Attica (22 page)

Chloe sniffed at the horrible musty odour of the place and shuddered.

She asked, ‘Do you think that sign once said DORMITORY?’

‘Dunno,’ replied Alex in that infuriating couldn’t-careless voice. ‘I’m tired. Let’s just rest here the night and see what happens in the morning.’

‘Well, a dormitory is the right place to sleep,’ agreed Chloe, ‘if that’s what it is.’

‘I can hardly
keep my eyes open,’ complained Alex.

Chloe too found the urge to sleep irresistible. Alex lay down first while she fought against her feeling of deep fatigue.

Gradually though she slid to the floor, sending up a puff of grey dust. There she lay half-awake, half-asleep for a few minutes, caught in that twilight world when the mind flutters in a pleasant state of tranquillity before fully dropping off. How pleasant it was to finally let go and fall, fall, fall, as if into a deep forest pool of warm feelings. Let the world carry on without her.

Just before she dropped off completely she felt her mother pulling up the bedclothes and tucking her in. Her mother seemed to have black hairy claws instead of hands. And her breath smelled of something foul, like rotting cabbages or old drains. But Chloe was too far gone into sleep to worry about things like that.

Once, during the night, she woke up to see a dark figure sitting on a stool. The figure was all in black and difficult to see in the very dim light, but he appeared to be painting. There was a canvas on an easel before the figure and, though very drowsy, almost to the point of unconsciousness, Chloe could see the arm wielding the brush. This brush was dipped in a palette of paints then brought to the surface of the canvas with a sweeping motion. When he saw that his subject’s eyes were slightly open, the figure in black smiled, and shook his head as if to say, ‘Back to sleep, Chloe.’

Is he painting me? thought Chloe. I wonder why?

Then she dropped off again, into a deep, deep slumber.

Don’t they know anything?

A dust sprite formed, and then ran like an upright lizard on its back legs for about twenty paces, then seemed to silently explode into a cloud of settling specks.

You’d think the number of dust sprites around would be warning enough. The place is full of them. They’re running around like cockroaches.

‘They don’t see dust sprites. Their eyes aren’t good enough.’

Do you think they want to sleep for ever? Some do. I know a board-comber who came here and gave himself up.

‘These are outsiders – they want to live.’

You’d think they’d recognise the signs then: the mouldering mounds, the tombstones at the heads of the graves. You think they’d
smell
what it was. They must have sawdust for brains.

‘Don’t be so hard on them. You remember what it was like when you first came to the attic. You didn’t know a thing. It was a long time before you found out there were malevolent board-combers like this one. How are the children supposed to know he collects souls?’

Eternal rest. Up here it means what it actually says. To sleep for ever under a dust sheet. There’s something a little tempting in that, when you feel as world-weary as I do. But how could they not realise? Look, it even says
DORMIRE
on that sign. Don’t they teach them Latin these days? I was taught Latin at school. I’ve got the scars to prove it.

‘It doesn’t say DORMIRE,’ the bat points out. ‘It says DORM.’

Well, it’s meant to say
DORMIRE.
There’s winding sheets all over the place. Who could miss such signs?

‘You did once – and you called them
shrouds
in your day. Are you going to get them out of there before it’s too late, or what?’

I’d have to touch them
, says the board-comber, shuddering with disgust, his breath hot against the inside of his mask.
I’d have to lay hands on them.

‘Well, I certainly can’t do it. I’m a bat.’

I’ve a good mind to let them stay there.

But the board-comber knows
he will not do that. He still has enough humanity to motivate himself into helping his own kind when they are in trouble. He berates the children for being ignorant, but knows it was the same when he first arrived. There are many traps in the attic, many pitfalls and hazards. If one manages to avoid the first few, one becomes wise to them. One becomes attuned to the rhythms of the attic, so that when unknown dangers appear, warning sounds go off in one’s head. It wasn’t necessary to know how all the traps worked, just to know what
might
be a trap and avoid it. It got so he could smell snares from a safe distance.

