Brat, p.5
Brat, page 5
I pulled the door to it open more. The draft got bigger and colder. The air smelled different, damper, badder.
I moved my body around the grow tent. I edged into the second attic. I found a light switch in the dark and switched it.
The lightbulb still worked. I did not know the last time someone had been up in here.
Everywhere was boxes, bits of small furniture, paintings leaned against walls, books, dust-filled cobwebs.
In the bulb-light I saw black mold growing on the attic walls. It seemed bad.
Outside plants were growing in through the roof, somehow.
I tried not to inhale. Maybe there were bats living here. Bat droppings could make you sick. I knew that.
My feet were bare on the dusty floor. I thought about nails I might step on. I did not want a rusty nail in my foot. I worried about the attic-dust-air on the skin of my exposed penis, too. I did not want to get a dust allergy on my penis. I was very allergenic. I did not want to break out.
Again I had the feeling someone was watching me. I looked back out of the attic, through the grow tent area, into my parents’ bedroom. But it was too dark to see anything.
There was nobody in the attic. Nobody I could see.
I held my breath. I did not want to breathe in.
I didn’t want to touch anything, either. It all looked boring and dusty. I really did not want to have to clean it all out.
But I picked up one shoebox. It had Rebecca written on it, in black permanent marker, in handwriting that looked like my mother’s.
I shook the shoebox slightly so some of the dust slipped off. I heard a heavy plastic sound in it.
I looked around the attic again. Everything was still dusty and boring and scary. But I thought I would take that box downstairs.
So I got out of the second attic into the first attic and made sure the door to the second attic was shut very properly. So my plants wouldn’t get cold.
I took the shoebox all the way downstairs to the living room.
The television was on. It was set to the History Channel. It was showing a program about the various deaths of Nelson Mandela. I turned it off.
I turned the light on. I opened the box.
Inside was a videotape and some photographs and a small and ornate mirror and various pieces of brown and amber jewelry. A trapped insect in one of the necklaces.
I spread it all out on the coffee table and sat on the floor in front of it. I still didn’t have any trousers or underwear on. I could feel the hairs on my new skin standing.
The photos were of my mother as a teenager.
She was with my grandmother and with her sisters and with people who I assumed were her friends. They had big hair and old clothes. The photos were dark and badly lit. Sometimes people were smiling and sometimes they were posing, not smiling, with eyeliner and hands against walls.
I looked at the videotape. It was in a tacky metallic-blue slip. I slipped it out.
I turned the television back on. There was a VHS player attached, still, so my father could watch his collection of old television shows and movies. For research or because he was bored or both.
I put the videotape into the player and rewound it. It made a sound I’d not heard in a long time. I sat cross-legged on the floor so I could control the player.
I pressed play.
At first there was just VHS snowstorm. Then a picture appeared. I recognized the legs as my mother’s. The camera pointed into her lap. I heard her say: okay, it’s started, it’s beginning.
The camera moved around the room. I recognized the house as this one. There was my father, sat beside her. He made a funny face into the camera. My mother laughed. My father grinned.
The camera pointed in a new direction. I saw my brother but very young, moving colored shapes around an impossibly curved and useless abacus. Look, my mother said, you’re on video. My brother looked confused and then came toward the camera grinning, but looking at my mother behind the camera, not into the camera at all.
The snowstorm reappeared and then a new image. My mother holding the camera again. But now in my brother’s bedroom, before it was a study. My father shirtless, holding my brother in one arm, painting the walls of the bedroom. Just the sound of the camcorder whirring. My father turning to the camera and smiling sheepishly.
I paused the tape on that. The image stayed still and carouseled up and down.
I looked at my flickering dad for the longest time.
Then I pressed play again.
The snowstorm reappeared and stayed there. I thought about stopping the tape and rewinding it. I wanted to see my family again. But I wanted to see if there was anything else on the tape, too.
Eventually the snowstorm shifted into an image. At first it was too light and fucked to see anything properly. But then I saw my mother again. Older now, older than earlier in the video. Old enough that I recognized her from when I was a child. She was sitting on the bonnet of a metallic-blue Alfa Romeo Spider. The person holding the camera walked toward her. Whoever was holding it was tall. My mother put her hand up to the camera and laughed.
Snowstorm reappeared on the screen.
I looked around the room. I noticed light from the television reflecting off the small ornate mirror that had been in the shoebox. It bounced around the room somehow.
Another image appeared out of the snow.
It was my mother again, the same age, outdoors, sitting on a picnic blanket with a man I did not recognize. The camera was being held at child-height, moving more than it should. I could barely make out the man sitting beside my mother. He looked big and thin and Spanish or South American. My body started to feel bad and full of movement.
