Out of the Attic Page 3

  He pointed out some of the very old things that had been stored. “I don’t know why,” he said. “I used to call this the Miser’s Palace. You know what misers tell you when you want to throw something out or give it away? ‘Someday this will be worth something.’ It’s worth something, all right, something to dust. It has a place to sleep. Now I would call it another Foxworth cemetery. You can almost hear their souls gathering up here. I used to think that was why the ceilings below creaked.”

  It gave me the chills to hear him say that. I didn’t even like looking up the dark stairway now, but I had no doubt Malcolm wouldn’t be dissuaded. For all I knew, he had been up here a number of times.

  “Malcolm!” I called, and walked to the door. The waning light of the late-fall afternoon sun barely illuminated the steps.

  “You’ll get hurt up there, Malcolm. Come right now, this instant!” I shouted up the stairway, and then listened. The silence was broken only by the sound of the wind swirling over the roof and seeping into the cracks. It was almost a whistling. “Malcolm?”

  I looked about for a candle, but this room had been unoccupied so long that no one bothered with it, especially in the evening. I was sure too much movement would stir whirling dust up from the floor. The room was more like a tomb. A rancid odor made me gag. Something might have died in it recently, I thought.

  “Malcolm, you are going to be terribly sorry.”

  I waited, but he didn’t stir.

  Reluctantly, I started up the stairs.

  Every muscle in my body, especially in my legs and thighs, seemed in revolt. I didn’t want to go any farther. How could he run up here? Didn’t anything frighten him? I was of a mind to retreat, close the door, and leave him hovering in some corner of the attic. After a while I would send Dora up after him. She should be the one going up here anyway. He snuck into the Swan Room under her watch. Garland never attached any blame to her when Malcolm did something wrong.

  “You didn’t let him sleep in your Swan Room when he was an infant,” he would remind me, as if Malcolm as a baby was capable of resenting it. I had real doubts that he understood his own child or any child’s mind. Lately, he had less to do with him than I did.

  Nevertheless, I had no doubt that if a terrible thing happened to him while I went to get Dora, Garland would blame me entirely. I could just hear him. Why did you chase him? Why didn’t you just leave him be until he came back? You drove him to go up there, and I had shown you how cluttered it was, how dangerous it could be for anyone, especially in the dark.

  I felt the sweat break out on my forehead and my neck. It gave me a chill. Again, I heard the stiff breezes penetrating the cracks and around the dormer windows. It sounded like the attic was sucking it in. Something tinkled like chimes above. Had he bumped into it or tripped over it? I listened for his cry but heard nothing, so I went up a little farther. The steps creaked under my feet as if the wood could complain like the sleeping dead who were annoyed at being woken.

  “Malcolm!” I screamed. By now he must realize I was coming up after him. “You come right down. I won’t spank you. Don’t make me come up there to get you.”

  I waited, listening hard for the sound of his small footsteps returning to the stairway, but all I heard was the wind whistling and that tinkling, perhaps of whatever was in his path. Reluctantly, I took another step and then another. The stairway was so narrow. It wasn’t much wider than a ladder, and the walls felt colder than the walls anywhere else in the mansion. Every few feet or so, there were webs of dust between the steps and between them and the walls. Some ugly-looking, wormlike creature, surely comfortable in hell, crawled upward. I avoided touching it and took another step.

  I was so frustrated, my rage twirling in my stomach, the muscles in my legs now aching with reluctance. I tried to swallow but couldn’t without taking a deep breath, and I hated breathing this stale, rancorous, and acrid air. It was as if the great house was rotting from the top down. In years to come, we would smell it everywhere. I raked my thoughts to find words that would drive him to submission and bring him back to the stairway.

  “You’re going to bed without any dinner tonight, Malcolm. And Mrs. Wilson made your favorite chocolate cake for dessert, too. You’d better come out and down,” I said, pausing more than halfway up.

