by Ronald Malfi
“Where?” I said.
“In the study.”
We entered her study. The room was brightly lit and there was a Paul Desmond CD playing low on the stereo. Against one wall was Tara’s desk, stacks of papers filed neatly on top. A spare bed, in case we ever found ourselves entertaining guests from far away who would require spending the night (though we could not see this happening any time soon), was pushed against another wall. Above the bed, twin windows glared at us like eyes.
“In the closet,” she said.
“What is?”
“The noise.”
“What noise?”
“The noise,” she repeated with more emphasis, as if this would clarify anything. When I looked at her, she only shrugged. She’d dropped her voice to a whisper now, too.
I turned off the stereo and we stood together in the silence, unmoving. All I could hear was the fall of the rain against the roof. As if part of the conspiracy, the dog had ceased barking outside, too.
“I don’t hear anything,” I said.
“Harold, it was in the closet.”
So I went to the closet and pulled the door open. Two file cabinets were tucked away here, as well as a plastic garbage bag full of winter clothes we had no room for in any other part of the house. But that was all.
“What did it sound like?”
“Like there was someone in the closet,” Tara said. “Someone moving around in there.”
“Who would be in the closet?”
“I’m just telling you what I heard.”
“Well there’s obviously no one here,” I said, backing away.
Back downstairs, I poured what was left of the coffee into my mug and reheated it in the microwave. Standing in the darkened kitchenette, I watched the rain sluice against the window over the sink. The dog had resumed its tune, sounding closer now than it had before. When the microwave finally chimed, I carried my steaming mug back through the kitchenette and down the corridor toward my office.
Tara stood in the hallway, staring at me.
I paused. “What?” I said.
“Don’t give me what,” she said. “I know it’s you.”
“Me?”
“Cut it out.”
“What?” I said.
“You’re trying to scare me.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Liar.”
“I swear it. I was making coffee.” And I took a long, noisy sip to bolster my innocence.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t know what you’re doing, or how you’re doing it, but cut it out. I’m trying to study.”
Back upstairs, I stood before her open closet door, peering inside. “I don’t understand,” I said. “What does it sound like?”
“Shuffling around. Sometimes like a knock, too. Like someone moving against the door from the inside.”
“Well, then leave the door open.”
“But that doesn’t make whatever is doing it disappear, does it?”
“Maybe it’s outside,” I suggested. “Maybe it’s the storm.”
“It’s not outside and it’s not the storm.” She was seated on the edge of the spare bed, looking past me and into the closet. “I heard it. It was right inside the closet, Harold.”
I leaned forward and wrapped the old shave-and-a-haircut on the doorframe. “Wait for it,” I said. “Wait…”
“Don’t make fun,” Tara said.
I sighed. “What would you like me to do, Tara? I don’t hear anything.”
“Do you promise you’re not trying to scare me?”
“Of course I’m not.”
“Because if it’s you, just stop.”
“It’s not me.”
“Swear it,” she said.
“I already have.”
“Swear it again.”
“I swear it’s not me,” I promised.
“Harold?”
“Yeah?”
She said, “I feel funny.”
* * *
As it will, time passed. Somehow, despite our hectic schedules, we managed to celebrate a reclusive yet cozy Thanksgiving together, fielding the customary telephone calls from our respective families overseas, and prepared for Christmas with the giddy excitement of two children set loose in a toy store. We were saving money—that was our promise to each other that year—and would keep gifts to a minimum. Pleased with myself, I managed to locate a well-made but inexpensive gold locket on a slender chain which I outfitted with a tiny photograph of Tara and me, taken back in the heyday of our courtship. I wrapped this gift in my pedestrian way (for the life of me, I could not wrap a gift) and decided to stow it in the attic of our little bungalow—a place, I was certain, Tara would never venture voluntarily.
I climbed the stairs and entered the dark maw of the attic. I had left Tara downstairs, busy decorating the Christmas tree; the house was draughty, the walls and floorboards thin, and the din of her soft, cheerful humming could be heard even against the whine of the wind in the eaves and the sigh of the cold winter’s night against the framework of the house.
Scrambling for the dangling pull-cord that hung from the light fixture in the ceiling, my right hand swatted blindly in the dark. I managed a step forward. The pull-cord brushed by my face, sending tremors down my spine. I yanked the light on.
The whistling wind was a constant. I could hear the house groaning and creaking and rocking in its foundation. Fleetingly, I wondered if this would be the year our roof decided to crumble into our neighbor’s.
I heard something move behind me. Spinning around, my eyes still adjusting to the gloom, I peered down the shadowy length of the attic, the ceiling low, the beams crisscrossing before me like the rank of raised swords in a military wedding. I could see nothing.
Yet unlike in the movies, where the protagonist must turn away from the noise before he hears it again, I heard it again: a labored, breathy sound, very much like respiration.
My own breath seized in my throat.
