Sunday Shorts

The Hole in the Ceiling

 

A Sunday Short By M.E. Born

The marks on my bedroom wall scared me.

Mum said they were just rusty water stains from a likely hole in the tin roof, or the mess from a cup of coffee accidentally thrown across the room, but I didn’t think so.

She said she was absolutely positive that nothing bad had happened in the house before we moved in - nothing strange, nothing scary - other than the elderly man who owned it before us dying in his bed, that is.

He was there for three days before they found him and that only happened because someone called the emergency line from his house. Someone had said nothing; only dialled the number and left the phone off the hook. When the ambulance came they found only the old man, already dead in his bed - nothing suspicious except the fact that someone had already covered him with a sheet.

I knew nothing about any of this until after Mum had already packed me out of our old house, 200 kilometres away, and moved us in here. She knew though. She knew the house was strange, that it had a history, a story. But she didn’t ask questions. If the questions were asked and the mysteries solved, the rent wouldn’t have been so cheap and she wouldn’t have been able to afford it.

It had been only Mum and me since the day, twelve years ago, when my dad took my brother fishing and they both drowned.

It’s a sad story, but I don’t remember them so it doesn’t make me cry. I only cry when I see my mum crying. She used to cry all the time, but only when she thought I was already asleep in bed.

I knew what nights she was sad and when she would cry over the photograph of my dad and brother. She would always rush me to bed, and sing my lullaby in a voice that was high-pitched and breathy and she wouldn’t look into my eyes when she kissed me goodnight. On those nights I would wait for a little while and then sneak out of bed and watch her from the hallway. She always took out the photograph and rubbed her fingers across it, kissed her lips to the glass and then clutched it to her chest as she sunk back into the chair and sobbed. I never went to her. She would have been mad if she knew I’d seen her. I would just sit on the floor in the hallway and cry too. Maybe I would miss them that much too if I remembered them.

But she didn’t cry these days, so neither did I. Mum was too busy to cry. After he’d died, Mum had got a big payout from Dad’s life insurance, but my uncle had encouraged her to invest it in some business scheme of his and he’d lost it, every cent. So Mum had to work hard now to keep us. She didn’t have time to miss Dad or my brother or be sad. She didn’t have time to sing lullabies and kiss me goodnight anymore either. But I didn’t need her to. I didn’t want her to, not now.

Because she was so busy it meant I was at home by myself a lot. At our old house she had worked two jobs, one during the day and one during the night, so I’d been by myself all day, apart from when I was at school - some days I didn’t go to school.

The whole reason we’d moved house was so she could take a better job and not have to work all day. But she still did. She did a lot of unpaid overtime, because she wanted to make sure that the new boss was happy with her.

So I was still at home by myself most of the time. I didn’t mind, I was used to it, it didn’t bother me at all until the kids at school told me about the house. The stains on my wall hadn’t bothered me until then, neither had the noises, sometimes loud thumping noises, but usually just quiet noises, like footsteps – the footsteps of somebody who is trying not to be heard.

I told Mum about the noises but she said it was just a possum in the roof and I nearly believed her until other things started happening.

Sometimes I found doors opened that I knew I’d closed, and windows open that I knew I never opened. So I knew it wasn’t a possum, and I also knew it wasn’t a ghost; which is what the kids at school always claimed. But a ghost wouldn’t need to open the doors or windows if it wanted to come in or go out and a ghost wouldn’t eat our food.

Mum was kind of worried when I told her I found doors open. It was the first time she hadn’t just completely dismissed my concerns. She frowned and mumbled and when I came home from school that day I met a locksmith waiting to change the door locks. But when I tried to tell Mum that someone had also been eating crackers from the pantry and drinking milk from the fridge she told me I had an overactive imagination.

Of course she didn’t notice, because whoever it was had self-control. They never finished a whole packet of biscuits or polished off left-over birthday cake entirely, they took it one cracker at a time - one tiny slither of cake, just a mouth full of milk. I wondered if they drank it straight from the carton and I guess they did because I never found a dirty milk glass. I did find a dirty sock though.

I’d come home earlier than usual from school that day. I normally had drama practise on Wednesday nights but it was cancelled due to the rain. I joined the theatre group in a lame attempt to make friends at the new school. It wasn’t working. Kids only talked to me when they wanted to remind me how haunted my house was.

The idea that practice had been cancelled due to rain sounded crazy to me at first. I thought it must have actually been an excuse because the drama teacher had a date with the new janitor that night, but it was something to do with a leaking roof in the play hall. It was the first time it had rained since we’d moved here – I guessed I’d be able to test Mum’s theory about our leaky roof too now.

I pictured the stains on my wall growing larger as I walked home - in the rain. When I got to the door I could hear something. Voices - mumbling. My heart was pounding like a drum as I unlocked the door and went in. It turned out it was just the TV. Of course the TV shouldn’t have been on, but I was just relieved to not find anything scarier that I hardly concerned myself about the TV playing away to itself even though I knew I’d shut it off before I left for school that morning.

It was playing some medieval history documentary, so, whoever they were, they were too intellectual for the day time soap operas. It was then that I noticed the sock. It was lying on the floor in the middle of the room, as if had been dropped by someone in a rush. It wasn’t my sock. I didn’t own any black socks. Initially I tried to convince myself that it was Mum’s sock, but I knew that wasn’t the case either. Mum didn’t have time to wear socks these days. She only ever wore pantyhose. I don’t think she even took them off when she went to bed. 

I looked at the sock for a long time from a distance. It was old and holey and I didn’t dare to go closer and undoubtedly find out that it smelled too. Eventually, I went outside into the backyard and fetched a long stick that I used to pick up the sock and toss it in the trash. I felt kind of bad for whoever it belonged to, but I figured if they really needed to they’d just help themselves to a new sock from my drawer.

The next day I was sick. Well, not literally. I was sick as in the “I was suppose to sit a maths test that day at school that I hadn’t studied for and my throat was slightly sore” kind of sick. Anyway, I told Mum I needed to stay home and she was too busy to insist upon anything different, so she went to work and I stayed in bed.

For a while I listened to music and slept, until I was woken by a much louder than usual thump. My heart started beating like a drum again and I noticed that the stains on my wall had definitely grown. I lay quietly in my bed to start with. I guessed I should probably call the police but I was always a little concerned they might lock my Mum up for my truancy if I got them involved.

I got out of the bed and peeked out into the hallway – nothing. I walked past Mum’s room and the bathroom – still nothing. I’d just decided it must have been that alleged possum when I reached the laundry and saw where it had really come from.

I’d never even noticed it was there before. I guess it’s one of those things that you don’t notice at all unless you need a tradesman to fix your wiring or until …. it’s missing. In the ceiling of the laundry there was a manhole. The cover of the manhole was gone. It was wide open, just a big black hole in the ceiling. Someone had come through the manhole. Someone was in the house.

© M.E. Born, 2012.