The image cut to something else. There was minimal snowstorm this time, almost none. It was my mother again, a third time, the same age, embracing two smiling children. The children looked roughly the same age as each other. They looked familiar. But I did not recognize them. In the background was the same metallic-blue car as in the video before.
The video ended there.
I rewound it. I saw my father again. Then my mother with the car. And my mother with the big and thin Spanish or South American man. Then my mother embracing the smiling boy and girl.
I let the video stop.
I lit a cigarette and stood. My head rushed like unwinding.
I walked over to the huge and faded gold-framed mirror that hung on the wall of the living room. In my hand was the small ornate mirror from the shoebox. I stood in front of the huge mirror and held up the small mirror to it. I put my head in between the two mirrors. I tried to look into the big mirror to see the smaller mirror reflected back into it.
But the small mirror was too small and my head was too big and it was too dark to see anything anyway.
Before I went back to sleep I tried to masturbate. My body felt bad and full of movement. I wanted to make that stop. And I wanted to see if my penis still worked after losing the skin on it.
I got hard. But I felt sensitive when I touched myself slightly, and it stung badly when I put my hand around myself and moved my foreskin up and down.
I gave up and passed out.
I woke to the sound of the landline ringing.
I looked at my actual phone. There were missed calls from my brother on it.
I waited for the landline to ring out.
I heard my dad’s voice say to leave a message. I thought about not calling my brother back. But I did.
“He speaks,” my brother said.
“What do you want?” I said, in a Robert De Niro mafia-guy voice. I took the phone away from my ear while my brother was talking to look at the clock on it. It said 1 p.m.
“What?” I said, when my phone was back on my ear.
“Were you asleep?”
“I was out.”
“Sure,” my brother said. “The estate agent is coming the day after tomorrow. To do a valuation.”
“Evaluate what?” I said.
“A valuation. How’s the clear-out going?”
“I found a VHS,” I said, “in the attic.”
“The attic? You must be almost done, then.”
“It has Mum and Dad and you in it. The video. But also Mum with another family, I think.”
“He’s coming at two. The day after tomorrow. Make sure everything looks valuable.”
“I don’t know who the other family is. In the video. With Mum. I don’t know if I can ask her. It’s a whole other family.”
“I heard a story you’ll like,” my brother said. “A friend of mine works in the Job Centre. In the town where the house is. He had to tell a man that they were stopping his benefits. So he’d need to get a job.
“And the man whose benefits they’re stopping, he looks at my friend. Then he looks around. Then he clutches his chest, where his heart is, and he falls off the chair.
“And he just lies there, on the ground. Dead of a heart attack, or something. So my friend rushes out of his little office to get help.”
“Oh, no,” I said.
“And the first person he sees, he says: this guy, he just died in my office.
“And the person says: was it Frank Thingy?
“And my friend goes: yeah. I think he’s dead.
“And the person just shakes their head and starts laughing. And my friend is panicking now, saying they need to call an ambulance, call for medical support, whatever. Because the guy is dead.”
“Oh, no,” I said.
“Yeah, so. My friend is panicking and the more he panics the more the other person laughs. And my friend is getting really worried now. Because this person is hysterical with laughter. But there is a dead guy in my friend’s office.
“So the person eventually stops laughing and takes my friend by the arm and walks him back to his office. And they just stand there watching the guy. From the doorway of the office. And they just stand there watching him. And my friend is panicking, but eventually he notices that the guy is still breathing.
“And his colleague laughs again, and says: get up, Frank.
“And Frank—who was dead—gets up, and doesn’t look at them, and kind of dusts himself down, and then sits back down in the chair.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Yeah. So apparently this guy just does that. Plays dead when he hears something he doesn’t like. That’s his thing. He’s known for it.”
“Pretending,” I said.
“Yeah. Pretending to be dead. Whenever he hears something he doesn’t like.”
“Like if an estate agent came to value his childhood home?” I said.
“Or if his dickhead brother fucked up a house sale that could make him a lot of money,” my brother said.
“I don’t like that story,” I said.
“Yeah, you do. You love it. You dirty little slut.”
“I’ve got to go, I’m dying,” I said, and hung up the phone.
I just sat there on my childhood bed awhile staring into nothing. It had started raining slightly outside. I could hear it. I liked the sound it made. I opened the window so I could hear it better and heard the sound of the motorway too, far away.
Downstairs I heard the television say: welcome to the money-wellness revolution.
The rain made the air coming through the window cold and I put the quilt from the bed around my shoulders.
Then I heard a different sound. From out the window. Like the sound of a garden animal but larger. So I looked out the window properly. But I couldn’t see anything there.
I heard the sound again. It seemed to be coming from the old and fucked-up garden shed.
