When she spoke to Alex, he seemed astonishingly careless of Jordy’s fate. ‘Oh, he’s all right,’ Alex replied.
Chloe asked him how he could be so sure and Alex just shrugged and said, ‘I get feelings now, Clo. He’s not far away. Honestly, I can feel it.’
‘You’re beginning to frighten me, Alex.’
Alex said, ‘Sorry.’
‘No, you don’t have to say sorry. It’s not your fault, but you seem to have changed lately. I don’t know what to make of you.’
‘Sorry, Clo.’
She let this one pass. Indeed, walking behind her brother now she felt she hardly knew him. He appeared quite unconcerned by their plight. Here they were, lost in an unknown world, their parents completely ignorant of where they were or what they were doing, with the possibility of never finding home again, and Alex seemed carefree and content. It wasn’t that he was happy exactly, but he certainly wasn’t worried in any way. Chloe couldn’t pin it down exactly, but Alex apparently had a connection with the attic that she did not. He appeared to be at home here.
Passing through a dim area, where the light clustered around a few peepholes in the roof, something happened.
‘Did you see that?’ cried Alex.
Chloe’s heart was beating fast. She had indeed seen it.
The dust was still settling from the sudden disturbance. It was difficult to believe. For many days now they had been wandering Attica without seeing another human being. Now one had popped up, just like that. A woman had unexpectedly opened a trapdoor from below.
The woman had lifted a box and pushed it along the boards as far as her arms could reach. Then she had vanished again, closing a trapdoor behind her. Another box of junk for the attic. To the woman’s eyes, unused to the dimness, the darkness had been impenetrable. Somewhat harassed, with fly-away hair, she had disappeared as quickly as she had appeared. Obviously to her this was not a vast continent whose guttered eaves were long journeys away, but simply her own small attic space.
‘Look, you can see the cracks now.’
Chloe looked down. There were faint lines in the dust forming a square. She stirred the dust with her toe, pushing it aside, and found underneath the unmistakable shape of a trapdoor. It was the first they had seen since leaving their own part of the attic. Perhaps there had been more which had gone unnoticed.
‘Oh, Alex,’ she said. ‘I wish this was our house.’
‘Well – well, it’s not.’
‘But it might be next door?’
Alex raised his hands. ‘Is this our part of the attic? No. There’s none of our stuff here. That means we’re in another part. If you go down that trapdoor, Clo, you might never come back up again. Who’s to say where you’ll end up? Not just another house in another street in another town. Could even be in another part of the world. You wouldn’t want to go down and find yourself in Holloway Prison, would you? Or stuck in a hut in Alaska? I know I wouldn’t.’
‘Of course I wouldn’t,’ she snapped, ‘but that’s just guessing. This is the first trapdoor we’ve come across …’
‘No it’s not,’ replied her brother calmly, staring at her from beneath the brim of his big floppy hat, ‘there have been lots more. You just haven’t seen them. I have.’
‘Stop being so know-it-all.’
‘Oh, I don’t know everything, but I know enough. I can’t help it, Clo, I have seen other trapdoors. I thought you had too. You mustn’t take any notice of them. We’ll know if ever we come across our own.’
If ever? Chloe’s heart pounded. He really didn’t care. You could hear it in his voice. It didn’t matter to Alex if he never went home again. She stared back into his deep brown eyes. There was no troubled look in them. They were calm and accepting. If she felt she had grown a lot in spirit since she’d been in the attic, Alex’s spirit had somehow been transformed. Chloe didn’t know him. He had turned away from her. It was not necessarily a bad change; Alex had not become some evil monster. He was simply very different. At least, part of him was.
‘Don’t keep looking at me like that, Clo. You’re scary.’ He nodded at her head and grinned. ‘You’re beginning to look like a witch. You need to wash your hair.’
Now this was more like the old Alex. She reached up and touched her hair. She had always been very proud of it. It was long, black and silky, like her mother’s. Very full, very thick. It had always shone with natural oils, but now it felt like straw. Horrible matted straw. She reached out, lifted Alex’s hat, and ruffled his straggly hair. ‘You too. You look like a tramp.’
