Where Old Ghosts Meet - Kate Evans [101]
Fresh air from the broken window swept across the room like a silent breath. She reached for a small tin box on the window ledge and pried it open. Tea, the faint smell trapped for years, still remained. She tried to imagine the kitchen as it had been: Matt’s chair, the smooth wooden table with the dark shiny groove, the old lamp. Around her feet years and years of activity showed on the worn linoleum.
The door across the hall was closed. The front room. She stopped for a moment and then headed up over the stairs. The treads groaned with each step. She moved stealthily, her eyes alert for danger. All about her the light, the walls, the air, all had a grey pallor, like death. Standing on the landing she felt the slope in the floor where the house was listing. A storm or two and she’d buckle at the knees and come down just like the others. Nora peeped in each room but, like the kitchen, they were stripped almost bare. She thanked God that Peg had had the good sense not to come back. She crept back down the stairs, holding tightly to the wobbly rail, anxious to be safe on the ground floor again.
“Still shut off,” she said aloud as she approached the closed door. All of a sudden she felt giddy and childish. “Well, Matt Molloy,” she continued, “you are about to be confronted by your granddaughter.” She knocked lightly, her ear to the door, mocking the silence. She knocked again, louder this time, insistent. She put her ear to the door again. Open the door, Richard. The words of the song came to her. She was singing in a whisper, Open the door and let me in. Then angry at her timidness she sang out, Open the door,Matthew,Matthew, why don’t you o—pen the door.
She heard the words echo about the house, climb the stairs, bounce off the walls, float out the front door and into the garden. She laughed out loud and took hold of the doorknob. “Ready or not,” she called, “here I come.”
Slowly she turned the handle and peeped mischievously around the door. Her little charade ended abruptly. The blank wall of silence came right at her. It mocked her high spirits and made her feel ridiculous. She straightened up and stepped inside. There was a different feel to this room. The window was still intact and the thin wisps of curtain were drawn together so it was dim and dusty and the air heavy and stale. Moving cautiously she looked about. An iron bedstead stood in the corner. She jumped as an empty soup can rolled drunkenly across the floor and came to a clanging halt by an empty beer carton. Dead bottles lay strewn on the floor, several poked out from beneath the iron bedstead, one lay on the filthy mattress and a couple more lay in the corner by the window. Someone had camped out here in the past. She picked up a bottle and sniffed. It was bone dry.
She moved to the window and pulled aside the dusty curtain. The tiny enclosure was filled with trapped sunshine. A whole world existed in this secret place. A nest of cobwebs, like stringy hammocks, hung in the corners cradling years of dirt. All about, the dust swarmed in tiny constellations. The Virgin Mary stood guard over all. Nora picked up the end of the curtain, rubbed at the dirt on the windowpane and peered through the smudgy circle. She could see where her feet had made a path to the door.
The sunlight improved the room but the silence was still unsettling. She had a strange feeling that things were staring right back at her, the bed, the walls, the overturned chair in the corner. He had died in this room in the comfort of fresh sheets, the warmth of a crackling fire, and with his dying breath he had spoken Peg’s name. In