The smile looked fake, forced. Exposed teeth, a dead stare forward. It was more of a grimace than anything else.
‘Don’t blame you, mate.’ Dean muttered as he looked at the image before him. He could see two reasons for the state of the other man’s face. The first being the fingers pinching his cheeks tightly, their grip pulling the skin taut in a way that looked painful. The second, more psychological torment was present as a tacky usher’s uniform coloured a horrific burgundy worn by the other man. He looked more like he should be handling Hercule Poirot’s luggage than showing patrons to their screening of some blockbuster, but Dean had been assured that the hapless figure worked in a cinema. Still, at least his wife, the owner of the fingers, looked happy, a genuine beam splitting her face with adoration and amusement.
Dean blinked and mentally corrected himself. The other man’s widow looked happy. In this old photograph he could see his girlfriend got some of her features from her mother and (although he’d never tell her) one or two from her late father.
Dean had been over to Melissa’s house a few times at this point and had gotten to know her mother well enough during these visits. Carrie spoke often of her late husband, often enough that Dean felt he would have liked the man if he was still around. Between Carrie’s common remark of: ‘He’ll always be with us.’ as she flicked her eyes heavenward, numerous photographs and other memorabilia placed around the house, he certainly maintained a presence.
It was this presence that Dean felt as he stood alone on the landing. He wasn’t alone in the house, but with Melissa napping and Carrie out shopping, Dean had taken to quietly wandering around the different rooms. His wandering had brought him here, surrounded by walls positively covered with prints and portraits, a haphazard collage of the past framed in every shape and colour you could think of. It all reminded Dean of an evidence board in a detective show, the rhyme and reason known only to whoever had mounted the myriad of pictures.
But Dean’s attention had been brought specifically to this picture in front of him. It wasn’t just the ugly waistcoat and rounded hat, or the contrast between grin and grimace, amusing as these were. It had caught Dean’s eye because it was out of place. Crucially, this frame was not sitting straight on the wall. It was sitting at a slight angle that was clearly not an aesthetic choice; no other picture sat like this. Dean reached out to adjust it, making sure to be delicate. But as his fingers curled around the wooden edges, their tips felt something odd. That is, they felt nothing. There was a gap in the wall. Dean lifted the frame further to take a look at what it hid. Sat in the tiny alcove was a small, ornate, but seemingly functional, lever.
‘Huh.’ Dean said with a raised eyebrow, curiosity burning inside of him. He didn’t know what a lever could possibly be needed for in the house. It didn’t look like a fire alarm, and surely that wouldn’t be hidden. Maybe it didn’t do anything, and that’s why it was hidden from sight. Whatever it did, the urge to know was overwhelming. He gripped the lever and pulled it.
CREAK
Dean’s head snapped up towards the noise. A hidden trapdoor had opened in the ceiling, a ladder slowly descending from the newly present hole. The opening was dark, but Dean could just about make out the house’s rafters, their lack of dust indicating that the attic was used regularly. But this was the first time Dean had even heard of Melissa’s house having second attic. Who would design the house with such a space, and why had the lever to get into it been stashed in the wall behind a picture frame? He looked over to his girlfriend’s bedroom door. Melissa probably had the answer to his questions, but her soft snores could still be heard.
Dean knew better than to wake her.
Carrie wasn’t back yet.
Dean decided to find out what the attic held on his own. He took hold of the ladder and began to climb, expecting it to creak or crack in protest, however it was clearly well made and maintained, which only made him more curious about what lay above. Even as his head poked through the opening, he still couldn’t make anything out in the gloom. He could, however, now smell something between perfume and incense. Pulling himself through the square gap, he found the space was tall enough for him to stand up in, so as he straightened up, he fished into his pocket for his phone. He squinted at the display, searching for the torch button. He found it and raised the phone to finally satisfy his curiosity.
Dean nearly fell back through the narrow gap as the small bulb illuminated the room. He simply wasn’t prepared for what was mere inches from his face. It was a smile.
The smile was fake, forced. Papery skin pulled taut over a skeletal frame, lifeless glass eyes. It looked more like a prop in a haunted house than anything else. But this was clearly no prop. The grinning head was attached to a body, held up in a stoop by silk ropes tethered around its wrists and neck tied to the rafters in the ceiling. The way the body hung made it look like it was reaching out for a warm hug, to wrap Dean up in a shrivelled embrace, its dead stare begging for comfort. The source of the smell was obvious now; numerous candles sat around the figure, atop the ornate rug and soft cushions splayed out in a cosy nest. As recognition dawned on a stunned Dean, he noticed a detail he wished he hadn’t. If he hadn’t, he could have written the ghastly sight off as some sick ornament. There was something white glinting in his torch light, just at the figure’s ankle. It was a fragment of bone sticking out from the skin.
This wasn’t waxwork, it was taxidermy, and it was obvious to Dean who the smile once belonged to. The cadaver was even wearing the same awful burgundy suit and hat. It was the same man from the photo. Melissa’s late father. Carrie’s late husband. Immortalised. Enshrined. Preserved.
BANG
The front door bursting open downstairs seemed to Dean to be the loudest sound he’d ever heard.
‘Lisssssa, Deaaaan, I’m baaaaack!’
Carrie’s unmistakeable sing-song voice echoed upstairs, paralysing Dean with cold panic as he’d barely processed the sight before him, let alone what it meant, or might mean if he was discovered with it. Fear quickly forced his body into motion, and he scrambled towards the opening in the floor, desperate to get back down before Carrie came up the stairs.
Rushing down the ladder was a mistake, though. Pain shot through his system as his right foot made contact with the floor at an awkward angle. He was able to catch hold of the banister before he fell on his backside, and supported himself there in agony. He had to wrench himself away, however, as he tried to shove the ladder back up into the hole of the macabre attic shrine. By some minor miracle, the same mechanism that dropped the ladder whirred into action, retracting it and closing the hatch. He caught his breath for a second, before Carrie called up again:
‘Are you both OK?’
‘Uhh-uh yeah!’ Dean lied, ‘Melissa’s just asleep at the moment.’
‘Ohhh, bless her, tired girl! I’m sure she’ll be awake once I’ve cooked; I’m making her favourite! I just need to bring the rest of these bags in.’
‘Do you want any help with that?’ Dean instantly cringed. Why the fuck had he asked that? If he hobbled downstairs, he’d have to explain away the pain in his foot and the sweaty shock on his face from finding a preserved corpse in the woman’s attic. He could barely speak, let alone carry groceries. He braced himself for Carrie’s reply.
‘Ohh thank you dear! But you don’t have to, I’ve not got that much.’
‘O-okay.’ Dean said. Another minor miracle; he had time to think of an excuse.
The photographs on the wall silently leered and laughed at him as he desperately hobbled back toward his girlfriend’s room.
He got the door open and dropped himself heavily onto the bed. For a moment, he enjoyed the relief of taking the weight off of his ankle. Then realised he’d missed something. Or rather, was missing something. In his panic to leave the attic, he must have dropped his phone. It was still up there, cold evidence of his discovery, and he didn’t know when or if he’d be able to retrieve it without being noticed. His inner cursing was interrupted by Melissa, who had woken up when he’d flopped down next to her.
‘Awhh, there you are!’ She cooed sleepily in a lilting, sing-song voice. ‘Come here, Lissy wanna cuddle.’ Dean wordlessly complied, feeling her arms and legs wrap around him as she characteristically squeezed, her breathing deep and content.
‘You’ll never leave me, will you Deano?’ She asked, snaking her hand upwards and pinching his cheek.
Dean didn’t know how to answer her.