  I waited. He made no sound, but I thought I heard something scurrying across the attic floor. Visions of rats as large as alley cats ran through my imagination. Garland had told me Mrs. Steiner periodically had Olsen use arsenic. Right before winter, he would go up and pluck the dead mice, rats, and other vermin, dropping the carcasses into a sack the way a slave before the Civil War picked cotton.

  What if Malcolm touched the arsenic or inhaled it?

  “There’s poison up there, Malcolm. You can die from it, or something bad will bite you up there and you’ll get a terrible infection and die,” I said. I was really warning myself. “There are evil spiders and rats and bats, too. One could bite you and give you rabies.”

  What else could I think of? Any other child would be somewhat terrified of such vermin, but in my heart I knew that hearing all that could easily please him. He liked creatures and especially enjoyed tormenting them. Dora was always chastising him for it, warning him of being bitten, but her criticism came dressed in such reasonable tones he was never threatened or afraid. I thought he might care if she liked him or not, that it was important to him, but Malcolm had his father’s independence and arrogance. He knew she would like him no matter what. I could almost hear him say it, even at this young age.

  I waited.

  Nothing, not a sound, suggested he was giving up. Maybe I should leave and not keep after him. Then he would come.

  I was tempted to do just that but mainly because what I had done was frighten myself and obviously not him.

  “Malcolm, I’m going back down and leaving you up here,” I warned. I really didn’t want to go up any farther. The autumn sun was sinking like a rock in water. The attic, the stairway, all of it, would soon be in pitch darkness. He would surely hurt himself then. The wisest thing for me to do now was simply leave and hope he would feel safe enough to follow before he couldn’t see his way back.

  “Maybe you belong up here, Malcolm. How would you like that? We can lock the door and keep you up here. You won’t be able to go to the lake and play with your toy sailboat or go for a rowboat ride. You won’t ride your pony, and I’ll make sure you don’t get any presents on your birthday or next Christmas.”

  I rattled off every threat I could imagine. There was still no sound of him, and then—

  Like a rifle’s discharge, I heard the door to the narrow stairway slam shut. I turned, pausing to believe it myself.

  “What?” I cried. The silence was suddenly deeper. I could see the door was indeed shut.

  I started down very slowly. Now that more time had passed, the steps were even darker than when I had ascended. What had he done? I imagined he had been under the bed after all, but why was the door to the attic opened? Had he thought of running up here and then lost his nerve? Or had someone else been up here and forgotten to close it?

  Or… could he be that crafty and deceitful at almost five years old and deliberately have opened it, knowing I would think he had gone up?

  I walked down to the final step and turned the door handle.

  The door didn’t move. I pushed it and turned the handle again, but it still didn’t budge. The cold, dank air seemed to rush down the stairway and close in around me. My whole body shuddered.

  “Malcolm? Are you holding this door closed?” I called.

  He didn’t respond. I tried again and this time put my shoulder against the door. It did not budge. Panic seeped into me, washing my neck and face in waves of heat as another frightening thought shot through my mind.

  “Malcolm. Malcolm! Did you turn the key? Did you lock this door?”

  It felt like it was locked. It didn’t even rattle. He had turned the key. The realization stunn
ed me for a moment. I stood there breathing fast and hard. I pounded the door and pushed on it and turned the knob, but it didn’t move. I shook the handle so hard I thought it would break off, but like most doors in this mansion, this one was solid.

  “Malcolm?” I screamed, and then I balled my hands and pounded on the door so intensely and fast that my hands and my wrists stung. I had to stop and then listened.

  There was only silence on the other side. Above me, whatever had scurried before began to scurry again. It sounded like more than one. The thought of them charging down this stairway took my breath away. I couldn’t swallow. My chest felt like it had turned to stone.

  “If you’re in that room and you locked this door, Malcolm Foxworth, I will punish you for a month,” I said, my mouth near the jamb. I didn’t want to breathe the dank, dusty air around me if I could help it.

  There was no response, not a giggle, nothing.

