The Outhouse

Old man Quentin from down the street still insists he ran away as a carny when he was fifteen. That would have been before they invented cameras, so nobody can say for certain one way or another.

Carny or not, the old man is fluent in English, German, and crotchety nonsense. You kick a ball over his fence and get an earful and a half. And he’s too old to even throw the ball back for you. If you break something of his, you’ll never hear the end of it. He shovels the red-orange leaves from his driveway right onto yours. He mutters because his dentures don’t fit quite right. A tortoise could outpace his walk to the mailbox, hogging as much personal space as he can muster. He’s a jerk three hundred and sixty-some days of the year. He puts one whole pumpkin out on his porch for decoration. On top of it all, the old man only goes candy shopping a few days before Halloween. His is the door to visit if you’re eager for hard toffee, caramels that break teeth, and stale root beer barrels aged too long.

But you can always find better candy at any other door on the street. You go to old man Quentin’s on Halloween for the outhouse in front of his garage.

That also sounds like a stupid thing. So, let’s get something straight. You don’t use the outhouse. You don’t go in the outhouse. That’s the whole point.

You’ll approach the outhouse from the sidewalk, as you have for years now. You’ll see it’s made of wood, nails, and rusty metal hinges. Then you’ll feel the grains from the wood planks as you run your fingers along. You can test the hinges if you’re brave or stupid enough to risk tetanus. You’ll walk around the closet-sized cupboard on the old man’s driveway. Three walls. Door. Roof.

You won’t see anything inside. Your brightest flashlight won’t help.

Every curious kid in costume on Halloween night steps forward to enter the outhouse, and their next step is back on the sidewalk.

No kid ever sees this from the street for the first time and believes it. You can get a stepladder like a kid before you and confirm the roof is no illusion. You can tap your feet along the outside baseboards like a kid before you and prove there is no trick floor or trapdoor. No wall leads to a secret passage. It’s a solid construction. Your arm stays attached when you reach through the doorway.

Still, you step inside and you are back on the curb where you came from. Like every kid before you.

The old man watches and chortles at each attempt.

You’ll pull a piece of candy from your plastic handheld jack-o’-lantern and throw it inside. A worthy sacrifice. It’ll hit the ground behind your feet. A nearby pebble does the same. Everything returns to you.

You’ll yank another kid’s baseball from his hands and promise to give it right back before practicing your sandlot pitch, looking to crash through the planks on the outhouse’s back wall. The baseball will gently tap your heels when you stand back up.

If you’re alone this year, you’ll bring a long rope when you step in. When you take your next step behind the outhouse, the rope will spool between you and the back wall.

If you’re with your friends this year, you will almost certainly get a dare to toss your whole pail full of candy inside as they try to convince you against everything you have seen for yourself that it will not return to you this time. Unless you’re chicken, you’ll make the throw and trip head over heels backward onto the pail. It’s a joke on you, either way.

This will hurt your pride worst of all. The annoying old man can’t possibly one-up you every year. So you promise yourself and your friends this year is when you crack the stupid thing wide open.

You go to the old man’s house in daylight before trick-or-treating starts. Many have before.

A grin paints his grizzled face as he claims “all he does is tilt the outhouse with all his strength back onto a hand dolly as tall as he is and wheel it out whole from the garage”. It annoys you even more because each of those things happens. He’ll show you the garage. He’ll show you the dolly. He’ll show you the outhouse that you and your friends cannot budge. If you’re nice enough and bring some pumpkin cookies fresh from your oven, he’ll scoop the structure onto the dolly in a demonstration - before setting it back down with a grunt. You know something is missing.

The sun is shining. The door is open. And you still can’t see inside.

Your friends start making suggestions. There’s a tunnel. A slide. An invisible catapult. Alien technology. Any combination of smoke and mirrors you can think of. The smile never leaves the crummy old man’s face as all of you plead for an answer. You see nothing but solid concrete on the driveway where the outhouse sits.

You don’t know what to think, except that you’ve had enough. Your pride is on the line. Hell or high water, you will figure out how this trick works. All you ask the old man is to keep the stepladder out tonight.

Halloween night arrives. All the other kids are amused again. They try every test you know by heart.

You spent all your pocket change for a fifty-foot rope from the hardware store. You tie one end around the fire hydrant nearby. The other end is secure around your waist. 

Friends and neighbor kids cheer you on.

You grab the stepladder and climb on top of the outhouse. The roof supports your weight for now. Planks sag. Nails creak.

You jump up and down as much as you dare. An answer worth all the candy in the world is right under your feet.

The roof groans with each landing. You feel it and smile to yourself. You jump harder. Higher. Your friends stop laughing. They hear the horrible snapping of wood. They yell at you to cut it out.

How can you? Finally, there’s a weak point. You feel it as you land again. There is a secret here. This stupid outhouse has to lead back to the outside somehow. You’ve seen it before. You just have to see it again. It’s the blink of an eye. Look. Jump higher. Land harder. Keep your knees bent.

One more jump.

You fall through. The rope does not follow you.

And when you fall, you will hope that someday, you will stop falling and return from the darkness.

If you think I’m full of it, go ahead. Visit the old man. Let him tell you this story, like I did. Halloween’s only a few days away. Go after sunset, when the moon stretches across the sky. He could have the outhouse repaired, and you still won’t go in. Or the wood will be knocked loose. And who knows where you’ll go then?

–

[Note: this short story is inspired by the Mark Z Danielewski novel “House of Leaves” for the weird architecture, the Christopher Nolan movie “The Prestige” for the magic trick, and the Kane Pixels Backrooms short film for the no-clipping. If you like this spooky story, you’ll probably also like my non-spooky short story “The Tree and The Moth”.]