Rats in the Loft

by Lumby, Mark

  “Why the loft, why not keep her in the ground?”

  “Don’t you see? This was her way of telling me! She wanted to be close to me. It was her making those noises. She broke the windows.”

  “Killed the cat? She was dead, Paul.”

  “I don’t need to be reminded of that!” he said bitterly. “But I’m telling you, this was her way of communicating. And this was my way of making it all stop. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

  My impatience with his stories was grown strong, and credibility was crumbling like the dried soil Sarah was wrapped with. This was all lies. It must have been. “This is bullshit! She was dead! You killed her! And this scratching and smashing of windows and dead cats, it’s all the talk of a crazy old fool.”

  “It was an accident, Peter,” I was reminded.

  “So you say,” and then I calmed a little. Reluctantly, I listened to him. “Okay, so let’s say it was an accident. You didn’t go to the police, you buried her, and because she was haunting you, you dug her up and hid her in the loft? All this because you thought it would solve everything.”

  “Yes—and it worked!”

  “Oh, please!”

  “No, really, it did. The scratching, the banging and tapping all stopped. She was at peace.”

  “So why did you leave her there when you moved?”

  “I couldn’t admit what I did; you’ve got to understand that. I don’t suppose I’m man enough to face up to that. But I knew what I had done was punishable. So I left her there, and hoped that she would disapprove and the scratching noises would start all over again. I know it sounds silly. I had hoped that someone, one day, would find her and that the police would find me.”

  “Well, I did and they will.” I started for the door, yanking the handle.

  “So, that’s it then?” he said, his arms falling defeatedly by his side.

  I paused, and with the door wide open, I said, “How did you think this was going to play out?”

  “But I beg of you,” he gasped, “please give me more time. It’s not for myself, you understand; my Janice, she needs me!”

  “I’m sure someone will take care of her.”

  “Yes, there will be, if you could call that care. I just want her to be happy until the end.” Paul lowered his head. “I don’t want her to know of any of this.”

  “Do you actually think she will still remember her daughter, let alone what you did to her.”

  “I’m sure she feels her, in one way or another. A mother’s love never disappears, right? But I pray the memory of what happened has been lost.”

  “She struggles to find in her mind who you are; what difference does it make who takes care of her?”

  “Well, despite what you believe, I do think it makes a difference. I’m not just making excuses. Please, you have to believe me. Just let this go—let it go until Janice is no longer here. Please, I beg of you!” He was a frail man and he looked so small in this state. Tears rolled down his cheeks. He approached me, falling weakly to his knees, sobbing, and grabbed at my hand, brought it into his face, my hands sticky with tears.

  He was pleading with me now.

  He was desperate. It was pathetic really, and I didn’t have time for this. But a better part of me saw things differently. This part was forgiving and wanted to help this man, and despite what he had committed, I thought about Janice. As much as I hated Paul, what he had done, whether it was an accident or he had murdered Sarah, it wasn’t fair on Janice. She was innocent in all of this; shouldn’t she be left to die with the love of her husband around her?

  Paul’s eyes were puffy and reddened, looking like they were bleeding. My hand was still against his mouth, still begging for mercy. He kissed it, and with a combination of tears and mucous lubricating the back of my hand, I swiped it away is disgust, wiped it on my trousers. But just as I did, Janice made her presence known and entered the room with a tray of tea and biscuits.

  “Now, now boys. All this talking makes thirsty work,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. We may have been two brothers having a heated discussion on football for all she knew. And she didn’t know a lot, her life being new from when she had opened her eyes this morning. She had to rely on what she had been told, on what Paul had briefed her upon. She wasn’t even aware that her husband was on his knees, pleading for his future, and hers, and brushed past him, oblivious, placing the tray onto the glass coffee table by the fire place. She turned with a thin smile. “Biscuits are on the tray,” she prompted and began to walk out, humming to herself, fully ignorant of her husband’s feeble breakdown.

  Then it dawned on me. How come this woman who suffered from an incurable illness, woke up every morning, her memories either gone or very faint, and she placed her trust in a man who was a stranger to her. ‘A mother’s love never disappears,’ Paul had said. And I wondered if that included the love of a husband and wife. After living with each other for so long, companions in life and all of its difficulties, was it possible that deep down Janice felt safe with Paul? Perhaps he was a stranger to her, but not as unfamiliar as he presumed. So was Paul right? Did she need him?

  “Just shout if you need a sandwich making. Oh—and Edward,” she looked down on Paul as he patted his eyes with the back of his hands, unfazed by his emotional state, “are you and the boys playing away this weekend?”

  “Away, dear?”

  “Oh, Edward—dear is for sweethearts, not your sister!” she scoffed. “I may come and watch, if that’s okay by you? I think your friend, Paul, likes me,” she waved her hand, like a fan, in front of her face. She left the room looking a shade of flustered, still mumbling but her voice faint as she went down the hallway.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  Paul held up a hand. For now, I felt pity and helped him up. “It’s like that sometimes. She thinks I’m Edward and we still live with her parents.”

  “Edward?”

