The Girl In The Floor

Emile jammed the woollen ears of his duck hat down over his head. He stuck out his tongue, because he was concentrating. The coin he was using as a screwdriver kept slipping from his grip.
He had been careful to put back the exposed wires and lift the white plate back into its place before putting the screws back in. His mother had gone out for groceries. She would be mad on seeing what he'd done, but Emile was doing it for her. So she wouldn't electrocute herself.
Emile was nine years-old, and saw himself as protector of the house. He wore a beige duck hat with white woollen flaps over the ears. He never took the hat off, even when his dad came home from work and told him to. He was slightly scared of his dad, mainly because he didn't like the colour black, and his dad dressed in a long black coat, and carried a shiny leather suitcase, also in black.
There were no brothers or sisters yet. His teacher had asked him the first time he came to school, late, refusing to take his hat off with all the other kids staring at him.
He had to stay home sometimes to look after his mum, because she was getting worse. This week the carpets had been taken up, the beds stripped, the mattress hoovered. Last week the plug sockets dusted with diatomaceous earth, even though fiddling with the wires could kill her.
She sat in her dressing gown at the kitchen table, scratching at her elbows, because she said, they were the parts that they bit the most. She spent her nights carrying out the same routine. She made Emile do it too. His bed was surrounded by a long line of sticky tape. There were deflated balloons in all four corners of his room. It looked like a party everyone had deserted.
Sometimes during the middle of the night Emile would wake up because something had been sprayed in his face that smelt funny. It was his mum, with a bottle of undiluted teatree oil, to keep them away.
Emile's father did nothing but go to work and let her get on with it. He didn't have the money to pay for it even if they did have bed bugs. Emile's mother was convinced, and washed herself and all the bedding once a day.
Once a kid at school said Emile had nits. But that was impossible, because he never took his hat off, even when he was put outside the headmistresses office for telling lies. He said it was a condition that caused him to behave like this. He had got it from his mum.
He had just about screwed the last plug socket back in its place when the door slammed and his mother walked in. She frowned when she saw her son, kneeling on the exposed floorboards.
The first words she spoke Emile could predict, because she had been saying them ever since Emile had been an infant. “What have you done?”
This was the part when Emile ran from the living room, back to his carpet-less room with only a mattress for comfort. Everyone always assumed the Stoker family were moving. All their belongings had been under dust covers, rotting in storage for months.
Aunt Sylvia paid visits to try to calm Emile's mother down. When the boy sat in his room, squashing flies against his bedroom window he heard the two women talking. “It's not right,” Sylvia said, “Jenny, you have to get somebody in.”
Emile thought it was too late for pest control. If the bugs were here, they were staying here forever.

That night he had been sent to bed without tea for putting back the sockets in their correct places. Emile played with his ten pence piece, spinning it until it fell between the gaps in the floor. His carpet was all rolled up against one wall. The floorboards underneath smelt like mud.
He heard his father arrive home. His booming voice scared Emile, who huddled under his blanket, his hat brushing the bedclothes. His pyjamas were too small for him, and had bunnies all over them. If anyone had invited Emile to a sleepover he would have to have said no because they were so embarrassing. But nobody invited him.

Emile found himself drifting off to sleep to the sounds of his parents arguing. They didn't care really. They were just together because of him, and they were on the verge of splitting up, because of him.
Emile knew he didn't belong to one of them. The problem was, he wasn't sure which one; his mum or his dad.
He looked like his dad. He had his dad's thick eyebrows, and his serious frown. But there was no way he would ever wear black. Black was the colour that made his dad frown too much. He knew that he was like his mum. There were times in the night when Emile would wake up in a cold sweat, shaking. He had imagined the bed bugs crawling up the walls, and into his ears and mouth.

The next morning Emile got dressed, ready for school and noticed the plug socket in his room was open. The ten pence piece lay on the floorboards beside the plastic covering. He wandered over and picked it up. His mum was sat at the kitchen as he left for school. “Do you want me to stay at home today?” Emile asked hopefully. Jenny Stoker shook her head. She got up wearily and pulled the hoover out of the kitchen cupboard. Emile left the house as its the high pitched wine of the motor was switched on. They couldn't even afford a proper hoover.

