covered the driveway towards the front door of the house. He bounded up the front steps as he had done so many times throughout his youth, alighting atop the landing and walking to the right side of the porch.
A cluster of small junipers was just to the other side of the wrought iron railing. Reaching beneath, he fished around with his hand until he found a large stone beneath the scratchy foliage. Lifting it, he found the small plastic bag with the rust colored key that had been there from so many years before. Matt’s mom had stashed it there so he would always be able to get into the house as he had a tendency to lose them if he carried them with him. Often, Scott and some of Matt’s other friends had used it just to sneak into his house and startle him while he was alone after school, but that had been a lifetime ago.
Brushing the snow from the knees of his jeans. Scott stuck the key into the deadbolt lock and turned it until he heard the loud thunk. Removing it, he slipped it into the lower lock and opened the door inwards as he turned it.
With a quick glance over his shoulder at Harry, who watched him with keen interest, he ducked into the house, the wet soles of his shoes squeaking on the tile in the entryway. To his right, a built- in bookcase separated the entryway from the living room, a thin layer of dust covering the top which was just about chest level. Gesturing to the stairs that led up and to the left, Scott looked to Harry, who slowly eased upwards.
“What exactly are you hoping to find?” Scott asked, right on Harry’s heels as they rounded the staircase into the hallway. “It’s the first door on the right.”
Nodding, Harry opened the bedroom door and stepped into the stale air of the long since vacated room.
“I’m not really sure,” he said, his eyes canvassing every inch of the room.
The walls were painted light blue. A dark, wood shelf ran along the wall to the right, several splatters of the blue paint marring its surface. There were no impressions on the thick, blue carpeting from where any furniture had been, as it must have been quite some time since anything had rested on the flooring long enough to leave a mark.
“Awfully cold in here,” Harry muttered, his breath gusting in thin lines of steam in front of his lips.
Scott just nodded as he surveyed the room. In his mind, he could remember when the walls had been painted white, the carpet a much more tightly knit nap of dark blue. He could vaguely remember the wallpaper that had been on the wall to the right just above the built in shelf, ships, if he remembered correctly. Not just ships, but large ocean vessels, HMS something, anyway. Closing his eyes, he could see the dark wood furniture lined along the left side of the room, a pile of coins next to an old intercom. There had been a bookcase filled with novels: Choose Your Own Adventures, a line of Piers Anthony science fictions, and the budding start of a horror collection consisting mainly of Stephen King and Dean R. Koontz. A desk had sat just to the right of that in the corner, a lamp coming out of the top of an old Washington Redskin’s helmet which had always made no sense as Matt had been a Falcon’s fan since the day he had met him.
There had been a bunk bed in the center of the room; both levels dressed the same beneath comforters featuring what looked like abstract drawings of ducks. He could remember many a night where he had crashed on the top bunk as a child. It had always been such a treat for him to sleep up high as he had always wanted bunk beds but his parents had never even considered the notion. He had listened to Matt talking from below as he made up stories of ghosts that haunted the woods around the house, wondering if he was for sure just making them up or if he had actually seen them as Matt never gave him a straight answer either way. His frayed nerves on edge, he had stared up at the panel that led up into the crawl space, praying that nothing crept out and grabbed him as he slept.
Staring up at that same ceiling now, he could see there square entrance to the crawl space, which for some reason still seemed just as threatening to this day.
“What’s up there?” Harry asked, nodding towards the ceiling where Scott stared.
“Crawl space.”
“Obviously,” Harry said, shooting him an icy glance. “Why are you looking up there?”
“I used to think there were ghosts that lived up there that would come down and get me while I slept.”
“Ever go up there?”
“No, but I remember Matt talking about finishing it up there so he had a place of his own to go where no one could ever find him.”
“Did he ever do it?”
“Not to the best of my knowledge, but our friendship became somewhat estranged the last year or so.”
“I think it’s about time we found out then, don’t you.”
“I guess, but why…”
“I’ll boost you up,” Harry interrupted, lacing his fingers in front of his waist.
Scott put his right foot into Harry’s hands, bouncing a couple of times before propelling himself upwards. Hammering the square of drywall that covered the hole upward with his momentum, he grabbed hold of the lip of the wooden square, pulling himself up into the darkness.
His knee snagged on the rim of the wooden edge, scraping the flesh beneath.
“Ow,” he grumbled, feeling the soft texture of the carpet remnants beneath his palms.
The light from the hole in the center of the hole did little to illuminate the dark covey. Dark shadows stretched from the light into the blackened corners of the barren attic as he pulled his feet past the rim and onto the makeshift floor. Batting his eyes, he could barely see his nose in the center of his face as his hands moved in a swimming motion to either side as he attempted to find anything that might shed a little more light on the situation.
His fumbling fingers knocked into something, sending it toppling onto its side as it clanked against another seemingly invisible object. Tracing its form with his hand, his fingers followed the glass base of an oblong cylindrical object, rounding the top edge before touching something completely different. He chipped at the surface with his thumbnail, peeling back a soft, waxy chunk of what could only have been wax.
“Do you have a match or a lighter or something?” Scott called down towards the hole, shifting his weight to the side as a box rattled to his right as he bumped it.
“Never mind,” he muttered, having answered his own question. He pulled back the lid of the box of matches and pulled a pair of the wooden sticks from within, returning the cover.
Running the bulbous head of the match along the sandpaper- like strike strip that ran down the side of the box, a ball of fire burst from the tip of the match, followed instantaneously by a black tuft of smoke. Holding the candle over his lap, he held the flame to the end of the wick, waiting as it popped and snapped before finally glowing with a flame all its own. Shaking the match which had nearly burned down to his thumb on the charcoaled stick, he set it down on the closed box and held the candle out in front of him. A dim aura of light encircled the flame, casting his long shadow into the recesses of the attic behind him.
He could see a folding chair of sorts lying on its side, half opened, in the center of the room. There was a stack of books beside it, a thick tome lying open on the tan carpeted floor. The walls to either side, which were held in place by only a few sparse nails, were covered with posters and cut- outs from magazines, bands that he hadn’t thought about in nearly a decade and women in various stages of undress. It was, on the surface, the hiding place of dreams for any high school aged boy; the only problem was that in this case it obviously hadn’t been.
Turning his stare from the snarling face of Dave Mustaine, he crawled forward into the crawlspace, heading for the back wall. A thin arc of light circled what he knew to be the seal around one of the ceiling vents, a stream of bitter, arctic air squeezing through the infinitely small gap and into the room. The surface of the carpet felt cold to the touch, the breeze causing the flame atop the candle to flicker, the goose bumps on the backs of his arms to rise. Pink rolls of insulation lined the back walls, filling the gaps between the wooden studs. The edge of the plywood laid across the floor fell several inches shy of reaching the back wall, exposing the insulation buried beneath. Stands of the thread that ran through the carpet to hold the knap in place danced, tangled and intertwined, at the edge of the frayed carpet beneath the chilly breeze.
Rolling onto his rear end, he turned back to stare into the finished portion of the attic. A globule of melted wax rolled over the top of the glass candlestick, singing the hair atop his knuckle as it froze into place atop his scalded skin.
There had to be something up there that would somehow be of use, he was sure of that, but what? What
