by Lumby, Mark
“Babes?” Maggie called from downstairs. She didn’t sound cross anymore. Warm toast drifted from the kitchen. “You want coffee?”
Stepping off the bed, I felt a little confused. My sight stayed on the loft hatch as though I was questioning it. Eventually, I turned away and replied, “Erm…love one. Don’t bring it up; I’ll be right down.” I quickly dressed in the clothes I’d left on the floor from last night. They were dirty, but if I was going into the loft, what did it matter. I passed Samuel’s room just before reaching the stairs. There were chaotic sounds coming from inside. The door was ajar. I pushed it open a little more. He sat on his gaming chair playing Grand Theft on the Playstation. I grimaced, shaking my head as he blew out someone’s brains from the back of their heads with an AK. 47. I closed the door.
Maggie was plating up toast as I entered the kitchen. She gave a warm smile, kissed my lips, and whispered in my ear, “Sorry,” and smiled again.
“For what?” I grabbed a slice of toast from the table.
“Yesterday. I think I may have overreacted a little. It might be the move. Everything’s gone so fast.”
“I don’t know, babes. Maybe I exaggerated. I’m sure the girl was something else. It had to be, right? Maybe I did scare him. But if he has nightmares about those things, then I guess I must stop. For you, at least. It’s not fair on you. So…I guess it’s me who should apologise.”
Maggie kissed me again and pulled out a chair.
“Samuel’s killing people again,” I confessed. “He’ll be getting locked up.”
“I did tell you not to buy it.”
“I know, but they all play it.” I took a large gulp of coffee. “You’re taking Samuel to that party this afternoon, aren’t you?”
Maggie said with a huff, “I thought that you’d be able to, babes? It’s a boys’ party…all the dads will be there.”
“Then you’d better keep your hands to yourself, hadn’t you.”
“Oh, come on, Peter! Really?”
“Remember our little friends, Maggie. If I didn’t need to go up there then I’d go. You know I would.”
“You wouldn’t need to if you’d rung around,” she muttered, and then quieter still, but to herself, “stubborn as that father of yours.” But I heard her clearly enough.
I protested, “I did, Maggie. What did I say to you? What did I tell you yesterday?” I put the coffee cup down a bit too harshly.
“I know what you told me, but…” she trailed off.
“But what, Maggie?” strain in my voice, although gentle, not at all demanding.
She was drying a cup fresh from the sink, and was staring out the window, across the garden. “I’m sorry,” she sighed, placing the cup down. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”
I pushed away the chair, stood and went over to Maggie. “Everything Okay?” I put my hands around her waist and pulled her into me.
“Why shouldn’t it be,” she tilted her head back and accepted my kiss.
“You just seem…I don’t know…a bit off lately.”
“I’m just tired. I told you; you keep me awake with those stories you tell our son,” she joked, shoving her behind into my groin. “I miss the old place.”
“Do you remember anything about last night?”
“I was angry with you. I remember that!”
“No—after that. We’d been asleep and, well, you said something.”
I could see her thinking about it, pouting out her bottom lip before shaking her head. “No. I can’t recall. Why? Did anything happen?”
“Oh—nothing. You must have been talking in your sleep, that’s all.” I backed away from her, grabbing a second slice of toast and another mouthful of coffee. Perhaps it was a good thing she couldn’t remember.
* * *
Maggie drove Samuel to the party. She left without saying goodbye, although strangely, when calling for Samuel to hurry up, she referred to him as Sarah before correcting herself. I watched her out the window as she pulled off the drive, Samuel waving at me, Maggie not seeing me. As they pulled off down the road I was sure I could see the back of another head sitting on the back seat next to Samuel, another passenger in the car. I suppose it could have been a shadow, a trick of the light.
I went back up the stairs, grabbed the steps from outside our bedroom and placed them under the loft hatch. I pulled out of my pocket a flash light I had found under the sink in the kitchen. I stared up at the hatch wondering what I might find that would explain the bad smell. I wasn’t looking forward to what I might find, and as I deduced what could be making such a foul smell, I thought about the little girls’ giggle? I doubted very much that I would find the answer to that question, although I had hoped that she wasn’t anything to do with the stench. Slowly and unwillingly, I climbed the steps. I pushed the hatch ajar to feel a subtle warm breeze strike my face; the humidity made the fine hairs on my face react, and carried in the air was a strange smell of decay. It was still there as though something had died.