  “Her elder brother. They were very close. Besides her parents, he was all she had. We used to play football together down in Acomb. The Acomb Magnets we were called, although we weren’t very good,” there was a glimmer of a smile. “Janice came to the occasional game. That’s how we met. Edward introduced us, and that was that.”

  “So, he could care for her—Edward,” I decided.

  He shook his head. “He died fifteen years ago. He had heart troubles. They found him on the bathroom floor, pants around his ankles, lying in his own shit.”

  “And there is no other person, family or otherwise?”

  “You see him. I’m all she has.”

  “I see.” A mother’s love never disappears. I couldn’t get what Paul had said out of my mind. It troubled me because I was actually beginning to think that perhaps he was right. Maybe I should wait. But what of Sarah’s body? What would I say to Maggie? And Samuel—what should I tell him? Rats in the loft?

  Oh, by the way hunny. That noise in the loft, it’s only the ghost of a dead girl I used to know from years back. But it’s okay; she’s harmless really. Her body is above where we sleep, but its fine! I’ll call somebody in the morning!

  Although, the problem could stay with us for a few months, but what if her illness was lenient with her and she lived for another year, or two. Was it really worth it? I placed myself in Paul situation, if I was the carer and Maggie had a time bomb in her head poised to explode. I think, perhaps, that I would have been as desperate as Paul was. So I decided to help him.

  I wouldn’t tell Maggie though. How could I find the words?

  * * *

  The car wasn’t parked when I arrived home. As I opened the front door, recovering from the sprint down Askham Lane, Maggie drove onto the driveway. She smiled at me, but her eyes didn’t smile with her, which lead me to believe there was one question she wished to ask. Had I sorted the problem?

  I dashed up the stairs, and into our bedroom. I could feel a stale breeze rushing through the loft hatch. It smelled different, perhaps because I knew more
, the reason for Sarah being up there. It smelled—rotten. I only hoped it was in my head and that nobody else could smell it. I leaped onto the step ladders and pulled over the hatch. But before I totally closed it, I paused and took a look into the loft. It was dark, only laser beams of sun light leaked through the roof tiles. Even if any of the light was shining light onto Sarah, the chimney breast blocked his view.

  “How’d it go?” Maggie called up the stairs. I heard her walk down the first floor landing, but even closer was the sound of Samuel in front of her, racing up the stairs like it was a competition.

  “Dad! The party was awesome! We have to go for my birthday. Pleeeeease!”

  “Sure thing.” I quickly dropped the hatch into place, jumped off the ladders just as Samuel darted into our bedroom. Maggie followed him. She looked anxious. I brushed down my trousers, giving the impression I had just finished off in the loft.

  “Did you find anything?” she asked. She held a grimace on her face as though she had expected me to say that I had found mice or rats up there, and that grimace was preparing her for what she didn’t want to hear. Although, she didn’t want to be told about the decomposed body neither.

  “Was it Sarah’s dead body?” Samuel said.

  “What!” I gasped. “What did you say?” How could he know?

  “Rats! Was it a dead rat?”

  “Rats?” I looked at Maggie, still trying to process that Samuel hadn’t said what I thought he’d said. Maggie waited expectantly, and for those few seconds Paul and Janice invaded my mind; I thought about Sarah, the incident, of her body all alone in the loft sleeping above where we slept. About the truth. Then my trail of thought ended with Janice and her brain tumour. I began to imagine what would happen once Janice had died and I would finally tell the police about the body. I thought of the thousand questions Maggie would ask; why I had lied.

  “Peter!” Her voice was raised.

  I was staring at Maggie like she was a stranger. Eventually I said, but still sounding unsure, “Exactly what I thought,” and I shrugged. “Just rats.”

  Although it was the last thing she had wanted in our house, she looked as if it was a relief just to know the truth.

  The truth.

  Our marriage had never been tested before, although I feared that it soon would be.

  Samuels eyes were wide. “Rats?” He swallowed hard.

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “There was only two of them. But they were dead. Had been for a while by the look of them. I found a mouse, too, so I guess the scratching noise must have been from that.” I was actually lying to them. And in some ways, I was astonished on how simple it was. I had imagined lying to my family to be the hardest thing in the world. But here I was, new to this deception, and I found it easy.

  “Where are they? Outside?” Maggie wondered. “And why are you wet?”

  “I bagged them up, dropped them into someone else’s garbage.”

  “Peter! You can’t do that!” She sounded shocked, but failed to hide the little smirk from the corner of her lips.

  * * *

  The lights were out. Maggie lay awake, hands resting on her stomach, fingers tapping. “Are you sure you checked everything?”

  “I told you,” I sighed. It had been the fourth time she had asked that evening.

  “I know, but are you sure? You did check under the insulation didn’t you? They breed in that stuff.”

  “I did.”

  “And between the wooden beams?”

  “Yes—that too. Listen,” I huffed, propping myself up onto my elbows, “I can go up tomorrow if you’d like. Check a second time.”

  “No, no, it’s okay. It just freaks me out thinking of those things running about up there.”

  If only you knew about Sarah, then you’d know what freaked out really means.

  “Well, those things are dead now.”

  It took Maggie a while to fall asleep. I knew she was thinking about those rats.

