Spiders And Flies

SPIDERS AND FLIES

The experience which was to mentally and physically scar me to this day
occurred on one of the last days of June, 1984.
I was walking down Grove Street, on my way back from the shops, having
just been sent out by my brother for a newspaper so he could find out
whether the horse he'd bet his giro on had won. It hadn't, and I was
starting to pray he'd be as stoned when I got back as he had been when
I'd left.
I was reading the paper - well, the 'Garfield' strip - when Henry
Anderson, a fat kid from my school, lumbered past the gate of a
driveway to my right, and ploughed into me like a bull. His face tore
right through the page, mouth a rubbery, terrified 'O,' bottom lip
quivering like something big had just taken a dive off it. I remember
looking into it and being able to make out the dirty black stubs of
failed dentistry work - But, by then, I was flying into the street,
with Henry's full (and there was a lot of it) weight on top of me. The
newspaper shot from my hands, and disassembled itself. I hit the
concrete with exactly the wrong part of my back, then Henry's weight
hit me. I once saw a cartoon where a scientist tried to build a giant,
but only got as far as his foot. The foot escaped, and went on a bender
around the world ('Frankenfoot,' I think it was called). At one point
it trod on a man, and when the foot peeled up there was just a pink
blob with eyes and a worried-looking mouth . . . I envisioned that same
thing happening here. I'm sure I might even have blanked-out for a
second or two.
I groaned, dimly aware of the newspaper scattering across the road.
Only then did I realise what had hit me. 'Henry, what the hell?'
It would be an understatement to say that Henry 'fat-bastard' Anderson
wasn't the most popular fourth-grader at Westbury Comprehensive, and
the reason for this was the same reason why kid's who smell, or speak
funny, or have lice, or poor parents, aren't popular in school . . .
Because kid's are prejudiced to the same degree as adults. And as you
grow older you think (you kid yourself, I suppose) the prejudice will
fade, but it doesn't, it just becomes more refined. Whether you're
talking about school or even about governments, it all boils down to
the same thing . . . There are spiders, and there are flies.
Henry had it worse than most though; fat kid's always do. At fourteen
years of age he'd been the butt of so many butt jokes and belly-laughs
he could have written a big fat book on the subject. He was held past
his stop every afternoon on the bus, and if you ever saw a hot air
balloon through the window during lessons you'd nudge whoever was
sitting next to you, and whisper 'There goes Alders, that fat
bastard.'
He was fat, friendless, and probably thought about suicide as
frequently as he prayed to God for the jokes to stop.
As he rolled slowly off me now, the first thing I noticed was his
expression. It wasn't that of someone who'd just had a nasty collision,
it was more like the vapid, 'what-is-this-beautiful-light?' stare of a
rabbit, just before you roll over the poor bastards head in your car. I
had an older brother, so I knew that look. The analytical engine inside
my brain got working as I fumbled shakily to my feet, and one of the
questions it came up with was, If Henry Anderson lives somewhere on
Birch Avenue on the other side of the village, what's he doing coming
out of the driveway of a house on Grove Street?
'Dennis,' Henry said from the road. He was trembling. Fair enough, I
thought, that scared the living crap out of me too, except . . . Except
he was really trembling, great, seismic sobs racking his prodigious
frame. His blue eyes - grotesquely adult-like in that round face - were
wide and afraid. I wondered how he knew my name, then remembered the
incident in PE a couple of months before: Me and eight other kids who
hadn't wanted to play football had been humped over lines in the
changing room. One of the kids - David 'Tosspot' Truscott, the
stupidest thing to come out of school since country-dancing - had found
Henry's P.E bag, with his uniform in it, and we'd each taken turns to
flush a piece down the changing-room toilet. I'd flushed his tie.
Compared to some of the other shit the kid had to put up with on a
daily basis, it was nothing to fuss over.
'What the hell's the rush, Henry?' I held out a hand to him. 'You look
like you crapped and forgot to take-off your pants.'
His hand filled mine, and I pulled him up. It was like trying to lift a
tree out by its roots. 'I-I -' Henry stammered, and no more. A gust of
wind made the iron gate behind him smack into its latch, and he
jolted.
I felt a moment of revulsion. There was something sickening about the
terrified way he stood there in the wake of that jolt, a fine layer of
sweat gleaming on his brow, his dark, short hair stuck to the contours
of his skull with it. Fear somehow made him even more grotesque than
usual. I was only a kid myself at the time, so less concerned with
making a mask of my feelings. 'You look like shit,' I told him finely.