There was the coin in his pocket, and he felt good holding it all day. When someone made fun of his hat, or pushed him around he fiddled with the round object. It rattled around in his pocket, making him feel guilty for leaving his mother alone, with the bugs and electricity.
When Emile got home from school, the house was empty. He closed his door carefully and got out the only thing that hadn't gone into storage. In between the covers of his mattress and the bed, Emile pulled out an old storybook of the Three Pigs. He turned the pages, and they made a crunching sound. Someone had left the book on the windowsill at school, and it had gotten damp and mouldy. Emile thought that no-one would want it, so he stole it.
He decided to read it before the light from outside faded, and his parents came home. So he wrapped himself up in his duvet and began.
By the time he got to reading about the last pig, a small light began to glow from around the pages of the book. A candle was being held up for him, by a girl much older then he was. Emile jumped, dropping the book. The page he was holding ran down the edge of his thumb, slicing it open.

“I got this light for you, to read the rest of your book.” Her voice sounded like two people speaking at once, in harmony with each other. Emile scrambled over his bedclothes. He kicked back, missing the girl by inches.
“Who are you, and where are your parents?”
“Where are my parents,” The girl grinned. “That's not the kind of thing I would be asking.”
Emile could see the floorboards had opened up behind the two of them. A large gaping hole, lead down further into the house. Emile knew they didn't have a cellar.
“My name is Cecily and you need a bath.”
Emile sniffed the inside of his pyjamas. It smelt musty, but only because he hadn't washed them himself. He sucked his bleeding thumb.
“It's the hat, I think.” The girl reached out for the beige duck hat, only to have Emile grab the woolly ears and wedge them over his head even harder. He couldn't see, but he could smell the girl's breath. It was cold, and watery. “What are you doing in the floor? We don't even have a cellar.”
“I'm here because you asked me to help.” Emile hadn't asked for help. The girl in the floor had got it wrong.
“You asked me to keep your parents safe, because you didn't want to lose them. And I have.”
Emile thought back to the many times in his head he wished for other things, like a plane, or a real tiger in his back yard. When he asked for help with his parents, he really didn't expect it to arrive.
“Where are they?”
“They are safe, and now you can put everything back the way it was, and live how you want to, knowing you'll never have to say goodbye to your mum in the morning wondering if you'll ever see her again, because she's electrocuted herself because of the plug sockets, or been eaten by the bugs.”
Emile scratched his head, tears formed in his eyes. “There aren't any up here, by the way. The bugs are with me. Your parents frighten them too much.”
The candle was dripping wax onto the bedspread. “Why are you down there?”
The girl in the floor looked up. “I fell in love.”
“So they sent you down there to live?”
Cecily shook her head. “ I went down there myself. I was fed of being affected by things.”
A cricket was rubbing his legs together near the splintered bits of wood. “You can come down here too. Just for a visit.”
Emile immediately shook his head. Being affected by things, was what made him hold his ten pence piece tighter. He didn't want to let those feelings go.
“You really don't want me to send them back up here now. Listen to the quiet. No more spraying, hoovering.”
It was quieter now, without his father's booming voice. The carpets could go back. His bed clothes could stay on for a week.
“See how you like it. Just for a day.” she said. The girl made her way back to the hole in the floorboards. “Just see how you like it.”
Emile pulled his bedspread up to his chin, and the candle went out.

It was quiet for an hour, and then Emile began to hear the bugs. The girl had been wrong. He was sure he could hear them. That night he realised he cared so much about the bed bugs and whether or not the lived in the house, that he must by rights, belong to his mother. And he felt sad, because although he hated black, he had his father's eyebrows. And there had been hope that he would one day grow up to let the woman in his life just 'get on with it' like his father had.
Emile spent the day returning things to normal. He found he didn't have the strength to pull the carpets across the floor, and he didn't want to in his own room because he wanted the girl to return.
When there was a knock on the door Emile hid under the lounge windowsill. He could sense the visitor, whoever it was, peer through the window above him. Emile held his breath and his hat for comfort. He suspected it was because this was the fourteenth day he had, had off school in a month.

