by John Marsden
There’s only one thing to do. You go sneaking up the stairs and get your ass out of there! You race down to the video shop and get every monster movie you can find. Keeping this creature happy is going to be a full-time job!
aying a quick prayer you step out onto the roof. Immediately a tile slips from under your foot and goes clattering down the roof and over the edge. You nearly follow it. But somehow you keep your balance.
You start clambering across the wet surface. The rain is belting into you like it’s taken a personal dislike to you. The wind accelerates to a force ten gale. There’s a howling noise behind, like a set of bagpipes being eaten by a crocodile. You daren’t look back. You take another step. And disaster strikes. Three or four tiles go from under your feet in a sudden sliding rush. And this time you go with them. You grab for something, anything, but there’s only air at the end of your grasping fingers. You’re swishing down the roof at the speed of a teacher who’s seen a cup of coffee. Your fingernails are making those scratching-down-the-blackboard noises that you’ve always hated worse than anything except the ABC News.
From the broken window comes a maniacal cackling laugh. All too soon you’re at the edge of the roof. Then you’re over the edge. You’re hanging in mid-air with your fingers gripping the guttering. There’s nothing else to stop you falling forty metres to the ground.
The storm’s so wild that you can’t see what’s below you, but you seem to remember there was a fence of iron railings. Sharp pointed iron railings.
Your hands are getting tired from hanging on. If you’re going to make an effort to get back onto the roof, you’d better make it now, while you’ve still got some strength. You take a deep breath and, with all the energy you can muster, you swing yourself up and try to grab on to something. It’s a life or death moment!
ou make your way nervously to the trapdoor, looking over your shoulder every moment. You don’t know what it is, but something about this place gives you a cold creeping feeling down your back. It seems to take an age to get to the door but at last you’re there. You bend down to the handle on the trapdoor and take hold of it and pull.
And it doesn’t move.
You don’t panic. You try again and again and again. The door just won’t open. It seems to be locked from the outside.
You try to wrench the door off its hinges but as it’s made of oak and the hinges are steel you don’t have much hope. At last, with your fingers practically ripped out of their sockets and sweat pouring off you like you’re a human waterfall, you give up. You look around again, this time frantically, trying to work out what’s going on. It seems even darker in the attic. But as you stand there searching for a clue, you get one. In fact you get more than one clue. You get two clues. Two eyes slowly appear, about ten metres in front of you. They’re green, they’re glowing, they’re wide open, and they’re staring straight at you. ‘Oh no,’ you beg, ‘oh no, oh please, I’ll be good, I’ll eat my spinach, I won’t ever use guinea pigs for shuttlecocks again, I promise.’
Under the eyes, a mouth forms. It’s like Mulligrubs, only not quite as scary. Then comes a nose, a pair of ears and even a set of eyebrows. But everything seems faint, like you can almost see through it. You feel you’re looking at a dim X-ray. Then comes a body, dressed in white, the body of a young woman, maybe twenty or twenty-five years old. Now that the person’s complete, you might feel a little better—except for the fact that the head’s not actually attached to the body. There’s a gap of a metre between the neck and the head.
‘Who . . . who are you?’ you stammer.
The woman answers: ‘I am Esmerelda.’
Her voice sounds like a cold wind blowing through a forest of icicles.
‘Who . . . who is Esmerelda?’
‘I live in this house. This is my home.’
There’s a bit of a nervous silence. You can’t think of what to say next.
‘Er, do you mind putting your head closer to your neck?’ you ask.
She seems annoyed and her eyes flash. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she says sarcastically. ‘It’s not easy to reassemble yourself, you know.’
She puts her hand on the top of her head and pushes it down till it sits on her neck better. She doesn’t get it lined up properly—her head is sitting off a bit to the left—but you don’t like to risk upsetting her any more by pointing that out.
‘So what are you doing here?’ you ask.
‘What are you doing in my house?’ she asks.