He smelled like shit too. Sweat had left two dark perimeters beneath
the armpits of his blue, v-neck shirt. The shirt itself was a couple of
buttons away from being fully fastened, and - what with the sweat, and
the factory of flesh beneath - the overall impression was of a pupae
wriggling out of chrysalis.
I didn't tell him any of this though. I was still wondering what hell
he was doing coming out of . . . I peered beyond the gate: The house
was like all the houses on Grove Street, squat, red, boring. Four
windows, front door and an upended v roof, the way small kids draw
them. The only difference was that no-one lived there. I'd seen it
before, many times, on my paper-round, walking the route twice a day
from the bus stop to my house. Me and my best friend, Chris Billing,
had even discussed the possibility of breaking in one day with a couple
of others and camping the night. Right now though, with more than just
a glance spared it, coupled with Henry's first-time-on-a-rollercoaster
expression, it seemed different. It seemed more out of place than ever
before. The garden was weed-throttled from the gate to the front door;
some had even made it onto the walls and roof, from which a rusted TV
antenna jutted, like the mast of an ancient galleon. Three of the four
windows had been smashed through (one of them by Mark Eastern -
Nerd-Superior of the school nerds - a couple of years back, after a
bunch of Fifth formers had threatened him with rape if he didn't).
Beyond their jagged edges I could make out dark patterned walls, ghost
shapes of furniture. In the top right window hung a length of white
cord which I took to be a lightbulb cable, sans lightbulb. More weeds
clung to the window pane, and I wondered if maybe the house was full of
them too.
'You been in there, Henry?' I readied a burst of disbelieving laughter
should he reply yes.
Henry stared at me blankly, and, in the same contemptuous tones used by
my father when he talked politics, said: 'Dennis, that place is full've
cats, and people who've hanged 'emselves.'
This remark was so utterly unexpected I was still turning it over in my
head when it hit me that he hadn't stopped talking: '. . . It's where
the Hill family used to live, and you know what a bunch've fleabags
they were. They used to shag dogs, or, at least, I heard Brooksie from
Mr Harrison's class say so. He said the oldest one, Grant, he used to
shag dogs because he was too ugly to get a girl to shag 'im. Why'd you
think I was trying to get out?'
'What the hell are you talking about?' I sighed contemptuously, even
though I'd heard the same rumour. 'What's that got to do with cats, and
people hanging themselves?' I added, because I'd never heard that
part.
Henry looked at me slyly. 'You never heard the ugly history of this
place, Dennis?' Without waiting for a reply he continued, 'My Dad says
a guy was found hunged in the top bedroom, a couple of years before the
Hill's moved in, maybe '76. He read it to me from the paper, my Dad,
so's I'd never go there on a dare or with my mates. Said it was a tramp
who'd been squatting there. Police'd been trying to get rid of him for
months, but he went and hung himself, the tramp. 'Paper said he'd been
there a couple of weeks too, just hanging.'
I laughed, and - though I'm not proud of it - part of it was at the
thought of Henry's dad believing his son had 'mates.'
The house drew my attention again. It felt disrespectful somehow, to be
stood here within its reach, spilling its secrets. It was like
gossiping about a dead person while you're standing on their grave. In
the top right window the white cable showed clearly, and I could
picture the tramp hanging from it, white face blurred by dust on the
pane, but if you could see up close his skin would be swollen-blue, and
cracked, and - I clamped down on the thought, and was about to again
ask Henry just what the hell he was doing here, when he smiled. It
wasn't much of a smile, but on a fat kid like him it was more than
enough. Palming a clear patch from the sweat on his brow, he whispered,
'I'm going in,' like he'd read my thoughts. His voice seemed to have
lost some of its trembling edge.
'I thought you said you were coming out?' I grinned back. 'I thought
you said it was haunted.' It hit me that I'd been there, talking to him
for over a minute already. A kid who I'd spoken maybe ten other words
to in my whole life, a kid I didn't really even know except by name,
and by all the other names we called him.
'I never said haunted,' he declared flatly. 'And I am going in, because
I -' His eyes seemed to weigh me up, deciding whether or not I was
going to laugh. 'I saw something. And the reason I came running out a
minute ago, was 'cause I'd just seen it again.'
I didn't laugh. I didn't even smile. Despite the blue sky and June
warmth, a cold ball of fear had begun to expand inside me. 'What'd you
see?'