‘Do you think we could find some shampoo somewhere?’ He scratched. ‘I think I’m getting fleas.’
‘You can’t be getting them. You either have them or you don’t. Anyway, I’m not surprised. Anything could be in those old clothes you’ve taken to wearing. A colony of termites. In any case I don’t think you’ve got lice.’ Chloe always insisted on calling things by their proper names. ‘I think you’ve just got a head full of scurf. We’ll have to be on the look-out for some shampoo. Come on, let’s get on now. If Jordy’s not far away, as you think, we need to find him.’
‘They escaped from the voodoo dolls.’
Lucky for them.
‘’Twasn’t luck, master, ’twas Makishi.’
I think we’re wasting our time with this bunch.
‘Then let’s not bother with them.’
The board-comber is tempted to let the children go. He takes his bag of Inuit carvings out and feels the soapstone figures through the cloth. How he would love another one for his collection. Perhaps a wolf? Or an arctic fox? Or even another human: a shaman of the clan? What a delight that would be. New eyes. That was what the children represented. New eyes had always been better at spotting things than tired old ones. Old eyes that had travelled over the same piles of junk a thousand times. Maybe he’d better stick with them just a little while longer.
I’ve got nothing better to do.
‘That’s the spirit.’
Where are they heading at the moment?
‘Oh dear. Look.’
We may have to get them out of there.
By the time evening came Chloe and Alex were in a part of the attic which seemed darker and more eerie than anywhere they had been before. There was an atmosphere of unnatural calm about the place. Chloe sensed that no one had visited this region for a very long time. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed in this corner of thick dust and dead air. On the one hand this was good, for it meant there were no Atticans here or strange beings like the voodoo dolls, but on the other hand there might be a good reason for the lack of life.
‘Alex, what do you think?’ asked Chloe, shivering and hugging herself. ‘Should we stay here?’
‘I dunno,’ replied her brother, putting down his pack and sending up a grey cloud of dust. ‘Don’t feel right, does it?’
‘No.’
They stared about them, their eyes getting used to the dimness. This was an area of the attic where the roof was lower than usual. In fact there were places here where the children had to duck to prevent their heads banging against rafters. Crouching, they explored a little, finding not the usual piles of old clothes, but clusters of dulled brass crosses and chalices, with heaps of shabby hassocks between. Neither child was particularly religious. Their father had been a Hindu and while he was alive Dipa had followed that path, but neither parent had been particularly zealous. The children had been mildly interested, but they had also had influences of Christianity and Islam on their doorstep by way of school friends. Here, clearly, were the trappings of Christianity, but they had little idea what they meant and why they were here.
The children moved forward.
‘It’s creepy, isn’t it?’ said Alex. ‘Spooky. Yuk, there’s a huge spider’s web here, blocking the way.’
Alex swept his hand through thick silken threads, breaking the snare of the absent spider.
‘You know I’m not scared of spiders,’ said Chloe. She tilted her c
hin in that typical pose of defiance she adopted when she was prepared to do battle against her fears. ‘And I’m not scared of spooks. People talk about ghosts being in graveyards, but if ghosts haunt old houses how can they be where their bodies are buried as well? This is just stuff from old churches. You’d expect an attic in England to have this sort of thing.’
‘I guess.’
Suddenly they came across a broken sign, held by a rusty nail to a low rafter. It read: DORM, but part of the sign was missing. Beyond this sign was a very low-roofed area – so low they would have to crawl to get in there – with mounds covered by dirty white sheets. At the head of each mound was an oil painting, leaning against the humped sheet. They were all portraits of smiling and unsmiling people, looking stiff and awkward in their poses. Some of the subjects in the paintings were dressed in historical costumes – dark old oil paintings with brown varnished surfaces – others were in more modern clothes, the colours a bit brighter and more vibrant.
