The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(86)

Wearily, Patricia turned and saw Mrs. Greene with her neck craned back, staring at the hall ceiling. More specifically, she was staring at a small black hook in the hall ceiling. Using it as a landmark, Patricia could just make out the rectangular line of a door around it, the hinges painted white. She got a broom from the kitchen and used the eyelet in its handle to snag the hook. They both pulled and, with a groan of springs and a cracking of paint, the rectangular edges got bigger, darker, and the attic door dropped down and the metal stairs attached to it unfolded.

A dry, abandoned smell rolled down into the hall.

“I’ll go up,” Patricia said.

She gripped the edges hard, and the ladder rattled as she climbed. She felt too heavy, like her foot was going to break the steps. Then her head passed through the ceiling and she was in the dark.

Her eyes adjusted and she realized it wasn’t completely dark. The attic ran the length of the house and there were louvers on either end. Daylight filtered through. It felt hot and stuffy. The end of the attic facing the street was bare, just joists and pink insulation. The back was a jumble of dim shapes.

“Do you have a flashlight?” she called down.

“Here,” Mrs. Greene said.

She unclipped something from her keychain and Patricia came down a few steps and took it: a small, turquoise rubber rectangle the size of a cigarette lighter.

“You squeeze the sides,” Mrs. Greene said.

A tiny bulb on the end emitted a weak glow.

It was better than nothing.

Patricia went up into the attic.

The floor was gritty, covered in a layer of cockroach poison, mouse droppings, dried guano, pigeon feathers, dead cockroaches on their backs, and larger piles of excrement that looked like they came from raccoons. Patricia started walking toward the clutter. Cool air formed a cross breeze blowing from the vents at either end. The white powder ground against the plywood beneath her feet.

It smelled like dead insects up here, like rotten fabric, like wet cardboard that had dried and mildewed. Everything downstairs had been meticulously cleaned and polished, scoured of anything organic. Up here, the house lay exposed: splintery joists, filthy plywood flooring, construction measurements penciled onto the exposed plywood beneath the shingles. Patricia played the flashlight beam over the mound of items at the rear and realized that this was the graveyard of Mrs. Savage’s life.

Blankets and quilts and sheets were draped over all the boxes and trunks and suitcases she’d once seen in the old lady’s front room. Studded with cockroach eggs, sticky with spiderwebs stretched between every open space, the filthy sheets and blankets were stiff and rank.

Patricia lifted one tacky corner of a pink quilt and released a puff of rotten wood pulp. Beneath it, on the floor, lay a cardboard box of water-damaged paperback romances. Mice had chewed one corner to shreds and brightly colored paperback guts spilled onto the floor. Why had he brought all this garbage into a new house? It felt wrong. In his entire, new, meticulously blank home, this stood out like a mistake.

Her skin seethed in revulsion wherever she touched the blankets. They were covered in grime, white cockroach poison, and mouse droppings. She walked around the boxes to where the blankets ended, where the brick chimney rose through the floor and then the ceiling. She recognized the row of old suitcases sitting next to it, surrounded by furniture she remembered from the old house: standing lamps completely obscured by spiderwebs that were thick with eggs, the rocking chair with its seat chewed into a mouse nest, the cross-stretcher table whose veneer top had warped and split.

Not knowing where to start, Patricia lifted each of the suitcases. They were empty except for the second-to-last one. It didn’t budge. She tried again. It felt rooted to the floor. She slid the brown, hard-sided Samsonite bag out, sweat dripping from her nose. She undid its first latch, stiff with disuse, then the second, and the weight of whatever was inside popped it open.

The chemical stench of mothballs exploded into her face, making her eyes water. She squeezed the light Mrs. Greene had given her and saw that it was crammed with black plastic sheeting speckled with white mothballs that rolled onto the floor. She pulled aside some of the plastic and a pair of milky eyes reflected the light back at her.

Her fingers went numb and the flashlight went dark as she dropped it into the plastic. She stepped back, missed the edge where the plywood flooring ended, and her foot came down on the empty space between two of the joists. She started to fall backward, arms pinwheeling, and only just managed to grab a rough beam on the ceiling and catch herself.

Reaching into the suitcase, barely controlling her panic, her fingers found the flashlight and squeezed. She saw the eyes again, and now she made out the face around them. It was wrapped in a clear, plastic dry-cleaning bag and Patricia saw white grains in it that had turned yellow and brown over time. She realized they were salt. The mothballs were there to kill the smell. The salt was to preserve the body. The skin on the face of the corpse was dark brown and stretched tight, pulling the lips away from the teeth in a terrible grin. But even then, Patricia recognized Francine.

Heart cracking hard inside her chest, hands tingling with blood, she forced herself to let the penlight go out. She slid it into her pocket and struggled with the Samsonite until she had it closed again. She twisted the stiff latches, grabbed the handle with both hands, and dragged it toward the stairs. It made a loud, gritty sound as she slid it across the floor.

She pulled on the suitcase, took a step, pulled it again, took a step, and step by step she dragged it halfway to the attic stairs. Her shoulders burned, the base of her spine felt broken, but eventually she got it to the lip of the trapdoor and felt relief course through her body when she saw the clean room down below.