Mice! Got to be. Either that or…Rats! Smells like they’re dead already. But that didn’t explain the little girl. And rats don’t giggle.
The stench was growing intense. I had to drop the hatch and nearly fell down the steps, pressing the back of my hand against my mouth. I spluttered and swallowed back a mouthful of sick. If there’s anything I can’t stomach, it’s the smell of dead things.
Decay.
Rotten animals…maggots wiggling through their flesh…lumps moving under their fur as little worms feast on dead meat.
I waited a moment, composing my stomach and pushing back the need to let out breakfast. I eased the hatch up and slipped it aside. Dust rained onto my head and down my spine causing me to shudder. It felt like ants. What if there were spiders in the dust? My back felt itchy as though something was crawling. But as I shook my t-shirt, it was only dust and loose chippings off old brick from the chimney breast. I looked up at the open hatch, dust floating slowly down, like zero gravity.
The darkness was heavy and consuming. I could hear traffic from outside - a horn, an engine revving, people shouting. I could hear scratching, too. But I knew it was from outside of the roof, a crow or pigeon, fruitlessly pecking at the slates.
First, I poked my head through, holding the butt of the flash light in my mouth. I had a quick look around. The loft was small, and I wondered how I could squeeze through such a tight space.
I monitored my breathing, and when I needed to inhale, I did so through my mouth. The smell was really bad and I feared that if I was reminded of the stench again, then I would throw up.
Rats.
I couldn’t shake the idea from my mind. I had injected the notion into Samuels and now it was in mine.
Dead ones, too.
Shivers down my back which revived the feeling that spiders had fallen with the dust.
As I poured the light into the corners of the loft, I noticed that the floor was bare; no boarding covered the wooden beams, except from a loose makeshift pathway made from wooden floor laminate. Insulation ruffled into balls of cream coloured clouds sprouted from between the wood like a huge growth of fungi. It was probably their breeding place, where they sleep and live. A perfect home for a mouse. But I was really thinking…Rats.
One false move, a slip of the foot and I’d be through the ceiling. I couldn’t see much from where I was; there wasn’t much to see, literally. There was nothing but beams and dust and shadowy figures that were born of my imagination. And that god awful stench that had somehow infiltrated my senses. Putting my arms through first, I heaved myself up and squeezed through the hatch. Once my shoulders were inside, the rest was easy. I didn’t stop to think about how I would get out, though. I stuck to the laminate pathway that had been spread and nailed with both thought and meaning towards the other side of the chimney breast. There was soil on the boards, dry and crumbly. Some of the earth had been smeared when wet, as though a person had tried to make it disappear with their hand, and had now drie
d to a matted stain. I rubbed some in between my fingers and felt obliged to take a whiff. Definitely soil. I searched to see if I could trace where it could have come from.
I was crawling on knees and hands, the laminate bowing as it supported my weight; the roof was low and as I reached the chimney breast where the roof was higher, I was able to stand. I waved the light across the walls; the light made shadows, introducing ghosts into my mind. My heart beat that little bit faster. As I passed the chimney, the roof lowered again; I crawled along the boards, loosely rattling, creaking under my body. But as I went beyond the chimney breast, I stopped, and I was forced by something to look back at the hatch. Finding the opportunity to stand and stretch—just about— I turned around.
What was that? Breathing? Faint, but it was there. I can hear it!
“Maggie? Maggie, you back already?” I crouched and began to crawl slowly back to the hatch, passing the chimney and almost touching the hatch. But now, the breathing was from behind. Far behind. From the other side of the chimney breast. I shone the torch in that direction. Was I just thinking it? But as I turned back, and the closer I got, the louder the breathing was. And I could now tell how strained it sounded, wheezy, asthmatic, like something…someone struggling to take another breath. Choking. I shone the light at the chimney breast. The noise was coming from the other side. I started back across the laminate boards. The closer I got to the chimney, the more I was inclined to believe that this was no rat. It was something bigger. What the fuck is that? I was thinking, although I’m sure the profanity audibly squeezed itself from my lips.
