by Lumby, Mark
“What’s all the commotion, dear?” a lady called out from the back room. Her voice was slightly slurred, but not drunk.
He couldn’t answer for a while. She had to repeat herself. He squeezed the teddy bear, dirty water pushed from its stuffing and stained the cream carpet. But he didn’t seem to care how pristine the carpet used to be, that I had trodden footprints into his house, or had even knocked him off his feet. It was the bear that distracted him, and it bothered him too. He cocked his head towards the back room, eyes fixed on the toy, and eventually said, “Oh, nothing, dear. It’s absolutely nothing. Don’t bother getting up; you go back to your knitting. You know Mary wants that coat finished before it gets cold.” He looked up at me. “The cats,” he said, as though I should have known. “She likes to knit things so she is knitting her a coat for winter. Not that she’ll ever wear it, but if she thinks she does and it makes her happy, then that’s fine.”
“Of course, dear,” she called hesitantly. “You sure everything’s okay?”
“Don’t worry,” he confirmed, stroking the head of the bear. He looked down at the toy once again. “She has brain tumour. We found out a year ago. Nothing can be done. If they operated they could only give her less than ten percent chance of pulling through. She’s going down hill so rapidly. When she wakes in the morning, she no longer knows who I am. I’m that stranger who shouldn’t be there. And she screams out. I’ve learned that the best thing to do is walk away. She comes around eventually. I’m not sure if she remembers me and just accepts that I’m there. But when I bring her breakfast, offer a smile, and I think for her it’s like falling in love all over again. Quite sweet really, don’t you think?”
I felt awkward. It wasn’t what I was expecting. I didn’t know whether to apologise for his wife’s illness, or crush in his face with my fist. He was obviously feeling the pain when caring for her. His eyes were strained around the edges and dark underneath. His complexion had become pale when compared to a framed photograph of himself and Janice from the wall. He was a man of late sixties but the stress of his wife condition had cursed him another ten years. I actually pitied him.
He smiled a bitter sweet smile. “I’m glad you came. Really, I am.” He sighed, grabbed the banister to heave himself up. He was old, and because of that, I wanted to help him. But he had killed that little girl, and I couldn’t lose sight of that, so I chose not to. “It’s been so long, you know. I knew this would come someday,” he huffed when he was finally up, and smiled at me to cheer my mood. “I just hoped that it would be later…when Janice had passed. But! Not to worry. It had to come. I suppose I don’t get to choose when. As God watches over me, I must accept my fate. But that’s the consequence, I guess.” He walked into the front sitting room. “Shut the door behind you, Peter. It is Peter, isn’t it? I forget, but I thought I recognised your face. So many children she knew, so many friends…my Sarah…God bless her soul.”
Sarah? Was that who was in my loft?
I kicked the front door closed with my heel, checking through the hallway and shot a glance into the room where his wife sat. There was a mix of soothing voices and old songs coming from the radio she listened to, but I couldn’t see her. I followed him inside and closed the room door behind me.
“Take a seat if you wish,” he gestured to a nearby chair, pillows looking inflated and leaning against the arms. I stood behind the seat, deciding not to take his offering. “But stand if it suits you.” He propped the teddy bear on the fire mantle, staring at it for a little while before wiping his hands dry on his trousers. “When exactly did it start?”
“The scratching? Is that what you mean?”
“The scratching, the knocking, the smell…any one of them. All of them.”
“Yesterday.”
His eyebrows raised, he said, “It didn’t take long, then. I imagined a few months at least, but you’ve only been in there, what, two, maybe three days. I rented it out before you bought the house, you know. I’d hoped that someone would at least go up there, and it would all end. The tenants complained of knocking or creaking. They even heard her laugh. But no one investigated,” he grimaced like this left an unusual taste in his mouth. “I’d hoped that someone would have gone into the loft.”
“Who was she?”
