My wife and I moved house, about a year ago.
We were renting, before that. But I got a new job; my last grandparent passed, leaving me a fair chunk of change; and a cute little semi detached house in the same village as my new job was new on the market, just within our price range.
We asked the normal things for first time buyers. How’s the area? How’s the insulation? Why are you selling?
Nice enough area. Excellent insulation. Found out my boyfriend was cheating on me.
Normal things. Normal, normal, normal.
It’s a narrow house. It and its twin, squeezed onto one plot of land but split in two for maximum profit. It Makes up for its narrow footprint by being tall. Front room, back room, bathroom, stairs. Repeat. Repeat.
We had a cat. She went missing a while ago. We got her a little red collar with a bell on it, so we could hear her coming.
The only problem is storage space. My parents asked me, very politly, to take all my shit and leave. Suddenly I had thirty years of memories to store. We bought boxes, cupboards, stuffed stuff under beds and under the stairs.
We were told that the attic wasn’t accessible. Or rather, not worth accessing. A tiny hole of a space.
Perfect for the last few things I didn’t want to throw away.
I got the ladder, crawled up to check it out. She was right, it was a tiny hole - a little triangular space packed into the tip of the roof, stretching off into the dusty dark. It looked like it went right over our neighbour. Just big enough to acomodate my shoulders, if I squeeze. Just big enough for a box. There was a slight smell. Faint, very faint. Like damp, or mould, or rot. I barely noticed it at first.
I just wanted to find the wall, to push the box as far as possible.
I must have been crawling, shoving, for over a minute before I realised something wasn’t right. I’d gone too far. Thr box got stuck, wedged between two rafters, but I still couldn’t see a wall beyond it.
It’s too tight to turn around up here, but I can shuffle backwards. I went back for half an hour. The floor under me is that smooth, cheap plywood. Regular. If I assume that each sheet is four foot long, based on my own height, I’ve been going backwards for… about six hundred feet since I started counting. My shoulders are cramping something awful.
I have phone signal, but not much battery left. I’m actually still connected to the home WiFi, which is… Nice. My wife isn’t answering her phone. The dust is playing havoc with my asthma. My phone torch will shut off when it reaches five percent. I tried to turn it off, to save power but… I don’t want to be in the dark.
I found a little red collar, with a bell on it. The smell is getting stronger.