* * * *

“I am like my mother,” Emile said out loud to himself. He noticed that his father had left his suitcase in the hallway. The little boy didn't know the combination to it, so he just ran his hands over it.
Emile dragged the suitcase to his room, picked up the three pigs book, and waited for the girl in the floor to arrive. He knew she would have to come back. She would want to know whether or not he liked it. He resolved to tell her that he didn't, even though he secretly did.
She didn't appear until Emile had read the three pigs for the fifth time.
“I know you're going to say you didn't like it.” The girl stood by the door. She bent down and touched the plastic plug socket. Emile swallowed. Cecily wore a sort of flowery patterned dress. She wore a pink hair-band.
“Everyone wants to know their things are safe, without having to look after them. You have been looking after them though, haven't you?” The girl looked towards the rose wallpaper, and Emile knew she was staring past it, through to the gap where he kept his piggy bank. There was a total of £20 in there. He was going to give to his father to buy his mother some flowers.
“I want them back, now everything is back to normal.”
“But they'll mess it up,” the girl walked forward. “People do. Mess things up.”
“Who did you fall in love with?” The girl ignored him.
“If you come downstairs I'll show you.” Emile shook his head, put down his book, and put his arm around the black briefcase. “Love can't be that bad.”
“You love that hat, don't you?” Emile nodded. “Imagine if I took it away, because I wanted it.”
“Why do you want it?”
“I just do,”The girl continued.
“That's silly. I want Jenny and Paul Stoker back.”
The gap in the floorboards had closed while they were talking.
“It's Jenny and Paul Stoker now, is it?”
Emile sighed. He knew he wouldn't see his parents tonight.
The girl started to walk in a long line across the carpet. Emile knew she was tracing the floorboard lines.
“You were the one who opened up my plug socket, after I put it back.”
“I don't like coverings, but if they help you feel better..” she shrugged. “Come with me. There's no coverings down there.”
Emile felt for his ten pence piece, and the woolly material protecting his ears. “I'm not going anywhere. They'll be looking for me. The people from my school.”
Smoke spiralled up from the floorboards and Emile nodded silently to himself. He had sometimes smelt smoke where there was none. His aunt Sylvia told him it was a medical condition he needed to get checked out.
Emile had once been called silly for wearing his hat, by a girl he could tell just wanted his attention. From the look on the Cecily's face Emile could tell this would require a lot more effort.
He cringed inwardly at saying her name.
“You just don't get it, do you? I'm keeping them from returning to look after you. Your parents aren't coming home. This is it.”
Emile Stoker looked around him. He was too young to live alone, and this girl knew it. “How are you keeping them away from here?” He raised his eyebrows suspiciously. Cecily sighed.
“There's nothing to keep them away from. They're safe. That's all you need to know.”
Emile jumped up from his bed, with his briefcase under his arm. He figured there must be something in it that would help, but resolved to snoop around after Cecily had gone. “Who did you love?”
Cecily became irritated. There only sounded like one person speaking now. “No matter how many times you ask that question, I'm not answering it.” Emile noticed that today she wore a white dress with lace sleeves, almost like the dress that his next door neighbour's child Belle wore when she was christened.
“Why not? Are you scared of the answer?” Cecily's hands disappeared into the sleeves of the dress.
“They've gone to the hospital for a check-up. Your parents. They're keeping your mother in.”
Emile stroked the fur of one ear of his hat. “Why would she want a check-up, is it to find out if she's crazy?”
“She's pregnant. With your baby sister.”
Emile considered this for a moment. The only experience he had ever had of babies was of Belle, and she was nice enough. He smiled.
“Aren't you worried she's going to take all the love away from you?”
Emile's smile dropped. He wasn't worried about that. The kind of love he received from his parents was always in the form of tellings off. What he was worried about, was why his father hadn't come back for his case, or him. “You're lying. My dad would come back for me.”
Cecily shrugged. “I'm just trying to make it easier for you. Things are coming for you and you're going to be affected no matter what. It's called preparation.”