'You wouldn't believe me.'
I laughed, but only so I could turn away from the stare. He was
freaking me out, and mainly because I could sense somehow that he
wasn't lying. I'd completely forgotten the fact that my brother would
now be wondering where the hell I'd got to, and if you'd have asked me
right then where I'd just been you'd have waited a long time for an
answer. Hoping to force the truth, I demanded, 'Why, did you see a
ghost?'
'Come and find out,' There was a confidence about him which didn't
quite jibe with the mental character I'd built up prior to this moment,
and it was unsettling. The yardstick of worth at our school was
established by who you could 'take,' as in, 'I could take him, piece of
piss.' Harry was one of those kid's you'd never have considered saying
this about, because the ability to take Harry Anderson, piece of piss,
was something which any kid had in them. It would have been like a
pro-footballer expressing doubt over his ability to beat a team of old
men in wheelchairs. At least, it had always seemed that way before, but
- now there was confidence, now there was looking at him, and not being
to hold his gaze. And, for those few seconds until he turned away, I
didn't think I'd ever have been able to take him. He looked mean and
halfway gone.
I realised he was still waiting for a reply: 'You daring me, Henry?'
Glancing both ways along the street I could see no sign of life, but
people rarely left their homes on Sundays. Men stayed in to watch the
football, women to watch the Eastenders omnibus. And now the weather,
which before had been so ideal, had turned ugly. Clouds were slowly
converging upon the sun, and the edges of those clouds were dark.
Henry had the gate open, and was squeezing through once more. It was
hard to ignore that sight. The gate could have accommodated two people
at once if necessary, but Henry was making the bars grate noisily
against the stone fastenings in spite of the fact he was going sideways
and his cheeks were red from sucking in. It made me wonder how fast he
must have been travelling earlier, to have made it through in one go,
and what had scared him into this kind of speed.
One of Henry's trouser buttons caught on the wall, and ricoched off. He
was coping with it rather nobly, I thought. Watching him scraping his
way through that gate, resigned to the burden of what was - to the
fortunate majority - so natural a task, I found myself thinking, I
wonder if you're ever going to get laid, Henry. It seemed unlikely. And
it was this, this sudden realisation of the awfulness of the life which
he had yet to live, which finally convinced me to follow.
That, and wanting to know what he'd seen.
I held the gate for him, trying not to make too big a deal out of
taking the strain. 'Henry, seriously,' I whispered, wondering why I was
whispering, 'tell me what you saw. I'm not going in if there's a guy
with a knife, or something.'
'Think I'd be going in if it was something like that?'
'So what was it?'
'It was a cat,' he sounded a little disappointed, like the build-up had
been the most exciting part, which - in a way - it had. He surmounted
the last inch of wall and toppled free.
'A cat?' I walked through behind him.
He nodded, and we started through the weed-littered garden, the stone
path a matter of guesswork beneath tall, dry grass. Henry's eyes were
making careful sweeps of the approaching house, and I noticed he'd left
the gate open.
'What's so bloody mysterious about a cat?'
'It was dancing,' he replied, not looking at me.
I stopped, my face screwing up into that expression of pained disbelief
that only kids can get away with. 'Dancing?'
Henry twisted furiously: 'I said you wouldn't believe me. Yeah, it was
dancing. It was yesterday. I was walking past here on my way back from
my aunt's, on Denbury. It was up on its back legs in that window there
(A stubby finger indicated the upper right window), and it was dancing.
I couldn't stop thinking about it last night. I couldn't sleep, I kept
seeing that cat dancing, like it was on hot coals, and I kept telling
myself that I hadn't seen it, but I did. Dennis, I swear I saw it. And
then, as I'm coming past here again today, there's that same cat, doing
that same dance, and it was -'
'What kind of dance was it doing?' I was grinning now, trying not
to.
'Get lost, you dick.' He meant it too. There was an indignant flush
building on each cheek, two great tracts of frown divided his brow.
'You don't have to come. You're only going to spread this round, and
I'll get beat up for it, anyway.'
'No, I'm not, I just -' For a kid of fourteen he was startlingly
perceptive. 'I mean, how can a cat dance?'
'Same way you or me would,' he sneered, prompting an undesirable image
of him dancing into my head. 'It had it's front legs up on the pane
where it's not broken, and it's back legs were going up and
down.'