“By she, I take it you mean my daughter,” he said proudly, lingering on the word daughter as though it should mean something to me, and the look he gave me also suggested similar. “You don’t remember her, do you? I know it was such a long time ago, but—”
I walked around the chair and onto the beige woolen rug where Paul also stood. “How should I know her? I’ve only just moved into that house. Why the hell should I know your daught—?” Then it hit me, and as I backed away from him, as a door in my thoughts opened, I felt as though a cold sheet of enlightened memories had fallen over me, and it was suffocating. I kept on backing away until I stumbled into the chair that was offered previously, and fell into its comfort.
“Yes…you do, don’t you? You played with her all the time. Of course you do. You’ll remember coming round for dinner after school?” He grabbed the teddy bear from the mantle and threw it into my lap. “This was hers. I remember that, once, you took it from her, stole it and took it to your home.” He spat the words at me. “She was heartbroken when she couldn’t find it. It wasn’t until a few days after that, I don’t know why, perhaps you felt guilty, but you returned it. You told her that you had found it down the alleyway, behind that wall you used to play on. I knew you were lying to her. Although,” he assured, “I understand why you did.”
As I stared into the teddy bears brown button eyes, I was overwhelmed by guilt. I couldn’t understand why I felt this way as I barely remembered her, but I did know her. “Sarah?” I looked up at him; my eyes felt clammy, perhaps from the rain, perhaps tears. “What did you do to her?” I was beginning to see her in my mind; it was as though the toy was giving up its secrets as I gazed into it buttons. “She disappeared! I remember that. She just wasn’t here anymore. My parents avoided the subject like it was taboo—don’t know why. But because we didn’t talk about it, I think after a bit of healing I just forgot about her.”
“That would have been the trauma. You hear about that sometimes. Your mind probably chose to forget—a kinder way to handle it. Sometimes I wish I could erase her from my mind, too; it would be easier.”
“You told everyone that she went missing.”
“That’s right. We did. You never saw her again after you gave back her bear.”
“I thought it was my fault! You never told me otherwise! I remember you making me believe I was the reason she went missing. I cried to sleep for as long as I could remember.”
“I know, and perhaps I was harsh on the matter.”
“Harsh! You really think? I was fucking nine years old!”
“I was angry,” he contested.
“Who with? Me?”
“With myself. I was angry with myself.” Paul sat in the chair opposite. He sank back into its softness, squeezing the arms like they were stress balls.
“But she didn’t go missing, did she? You lied to the police—hell, I remember seeing her face on the television,” I shook my head. I tried to get my head around this. “Sarah is in my loft, Paul. Your daughter is in my house. She was dead and bagged up, and you told everyone that she went missing?”
“It’s all I could think of at the time. I panicked…that’s all.”
“That’s fucking all? Are you for fucking real?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Who are you sorry for? Certainly not for me; how could you be? You say that you panicked.”
“Of course, yes. You see, there was an accident. Do you remember that day when you gave back her teddy?”
“Not really. I suppose very vaguely.”
“Well, after you left, I admitted to her that you had stolen it.”
“Why would you say that?” I sat up.
“Simple answer to t
hat question—I didn’t like you.” Paul shrugged passively and began to push himself up straight. “I thought you were bad for her, so, in a round about way, I told her.”
“You lied to her.”
“The truth didn’t matter. I wanted you out of her sight.”
“So, you killed her, too?”
Paul shook his head, denying the accusation. “I told you!” he blasted, then a little calmer, “it was an accident. Before you go branding me for being a murderer, don’t you think you should hear me out first?”
“Her body is in my loft.”
“Listen to me! Sarah ran up the stairs. She was running away from me after I told her about you. I caught her at the top of the stairs. I don’t know why, because it’s just not me, but I pinned her up against the banister. I wasn’t going to harm her; I didn’t like seeing her upset and wanted to console her.”
“By roughing her up?”