Emile dragged his dad's case into the kitchen, where the tap was dripping. He sat on it and folded his arms. And before he knew it, Cecily was gone.
Emile knew where the knives were kept, and the screwdrivers, and the diatomaceous earth to kill the bugs and the flash lights. He even knew where the car keys were, when the time came. If Cecily was right and things were about to affect him, well maybe he would need the car.
He carved up the leather case, being careful to slice away from himself. And what he found in there was nothing. His dad. The large man dressed in frightening black had been carrying nothing to work everyday.
Emile left the shredded suitcase in the kitchen and opened the back door. He stood on the step and surveyed the long garden. The lawn was overgrown, up to his knees. Cecily was there, holding out a dandelion for him.
“So you found out there's nothing in there, right? Your father doesn't have a job. He probably sits in a bar all day while your mother worries about bed bugs. Now do you want him back?”
Emile nodded. “Show me where you fell in love.”
Cecily considered this for a moment. It wasn't against the rules.
She took him down the road, until they were standing opposite the old cinema. Emile looked at the grand arches housing the ticket booth. The red velvet steps. All of it closed.
Cecily took Emile's hand for the first time then. She led him through an alleyway littered with ginger beer cans, through a battered old door covered in old posters into the cinema. They sat at the back. Emile felt excited, because his mother never had time to take him to see films, and his father was too busy carrying around an empty suitcase to bother with stories.
The stage was painted in gold, and the curtains, heavy and blue, were dusty. Cecily looked up at the small window where all the film equipment was kept. She was silent, as Emile swung his feet back and forth, waiting.
“He was a projectionist, wasn't he?” Cecily didn't move. “You keep looking back there, as if he were right there.”Emile thought of the projectionist walking through the cinema. He wore red braces and old fashioned shoes, and glasses.
“I told you I don't like coverings,” Cecily snapped all of a sudden. “That's all cinema is.”
They both sat there in silence until Cecily stood up and held her stomach. She left Emile there waiting for a film that would never begin. He tried to hide his disappointment by counting the patterns in the ceiling.
They were outside when Emile realised he might be seen by the school officers. It was the middle of the day. If they caught him, they wouldn't let him live alone.
He ran all the way home, not looking back. As he opened the door of his house he spotted a black insect scuttle across the wall. His mother was right. Emile sprayed undiluted teatree oil on it immediately. And when that didn't work he got a hammer and crushed it against the kitchen wall, as proof.
“What's that?” Cecily said, when she caught up with him.
“It's a bed bug.” He replied.

* * * *

Emile was eating out of a tuna can, when Cecily appeared holding some paper cut-outs. She fixed them in a cardboard circle, and put them in the centre of his bedroom.
Emile wanted to ask about the projectionist, but every time he opened his mouth he found himself staring at the way Cecily's hands worked to create the cardboard shapes. She lit a candle and as the match flared and died, Cecily span the images around the light. The room filled with pictures of dancers and lovers and meetings. Of fireworks, and clowns and tears. They ate ice cream from the freezer and played cards.
Cecily fell onto the floor with laughter at something he had said. Emile watched the way her fringe fell over her eyes. They both fell asleep on the bedroom carpet, as clean as the day it had been lain.

* * * *

He found a bite on his finger the next day. And then all on his chest and arms. Emile fiddled with his coin. “They aren't bites,” Cecily said when she saw him picking the spots. “You're not well.”
They tried to catch fish together at the bottom of the garden, but the fish Emile's mother had bought were all dead. No one had fed them.
“I'm running out of food,” Emile said. “I don't have any money left.”
Cecily shrugged. “I survive without parents.” They were both sitting cross legged opposite each other at different ends of the pond. “The projectionist left me. When he told me he didn't love me, the only person I wanted comfort from, was him.”
Emile pulled his stick out of the water. On the end of it was a packet of soggy cigarettes. No one in the Stoker family smoked. “I know,” he replied. He scratched a bite on his stomach and coughed up into the pond.

* * * *

They ventured out to steal food. Cecily looked younger each time she visited from the hole in the floor. She wore blue dungarees, and her hair was pinned back off her head.
Emile borrowed his dad's boots to trek across the fields to find berries. Cecily tried to persuade him to kill a chicken, but he couldn't do it.
They ended up eating plants, which made Emile even sicker. He still refused to take off his hat.
Emile spent the next day in bed, sweating. He ached, and vomited and cried for his mum. “Now will you let them see me!” he cried out.
Emile knew he needed medicine. When he began to see blood in his sick, he shouted louder. For anyone to come.
Cecily appeared. She stared down at him with a face full of pity.
“You don't like coverings,” Emile said, and took off his hat. His black hair fluffed out in different directions. He offered it to her with eyes glazed.
At that moment Cecily kissed Emile, and it felt like all the blood had been drained from him. He saw the projectionist and Cecily holding hands in front of him. He saw Cecily crying.
Emile was only young and didn't know that when you kiss a stranger from the world below you pass everything onto them. He didn't know that Cecily had never had mumps, or measles, or chicken pox. That she was allergic to milk, and diatomaceous earth. That by being there, and doing what she did, was against the rules for girls like her.
Cecily suddenly knew the words to the Three Pigs off by heart. She knew Emile's mother secretly loved him, more than she loved bugs, and she couldn't tell him. She knew his dad hated the colour black. And they both knew that however hard she tried Cecily would never love Emile, not like she had loved the projectionist.
Emile fell back onto the bed exhausted. He wanted Cecily to hug him then. More than anything.