'Maybe it was just trying to get out,' I suggested, and that suddenly
seemed right, not just speculatively right, but certain right. I didn't
know why it was trying to get out (Or what it was trying to escape
from), but I knew that this was the explanation. I imagined Henry up
there in that same window, fingers splayed against the glass, legs
pumping up and down like a marionette, face flattened against the pane,
and his mouth a wide, silent, doughnut-shaped scream.
We were coming to the front door, all bound up with dead vines like the
cobweb-strewn cover of an old book. There was no way it was going to be
open, and that would be fine. Henry would be disappointed, there would
be a short walk back up the path, and that would be fine. I was
starting to get what my mother called 'the willies,' though I would
never have admitted it to him. The clouds that were passing,
ominous-grey, above had appeared too suddenly, too appropriately. Wind
streaked through a carrier bag buried in weeds, making it flap and
crackle. I wanted to tell Henry I had to get home. I wanted to tell him
this not because I had to get back home, but because I didn't want to
be near this place. But I didn't say a word, because the weaker part of
me knew I couldn't leave. The weaker part of me was saying that if I
quit now I had less guts than Henry 'Blimp' Anderson. I'd become as
mocked and objectionable to others as he was. My brother was probably
going to kill me for getting back late, but he'd kill me even worse if
he found out I'd quailed where a fat kid had stood firm.
We reached the door. Now that we'd reached it Henry didn't seem too
concerned about trying the handle. He looked at me, rather than at that
door, and I guessed he was running through the same things I had. 'You
think we could get arrested for this?'
'Henry, why are we going in there?' It was out, finally. 'I mean,
what's so special about a dancing cat?'
'Don't you want to see what's inside?' He asked, and it was the
accusatory 'you' that convinced me. I reached past him, took the handle
in both hands and twisted. Or rather, my hands twisted, the handle
remained still.
'Bugger the cat,' I said, and started to walk away.
'There's another door,' Henry called quickly after me, and there was
something about the tenor of this declaration which made me think it
was something he'd known awhile. I turned to see him pointing at it,
and could almost, almost understand why I hadn't seen it before. It was
built low in the wall a few feet to the right of the main door, and was
obviously the entrance to the cellar. Nearly all the houses in the
village had them, and even on the occupied, living houses they never
failed to give me the creeps - cellars are to a kid's imagination what
gunpowder is to a spark. The door was a light brown, weathered to the
same colour as the brickwork. It too had fallen prey to the weeds and
vines. Now that I thought about it, I'd seen the vines all the way from
the gate, I just hadn't expected there to be a door behind them.
'That's a cellar door,' I said weakly.
Henry nodded, smiling, without a source for the smile.
'You think I'm going down into that cellar you're dumber than you are .
. . ugly.' I'd nearly said 'fat,' and Henry knew it. He must have been
pretty used to it though, because his smile flickered only a second
before coming back stronger than before. Maybe he appreciated the fact
I hadn't said it, when most other kids wouldn't have thought
twice.
'What's the worst thing that could be down there?' he inquired. 'What's
the worst thing that could happen?'
I tried to think of the worst thing that could be down there, and what
it could do to us, but the best I could manage was, 'Spiders.'
'I hate spiders too,' Henry nodded, 'but I'm not afraid of them.'
'I'm not either, you moron, but . . . This'll be locked too.' I located
a handle among the vines and pulled the door, wide.
Neither of us spoke. The doorway gave vent to shadowed brickwork and
wooden steps worn to curves at the edges. In the cold circle of light
which the door let down I could make out a length of yellowed rope, a
few tins upon which the labels still clung drearily, and the shredded
remains of a porno mag. All that really caught my attention, though,
was the rope. The curled up length of rope from which the tramp had
hanged himself.
'Let's go,' Henry said.
I nodded, and it was only when he started down the steps that I
realised he hadn't meant away from here: 'What if the door locks behind
us, or something, Henry?' I pleaded. 'And, anyway, the hatch at the top
of the cellar stairs will be locked. No-one leaves a house unlocked.'
Even as I said it I already knew that this particular one would
be.
Henry wasn't listening anyway, he was already halfway down, steps
groaning (I knew how they felt). A faint breeze blew up past him,
carrying the stale, dusty smell of things which have been too long
without sunlight. My heart had begun to thud double-time, and my lower
lip was a sudden shock away from being bitten in two by my teeth . . .
But, if Henry 'doughgut' Anderson could brave it . . . I started down
the steps, the first faint drops of rain spattering my head for less
than a second before I passed beneath the doorway.
