Black Static #80#81 Double Issue by TTA Press

Author:TTA Press [TTA Press]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror
Publisher: TTA Press
Published: 2022-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

***

Some months later, and we’ve moved out of the cold end of spring, through a sudden hot two-week summer, and then into a wet in-between season – green but endlessly soaked. The weather forecasters promise it’ll end soon, and that we should expect a proper hot summer.

I pass the wet days making too much cake and reordering bookshelves endlessly, around stripping wallpaper and replacing skirting boards. I sometimes wish the big rooms of our dream house were a little smaller. And there’s the mice, still. In the corners and at the backs of both the bookshelves and the kitchen cupboards is an endless trail of mouse shit and nibbled paper.

You are restless. I find you, often, sitting on the little makeshift box seat, gazing out the window at the half-jungle of the garden, jiggling one foot. You sit, and you stare, and you tell me you have become quite obsessed with the birds, but though you buy bird food that is slightly higher quality than our own food, you forget to feed them all the time. Today you are gazing at a lone pigeon and fiddling with the silver ring that hangs on a chain around your neck for safekeeping, “in case we ever find the owner”.

The ring still looks tarnished to me, and I don’t sit on the box seat because I imagine myself falling through it into that dark filthy space and choking to death on spores and mouse bones, though that’s impossible – the cupboard is no more. Chemically scorched clean and then bricked up, the seat is just a seat, with no secrets under it. The door was plastered back into place more smoothly than it had been before, and we painted that whole wall a beautiful dark teal accent colour to complement the rest of the room, and also to hide any signs of the mould returning.

“Did you ever hear back from whatsherface – the estate agent?” I ask, gesturing at the ring.

“I didn’t ask her,” you say.

“Secondhand shop, then?” I suggest, for the fiftieth time.

“But it’s got initials on it,” you rebuff, also for the fiftieth time. And that’s that.

“I’m going into the attic to check the traps,” I say.

“Want me to hold the ladder?” you ask. I say yes. The ladder is secure, but if it stops you sitting on a rotten box seat and staring into the garden with that half-anger half-sadness in your eyes, then yes, please, hold the ladder.

I climb into the attic. Three out of six mouse traps have been sprung. I pick up one and balance it near the trapdoor. I go to collect the next, and when I turn around you have, surprisingly, clambered up the ladder, high enough to poke your head and shoulders through. You hate the attic. You hate mustiness, and you hate heights.

“It’s so dark up here,” you say, and I move so my head doesn’t block the feeble light. It turns the skin on your face the colour of old bones, making you look sick.

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