel Wings was opening the door. He was getting inside.

“Stop—“ Santo croaked.

Angel Wings glanced at him as he closed the door.

Santo swayed to the right and somehow got a big garden brick into his hands. As Angel Wings started the engine, Santo shot putted the brick. THWACK. A big web spidered across the front windshield of the truck.

As Angel Wings calmly got back out, Santo was halfway to the bed of the truck. Every step was agony, but the inertia of an all-in bid kept him moving.

Santo opened the tailgate and reached out to grab the bag just as a knotted fist found the small of his back. Santo lost his feet, but not his grip. As he sank, he pulled, and the bag dragged halfway out of the bed.

A bolt of tattooed lighting broke Santo's collar bone, and his grip. In one swift motion, Angel Wings tossed the bag back into the truck bed and slammed the tailgate.

And then he went back to work on Santo. It was less painful this time. Rapidly dulling sensation took the sharpness out of the blows. Before his world went totally dark, Santo noted absently that there was more than enough room in the back of the truck for him, too.

Angel Wings knew Santo was unconscious, but he’d already given him an out. He didn’t owe him another one. He had a keen sense for when the life had gone out of a person. He knew a few more well-placed kicks would conclude this soft boy’s story.

Blue and red light interrupted the job.

Angel Wings watched the lone squad car drift to a burnt rubber halt. One, then two men in dark blue uniforms emerge next to smoking tires.

There was a .45 behind the gate in the corner. As they drew, so did he.

“DROP YOUR WEAPON!” the first officer screamed just before Angel Wings pulled the trigger. His aim was surgical. The man died instantly in the line of his duty.

The second officer didn’t yell anything as he opened fire. Angel pivoted toward him. Blood fanned out behind his bare back, and arced off his shoulder, but he didn’t flinch as he steadied his next shot.

Using his open squad car door for cover, the second officer emptied his clip to compensate for his inferior aim at this distance. Just as Angel squeezed the trigger, one of the cop’s bullets struck him in the pit of his arm, which dropped his hand a life-saving fraction of an inch.

A thick metal POP exploded in the second officer’s door, just under his chin.

Blood streamed down the Angel’s chest, his back, soaking the top of his pants and running down his leg. He raised his Wing again. This time he would not miss.

The crack of a gunshot split the air once more, and his statuesque body crumpled like a marionette. The second officer jogged over to the man he had just killed. The final bullet had smashed the bridge of the Angel’s nose.

The officer left him where he lay.

He radioed for backup as he performed lonely triage. His partner, the gunman, a black bag in the truck, and another young man on the ground. He crouched close to discover how many were the dead.

Breath still passed over bleeding lips in weak puffs. His heart still beat like a trapped bird inside his broken body.

When Santo woke up, he was in the hospital. They told him they were trying to get in touch with his family.

He asked them about the girl. They told him she was OK. That he had her tied up in his apartment. Scared but not hurt.

He didn’t understand.

“Oh,” they said. “You mean the one in the bag.”

They told him his neighbor had hidden her body up in his ceiling weeks ago. They asked Santo why he started digging. He didn’t know what to say.

He didn’t know anything.