The light shifted the moment I passed in, or rather, my eyes
compensated: The cellar was fairly wide, but all its corners were
visible. And there was - to my surprise - no paraphernalia of torture,
or limbs poking from bin-liners. Or dancing cats. Apart from myself and
Henry, the rope, the tins, and the porno, the cellar was empty, just
dust-strewn cement and bricks.
Henry was grinning at me. 'See? No spiders.'
At that moment, a rat scuttled across the stone floor between us. I
screamed, not only because it was a rat, but also because of the shock
element. The rat changed course, and headed for my feet, because all
evil creatures understand and are attracted by fear. I screamed again,
and jumped three stairs up. Henry made a sound which might have been a
laugh and came wobbling over. He reached the rat - which, for some
insane reason, had decided to stand it's ground - lifted his foot, and
stomped down.
The rat exploded.
It's guts sprayed from the ripping skin and strew their way across the
floor. It's blood made it even further, a few drops landing on my
boots, the rest running in a dark pool into the darkness beneath the
last step. Something grey and frothy, which I guessed were brains, fell
from its mouth. It's tail convulsed like a worm that's just been cut in
two. I raised a trembling hand to my mouth as my stomach fisted-up in
revulsion, and closed my eyes.
When I opened them Henry was grimacing as, with a revolted chuckle, he
peeled the remains of the creature from the sole of his trainers. The
hairy grey mass hit the floor audibly, a foot-sized indentation running
the length of its spine. It began to squeak, pitiful and desperate, and
I nearly lost my lunch again. How could anything want to survive such
obliteration?
'Yuck,' Henry said, volunteering himself for
understatement-of-the-millennium. 'Make that rats too!'
'What?'
'I hate rats too, rats and spiders.' His eyes searched hungrily around
the cellar. 'I bet it had friends.'
'Henry,' I managed weakly, 'we're going to need weapons.' The
possibility of more of the foul little bastards was turning my blood
into lead. I was still reeling from the way he'd dispatched the rat:
I'd seen kids suck stringy wads of their own snot into their mouths and
swallow, I'd seen kids popping ants under a magnifying glass, and I'd
seen kids turning the running track yellow with puke after a four mile
cross-country circuit, but I'd never seen any kid pop a live rat with
their boot. There had been delight in his face, and there was delight
there now, and - in that moment - I totally lost the image of Henry
'Blobby' Anderson I'd built up, and was faced instead with this very
real kid with very real mental problems which had been warmly
encouraged, rather than helped, by the kids at school. If anyone was to
blame for Henry's enjoyment of crushing that cellar rat it was us
kids.
'They're easy to get rid of,' Henry said, showing me the glistening
underside of his foot. 'We come across any more, don't worry, Dennis .
. . I'll squash the bastards!' And there was that delight again. He
turned, and walked to the stairs opposite, and if any rat still existed
in the place it made a good job of biting it's tongue.
'You're still going in?'
For reply he pushed at the hatch. It rose with an in-spill of light and
dust and cobwebs, and he glanced back.
I sighed as wearily as I could and followed, watching the floor.
The hatch gave onto what I guessed had been the kitchen, given the
brass pipes running halfway up one wall, where a washing-machine might
have gone. There was no sink, no table, or cupboard units, but there
were a few tiles on the walls, and it just sort of felt like a kitchen
anyway. We stepped up through the hatch, studying everything nervously.
Light barely made it through the boarded windows, disclosing only the
peeled plaster walls, and ringed stains on a cracked ceiling. The room
seemed warmer here than in the cellar - if a little more dusty - but
there wasn't anything friendly about it.
Henry dropped the hatch behind him, studying the square it made in the
floor, a hint of fear swapping places with the dark humour which had
been his earlier expression.
'Which way now?' Henry whispered, more to himself.
Rain pounded against the boarded window.
Two doors - both closed - faced each other across the breadth of the
room. I hated them for being closed, and felt certain that any further
doors we discovered would also be closed. Not locked though . . .
Nothing was going to stop us now from discovering every corner of
terror the house had to hide.
'Either,' I replied, brushing dust and cobwebs from my shins.
Henry pushed his right hand into a trouser pocket yanked tight by girth
and rustled around: 'Dennis, you got any money?'
'What're you going to buy with it here?'
'We'll toss a coin, you idiot.'