Not a mouse; not a rat. Too small. A cat? Dog? But we don’t have either, and how the hell could they get up here through the damn hatch? Whatever it is was either put up here or else knew how to get into the loft. And a thought pushed into my mind. A sudden realisation that we had only lived here a few days. What if the previous owners had hidden something up here?
I crawled across the laminate boards. I stopped when I reached the chimney. I placed a hand on the brick to support myself as I stood, brick dust crumbling over my finger tips. I took the torch from my teeth and shone the light into the dark side of the loft. And in the far left hand corner looking like a glistening shadow when I stared the light over its surface, was a shape covered in a black refuse sack. It was disproportionate, the base fuller, wider, and then slimmer on the top. From my angle it appeared a similar shape as a snowman, only black. The shape wasn’t moving. It leaned to the right as though at any moment the sack would collapse to the side. The boards that I crawled upon lead straight to the sack. Must be nothing, I told myself. Something that the previous owners had packed away and had forgotten to take with them. I didn’t even think to consider why such a package would qualify having a purposely built path leading straight to it.
I would check it out regardless, to ease my conscience. And if I felt the need, I would deliver it to them in the morning. I had known the Mitchels for many years, since I was a child, and had grown up with Janice and Paul living down the street from where we used to live. They had only moved down the road to a smaller house. So it was quite convenient.
But I had wondered why, when the rest of the loft was empty, they had left something behind. It couldn’t have been important: old sheets; bedding from yesteryear; teddy bears that left memories too painful to be reminded of the fun times that had disappeared into the past. I guessed the Mitchels, however, had their purpose. But whatever their reason, it left me feeling both curious and nervous at the same time, and I did wonder ‘why all the soil?’.
I shone the light in other cavities of the loft too, but there was nothing else. Just a black void of emptiness and floating dust. There was only the sack in the corner, mysterious and intrusive. Slowly, I crept towards the package, kneeling across more soil and dried stains, and as I shined the torch I could see where the earth had gotten lost between the wooden beams. When the boards creaked and began to sink between the beams, I had to stop and check to see nothing was breaking. I was above Samuel’s room and one slip of the knee would send my leg through his ceiling.
As I got closer I realised that the sack did, in fact, look as though it would fall over, but knew that this was impossible. The roof was so low at this point that, whatever it was, was wedged into the corner where the brick and joists met. There was a hole in the bottom of the sack, ripped or caught on something, where soil had spilled out. This too looked dry with age.
I could nearly reach the bag. There was that unusual smell of decay again made stronger by the humidity in the loft. I stopped and tried to sit down, collect my thoughts as my eyes adjusted to the darkness that wrapped around me like a blanket. I removed the torch from my teeth and ran the light over the refuse sack, matted with fine dust and dotted with finger prints. The soil that had poured from the split hole was indeed old. But now I was close enough for my mind not to play tricks on me and I saw the true shape of the sack. I concentrated the light on the ripped plastic and I realised something that couldn’t be what it looked like. But I feared that it was. I could feel the base of my stomach bubble inside. Acid started to rise, and it just about reached my mouth, but I swallowed it back down, putting my hand over my lips as though this was enough to stop me from being sick. For now, it was.
I shuffled closer to the bag, close enough to touch and peel the plastic wider with my finger and thumb. More soil spilled out, crumbling like dust. And the more I widened the hole I could feel myself become clammy and cool, the sick rising into my mouth, only this time it wasn’t stopping. I bent to the side and coughed up undigested toast, wiped my mouth and stared back at the small foot.
I dropped the torch onto the wooden laminate, but it bounced and landed facing the sack. I glared at the foot for a long while, unable to speak, the sack in the spotlight not giving me the pleasure of forgetting. The foot had no skin; it was bone.
A skeleton.
“Oh God!” I tried to say. I freed myself from this trance and found courage to move closer to the sack. My attention was now on the top half of the sack…the thinner part. And seeing the foot, I knew what I would find. The shape was obvious to me now. Timidly, I stretched the plastic until a hole was torn and my finger accidentally slipped through and touched a skull. I pulled my hand away, checked over my shoulder, the light from the bedroom peering around the chimney breast.
