This
time he used a stepladder, but the roofspace appeared as disappointingly empty
as it had that once years previous, when after several attempts he had finally
managed to elevate himself between the bannister and the linen cupboard shelves
immediately below up to the panel recessed in the ceiling, its simple sliding
bolt pulled and the panel itself then pushed up to drop back over into
darkness, in such becoming the sole component of the attic’s inventory, then as
now.
The
void air into which his forearms raised him was not stale as expected, rather a
circulation of the outside cold keeping it relatively fresh, and had it been
spring or summer he might even have glimpsed a line of this hour’s daylight at
the roofing’s far edge.
Restricted
in the Levi’s jacket the removal of which his haste had precluded, he pressed
on the lightswitch, the fixture an unshaded bulb at his feet, to then stand
bent double and panting beneath the rafters.
He
had hoped this would be quick, the attic empty of everything save that
glaringly obvious item which at his mother’s insistence he was here to
retrieve, but the emptiness forced him to consider that his mother’s word, who
had not spoken at all these past two years, was mere babble in which her
deepening lunacy had found its manifest expression. He understood her condition
to have suffered a rapid deterioration. The terrific fits witnessed on his
recent visit and today’s telephone call heralding not revival but decline, as
if in this one last rallying of strength she might recuperate enough to finally
cauterize each naked nerve by which for so many years she had felt herself
tormented.
The
attic was empty, and the seeming absence of everything weighted anything
with significance. He was horrified to notice one section of the blond wood
scorched black, any attempt at context or history of which he put quickly from
his mind. Then worse: the sparse carpet of insulating fibreglass between the
beams he saw to be irregularly patterned everywhere with small dark pools,
closer inspection of which revealed in clusters dead wasps of inconceivable
number.
He
could access no memory of his mother ever using this space, but knew that did
not rule out her waiting out up here every second of his absence as the wasps
dropped all around.
His
random searches of the flooring and rafters had yielded nothing, and if the
attic was to ever give up its requisite secret he knew he would have to conduct
a systematic examination. Unsure that the space between would bear his weight,
he made his way to the back wall by carefully placing each boot upon the
parallel beams crossing the floor, stooping as he did so to crouch beneath
those obstructing him at waist-height and cursing his weak ankle throughout.
Supported
with one hand clamped fast to each subsequent upright, he probed with his other
every possible intersection of the rough pine framework within reach, from the
ceiling through the horizontal crossplanks and on down to the very beams upon
which he stood, resolving if necessary to roll up each disintegrating stretch
of insulation even if just to prove all this a facet of her madness, who was at
this very moment trembling in her bed, thinking
Mother:
If he doesn’t bring them back, I can never die.
and
sniffing at the air in hope of him.
The
stretch and stoop of his movements broke him a thick sweat, the jacket tight
about his shoulders as he worked quickly on, methodically moving back toward
the central opening in the floor through which he’d entered. He was directly
over this when his fingers leapt back from their sudden contact with the
unexpected, now lifting into the light a small lump of drab bandaging wrapped
loosely enough for him to discern its content as two separate units, and this
all he would know of it until the revelation appendant to his mother’s death in
the morning.
Tucking
the little package inside his jacket pocket, he turned and sat upon the
opening’s edge to better negotiate the ladder’s descent, leaving the house in
such hurry and so preoccupied as to forget the locking of its front door.