“I didn’t do that! I suppose I was a bit rough with her, but, I don’t know—I could have let her go, cry it off in her room. But I didn’t like to see her cry.”
“Did you try to stop her from crying, Paul?”
“What are you insinuating? That I tried to stop her crying some other way?”
I shrugged. “You could have suffocated her, put your hand over her mouth. That would stop the noise. Is that why you did it, because you couldn’t stand her screaming?”
“No, No! Janice was screaming at me from the bottom of the stairs to leave her alone. I wasn’t going to harm her, but the tone in Janice’s voice said otherwise. I had Sarah in my hands. I had her, Peter! And then I didn’t. I let her go and she tumbled down the stairs.”
I got to my feet. I couldn’t take my eyes off Paul. He just seemed so relaxed as he told me, as he had told the story so many times in his head, well rehearsed, groomed to just the right level of truth. He sounded as though what he had done had happened, and that was that. I would have been convinced that he felt no sorrow, too, if not for wiping away the tears from his cheeks.
“I heard her whimper with desperation as she fell, reaching out for the spindles in the banister, but she couldn’t grab onto them. I raced down the stairs after her, but it was no good. And then, I heard her neck break; there was nothing after that. The air in the hallway was still and would have remained that way if not for Janice falling to her daughter’s body, hopeful she would still be breathing, but knowing that it was over. When she realised her daughter was gone, her grief killed the silence. She never looked at me in quite the same way. Her heart had been torn out that day, and everyday after that. Only when her brain tumour got serious did things get better. And that’s why we left that house…because we could, and because of her illness, Sarah seemed to become a memory in a film Janice had watched a long time ago.”
I turned to leave the room, clutched the handle, but before I opened the door, I looked at Paul from over my shoulder. “You could’ve just called an ambulance, gone through the motions of it being an accident.” Was I going to believe him? Take his word that this was all an accident. What if he had murdered her?
“I know. I know that now. I just reacted, Peter. Isn’t that what we do, react?”
“Badly! You made a crazy choice, because I have Sarah’s body in my loft, and I’m going to have to tell someone.”
“The police?”
I nodded. “I guess.”
“Go ahead.” He blew out like it was all a relief. “I knew this would happen one day, and I’m grateful that its now.”
“You’ll go to prison,” I said.
“Yes, probably. And Janice will go into care,” he bit back. “I guess it’s fate that brought you here, that it was you who found her. I suppose that’s justice’s way of making things right. There’s irony in everything.”
“No right can become of this, and it’s certainly not fucking ironic! It’s messed up.”
“But—there is another solution, if you’d lend me your ear. I’d like to appeal on your best nature. You’re a good man, Peter. I can see that in you.” He looked desperate, and paler than when I had first entered the house, like his confession had taken so much from him. He picked nervously at the arm ends. He avoided looking at me, head low and gulped spittle down his dry throat. “Janice— well, it won’t be long until she’s gone, and it would be convenient if you could hold off on telling the police until her illness has taken her. I don’t want her to spend the remainder of her life in a care home; I’ve heard bad things about those places.”
“Yes, that would be convenient, wouldn’t it? And if I agree to this and I go, leave you in peace, what will you do? Leave? Go on the run?”
“Absolutlely not!” He sounded deeply offended, making attempt to get up out of his chair as a thought of confronting me entered his mind, but his old bones prevented such a hasty move. “I told you, I am ready to face the consequences. I deserve that!” He relented his body back to the chair, although sat on the edge.
Looking down at his clench fist, I said, “Are you ready, Paul?” I had the door marginally open, but I slammed it shut, allowing a picture from the wall to tremble.
Paul glanced at the other wall, where on the other side Janice was sat knitting. He appeared panicked like he was frightened that his wife may have been disturbed. His fists slackened.
