Unable to face the death of his son, incapable of living through the funeral, he buried him in the cellar. Damp walls and an unfinished floor made quick work of it. He didn't say goodbye, he simply closed off the room and called it a day.
For days it drizzled and the man did not worry. His wife, his daughter, his youngest and only remaining son, all of them enjoyed the rain, content in knowing their brother was at the boarding school. None of them could feel him, rotting beneath them. None of them smelled him.
Days dragged into weeks. The smell grew, clouding the father's mind. He could hear him, feel him. Outside, the ground began to give up, allowing water to stack higher and higher on its surface. In the brief moments when the rain ceased, it took into itself as much as it could.
Beneath the house, there was no such respite. The father could hear water, moving around beneath their feet. Sloshing, and splashing, and moaning, and cries for help from a voice that could no longer be.
"It was an accident!" he would scream into the floor.
They could all smell it now, the rot all around them. His inability to face the truth, his snap decision and refusal of his mistake hung in the air. It stuck to them like sap, the rotting regret following them wherever they went. The children were teased, their mother distraught.
The water began to reach through the floorboards. Green and sick and full of screaming. The man dreamt of his child, crawling through their house, half decomposed, splashing softly in the water, into his room, watching them sleep.
They knew, they all knew. How could they not? He hurried them along. They had to leave, to get away from his terrible mistake. He could hear him all the time now, laughing and wailing in the flooded cellar. Everyone else had to know. They piled in the car and drove to drier land.
The rain slowed and pretended as though it may stop. A sense of normality began to fill their little hotel room. The children complained of missing trinkets, the mother of fresh clothing for them all. They asked him to go back and get it all. They gave him a list and a hug.
He heard the voice before he even left his car. His boots squelched in the soft mud of the yard. He could smell the rot and death and could hear the crying child in the claps of thunder.
Just some clothing. Just the list. Just leave. Turn around. Run away.
In the hall, he shuffled through the water to the cellar door. Just a hole in the ground covered by a small square door and a rug atop that. He could hear him clearly now, an angelic voice, his sweet child, crying and laughing and calling out love and fury.
Opening the door, he expected to see his child. He expected the full face of his memories, he expected the rotten corpse of his nightmares. There was nothing. Just black water, impossibly still an stagnant. It looked like a night without stars, a dream without end.
The next day, the rains stopped. A day later and the family went back to check. The house had collapsed, the foundations having crumpled. Much of it had run down, following the lazy river that had become their neighborhood.
The father's body was never found.
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