  “I will definitely have you locked up here. I swear I will. Malcolm. You’re hurting Mama badly. Everyone will be angry, especially your father. Especially Dora,” I added.

  I waited, really in disbelief at the silence. Could he be standing there on the other side, now too frightened of what he had done to move? Something crawled over my ankle. I screamed and kicked out so hard and fast that I nearly lost my balance. I felt like I was sinking in a well of panic, sinking like someone who had stepped into quicksand. I ended up slamming my rear on the step. I was trembling badly and, despite how I had avoided it, took deep breaths of this rancid air. For a moment I simply sat there, trying to convince myself that this wasn’t happening.

  But it was, of course, and now there were other reasons to panic.

  Who had seen me chase after him? No one knew I had come home from shopping. No one had greeted me, neither Mrs. Steiner nor Mrs. Wilson, and Lucas had gone off to finish a chore for Mrs. Wilson and then pick up a meat order. I didn’t want to wait in the carriage while he had done all of that, so I had him take me home first and then sent him back.

  After a good half a minute or so, I stood up and pounded on the door again and screamed until my throat ached. There was no response. Everyone was too far away to hear. How would anyone know I was in here if Malcolm, who was surely terrified about what he had done now, didn’t tell? I searched my mind for a solution and decided I had no choice but to go back up to the attic and call for help from one of the attic windows. I took the reluctant steps until I was up there, standing in the doorway looking across the vast attic that ran the length of the mansion.

  It was much darker now. The shadows had merged. Every piece of old furniture was covered in a sheet. When I was up here with Garland, they looked dingy gray, but now they looked coal-black, and the shapes pressing under them appeared to be moving, changing shapes, threatening, angry at being awoken. The Confederate uniforms I had seen hanging looked like ghosts were filling them out again. A dressmaker’s mannequin seemed to turn my way.

  I spun around because I thought I heard the sound of a trunk opening to my right. I was stone still and listened for the sound of anything, but whatever I had heard crawling was probably just as frightened of me as I was of it and cowered in a corner or under something, its heart beating as fast as mine. I was glad of that. I’d rather not see it.

  There was no time to dillydally anyway. Night was falling very quickly; it did this time of year, as soon as summer disappeared into the beginning of autumn. That sinking sun barely scratched at the horizon. I carefully navigated between old furniture, boxes of discarded clothes and shoes, and trunks. Every movement I made seemed to stir another cloud of dust or get something to scurry into a corner. I coughed and then paused to take some deep breaths with my hand over my mouth to calm myself. I counted to ten, something my father had told me to do when I was a little girl after something had frightened me.

  Gathering my strength, I continued on through the attic, moving carefully to avoid what I recalled had looked like rusted old farm equipment. I remember Garland ridiculing his father and grandfather for being so miserly as to not give it to someone who could have used it. I passed the school desks that Garland had told me the Foxworth cousins had used during the smallpox epidemic and wound around to the closest set of four deep dormer windows. Clouds were at that point between day and night when they looked more like shadows. Stars were twinkling brighter. I was never lonelier as a child than I was at evening when the world looked like it was spinning aimlessly into the vastness of space. Those memories still haunted me.

  I rushed at the windows.

  The first three didn’t budge. I started to panic again, but the fourth opened. I brought myself up to it and began to shout. I shouted until I was nearly hoarse, feeling embarrassed and stupid crying “Help!” but finally, I saw Olsen step around the right corner of the mansion and look up.

  “Olsen. I’m locked in the attic. Hurry!” I screamed.

  He rushed into the house. I hurried to the stairway, tripping on some smaller box and scratching my arm on a metal trunk before regaining my balance. It stung, but I hurried down the stairs, nearly stumbling over my own feet and falling head over heels. I pressed my palms against the door to stop my downward motion, and I waited, my eyes closed. Minutes later, I heard Olsen’s and someone else’s footsteps. The key was turned and the door pulled open. I nearly fell out, but Olsen stopped me with his big right palm on my shoulder. Mrs. Steiner stood behind him with a lantern.