I knelt on the bed to look out of the window.
I saw the door to the shed open on its almost broken hinges.
The sound was the man. The figure I’d seen before. But he was not dressed as a man. I couldn’t see what he was dressed as at first.
The man came out of the garden shed holding a pair of oversized rust-covered shears.
He pushed the door to the shed closed behind him.
I shouted.
And the man turned to the window slowly. And that’s when I saw what he was dressed as.
The man was dressed in a horrible mud-covered brown costume.
The costume had its own fur. The fur was full of dried mud and attached plant matter, leaves, twigs, matted.
And on his head he had a mask of a deer face. A woman deer, without antlers. Covering his whole head.
I couldn’t see eyeholes in the deer mask. Just glassy mask eyes. Far too far apart for him to see out of.
He stood there in the light rain looking at me in the window for a moment, still holding the rusted shears in one of his brown-gloved hands.
I wanted to shout again. But I didn’t. We just stayed there looking at each other.
Then the man turned back toward the shed and opened the door to it. Then he looked back at me. Then he went into the shed and I heard the sound of tools in it.
Then I saw him come out of the shed. I shouted again.
I noticed he didn’t have the shears anymore.
He closed the door to the shed without turning back to the window.
Then the man clomped off toward the trees at the end of the garden until I couldn’t see him anymore.
I stayed at the window watching for a long time to see if the deer-man came back.
But he didn’t.
So I put on dirty clothes, still watching the window.
I went downstairs to the kitchen. I took a big knife out of the knife block. Like I had before.
I thought about calling the police. But the house was full of drugs. And I wasn’t a snitch.
I looked out of the kitchen window into the garden. It was still raining slightly. The door to the shed was slightly open.
I put a cigarette in my mouth and lit it.
I opened the back door and took my knife out into the garden.
I shouted a sound with the cigarette still in my mouth. I wanted to keep my hands free.
I couldn’t hear anything.
I looked around everywhere and started walking down the long garden to the shed. I kept my eyes really wide.
At the shed, I stood away from it and pulled the door open with my non-knife hand. Just in case the deer-man had snuck back in there and was waiting to jump me with the rusted hedge trimmers, or another garden implement.
The shed was empty.
I heard a sound from the trees at the bottom of the garden.
I didn’t shout this time. I stepped back from the shed farther. I walked quietly toward the trees.
At the trees there were no more sounds. And I couldn’t see anything, either. But the trees at the end of the garden turned into a dense-ish patch of woodland.
There was a fucked-up wire fence showing where the garden ended. It had been broken in one place. So you could easily jump it.
I stood looking into the woodland. The sound of rain on remaining leaves; birds.
I looked up at the biggest tree. I knew it was an ash. It had some kind of lesion on it. It looked dying.
I stood there with my knife a long time, moving my head around and shifting between feet quietly. But there were no more sounds. So eventually I gave up.
I went back to the house. On the way I looked into the shed again.
The shed was weirdly clean. I had been expecting more cobwebs. But there weren’t many. All the garden tools were neatly arranged. The shears had been returned. They were in their spot.
I closed the door to the shed and went back to the house.
I found a padlock with a key in it in the drawer of stuff.
I took the padlock out to the shed and locked the door shut tight.
I turned to go back into the house. The house looked so fucked up. Plants were growing all up it, flaking bricks. Holes in the roof where tiles had fallen.
The walls were beginning to peel.
I went back into it.
I checked again that all the house doors were locked properly. And that the windows were closed, too.
I took half a Xanax and sat on my bed cross-legged. I watched the window and waited.
I tried to ignore the front door, but when I opened it the boy and girl were standing there. The boy stood at the front. The girl stood behind him, swinging car keys around her finger.
“Hi,” I said.
“You’ve got vomit on you,” the boy said, all quiet.
“Your car is here,” I said, nodding at the car.
“We came to pick it up.”
I invited them inside. Then I told them the story about a man who pretends to be dead.
“That’s a sad story,” the girl said. The boy nodded and passed the girl the joint I had just rolled.
“How come your parents are never home?”
“They’re dead,” I said. “This is my house now.”
“Our parents are dead, too,” the boy said. “In a car crash.”
“Your car looks fine,” I said.
“Your house looks fucked up,” the girl said. “The front of it is all crumbling.”
“Are you brother and sister?” I said. They looked at each other.
“Yeah,” the girl said.
“Where do you live?”
“We told you,” the boy said, “nowhere.”
“Right,” I said.
“Yeah,” the girl said.
“I want to show you something,” I said.
We went into the living room and I showed them the blue oriental-looking vase that had my father’s ash in it. My mother’s possessions and the blue slip of the videotape were still all over the coffee table.
The girl said, “Have you touched the ash?”