Her eyes burn as she asks the question, and you realise she’s not happy about your presence in the attic. You try to think what you can say that won’t make her madder. Should you apologise? Or should you stick up for yourself?
ou’ve always been scared of heights, so even in this extreme situation you can’t bring yourself to get out on the roof. Instead you turn and face the terror that’s been pursuing you through the attic.
It’s stalking slowly towards you, and somehow that makes it even more frightening than before. It’s so cold, so menacing, so relentlessly deadly.
And suddenly it farts.
There’s no mistaking the sound. It’s a real rattler that goes for about twenty seconds. Like a machine-gun. And it stops the creature dead in its tracks. Almost at once you realise why. It’s embarrassed.
You take full advantage of the situation.
‘Pooh,’ you say, waving your hand in front of your face. ‘What a stink.’
You’re bluffing, but then a moment later you’re not bluffing, because the smell does hit you. And it’s an A.S., an Absolute Shocker. No longer can you divide farts into ‘Silent but Deadly’ or ‘Noisy but Friendly’. This is Noisy and Very Unfriendly. It’s like this ghost thing has been saving it up for about five hundred years. It’s the smell of mould and decay and death and rotten seaweed and the grave. You buckle at the knees and nearly pass out. ‘That is revolting,’ you exclaim when you get your breath back. ‘That is very antisocial. Can you give me about a week’s warning next time you think you’re going to drop one like that?’
The corpse takes a step backwards. He looks completely disconcerted. You follow up your advantage. ‘I’m getting out of here,’ you say. ‘This attic isn’t fit for human habitation.’
Walking steadily, determined not to show any panic, you go to the trapdoor, open it, and climb through. Your last glimpse of the corpse, as you pull the trapdoor shut above your head, shows him back in his place, pulling the sheet over himself.
‘Thank goodness,’ you think. ‘I’m not going up there again.’
At the bottom of the staircase you run into your father. ‘Where have you been?’ he asks. ‘Exploring? Oh phew! What’s that awful smell? Have you been rolling in something? Go and have a shower, for heaven’s sake.’
And he’s gone, before you can even begin to explain. Though, as you think about it later standing under the shower, you decide it might be better that way. After all, who’s going to believe you?
y a miracle, you feel your right hand connect with some lump on the roof. You get a good grip on it. You’re not going to let go, no matter what—you know that much! Slowly, ever so painfully, you haul yourself up over the edge, until at last, having expended every gram of energy in your body, you’re safe again, lying face down, totally exhausted, on the wet roof.
After a minute you get enough energy back for your mind to start working slightly again. And the first thought you have is ‘What’s this lump I’m hanging on to so desperately?’ And so you open your eyes and turn your head slightly and look at it. And it’s a human foot.
A human foot?! And not just any foot, but a desiccated yellow skeletal foot with no fingernails. ‘Of course not,’ you think, ‘feet don’t have fingernails, they have toenails.’ Only this foot doesn’t have them either. You let out a wild scream, just as a bolt of lightning rips the sky apart and an explosion of thunder shakes the whole house. You let go of the foot and jump up. The sightless eyes of the corpse seem to stare right through you. The hands, th
ose ghastly dried hands, reach for your throat again. You take a step backwards. This is not such a good idea. You’re standing on the edge of the roof, remember. Now you’re balanced on the gutter and it’s starting to give way beneath you. In your terror of falling, you throw yourself forwards. The corpse is not expecting this. He falls backwards with you on top of him. The two of you go rolling straight for the edge. You see a couple of steel pegs sticking out of the roof, just beyond your reach. If only you could reach them! Wait a sec, maybe you can reach them! You grab the arm of the corpse and give a mighty wrench, just as he goes over the edge. And sure enough the arm comes out of the socket! You’re holding it in your hands! Desperately you thrust it between the steel pegs. And to your relief, it holds! You use it to haul yourself up to the pegs and wedge yourself against them. They give you something to hold on to, till help comes. You can stay there all night, if you have to.