  “What in all tarnation!” she exclaimed. I was sure I looked a sight, looked like a crazy woman. I had been running my fingers through my hair, and dust probably had caked on my cheeks.

  “Where is he?” I demanded.

  “Who, ma’am?”

  “My son,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I think he’s in his room with Dora.”

  “Thank you, Olsen,” I said. I started out and paused. “Take that key out of the door. I don’t know why it was left in the lock.”

  I continued into the hallway. Mrs. Steiner hurried to move beside me with the lantern.

  “What happened?” she asked. “How did you get locked in there?”

  I didn’t speak. When we reached the hallway to the Swan Room, Garland’s room, and Malcolm’s, I hesitated. Somehow I had not lost the belt. It was still wrapped around my wrist. Dora heard the commotion and stepped out of Malcolm’s room.

  “Where is he?” I demanded.

  “He’s curled up in his bed, ma’am,” she said. “He’s been shivering with fear.”

  “As well he should,” I said. “Did you see what he did in my bedroom? Why did you permit him to go in there?”

  She shook her head, her lips trembling.

  “She was helping me, ma’am,” Mrs. Steiner said. “What did he do?”

  Ignoring Mrs. Steiner, I hurried past Dora and into his room. He was lying there on his bed with his face buried in the pillow. He had his left thumb in his mouth. Now he would pretend to be a baby, I thought.

  “What happened, ma’am?” Dora asked, coming up behind me, Mrs. Steiner a few feet back. “He was covered in dust, too. You have a bad scratch on your left arm,” she said. “There’s blood on your torn sleeve. I’ll fetch a wet cloth, medicine, and a bandage. Did he do that?” she asked incredulously.

  “He caused it. He nearly destroyed my entire wedding album and then ran away when I caught him doing it. He tricked me into going up the attic stairs and then locked the door behind me. I fell and scratched this arm on some metal trunk.”

  “Oh, ma’am. That’s a lot to lay at the feet of one so small,” Dora said.

  I turned on her, my eyes probably blazing. “Are you blind, deaf, or stupid?” I asked. “One so small? You know better than I do that he’s stuffed with enough mischievous behavior to choke a horse.” I turned to him. “How could you do such terrible things, Malcolm, and to your own mother?”

  He didn’t move or say a word.

  I stepped closer and raised the belt. “Maybe this will bring some answers.”
br />   “Oh, ma’am, don’t,” Dora said. “I’ll see to him. He’ll have no toys and be kept in his room for as long as you see fit.”

  My hand trembled. I knew I should lay at least a half dozen good whacks on his behind, but Dora was trembling almost as much as Malcolm, who I was sure was pretending, and Mrs. Steiner was staring at me, looking shocked and terrified, too. Reluctantly, I lowered my arm. I had to show some control, or they’d somehow get Garland to believe I had gone mad.

  “He’s to stay in here for… a week,” I said, turning to her and speaking calmly but firmly.

  She nodded, but I could clearly see she didn’t believe I’d keep to a week.

  “No dessert tonight, Dora. No dessert for lunch or dinner for this whole week. I mean that. He cannot go out to play with his bike or go to the lake with his sailboat toys. Nothing.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She looked at him. He still hadn’t turned, and his eyes were tightly closed. She knelt beside him and put her hand on his back softly. Then she stroked his hair. “Why did you do such a terrible thing to your mother, Malcolm?” she asked him gingerly. “Why did you run away and hide where it is so dark and dirty? I’ve begged you to stay out of that part of the house. Why would you go there?”

  He took his thumb out of his mouth but didn’t answer.

  She looked at me and then turned back to him. “Did you lock your mother in the attic?”

  “She was going to beat me,” he said, without looking at either of us.

  “I sure was and still might,” I said, “if you don’t listen and sit and think about what you’ve done. Do you hear me, Malcolm Foxworth? You have gone too far this time. You’re not a little baby. You know you’ve done a terrible thing.”