August Ansel - The Attic

Renna thrashed once in her sleep, moving her arms and legs in a crawling motion. The bedding she’d rolled up in didn’t give her much room to move. “Shh,” she whispered, and curled herself into a ball, as much as she could, anyway.

He knelt next to her, watching her face. Her brows drew down, making parallel lines above her nose. He touched that spot with one fingertip, letting it rest there, then he traced it over her broad, satiny forehead. Her body relaxed, and she stopped fighting the blankets. “Best sleep now,” he whispered.

Her dark eyes opened. Seeing him so close made her recoil at first. He straightened, and she recognized him. “Oh, it’s you.” She reached behind his neck to pull him close again. Her eyes were so dark that pupil and iris were indistinguishable. “I’m so glad it’s you.” When he leaned to kiss her, she slid her fingers into his long hair and held him there with both hands.

Talus could smell the old dead woman hidden in the middle of the house and could smell the bad dog that had been inside at the front door, and the old dried fear-piss of the woman Talus had heard but not seen, the young woman who was now sleeping over their heads.

The man Curran was afraid. She could feel the fear in his hands. Maybe it was his injury that made him afraid, because this was not a bad place. This was a good place. The bad dog wouldn’t come in here again. It had come around their place in the tree, had stood at a distance and made Talus’s fur jump up. But it was dead now, that bad dog—dead out in the street, dead like the old woman in the closed room. Dead things weren’t scary. A bear had been here, too, but bears were easy to frighten with a loud bark. She liked barking at bears, and at raccoons and blue jays. Not skunks, though. Best to stand behind something until a skunk went the other way.

She sat close to the feet of the man Curran. When she pressed herself against his leg his fear stink lessened. She stayed close, though she wanted very much to run through this new place. There were food smells, but not down here—only in the place over their heads. Talus could smell the cooked chicken. That smell had been on the man Curran tonight when he came back to their house in the tree. The chicken smell made water come to her mouth, and she licked her face in case something tasty was there on her fur.

Many good things had been here in this new place, not just food. Other people and other dogs. Good people and good dogs. A little bird, too. Strange to keep a little bird in the house. A man with a cigar had been here for a long time with the dead woman in the closed room. And the small old woman, the woman who came to the house in the tree with the man Curran—she had been in this place for a great many years. Her smell was the smell that touched everything here, was stronger than all the other smells, even the bear’s. She wasn’t inside with them now, though. Talus had heard her leave a while ago, during the time when Curran was sleeping. Perhaps she went out to find the big cat, to kill it.

Talus was afraid of the big cat. It had come around their house in the tree, too, like the bad dogs. It pissed on things close by and came around while they were inside at night. The big cat was not like a bear—it was quiet. It followed in the dark and watched from up in trees. Talus didn’t think it was very afraid of dogs, not like a bear was afraid. Tonight, when they had walked from the house in the tree to the new smelly house, the big cat followed all the way. Even when Talus had made her fiercest growl and bark, it had stayed close. The cat didn’t smell afraid. It had kits and smelled of milk. It smelled hungry.

The man Curran moved in a hurry to look out the window, and Talus scrambled to her feet. “She made it,” he said. Even though his head was still making him sick, he was happy. Something good was going to happen.

Arie finally came out at the top of the path and onto the street, sweating in the cold pre-dawn air. She slowed her pace, fighting the urge to look over her shoulder, but her eyes tracked the night sky anyway. Two blocks up, a single unmolested streetlight shone, still doing its duty for no one, and in its light the dead neon sign at the corner grocery—Pat’s Market—reflected dully beneath it.

Setting foot on the weedy tangle of her yard brought a flood of relief. The skeletal branches of the maple tree seemed like a naked welcome home. She slipped through the gap in the fence, thinking to signal for the rope ladder to be let down.

Something moved out of the dark, directly at her, and in the instant of contact she gasped and stumbled sideways, groping for the short spear. But then Talus was pressing against her leg, licking her hand.

“Here.” It was Curran, speaking from the back door.

“Damnation,” she breathed. She made the little detour under the old porch awning, and Curran stepped aside. The door was only open about a foot; Talus squeezed through first, and Arie followed. She expected her feet to grit through the usual mess, but a path had been cleared.

“Handy told me you were out,” Curran said. The dead hulk of the refrigerator now served as a blockade and prevented the door from opening all the way. He put his shoulder to it and muscled it back in place. A length of rope secured on either side of the doorframe functioned as a tie-down; Curran gave the knot a mighty yank. The boards Handy had torn free earlier to get Curran and Talus inside lay heaped in the corner, and Arie made a mental note that they should be carted upstairs to split for the fire.

“It’s good Handy was able to wake you,” she said. “I wasn’t sure but that you’d go comatose.”

“I’m still here,” he said.

“Glad of it. You did well on the watch,” she said. “Both of you.” She slapped Talus companionably on the rump, and the dog looked up, wagging her tail furiously. “It’s another three hours or so until dawn,” she told Curran, “and if I’m honest, there’s no way I can stay awake. How’s your head now?”

“Still hurts a bitch,” he said.”

“Wounds of war,” she said. “Has it bled?” They were making their way down the dark hallway and into the little bedroom. Talus tarried again at Granny’s door, but only to give it a single cursory sniff, her curiosity apparently satisfied.

Curran gingerly touched the stained bandage. “Seems fine,” he said. “I can finish the night.”

“I’ll go up, then.” She moved into the closet. The smell of the attic—kerosene lamp, apples beginning to ferment, crumbling insulation—took hold of her. “Tomorrow I’ll see to it, that head, along with all our various infirmities.” She braced her foot on the lower shelf. Curran put a hand on her arm.

“Why did you go out?” he whispered. “After what happened to us before—”

She waited, saying nothing. He took his hand away.

“It was time,” she said, climbing.

In the attic, she found Handy and Renna asleep. Renna was still wrapped in her blankets on the car seat. Handy had made his bed on the floor beside her. He lay on his side, right arm curled under his head, left arm planted above him, fingers intertwined with Renna’s. That’s going to pain you later, Arie thought, when you wake up all pins and needles. Truth to tell, she had fully expected them to be sleeping under the same blanket tonight; it surprised her to see otherwise.

She let down the sky panel so that it closed all the way, and she threw the bolt. It was easy enough to find her own bedroll in the dark—she’d done it a great many times. In her habitual fashion, she tucked the short spear under her pillow. The slingshot and ammo bag were wherever Handy had left them; they were his concern tonight. She took off her apron, shook her hair out of its horsetail, and slid beneath the blankets. The thin padding of her bed might just as well have been an eiderdown mattress, so heavy was her exhaustion. Falling into sleep as if launched from a catapult, she heard a soft, sonorous voice beneath her: There is a ship that sails the sea, she’s loaded deep as deep can be. Curran, singing to Talus.