I ripped away more of the plastic; soil crumbled around my feet and trickled over my hands, but I didn’t care now. I opened it up like a present on Christmas day, but without the excitement, until the small skeleton was exposed. It was too small to be an adult, too dirty to have been an exhibit or a fake skeleton. No…this was real. Someone had done this to this child, murdered them and stored them away up here. That’s what the smell must have been. The decay.
Something else had wanted to come out from the refuse sack, a hand of a different kind; a teddy bear’s paw smothered with the dirt from the bag. I gave it a hand and carefully pulled it free from its coffin.
The child must have been clutching at the teddy tightly because it refused to let go as I pulled, as though clinging to the only memory of its young life. I suddenly retreated from the child as its torso collapsed into my lap. I push it away and couldn’t scramble away fast enough, kicking off my shoe in my escape and leaving the torch behind to shine into its eyeless sockets. But I had the bear with me. I turned to the hatch, and waited as if I had expected the collapsed pile of bones to reassemble and follow. They didn’t, of course, but I found myself holding onto the teddy bear as though it was the most precious thing in the world, like it had been for that poor child. And then I caught a glimpse of the soiled pink ribbon tied fashionably around its neck. I deduced that the skeleton was that of a girl.
I couldn’t see the child; she was sleeping in the corner, at the other side of the chimney breast. I couldn’t just leave her, tell Maggie that there were no rats, or mice, or anything. In the light of the hatch I checked my watch. I had more time than I had thought, so I
wasn’t expecting Maggie and Samuel home for another hour. I squeezed through the hatch and, for the moment, sealed it shut.
* * *
I strode to the end of the street, clutching the soiled teddy bear in my right hand. It was raining quite hard and I hadn’t cared to equip myself with a jacket. The bear was sodden in my grip, dripping filthily and laying a trail of soiled blotches onto the footpath. Passerby’s looked at me with both concern and curiosity: wet to the bone, hair matted to my forehead and dripping down my face, and clutching an old teddy bear. They watched as though I had done something terrible. Although, they weren’t to know the real reason why appeared like this. I had just found the corpse of a little girl in the loft of my house, so stranger or no stranger, they could probably tell, apart from being soaking wet, that something was horribly wrong.
I stopped at the very gate where the Mitchels lived, placed my hand onto the cold black iron. I looked up at the house. What would I say to them? Every instinct in my body was warning me away. But I had to do this. And throughout my standing there, all I could think of was ‘rats…those damn rats tapping, scratching and…the giggles of a little girl’. That poor little girl. What must she have gone through?
Murdered.
I wondered how they had done it, taken her life. I had devised the obvious ways in my head, although in my imagination I couldn’t help but sway to the more extreme methods. Perhaps a crack to the back of her head, or maybe she was strangled or poisoned. You hear stories of parents killing their children that way. Or you just don’t hear about it at all; they simply disappear and through their crocodile tears are content in absorbing other people’s sympathies and accepting their help. But I couldn’t help visualise Mr Mitchel pinning her down onto her bed, sitting on her, looking down on her with his hands wrapped around her thin neck, calm on his face as his hold around her neck tightened.
I couldn’t remember opening the gate or walking down the path, but I found myself standing in front of the Mitchel’s red door under the shelter of their porch. I knocked on the door, gently, as though I really didn’t want them to answer and I had to walk away. But I thought of that poor girl and the next knock I did nearly exploded the door panel. I heard a coarse voice cursing me from the other side, words of protest from the noise. He swung open the door, and Mr Mitchel, face shaking in anger, began to shout. But I burst through stepping wet prints onto their cream carpet and gripped my free hand over his throat. He collapsed on the bottom of the stairs and I tripped and fell onto him. He struggled temporarily, but he was old and couldn’t put up much of a fight. Although it wasn’t his age that stopped him. I had pushed the teddy bear into his chest, then I backed away. He sat up, composed himself as gentlemanly as he could, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the bear. His eyes changed somehow, from rage to shock. The creases in his forehead seemed deeper. He glanced at me and then back at the bear.