The sounds returned, three nights later, and they were-larger.
"Not mice" said Clara Peck. "Good-sized rats rats. Eh?"
In answer, the ceiling above executed an intricate, crosscurrenting ballet, without music. This toe dancing, of a most peculiar sort, continued until the moon sank. Then, as soon as the light failed, the house grew silent and only Clara Peck took up breathing and life, again.
By the end of the week, the patterns were more geometrical. The sounds echoed in every upstairs room; the sewing room, the old bedroom, and in the library where some former occupant had once turned pages and gazed over a sea of chestnut trees.
On the tenth night, all eyes and no face, with the sounds coming in drumbeats and weird syncopations, at three in the morning, Clara Peck flung her sweaty hand at the telephone to dial Emma Crowley: "Clara! I knew knew you"d call!" you"d call!"
"Emma, it"s three am. Aren"t you surprised?"
"No, I been lying here thinking of you. I wanted to call, but felt a fool. Something is wrong, yes?"
"Emma, answer me this. If a house has an empty attic for years, and all of a sudden has an attic full of things, how come how come?"
"I didn"t know you had had an attic-" an attic-"
"Who did did? Listen, what started as mice then sounded like rats and now sounds like cats running around up there. What"ll I do?"
"The telephone number of the Ratzaway Pest Team on Main Street is-wait. Here, MAIN seven-seven-nine-nine. You sure sure something"s in your attic?" something"s in your attic?"
"The whole d.a.m.ned high school track team."
"Who used to live in your house, Clara?"
"Who-?"
"I mean, it"s been clean all this time, right, and now, well, infested infested. Anyone ever die there?"
"Die?"
"Sure, if someone died there, maybe you haven"t got mice, at all."
"You trying to tell me-ghosts?"
"Don"t you believe-?"
"Ghosts, or so-called friends who try spooking me with them. Don"t call again, Emma!"
"But, you you called called me me!"
"Hang up, Emma!!"
Emma Crowley hung up. In the hall at three fifteen in the cold morning, Clara Peck glided out, stood for a moment, then pointed up at the ceiling, as if to provoke it.
"Ghosts?" she whispered.
The trapdoor"s hinges, lost in the night above, oiled themselves with wind. Clara Peck turned slowly and went back, and thinking about every movement, got into bed. She woke at four twenty in the morning because a wind shook the house. Out in the hall, could it be? She strained. She tuned her ears.
Very softly, very quietly, the trapdoor in the stairwell ceiling squealed.
And opened wide.
Can"t be! she thought. be! she thought.
The door fell up, in, and down, with a thud.
Is! she thought. she thought.
I"ll go make sure, she thought No!
She jumped, ran, locked the door, leaped back in bed. "h.e.l.lo, Ratzaway!" she heard herself call, m.u.f.fled, under the covers.
Going downstairs, sleepless, at six in the morning, she kept her eyes straight ahead, so as not to see that dreadful ceiling.
Halfway down she glanced back, started, and laughed.
"Silly!" she cried.
For the trapdoor was not open at all.
It was shut "Ratzaway?" she said, into the telephone receiver, at seven thirty on a bright morning.
It was noon when the Ratzaway inspection truck stopped in front of Clara Peck"s house.
In the way that Mr. Timmons, the young inspector, strolled with insolent disdain up the walk, Clara saw that he knew everything in the world about mice, termites, old maids, and odd late-night sounds. Moving, he glanced around at the world with that fine masculine hauteur of the bullfighter midring or the skydiver fresh from the sky, or the womanizer lighting his cigarette, back turned to the poor creature in the bed behind him. As he pressed her doorbell, he was G.o.d"s messenger. When Clara opened the door she almost slammed it for the way his eyes peeled away her dress, her flesh, her thoughts. His smile was the alcoholic"s smile. He was drunk on himself. There was only one thing to do: "Don"t just stand there!" she shouted. "Make yourself useful!" She spun around and marched away from his shocked face.
She glanced back to see if it had had the right effect. Very few women had ever talked this way to him. He was studying the door. Then, curious, he stepped in.
"This way!" said Clara.
She paraded through the hall, up the steps to the landing, where she had placed a metal stepladder. She thrust her hand up, pointing.
"There"s the attic. See if you can make sense out of the d.a.m.ned noises up there. And don"t overcharge me when you"re done. Wipe your feet when you come down. I got to go shopping. Can I trust you not to steal me blind while I"m gone?"
With each blow, she could see him veer off balance. His face flushed. His eyes shone. Before he could speak, she marched back down the steps to shrug on a light coat.
"Do you know what mice sound like in attics?" she said, over her shoulder.
"I d.a.m.n well do, lady," he said.
