In the darkest, quietest part of the basement of my
home hides an old curve-top cedar chest, balanced safely between two chairs
should spring thaws feed basement floods. (This is, after all, a lakeside
city.) The chest’s rich red-toned wood folds into a carved lip around the
lid. Lift the lid and you find treasures of times before my time in the
family’s history. The chest has always been here, in the house my father
built. It is beautiful. It is valuable. It scared the bejeebies out of
me.
Too many episodes of The Twilight Zone as a child influenced a healthy
- by my standards - fear of two things: 1) dolls that come to life, crawl
across the floor and inflict who knows what mayhem and 2) anything that
resembles a kid-sized casket in any basement. (My preteen fear of clothes
tossed on chairs that loom ominous in the dark did not come from The
Twilight Zone, as Mom believed. It stemmed, rather, from seeing only
the beginning of The Blob, starring Steve McQueen. Had I witnessed
the Blob’s destruction before Mom caught me, I have faith that fear could
have been avoided.)
I love The Twilight Zone. I love mysteries and dark nights in October
and the legendary storms of November. And while I never loved that cedar
chest, I’ve come to appreciate the adventures it gave me. For you see,
it gloated and delighted in my torment … every time my mother sent me downstairs
to fetch canned goods from the shelves beside it. I never really told Mom
how that basement corner terrified me. Any such admission would have meant
severe restriction of my dates with Rod Serling. Mom had, and at 80 still
has, a low tolerance for panics caused by cedar chests.
So when Mom directed me to bring up some canned peas for supper, I’d try
to ignore the request. (Fat chance.) Then I’d persuade my dog, Lady, to
join me. Yes, with Lady by my side, I could face the box. We would approach
the pantry shelf and, every time without fail, Lady would turn and bolt
back up the stairs without me. What did she care if Mom cut off her access
to scary TV? Left alone to face the object of my undesire, I did what any
northern-raised, self-sufficient child would do. I promptly forgot what
I was supposed to get, grabbed the nearest can of Whatever within my reach
and white-tailed it in blind panic to the staircase. I knew It was behind
me, reaching for me, but It never got me. Ha.
Now Bob and I bought my family home and have settled in. He and I both
love the crisp, storm-tossed autumns around Lake Superior, though Bob doesn’t
care for the scary stories. (Mom loves him.) I still devour murder mysteries,
the kind penned by the authors we’re featuring in this issue. Hang a professor
from the Aerial Lift Bridge? Leave a drowned body beside an Isle Royale
shipwreck? Doesn’t frighten me … as a page-turner, that is.
Meanwhile, beneath us in the house, the patient old cedar chest still lurks,
but I am no longer afraid. We don’t keep canned goods down there anymore.
Ha, ha.
Konnie LeMay
Editor
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