Then another sound: a dull thud. A knock. This was it—this was the sound Tara had heard coming from behind the closet door in her study. Quickly, I unfolded a mental blueprint of the bungalow and, sure enough, that section of the attic was positioned directly above Tara’s second-floor study.
With mounting desperation, I was suddenly trying to recall whether or not the police had ever arrested anyone in connection with those unsolved murders in the Heath, and I was coming up blank.
Steeling myself, I walked along the floor beams toward the opposite end of the attic, toward the noise. The shadows deepened as I approached, but I no longer heard anything—
Something tittered and I caught a glimpse of a fleeting shadow swim across the far wall. This was not my imagination. I was certain of it.
Taking a deep breath, I reached the far wall and hunkered down to examine what appeared to be a narrow abyss in the attic floor, where the floor should have met the far wall. My fingers digging into the beam above my head for balance, I peered down into that narrow cut of darkness in the floor.
Poor construction. That’s what I was looking at. Poor construction and, no doubt, the tilting of the house had caused the beams to split, to come apart, leaving a narrow little arroyo in the floor that just happened to drop down behind the wall of the closet in Tara’s study.
The respiratory sound was undoubtedly the wind shuttling against the eaves. With such a separation in the framework, sound was bound to echo. That evening in bed, I explained what I had discovered to Tara, though she did not seem comforted by my revelation.
“I don’t like that room,” she said. “I don’t like the noises that come from it, Harold.”
* * *
Christmas came. I gave Tara the gold locket and she presented me with a handsome leather briefcase. We had a quiet dinner together in the drafty house then watched television until Tara went upstairs to shower before bed. My own eyelids growing heavy, I pulled an afghan up over my body and muted the television.
When
Tara appeared staring down at me several moments later, I thought I was dreaming at first.
“What?” I muttered. “What is it?”
“It’s back. Upstairs. Come listen.”
Once again in the second-floor study, we both stood before the open closet doors, peering in at nothing by a couple of metal filing cabinets.
“That’s the wind,” I explained again. “If you’d seen the gap in the attic boards…”
“That isn’t the sound I heard before.” Tara looked frightened. “It was like something moving around on the other side of the drywall.”
“Darling, there’s nothing there.”
“What if it’s an animal come in from the cold? Living in the walls? A raccoon, maybe?”
“There’s nothing up there, Tara.”
She shivered beside me. “I feel funny. Strange. Like something is trying to get at me.”
“Get at you?”
“Eat me.”
“Tara, honey, there are no wild animals up in the attic.”
“Harold, please…”
I sighed and promised her I would check again first thing in the morning.
But morning brings with it a breed of clarity that night disallows, and it took the passage of several more evenings before I agreed to once again climb up into the attic. Armed with a flashlight, a hammer and nails, and a few planks of wood, I promised Tara I’d chase out any animal intruder then board up the narrow gap in the floor, putting an end to this nonsense once and for all.
In the attic, I traversed the narrow beams until I reached the gap where the floor met the outer wall. Setting my implements down, I clicked on the flashlight and dumped the beam down into the open shaft.
Things twinkled at me from below.
The distance was too great to make out what they were, or to simply reach down and scoop them up. My curiosity mounting, I decided to climb down there and see what those items were. It was a tight squeeze, and I utilized the exposed beams as hand- and footholds on my way down. The dry smell of insulation caused me to sneeze. When I touched my feet down on solid flooring again, I was packed firmly behind the closet wall of Tara’s second-floor study.
I trailed the flashlight’s beam along the floor, illuminating those twinkling objects scattered about my feet…
Some items were easily identifiable as jewelry—necklaces, earrings, what appeared to be a collegiate ring with the jewel missing from the setting—while others were as enigmatic to me as matter floated down from space. There were also a few screws and things that resembled hammered ball bearings. I gathered up all these items and stowed them away in the pockets of my trousers. Then, climbing back up out of the gap, I covered the opening with the planks of wood. If any animal had sought refuge in this crevice, there would be no more re-entry.
* * *
For whatever unexplained reason, I felt compelled to hide the items I’d found in the gap from my wife. I put them all in a gym sock, which I stuffed toward the back of my underwear drawer.
* * *
It was very early morning, the sun not yet fully up, when I awoke in bed alone. Tara’s side of the mattress was cool. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, awaiting her return from the bathroom. But she never returned. And when I checked the bathroom, I found it empty and unused.
I searched the bungalow, calling her name. When the clock on the landing struck 5:15 AM, a dreadful panic had already set in. Hastily, I checked the windows and the doors—all of which were locked—and once again began thinking of last year’s murders in the Heath. It was still an ungodly hour of the morning when I found myself pounding on neighbors’ doors, asking if they had seen my wife. They all scowled and assured me they had not. Trembling, I returned home to call the police.
Two uniformed officers came, took notes, and conducted a cursory and disinterested scan of the bungalow. “Maybe,” one of the officers suggested before leaving, “she just got bored, mate.”