“You really think you’re ready to explain why you daughters’ body lives in a refuse sack in my loft? The search parties were out looking for her! All that time, all those lies.” The teddy bear was still in my hand. I rushed over to him and crushed the bear into his chest without consideration of his frailty. His eyes bulged, taken back by my actions as I continued to grind the bear into his chest. “I ripped open the fucking sack! I didn’t know what was inside…how could I. Dried up soil spilled out! Soil! From the fucking ground!”
Tears were flowing from his eyes, but his face was expressionless as he stared back. Paul opened his mouth like he was trying to say something but couldn’t find the words. I couldn’t tell whether he was shocked or merely winded.
I retreated, leaving the toy to fall limp down his torso, like a soldier tumbling fatally to the ground, and I screamed out, not caring if Janice heard or not. I lifted my hands to my head and tugged at my hair as if by doing so would release the answers I was searching for. I looked at the grandfather clock hiding in the corner of the room, playing out its hypnotic repetitive beat. Maggie would surely soon be home. Had I closed the loft hatch when I left? I didn’t want her to find it unattended and felt the need the investigate herself. And, although I doubt she had the courage to go through the hatch, there was always that chance.
“We buried her in our garden: I buried her,” he corrected himself. “Underneath the tree, if it’s still there.”
“There are two trees. One has a swing attached.”
“Good God; is that still there? But—but yes, that one. She used to play on that swing all the time; she would want me to push her as high as gravity would allow. The branch would creak and I would slow it down, but she never shared my fear. That swing was our place, where we could laugh and be thankful of one another.” He paused, and loosened his lips as though he was tasting something bitter and nasty. His face contorted when he said, “And then you would come, strolling into the back garden from around the house. And when she saw you, I didn’t even exist!”
I understood now that this man clearly resented his daughter’s friendship towards me. And that’s all I was, a good friend, like any other child friendship, past, present and future. But he talked to me like I had taken away his daughter from him. Like I had killed her.
“I buried her there, not too deep, but deep enough, and placed her teddy bear with her. Janice said it would keep her company. And all throughout we knew it was the wrong thing to do, we walked away from her grave knowing that we had made a terrible mistake by not reporting the accident. But it was too late for anything like that, now. There would be too many questions.” Paul struggled getting to his feet, grimacing with a h
and on his thigh for support. “Every night for a week we heard scratching on the back door. First I thought it was cats, although we hadn’t heard anything like this before now. Then something would tap on the door, a constant knocking that we heard throughout the night. Windows would smash or crack. On one night in particular, it was two in the morning when we heard the most peculiar sound. It came from the back door. By the time I opened it, the sound had stopped. Stretched out on the patio in a pool of blood with its intestines spilling from its belly was next door’s cat. The blood was still bubbling from its insides. I had seen nothing like it before. But what struck me the most was that Sarah’s teddy bear was laid next to the feline almost touching its blood. I picked it up immediately and ran over to the tree, fearing the ridiculous, but the grave was still intact. I collected a spade and a flash light from the garage and placing the torch under the tree, I started to dig up Sarah’s grave.” Paul turned to me. “I couldn’t understand, you see,” he said as if it was important for him to explain to me. “I was sure I had buried the teddy with her. Sure of it! But when I got to her body there was no bear. As I sat on the edge of her grave, I cried into the bear. Sarah’s body had a thin layer of earth over her. I couldn’t see her face.” His eyes widened, lines spreading at the sides. “I was sure I could smell her, feel her standing behind me, watching. But it wasn’t joy I could feel; she was angry.” He lowered his head. “I tried talking to her. I had hoped that if she could hear me, she would have forgiven me for what I had done to her. I got to my knees and began to excavate the dirt from her face until I could see my darling daughter. And when I had uncovered the soil from her eyes and mouth I suddenly decided what must be done. I removed her body from the grave and carried her inside, placed her on the kitchen table. Janice, I had hoped, was still sleeping. But she wasn’t. And when she starting screaming, I hit her until she never screamed again. I went for the refuse sack and placed Sarah inside. Before I put her in the loft, I gave her back her teddy bear.”