"Clean up your language. You know rats? These could be rats or bigger. What"s bigger in an attic?"
"You got any racc.o.o.ns around here?" he said.
"How"d they get in in?"
"Don"t you know your own house, lady? I-"
But here they both stopped. For a sound had come from above. It was a small itch of a sound at first. Then it scratched. Then it gave a thump like a heart.
Something moved in the attic.
Timmons blinked up at the shut trapdoor and snorted.
"Hey!"
Clara Peck nodded, satisfied, pulled on her gloves, adjusted her hat, watching.
"It sounds like-" drawled Mr. Timmons.
"Yes?"
"Did a sea captain ever live in this house?" he asked, at last.
The sound came again, louder. The whole house seemed to drift and whine with the weight which was shifted above.
"Sounds like cargo." Timmons shut his eyes to listen.
"Cargo on a ship, sliding when the ship changes course."
He broke into a laugh and opened his eyes.
"Good G.o.d," said Clara, and tried to imagine that.
"On the other hand," said Mr. Timmons, half-smiling up at that ceiling, "you got a greenhouse up there, or something? Sounds like plants growing. Or a yeast, may be, big as a doghouse, getting out of hand. I heard of a man once, raised yeast in his cellar. It-"
The front screen door slammed.
Clara f.e.c.k, outside glaring in at his jokes, said: "I"ll be back in an hour. Jump!"
She heard his laughter follow her down the walk as she marched. She hesitated only once to look back.
The d.a.m.n fool was standing at the foot of the ladder, looking up. Then he shrugged, gave a what-the-h.e.l.l gesture with his hands, and- Scrambled up the stepladder like a sailor.
When Clara f.e.c.k marched back an hour later, the Ratzaway truck still stood silent at the curb. "h.e.l.l," she said to it. "Thought he"d be done by now. Strange man tramping around, swearing-"
She stopped and listened to the house.
Silence.
"Odd," she muttered.
"Mr. Timmons!?" she called.
And realizing she was still twenty feet from the open front door, she approached to call through the screen.
"Anyone home home?"
She stepped through the door into a silence like the silence in the old days before the mice had begun to change to rats and the rats had danced themselves into something larger and darker on the upper attic decks. It was a silence that, if you breathed it in, smothered you.
She swayed at the bottom of the flight of stairs, gazing up, her groceries hugged like a dead child in her arms.
"Mr. Timmons-?"
But the entire house was still.
The portable ladder still stood waiting on the landing.
But the trapdoor was shut.
Well, he"s obviously obviously not up in there! she thought. He wouldn"t climb and shut himself in. d.a.m.n fool"s just gone away. not up in there! she thought. He wouldn"t climb and shut himself in. d.a.m.n fool"s just gone away.
She turned to squint out at his truck abandoned in the bright noon"s glare.
Truck"s broke down, I imagine. He"s gone for help.
She dumped her groceries in the kitchen and for the first time in years, not knowing why, lit a cigarette, smoked it, lit another, and made a loud lunch, banging skillets and running the can opener overtime.
The house listened to all this, and made no response.
By two o"clock the silence hung about her like a cloud of floor polish. "Ratzaway," she said, as she dialed the phone. The Pest Team owner arrived half an hour later, by motorcycle, to pick up the abandoned truck. Tipping his cap, he stepped in through the screen door to chat with Clara f.e.c.k and look at the empty rooms and weigh the silence.
"No sweat, ma"am," he said, at last. "Charlie"s been on a few benders, lately. He"ll show up to be fired, tomorrow. What was he doing doing here?" here?"
With this, he glanced up the stairs at the stepladder.
"Oh," said Clara Peck, quickly, "he was just looking at-everything."
"I"ll come, myself, tomorrow," said the owner. And as he drove away into the afternoon, Clara Peck slowly moved up the stairs to lift her face toward the ceiling and watch the trapdoor.
"He didn"t see you, either," she whispered.
Not a beam stirred, not a mouse danced, in the attic.
She stood like a statue, feeling the sunlight shift and lean through the front door. Why? she wondered. Why did I lie? Well, for one thing, the trapdoor"s shut, isn"t it? And, I don"t know why, she thought, but I won"t want anyone going up that ladder, ever again. Isn"t that silly? Isn"t that strange?
She ate dinner early, listening.
She washed the dishes, alert.
She put herself to bed at ten o"clock, but in the old downstairs maid"s room, for long years unused. Why she chose to lie in this downstairs room, she did not know, she simply did it, and lay there with aching ears, and the pulse moving in her neck and in her brow.
Rigid as a tomb carving under the sheet, she waited.
Around midnight, a wind pa.s.sed, shook a pattern of leaves on her counterpane. Her eyes flicked wide.