And you do have to. When the fire brigade gets you down the next morning your first question is, ‘Where’s the dried-up corpse?’
Everyone—the fire brigade, your parents, the neighbours—stare at you like you’re mad.
‘On the ground,’ you cry, looking around frantically. ‘It must be here somewhere. It must be!’
‘There, there,’ says your mother soothingly. ‘It’s the shock. Poor dear, you’ll soon be over it.’
‘No, no,’ you say, ‘the dried-up corpse, it must be here.’
Then you see it, lying in the long grass just five metres away. You point to it with a quivering finger.
‘Oh, that old scarecrow,’ says your mother. ‘I don’t know where that came from. It wasn’t here yesterday.’
You don’t know about that. All you know is that it has one arm missing.
t’s not hard to suck up to her because you really are scared. Who knows what powers this Esmerelda woman might have? ‘I’m sorry,’ you whisper. ‘We didn’t know this was your house. We thought it was empty.’
‘Empty!’ she hisses. ‘Empty! I’ve been living here for a hundred and fifty years. Isn’t that long enough? Why, I even died here, in the room below this one. I think that gives me some rights.’
‘Oh yes,’ you agree. ‘Definitely.’
‘But,’ she goes on, ‘it does get lonely. I could use some company.’
She takes a step towards you.
‘Oh well,’ you say, ‘I can understand that. Of course. Well, it’s been nice talking to you but I’d better be going. Catch you later. You have a good day, now.’
‘You talk a lot,’ she says. ‘You like to talk. And I’m sick of the silence up here. I think I’ll put you somewhere where you can talk as much as you want.’
She points a finger at you and makes a strange noise. There’s a tremendous flash, like a nuclear blast, and you can’t see or hear anything for a while. When it clears you find things have changed for you a little. You’re sitting in a bird cage. You’re wearing yellow feathers and you have a rather cute beak. There’s a bowl of birdseed that looks tasty. And you’re just chattering and singing nonstop. You can’t help yourself. Esmerelda is sitting in an armchair opposite you and you sing to her all day long. You sing about the weather, about your plumage, about your mirror, about the shape and colour of your bowl, about the hay fever you get from the dust in the attic.
After only an hour, Esmerelda has her hands to her ears. After two hours she’s begging you to shut up. After two-and-a-half hours she leaps to her feet, points her finger at you again, and makes that strange noise. When the flash has finished, you find you’re back to normal and Esmerelda has gone.
You rush over to the trapdoor and this time you find to your relief that it’s open. You go belting down the stairs, vowing you’ll never go in the attic again.
By teatime though you’ve just about convinced yourself that the whole thing is impossible and you must have imagined it. But then a funny thing happens. You sit down to tea. It’s your dad’s turn to cook and he serves up your favourite meal, chicken nuggets. But for once it makes you feel kind of sick. You sit there staring at it. ‘Dad,’ you say, ‘couldn’t I have something different . . . like, for instance, cuttlefish?’
ou throw yourself on the ground at her feet. ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ you cry. ‘I don’t know what came over me. Please forgive me. Here, let me lick this bit of dust off your shoe.’
You hear a choking sound and you look up, worried that she’s having a fit. Then you realise she’s actually laughing.
‘You’re an idiot,’ she says.
‘I know,’ you agree. ‘But please tell me what the graves are. Who’s buried here?’
‘I still don’t think I should,’ she worries.
‘You owe it to me,’ you say.
‘I don’t owe you anything.’
‘But if we’re going to live here, we’re entitled to know about our own house. Especially if it’s something bad.’
Suddenly she makes up her mind. ‘All right,’ she says, ‘but don’t tell anyone I told you.’
You think of making another joke but for once you get smart and keep your mouth shut. Stacey looks around, as if to check that no-one’s watching. Then she leans a little closer and whispers: ‘These are the last three owners of this house.’
