The Wolf in the Attic by Paul Kearney Read Free Book Online Page B

here.
    No clock chimes can be heard in the attic. Even the sounds of the streets below are absent. There is nothing but darkness and silence and cold.
    ‘This is very disappointing,’ I say to Pie with a sigh, and I make my voice loud, looking around me as I say it. I am the mistress of this house – Mrs Bramley told me so. But I cannot shake the impression that I am not alone up here, and all the little hairs on the back of my neck are standing up, like the pelt of an alarmed cat.
    The attic is full of junk. There are old broken-back chairs, and boxes, and racks of ancient-looking clothes that smell damp and dreary. I can see a feather boa, and an enormous hat, wide as a tray. I pick my way over the creaking floorboards, the shadows giving way before me.
    ‘Bosh.’ I say loudly. ‘Bosh, tosh and balderdash.’
    Some of the clothes have just been piled up in a heap on the floorboards, and they smell too. They look almost like a nest, but it’s hard to tell. I look them over and see that they are covered in grey mould.
    The candle is almost flat with the holder now, and spilling veins of wax at an alarming rate.
    I don’t know what I had thought to find up here, but it was more than this neglected, waiting emptiness.
    A treasure chest, perhaps, or a cavalry sabre, or a madman’s diary… or even a doll. But there is nothing, not so much as a book to read. Just that rank smell.
    ‘It must be the damp,’ I say to Pie.
    I can see the slates of the roof, the beams and joists of old and massive wood which support them. Buttresses of brick stick out at regular intervals, and as I pick my way through the rubbish and the boxes I see the mummified body of a little mouse on the floor, and feel a pang of pity for it, to have died up here all alone.
    ‘That’s what smells I suppose,’ I say. Though it seems too small to account for the stink.
    ‘We shall open all the skylights and air the place out,’ I tell Pie. ‘Bring up a lamp, and some books, maybe even a stool or something. It could be cosy, I’m sure of it.’ I don’t think Pie is convinced.
    I look up at the yawning broken skylight again. There are stars beyond, a glimmer of them. The catch is too high for me to reach. I would have to pile up the boxes, and they all look fragile, like sandcastles which have dried out and will crumble to the touch. It will have to stay open for now.
    Newspapers, from another century, yellow and mottled. Here a pair of gloves, the leather stiff as biscuit. A belt, gnawed by little teeth and rippled with mould. A pair of broken spectacles. And some photographs. It is too dark and the candlelight too uncertain to make them out with any clarity, but I see stern faces and stiff collars, muttonchop whiskers, a pot plant. In one there is a sleeping baby, and for some reason it makes me shiver to look upon it.
    I wonder who they were, these strangers in the photographs, and if they live yet, or if they are among the dead now. I suppose they must be. There is no life up here, nothing that was made in the century I know.
    But perhaps the baby in the photograph is still alive, quite old by now, all grown up and with children who have children. Perhaps they have chased me down the street and called me names.
    They belong here, these faded faces from the past. And I do not.
    I return to the doorway that leads below. The candle flame is bright, and tall as a willow leaf, but it has not long left.
    ‘At least it’s quiet,’ I say to Pie. ‘It would be different in daylight, of course. And no-one would ever find me up here.’
    No-one would ever find me. If I sat up here I could be as forgotten and alone as the dead faces in the photographs.
    I shiver again. I think of the noisy, incessant chatter of the ground floor rooms when they are full of strangers, the way the voices echo through the house, my father’s among them.
    I know now that he will never read me a story at bedtime again. He has given up on all the stories. All he wants is his