The board-comber sprays one of his kerchiefs with cheap scent found in a little blue bottle labelled
Evening in Paris
. This will protect him from the odour of the sleep gases left by the bad board-comber. Tying this around his nose he then enters the Garden of Eternal Rest and grips the boy by the heels. He does not like doing it, but knows the children will remain here always if he doesn’t do something about it. He then drags the boy out in the open, away from the sleep gases exuded by the board-comber.

This board-comber is like all collectors in the attic: it gathers its treasures in one place. This one collects souls. It is one of those creatures like Katerfelto, which has appeared all by itself. It has the shape and form of a human, but the heart and mind of a spider. It waits for the tug on its web and then descends from the rafters to wrap its victims in shrouds. It hangs its souls collection in a secret place, nailing them to rafters where they flap in the four draughts from the four corners of the attic.

Once the boy is out in the open, the good board-comber goes in and drags out the girl. He then wipes his hands on his coat, as if the children had left a sticky substance on them. Somewhere above, the vile collector of souls is watching, grinding his teeth.

Chloe woke to
a feeling of intense coldness.

There was a dirty sheet over the lower half of her body and she kicked it off in disgust. She looked round to see a long streak in the dust where she had been dragged while slumbering. In panic she looked around quickly for Alex. He was lying not far away, still asleep. Then she sat up and noticed an oil painting, half-finished, lying face up in the dust. Reaching out to touch it she found the paint was still not quite dry.

She recognised herself as the subject of the portrait.

‘Oh, what is
that
?’ she murmured, shuddering. It was a ghastly painting. Her features were pale and lifeless, her eyes were closed, her lips were a translucent blue. Her head was resting on a pillow of pure-white lilies. There was a very faint but frozen smile on her face.

It was the portrait of a dead girl.

‘How horrible!’

She tore her eyes away from her own terrible image and saw that her brother remained asleep.

‘Alex, wake up,’ she called.

‘Whaa—’ Alex rolled over and opened his eyes. ‘What’s this thing wrapped round me?’

‘I don’t know. I had one too.’

‘It stinks,’ he said, kicking it off.

Alex stood up and stretched.

‘My head aches. I think there’s gas about. Can you smell gas?’

‘I don’t know. I think we ought to get away from here. This is an evil place.’

They gathered up their packs and as they did so Chloe noticed footprints in the dust. Yes, someone had definitely dragged them out from under that low roof. Jordy? Surely not, or he would have stayed. Perhaps it had been one of the Atticans? The soles of the shoes the person had been wearing were very large though: bigger than an Attican would wear. She sighed. It was just another mystery attached to this weird world of boards and rafters. Whoever was their saviour obviously did not want to be known. An anonymous person: a guardian angel of some kind.

As Chloe caught
up with her brother, she saw something which made her pause and think. It was a ball of string, lying on its own, gathering the dust of ages. Picking it up, she had a wonderful idea. It was a scary idea, but it seemed it might be the answer to a very big question.

‘Alex,’ she said, reaching him, ‘I’m going down that trapdoor.’

Alex’s expression became serious.

‘You
can’t
, Clo. You don’t know what’s down there.’

She showed him the ball of string.

‘I’m going to tie the end around my waist and you can reel me down into the house below. That’ll keep physical contact between the two of us. If anything goes wrong I’ll just come up and join you again. As long as we both hold on to the string we can’t be parted. This way I can sort of get our bearings in the real world. Find out where we are.’

‘I don’t like it, Clo.’

‘Well, I don’t like it either, but it’s got to be done,’ she said firmly. ‘That woman didn’t look like a monster. Maybe she’ll help us? We can only ask. Look, I’ll tie the string to my jeans belt like this … now help me get this trapdoor up. Is there any handle? No, well, use that penknife thing you keep flashing every five minutes. At last we can use it for
something
.’

They struggled with the trapdoor and finally eased it up. Dust clouds went everywhere, making them both cough. Then Chloe took her torch and shone it down the square black hole.

‘What’s down
there?’ asked Alex, peering. ‘I can’t see much, can you?’

‘Only a landing and some stairs, I think,’ replied Chloe. ‘It’s just an ordinary house.’ She felt excited. ‘Maybe we’ve found a way out, Alex.’