The last three owners of the house! So the last three owners have all died here! The more you think about it, the worse you realise it is.
‘I . . . I wish you hadn’t told me that,’ you stammer.
Stacey just shrugs. Then she says: ‘You asked for it.’
‘How . . . how did they die?’
‘No-one knows. The last one was Mr Blenkinsop, and he was found last Christmas Eve, dead in the cellar.’
‘Well, gee, maybe he fell down the stairs. Or he had a heart attack. Or he died of old age. It could have been anything. It could have been all those things. Maybe he was old, fell down the stairs and had a heart attack.’
‘The cellar door was locked!’ Stacey hisses.
‘Locked?’ You think it’s your own voice you’re hearing still, but it’s coming from so far away!
‘From the outside,’ Stacey says.
You faint. When you come round you’re still lying on the ground and Stacey’s wiping your face with a wet handkerchief. You sit up, with a bit of a struggle.
‘I’m OK now,’ you say. ‘Thanks for bringing me round like that. Where’d you get the wet handkerchief so quickly?’
‘No problem,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a cold.’
Suddenly you don’t feel so good after all.
Before you can ask Stacey for more information you see someone coming down the drive. It’s your mum, and it seems like she’s looking for you.
‘There’s my mum,’ you say to Stacey. ‘You want to meet her? You can tell her all about the graves.’
But Stacey seems to be getting bashful. She looks nervous. She hesitates.
‘Um . . . well, I don’t know . . .’
‘Come on,’ you urge. ‘She’s nice. Well, most of the time. She won’t bite your head off . . . I don’t think so, anyway.’
s you stand there you feel a slight draught on the back of the neck. You nearly jump out of your skin when you hear a voice.
‘I came back,’ it whispers.
‘From . . . from the grave?’ you stammer.
‘No, you idiot, I came back to help you,’ the voice says. And laughs. You realise that it’s Stacey.
‘There’s . . . there’s a skeleton,’ you gasp, barely able to get the words out.
‘Oh yes,’ Stacey says. ‘That’s Mr Brennan’s. He was the last owner of this house. He had a lot of stuff like that.’
‘But why?’ you ask.
‘He was a Science teacher,’ Stacey explains.
‘Oh,’ you say, feeling a bit silly. You start to relax a bit. But then you remember something else.
‘What did you mean before about something you should tell me about this house?’ you ask. ‘Just what is wrong with it?’
‘Oh, al
l right,’ Stacey says. ‘I will tell you then. The place is falling down. It’s the biggest dump in the neighbourhood. Mr Brennan was a real crook. He just did the place up to look good, then sold it to the first suckers, I mean the first people, to come along. I think you should tell your parents to sell it, as fast as they can.’
‘Oh no,’ you think. ‘My parents have done it again.’ You know all too well that they’re not great business people. You’ve known that ever since they invested their life savings in a range of cold-water bottles, for people to take to bed on hot summer nights. They didn’t sell very many.
‘Gee,’ you say to Stacey, ‘I don’t know what we can do about it. The contracts have been signed and my parents have paid over the money.’
Just then you hear a loud crash. You look out the window of the shed. To your horror you see that the house is collapsing like a pack of cards. The roof just slid off, and the walls are falling outwards, one by one. Water is shooting up in the air from broken pipes. You and Stacey rush outside and run up to the house. To your relief you see that your parents are all right, standing there looking at the house. To your amazement you see that they’re actually smiling.
‘What’s the big joke?’ you demand, as the dust and rubble swirl around you.
‘The big joke?’ your mother asks, as she laughs almost uncontrollably. ‘The big joke? That’s easy. Yesterday we insured this old dump for a million dollars.’
ell,’ you think, ‘here goes.’ You go to break the window but then you realise there’s a problem. You need the axe to break the window, and the axe is behind the glass. ‘Who designed this thing?’ you ask yourself. ‘They must be complete idiots. I’ve got a good mind to sit right down and write them a letter about it.’