Chloe sniffed at the horrible musty odour of the place and shuddered.
She asked, ‘Do you think that sign once said DORMITORY?’
‘Dunno,’ replied Alex in that infuriating couldn’t-careless voice. ‘I’m tired. Let’s just rest here the night and see what happens in the morning.’
‘Well, a dormitory is the right place to sleep,’ agreed Chloe, ‘if that’s what it is.’
‘I can hardly keep my eyes open,’ complained Alex.
Chloe too found the urge to sleep irresistible. Alex lay down first while she fought against her feeling of deep fatigue.
Gradually though she slid to the floor, sending up a puff of grey dust. There she lay half-awake, half-asleep for a few minutes, caught in that twilight world when the mind flutters in a pleasant state of tranquillity before fully dropping off. How pleasant it was to finally let go and fall, fall, fall, as if into a deep forest pool of warm feelings. Let the world carry on without her.
Just before she dropped off completely she felt her mother pulling up the bedclothes and tucking her in. Her mother seemed to have black hairy claws instead of hands. And her breath smelled of something foul, like rotting cabbages or old drains. But Chloe was too far gone into sleep to worry about things like that.
Once, during the night, she woke up to see a dark figure sitting on a stool. The figure was all in black and difficult to see in the very dim light, but he appeared to be painting. There was a canvas on an easel before the figure and, though very drowsy, almost to the point of unconsciousness, Chloe could see the arm wielding the brush. This brush was dipped in a palette of paints then brought to the surface of the canvas with a sweeping motion. When he saw that his subject’s eyes were slightly open, the figure in black smiled, and shook his head as if to say, ‘Back to sleep, Chloe.’
Is he painting me? thought Chloe. I wonder why?
Then she dropped off again, into a deep, deep slumber.
Don’t they know anything?
A dust sprite formed, and then ran like an upright lizard on its back legs for about twenty paces, then seemed to silently explode into a cloud of settling specks.
You’d think the number of dust sprites around would be warning enough. The place is full of them. They’re running around like cockroaches.
‘They don’t see dust sprites. Their eyes aren’t good enough.’
Do you think they want to sleep for ever? Some do. I know a board-comber who came here and gave himself up.
‘These are outsiders – they want to live.’
You’d think they’d recognise the signs then: the mouldering mounds, the tombstones at the heads of the graves. You think they’d smell what it was. They must have sawdust for brains.
‘Don’t be so hard on them. You remember what it was like when you first came to the attic. You didn’t know a thing. It was a long time before you found out there were malevolent board-combers like this one. How are the children supposed to know he collects souls?’
Eternal rest. Up here it means what it actually says. To sleep for ever under a dust sheet. There’s something a little tempting in that, when you feel as world-weary as I do. But how could they not realise? Look, it even says DORMIRE on that sign. Don’t they teach them Latin these days? I was taught Latin at school. I’ve got the scars to prove it.
‘It doesn’t say DORMIRE,’ the bat points out. ‘It says DORM.’
Well, it’s meant to say DORMIRE. There’s winding sheets all over the place. Who could miss such signs?
‘You did once – and you called them shrouds in your day. Are you going to get them out of there before it’s too late, or what?’
I’d have to touch them, says the board-comber, shuddering with disgust, his breath hot against the inside of his mask. I’d have to lay hands on them.
‘Well, I certainly can’t do it. I’m a bat.’
I’ve a good mind to let them stay there.
But the board-comber knows he will not do that. He still has enough humanity to motivate himself into helping his own kind when they are in trouble. He berates the children for being ignorant, but knows it was the same when he first arrived. There are many traps in the attic, many pitfalls and hazards. If one manages to avoid the first few, one becomes wise to them. One becomes attuned to the rhythms of the attic, so that when unknown dangers appear, warning sounds go off in one’s head. It wasn’t necessary to know how all the traps worked, just to know what might be a trap and avoid it. It got so he could smell snares from a safe distance.