‘But what about Jordy?’

Jordy indeed was a problem.

‘If this is a way home, we’ll look for Jordy when I come up again, all right? We’ve still got to find the watch, so we can’t go back down again for ever. All I want to do is see where we are, in relation to our own house.’

‘OK, Clo. If you’re sure.’

‘I’m going down,’ she said, lowering herself through the trapdoor. ‘I’ll keep calling up, once I’m down there, so you’ll know I’m all right.’

Alex played out the string as his sister climbed down through the hatch and dropped to the floor beneath.

‘Are you down there yet?’

Her voice was quite faint. ‘Yes, I’m fine. More string, please.’

Alex unwound some more from the ball, playing it out as his sister moved cautiously around the landing below.

At that moment a thought occurred to Alex and this scared him as much as he knew it would scare Chloe and Jordy – he actually
wanted
to stay up here in Attica. He wasn’t ready to go home. This was an exciting place, full of adventures, full of strange creatures and the prospect of treasures. You can’t win treasures without going through risk. The treasures didn’t mean anything otherwise. And the risk could be enjoyed if you knew what you were doing. Alex was beginning to feel he knew what he was doing. It was actually too early for him to go down. The attic was willing to have him. And he was ready for the attic. It was a
great
place to spend time in.

A jerk on
the string. He played out some more.

‘Clo? Are you all right?’

Nothing.

‘Clo?’

A faint whisper on a cold draught of air coming up through the hatchway. Was that her voice? Or was it just the rustling of something down below? This was a bad idea, going down there. Alex could feel it in his bones.

‘Chloe!’ he yelled, tugging lightly on the string. ‘Come on back up.’

No answer. Nothing. Just that cold draught.

Alex could do no more than just sit there, waiting and hoping. At least the string was still moving, so he knew she was still there.

‘Fishing?’ asked a deep voice.

Alex almost jumped out of his skin.

CHAPTER 14

Visit to the Underworld

Looking up, Alex
could see a tall young stranger in long capes and hat, with thick leather boots. The stranger had two rats, one in each side pocket of his coat, their little heads poking out. On his back was a huge rucksack, homemade by the look of it, with a wooden frame built to fit his broad shoulders. His face was as creased as a well-used map.

‘N-n-no,’ stuttered Alex. ‘M-my sister’s on the end of this line – she’s down there in a house.’

‘Bad move,’ growled the youth, taking off his rucksack. The two rats leapt out of his pockets and came to peer down the hatchway at the landing below. ‘You ought to get her out of there, Alex.’

‘Y-you know my name?’

‘I met your brother last night. You won’t know what I am, but they call me a bortrekker. I know the ways of this world, Alex. I know where to go and that’s not one of them. Trapdoors – if they’re not to your
own
house – lead only to even stranger places than here. Get her out, now. Get her up or you may never see your sister again.’

Frightened by these words, Alex yanked on string. To his utter horror, it went completely loose. He reeled it in, finding a frayed break on the other end. The string had snapped. Chloe was down there alone.

There was a light on the
landing of the house. It seemed it was evening. Chloe could see a faint pinkness to the sky through the landing window. For a while she simply stood there studying her surroundings. It seemed a very ordinary house. Very ordinary. A sort of mushroom colour emulsion on the walls of the landing and going down the stairs. A carpet of similar hue. At the bottom of the stairs sat a tortoiseshell cat, washing itself. It looked up at her when she moved and
meow
ed softly, before continuing with its ablutions. It looked a gentler cat than Nelson. Along the landing itself were several doors: bedrooms and the bathroom no doubt. Everything was nicely painted or varnished.

‘All right,’ muttered Chloe to herself. ‘Let’s see who or what’s downstairs.’

She prepared herself for a confrontation. Those who owned this house, who lived here, would not take kindly to an intruder. At least she was a young girl and not a large threatening man. However, if confronted she didn’t want to launch into a story about Attica. No one would believe her. She decided she would make an excuse for being in the house and play it by ear. Once she knew where she was in relation to her own home, she would go back up to Alex. They could mark the trapdoor, look for Jordy, find the watch, and all three of them return down through the house to freedom.