I called out of classes for the day and sat on the sofa for most of the afternoon, anticipating—hoping—that Tara would walk through the front door at any minute. By late afternoon, with a gray rain falling in the streets, I contemplated driving around town to see if I could spot her. I even pulled on my clothes without the benefit of showering and was in the process of lacing up my sneakers when I heard a banging sound echo down the stairwell from the second-floor landing.
“Tara!” It leapt from my throat in a strangled cry.
Racing up the stairs, I entered Tara’s study to find the room empty. I listened again for the banging noise but heard nothing. My respiration was shuddery, my vision beginning to fragment. The closet doors stood open, the twin filing cabinets leering at me.
And then I heard it—a muted thump, like someone on the other side of the closet wall, pounding a fist. I pressed my ear against the drywall and listened, holding my breath. Nothing. Again, I called my wife’s name. No response.
I grabbed the flashlight from the kitchen drawer then climbed up into the attic. When I turned the flashlight on, the beam shook in my unsteady hand. The attic appeared empty. Again, I called out Tara’s name and received no answer. Crossing the catwalk of two-by-fours to the far wall, I wondered if somehow Tara had fallen down the gap between the walls. It was ridiculous, of course—what would she have been doing up here after all?—but what other explanation was there?
But no: the planks of wood were still nailed down over the opening.
I stood there, my heart slamming in my chest.
And thought I heard movement down below, in the gap.
“Tara!”
I dropped to my knees and began wrenching the planks of wood loose with my bare hands. Once I’d made a large enough opening, I directed the flashlight beam into the gap while holding my breath.
Of course, the space was empty. Had I really expected to find Tara down there?
My hands quaked. The flashlight’s beam vibrated across the flooring at the bottom of the gap.
Again, something twinkled up at me.
After prying away more boards, I descended the gap as I had done once before, and crouched down to retrieve what I had seen from above.
Tara’s locket. The one I’d given her for Christmas.
A terrible sickness overtook me. I thought I would pass out. Nothing made sense.
There were other things on the floor as well. Things similar to the hammered ball bearings I’d found previously…
* * *
I sit now on the spare bed in Tara’s study, facing the open closet. In my lap is this notebook, in which I have detailed all that has happened, no matter how bizarre. Beside me is Tara’s locket. The picture is no longer inside it; where it has gone, I have no idea. It’s been three days since Tara’s disappearance, and I am hearing the knocking behind the wall regularly now, much as Tara had.
What had she said? I feel funny. Strange. Like something is trying to get at me. But not just get at her. Eat me, she had said.
I’m done writing now. I’ll sit and wait and see what happens. Tara was right—there is something here. Maybe not something behind the walls. Maybe it is the walls. The bungalow itself.
I don’t know.
What I know is that I am scared I will never see my wife again.
What I know is that I am terrified of what is making that knocking sound.
What I know is that those hammered ball bearings I found are actually fillings from teeth.
We sat outside the café sipping hot espressos while watching the camouflaged trucks come down the dirt roadway. They looked heavy and were burdened with men, and the thick-treaded tires bit into the muddy earth and turned with much noise. There were five trucks in all, and they crept slowly past the café and down the rue boueuse, and behind them the sky was like gunpowder and acrid with the smell of smoke. From the café we could no longer see the smoke clearly, billowing up from beyond the veil of trees against the horizon as it had done for the past five days; after many days, the smoke had become part of the
air itself, and it had mingled and dispersed. We were breathing it in with every breath. Omar said something about the water having turned gray and how the surface was covered in a gentle film of dust. You couldn’t drink it, he said, because it would make you sick, and that it tasted very much like soot, and it coated your throat and made your throat and the back of your mouth taste very bitter and unclean. Many of the fish had died, too, and most were big fish and good for eating but no one would eat them now and anyway they floated at the surface of the dirty water like logs in filth. Not smiling, Omar said he’d seen children down by the bank of the river early in the morning and had watched them use long sticks to pull the dead fish close to the embankment. The kids, they made much noise, and it was very early in the morning for children to be outside. The water was too dirty for them to play in, also, Omar said. He said a lot of things about the water. He spoke more of the water than of the soldiers that had come into the town and shot the little girl in the street. Omar did not speak about the little girl, and of the way her mother had cried and screamed and how she had been shot, too. He said nothing about the little girl and her mother, and no one else did, either. It was easier to talk of nonsense and to talk about dirty, undrinkable water.
The Jumping Sharks of Dyer Island
They stayed in a small clapboard hut in Kleinbaai, which overlooked the black sea and the white flats and a jagged outcrop of glossy auburn stone. The air smelled of brine and fish, and there were many southern right whales beached down by the water during that week. Fishermen populated the flats in the early morning. Their tiny boats were like oversized shoes draped with chain-mesh fishing nets hanging over the sides. These men fished for hours beneath large, sweeping cumulous clouds, their bodies the color and texture of oiled saddle leather. Twisted bundles of muscle contracted in their backs and arms as they worked. Jay Conroy watched them from beneath the hut’s portico every morning while seated in a rope-backed chair.