The board-comber sprays one of his kerchiefs with cheap scent found in a little blue bottle labelled Evening in Paris. This will protect him from the odour of the sleep gases left by the bad board-comber. Tying this around his nose he then enters the Garden of Eternal Rest and grips the boy by the heels. He does not like doing it, but knows the children will remain here always if he doesn’t do something about it. He then drags the boy out in the open, away from the sleep gases exuded by the board-comber.
This board-comber is like all collectors in the attic: it gathers its treasures in one place. This one collects souls. It is one of those creatures like Katerfelto, which has appeared all by itself. It has the shape and form of a human, but the heart and mind of a spider. It waits for the tug on its web and then descends from the rafters to wrap its victims in shrouds. It hangs its souls collection in a secret place, nailing them to rafters where they flap in the four draughts from the four corners of the attic.
Once the boy is out in the open, the good board-comber goes in and drags out the girl. He then wipes his hands on his coat, as if the children had left a sticky substance on them. Somewhere above, the vile collector of souls is watching, grinding his teeth.
Chloe woke to a feeling of intense coldness.
There was a dirty sheet over the lower half of her body and she kicked it off in disgust. She looked round to see a long streak in the dust where she had been dragged while slumbering. In panic she looked around quickly for Alex. He was lying not far away, still asleep. Then she sat up and noticed an oil painting, half-finished, lying face up in the dust. Reaching out to touch it she found the paint was still not quite dry.
She recognised herself as the subject of the portrait.
‘Oh, what is that?’ she murmured, shuddering. It was a ghastly painting. Her features were pale and lifeless, her eyes were closed, her lips were a translucent blue. Her head was resting on a pillow of pure-white lilies. There was a very faint but frozen smile on her face.
It was the portrait of a dead girl.
‘How horrible!’
She tore her eyes away from her own terrible image and saw that her brother remained asleep.
‘Alex, wake up,’ she called.
‘Whaa—’ Alex rolled over and opened his eyes. ‘What’s this thing wrapped round me?’
‘I don’t know. I had one too.’
‘It stinks,’ he said, kicking it off.
Alex stood up and stretched.
‘My head aches. I think there’s gas a
bout. Can you smell gas?’
‘I don’t know. I think we ought to get away from here. This is an evil place.’
They gathered up their packs and as they did so Chloe noticed footprints in the dust. Yes, someone had definitely dragged them out from under that low roof. Jordy? Surely not, or he would have stayed. Perhaps it had been one of the Atticans? The soles of the shoes the person had been wearing were very large though: bigger than an Attican would wear. She sighed. It was just another mystery attached to this weird world of boards and rafters. Whoever was their saviour obviously did not want to be known. An anonymous person: a guardian angel of some kind.
As Chloe caught up with her brother, she saw something which made her pause and think. It was a ball of string, lying on its own, gathering the dust of ages. Picking it up, she had a wonderful idea. It was a scary idea, but it seemed it might be the answer to a very big question.
‘Alex,’ she said, reaching him, ‘I’m going down that trapdoor.’
Alex’s expression became serious.
‘You can’t, Clo. You don’t know what’s down there.’
She showed him the ball of string.
‘I’m going to tie the end around my waist and you can reel me down into the house below. That’ll keep physical contact between the two of us. If anything goes wrong I’ll just come up and join you again. As long as we both hold on to the string we can’t be parted. This way I can sort of get our bearings in the real world. Find out where we are.’
‘I don’t like it, Clo.’
‘Well, I don’t like it either, but it’s got to be done,’ she said firmly. ‘That woman didn’t look like a monster. Maybe she’ll help us? We can only ask. Look, I’ll tie the string to my jeans belt like this … now help me get this trapdoor up. Is there any handle? No, well, use that penknife thing you keep flashing every five minutes. At last we can use it for something.’
They struggled with the trapdoor and finally eased it up. Dust clouds went everywhere, making them both cough. Then Chloe took her torch and shone it down the square black hole.
Attica Page 17