  I was thinking about Sarah, and how easy it had been lying to Maggie. But mostly about Sarah, her decayed body sleeping above us, or to be more precise, above Samuels bedroom. I watched the digital clock as the hours disappeared, minutes fluttering by like lemmings falling off a cliff. My mind was dizzy with thoughts of yesterday, whether the right decision had been made, whether Paul had been totally honest with me. I even had doubts whether Janice actually did have a brain tumour. Was it a story Paul had told me because I’d placed him on the spot? Although it did appear magnificently rehearsed to be anything other than the truth.

  …the whole truth…and nothing but the truth…so help me God.

  When it was all over, and Janice had died, and I would go to the police, then what? Would I be arrested? Locked up. Would I be a suspect? But Sarah had died when I was a child, so how could they suspect me?

  But they might, the voice in my head told me. You have her body in your house. They’re gonna suspect something. Maybe you didn’t kill her, but you have her now. You’re hiding her. You’re as much as a suspect as Paul!

  I’ll just tell them that I didn’t know she was there.

  And what would you tell Maggie? She would know that you’ve lied to her? How would that make her feel?

  She’ll understand. I’ll explain it to her. She’ll know I had no other choice.

  You did have a choice!

  This is the right decision!

  Really? Don’t you think you feel a little guilty?

  Why should I feel guilty? I scoffed at the question a little too loudly, and realised Maggie was stirring. I stopped thinking for a while. I might have fallen asleep, too, until my conscience broke the peace.

  Because Sarah’s father doesn’t like you. He never liked you then, and he still hates you.

  That’s not true.

  You heard him, Peter. I was there with you, remember. He told you that he didn’t particularly like you. You heard him! I heard him with you! He blames you for her death. If you hadn’t been so close to her when you were children then she might still be alive today.

  That’s rubbish.

  If you hadn’t taken that teddy bear, the pair of you might have eventually had a relationship, got married, had children. There would be no Maggie, no Samuel. Just you and her. But now that’s not possible because of you!

  Then there was just me, no voice. Perhaps it was quiet because the argument had been won and there was no disputing it. Maybe I was to blame. The warm colours that dawn brought was delivering its aurora around the edges of the curtains. It was 5:37am. My eyes were moist and puffy, stinging without the sleep I needed. I swung my legs off the side of the bed. I turned to Maggie. She was peaceful and in the same position in which she had left herself, her hand resting on her stomach. I smiled at her apologetically. I suppose I was sorry for lying, but I couldn’t apologise. I can only be ultra kind by way of an apology and pray that she doesn’t see through the smoke screen.

  I was troubled by something else. As I stared at the loft hatch, I couldn’t help but wonder what had made those noises. Since it was clear we had no rodents, I had disturbing thoughts on where the tapping was coming from. Was it really her? Was it Sarah? The disturbances had ceased, for now. Whether it was because I had found her, I really didn’t know for sure. Although, it was an unusual coincidence that the noises had stopped.

  I would need Maggie to disappear again, hopefully occupy Samuel too, which would allow me some time in the loft. I needed to see Sarah, neither from a morbid sense nor nostalgic, but if she were to lodge in my house, in my loft, then the hole that I had ripped apart in the refuse sack would need to be re-sealed. I didn’t have to do this, but I needed to. Because, strangely, I would feel safer. Once this chore was finished, I would leave the loft alone—until Janice had died.

  Just as I decided to head downstairs, make a coffee, rehearse in my mind what I would say to Maggie when that day arrived, it was there—the giggling of a child. I turned to Maggie; sometimes she would laugh in her sleep. But it did s
ound like a child. It couldn’t have emitted from my wife. I decided to stand on the edge of the bed, careful not to rock Maggie awake, and with a hand supporting on the wall I stretch my body as far as it would go, my ears as close to the loft hatch as they would reach. I checked back at my wife, still sleeping, fingers entwined on her stomach. She slept like a dead person. But when I heard the giggling no more, I speculated, or rather hoped, that it had come from Maggie. As I stepped off the bed, I was startled by a small figure to my left. At first, I froze as I saw Sarah as she was all those years ago, as if she had been playing outside in the summer sun, her long dark hair caked to her forehead by sweat, and blinding her sight. Until I was convinced by a second look that it was actually Samuel, and my heart returned from my mouth and back to my chest. I sighed, relieved, and placed my hand on his shoulder.

  And then he spoke to me in a voice not of his making. “I’m lonely.” It was as though he wasn’t speaking to anyone at all, this murmur of dissatisfaction. “Its cold up there and you took him away from me.” I gasped, slipped my hand away from his shoulder as though he was some kind of contagious infection. Samuel’s arms hung by his sides, and the colour of the sunrise manifested his face into something else. His eyes stared vacantly. He didn’t seem to own them. He gaped, tongue inconsiderably leaning over his bottom lip, supporting a dumb expression, as he said again, “So lonely.” The sadness was heavy in the air, engulfed like a suffocating blanket of depression. And then he giggled. It wasn’t his voice, though. And throughout, Samuel did not even move his mouth; his tongue peeped over his bottom lip, spittle wetting his chin. The voice was coming from the base of his stomach as though something else lived in there.