'Good idea.' I groped in my own pocket, came away with the change I'd
got from the paper, and filtered all but a ten-pence through my
fingers. 'Heads or tails? Heads we go right, tails left.'
'Tails never fails.'
'Okay,' I nodded 'And don't ever, ever call me an idiot again.' I
tossed the coin, watched its spinning arc as I brought my other hand
up, and fumbled it. The 10p fell with a muted thud and rolled over to
the door on the left. I cursed.
'No,' Henry put his hand on my forearm. 'It's the way we're supposed to
go.'
I pulled my arm away: 'What if it's heads?'
'What the hell's it really matter?' He walked to where the coin had
settled and peered down. 'It's tails,' he said, a little too smugly. I
walked over and verified it, then turned the handle of the door and
pulled it creakily wide.
'It's the living room,' Henry said, before I'd had a chance to fully
open the door. He was right. There was a small window ahead, through
which tangled leaves and branches could be seen, and two windows taking
up the wall on our right. Both of these gave onto the garden. We were
looking at the front-right portion of the house . . . And something
felt wrong. I stepped through, and the wrongness intensified, but it
was nothing I could name. It was something about the shape and size of
the room, but it was nothing I could name.
The overall impression was much the same as the kitchen. This was a
place that had not seen life for a long time. Cracks between the
floorboards were indistinct with dust, a few old newspapers were strewn
in the far-left corner, and among the yellow rings of damp on the
ceiling a fist-sized hole -which had probably once housed a light -
peered down on the room, like the socket of a dead eye.
The rain-washed garden beyond the two windows was the least ugly thing
about the place. I found myself longing for that garden again, and for
what lay beyond the gate. For anything but this dismal and unsettling
room. The premonition that we shouldn't be in there surfaced alongside
the feeling that something was wrong about the room, and I told Henry,
'We should just leave before somebody next door sees us.'
'They can't see us in here,' Henry laughed back. 'You scared?'
'Get lost fa - I just got to get back 'fore my brother goes ape about
his bet.'
'What bet?'
'It's not important. Leaving is important.'
'So go.' He looked away from me, and began poking among the few objects
which littered the room.
A surge of hatred rose up in me then, and if there'd been a weapon in
my hands part of it would soon have been embedded in Henry. 'Okay, lead
the goddamn way,' I hissed. 'Let's try upstairs, and see what gets its
claws into you up there.'
Henry shrugged this off. He plodded back into the kitchen. I followed
moodily, and watched him pull the remaining door wide. Steps lay
beyond.
Something moved.
Fear was running through me in an instant. I was too scared to even
make a sound. I was about to bolt for the cellar steps when Henry said,
in a queerly high voice, 'Heeeere, puss.'
The cat hissed, but not like a cat. It's tail was arched, swaying. One
of its eyes was the wrong colour. I don't know the exact variations
which can be found in cats eyes, so it's difficult to explain how I
could tell one eye was the wrong colour, but it was. One eye was green,
the other eye was wrong.
Henry was on his knees now, holding out a hand, rubbing his fingers
together. He started whining. My first thought was that his brain had
snapped, then I realised he was making cat noises. The cat, being a
cat, was ignoring him. It's wrong eyes were fixed instead on me. I've
never particularly liked cats, not since one bit me for pulling its
tail when I was a kid. I liked this one less than I'd ever liked any.
Evidently, it knew this. It hissed again, and scrabbled up the
stairs.
'That the one?' I asked Henry's still bent back.
'Yeah.' He pushed himself up and began to climb the stairs. 'I guess it
wants us to follow it.'
'No, Henry,' I said, but followed.
The stairs led up to a long corridor, cracked-plaster walls, doors at
either end. The door on the right was open - the light which spilled
through the gap had the quality of sand oozing through water. It was
into this light that the cats tail was now disappearing. Henry started
after it, floorboards remarking rudely with each step.
'Henry,' I hissed. 'Wait.' Something bad was going to happen, I knew
it.
He stopped, turned. He was smiling, but seemingly not by design. 'Come
on,' he whispered, and said the same with a flick of his head.
Bad, Henry. Something bad is going to happen.
I followed, imagining what might lie behind the doorway, in one of the
last unknown rooms in the house. Rain was impacting on the sloped
corridor roof, like fingers rapping. Henry reached the door, gave me a
nervous smile, and stepped through. I had to squint because the light
pouring out was so fierce, and Henry's back broke up in spangles . . .
I stepped after him, breath held, imagining arms reaching