DO NOT OPEN (standard:horror, 3406 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: May 21 2008	Views/Reads: 3518/2338	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
What is so dangerous that it has to be walled up in the attic?

The prospect of decorating never appealed to Derek. It was always a case
of putting it off until later, but later never came. He would make 
excuses that he would often believe himself, such was the conviction he 
told them with. Yet, today, he had actually made a start, dampening the 
wallpaper to make it easier to strip. His wife was no help whatsoever. 
It was her constant pestering that forced him to make a start, if only 
to keep her quiet. The hall was first, where there was an elegantly 
carved table, upon which lay the telephone. It couldn't stay there 
while he was working, so his wife suggested putting it in the loft. 
Derek couldn't see why putting it the loft would make it any safer than 
putting it  in the spare room or bedroom, but once his wife's mind was 
made up, that was that, the table had to go in the loft, along with 
many other miscellaneous items that would be ‘safe' up there. Most 
manageable furniture would end up in there, Derek thought. There was no 
reasoning with her. Derek had been married to her for 22 years, most of 
them happy. At least that's what Derek told himself. He had convinced 
himself that she was the only woman for him. As it was these days, with 
Derek being the exact opposite of a male model, at 59, with a beer gut, 
and his faculties slowing down with age, he had become the epitomy of 
the answer to the question in relation to his wife: Who else would have 
him? 

He had accepted the way things were. If he tried to change anything
within his marriage, then he always sought her approval, or permission, 
accepting her answer, always without question.  She was downstairs now, 
making cottage pie. He didn't like cottage pie, never had. One remark 
18 years ago as to what he thought of her cooking was enough to keep 
him in cottage pies for years. ' Yes, this is lovely', he had said, and 
that was that. It was cottage pie every Tuesday. It didn't matter. She 
always saw Irene on Tuesday for a social evening at the local 
conservative club for card games, bingo, line dancing, and all manner 
of activities that she enjoyed along with people of a similar age. 
Derek used her absence to go to the takeaway. Char siu and chips, 
covered in curry. It was sheer bliss. When he had finished, he always 
disposed of the empty packet by leaning over the fence in the garden 
and putting it into next door's wheelie-bin. For seventeen years she 
had never suspected. Tonight was his little bit of freedom to relax in 
front of the TV and watch what he wanted. The remote control was all 
his. In the meantime, he had to haul the table up into the loft. The 
stepladders were open beneath the dark square in the hallway ceiling, 
and he found himself having to find a torch. He retrieved one from the 
garage, one bought for him for his birthday six years ago by his wife, 
and hardly used. Its beam was powerful, and picked out everything in 
the loft in glaring intensity, including a collection of broken pieces 
of furniture, no use to any one, piled up in the far corner. Putting 
broken furniture up in the loft was one thing, Derek thought, but then 
piling it all up in the corner meant to him that there could be a 
reason for it, or somebody had had nothing better to do. Perhaps it was 
hiding something, he wondered. Having been here for four years, and 
only once having ventured into the loft, he had never thought that it 
could be concealing something. There was nothing else of interest up 
there. Layers of asbestos, an empty, dust laden bin-bag, a piece of 
wire, and a piece of broken glass. With the torch laid at an 
appropriate angle, Derek began to move the pile, starting with a piece 
of chair leg at the bottom. He should have thought, but he didn't, that 
beginning at the top would have been easier, as the whole pile came 
crashing down. He jumped back, clutching onto a wooden post. Thick dust 
swirled like black smoke from burning tyres and clogged his throat, 
making him cough like he did the first time he had tried a cigarette, 
40 years ago. The ceiling remained intact, but Derek was more worried 
about the wife. He was waiting for a call from downstairs to ask just 
what on earth the noise was, but when nothing came, he assumed she must 
be out in the back yard, or somewhere out of earshot. The torch was 
underneath the furniture somewhere, producing muted shafts of light 
through the wood. One beam, deflected from the surface of half a coffee 
table, despite the thick layer of dust, cast the wall, hidden by the 
pile of useless furniture, in a muted yellow hue. Derek came to the 
conclusion that the furniture was hiding nothing. It was a blank wall. 
At least, Derek believed it was a blank wall until he looked a little 
closer. He stepped over the furniture and managed to crouch down and 
see that part of the wall was a different colour. Most of the bricks 
were old and encrusted with grime, but one part held new bricks, 
hastily cemented together. There were six bricks that Derek guessed had 
not been there as long as those surrounding them. It seemed as though 
somebody had sealed something up. It didn't take him long to go 


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