The Girl Below(73)

“My books fell off the desk,” I said, stuttering.

“Are you all right?”

“I found a tooth.”

In Caleb’s expression, I saw how pathetic that sounded.

“It’s probably one of mine,” he said. “Can I see it?”

We went back to my bedroom, turned on the light, got down on all fours, and crawled over the carpet looking for the tooth, but like a contact lens that had popped out of my eye, never to be found again, the tooth had fallen from my hand and disappeared. After ten minutes, we still hadn’t found it, and I sat down on the edge of the desk, despondent.

“Are you sure it was a tooth?” said Caleb. “Maybe it was just a button or something.”

“No, it was definitely a tooth. A small front tooth.” I had only wanted it to be a button.

Caleb sat on the edge of the bed and yawned. “It must have been mine,” he said. “This used to be my room—remember?”

“You’re probably right. I’m still a little freaked out about the, ya know, presence, that’s all.”

He flopped over and frowned at the ceiling. “Have you heard the noises?”

“What noises?”

“Children’s voices. They whisper sometimes.”

A bolt of such hysterical fear went through me that I laughed out loud. “What do they say?”

“I haven’t heard them for a while, but they were mostly taunts, like at school. They talked about me like I was the stinky fat kid and they were coming to get me. Like they wanted to kill me.” His voice fell to a raspy whisper. “Kill him. Kill him. Eat his heart.”

We fell silent, listening, but heard only the faint rumble of Harold’s snoring, coming from downstairs. He’d been trashed when he went to bed, and I thought, with a shudder, that he must have been the spy. A strange rustling sound came from the bed, where Caleb was lying, and when I looked over, he was scratching his skin and pulling at his hair, eyes rolling back in some kind of fit.

“Caleb, are you all right?” I actually went over to the bed to get a closer look.

His chest heaved with silent spasms, and he was laughing hard enough to choke. “ ‘Eat his heart,’ ” he repeated. “You should have seen your face—it was priceless.”

“You scared the shit out of me.” I tried to laugh, but felt like crying, and turned away, only to come face-to-face with the damn wardrobe. Even with the heavy desk slammed up against the door, it had found a way to spring open a fraction.

“Sorry,” said Caleb. “I was trying to make a joke of it—so you wouldn’t be frightened.”

I was sick to death of feeling like such a sissy, and went over to the desk and hauled it away from the wardrobe. I flung open its doors, and pulled out all the boxes and other junk. “Who are you?” I said to the empty space. “And what do you want?”

The wardrobe did not reply.

“I’ve got an idea,” said Caleb. “Why don’t we stake it out? Like they do on TV.”

I thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t.

“It’ll be fun,” he said. “And anyway, nothing will happen, because I’m here.”

Half an hour later, we were propped on our elbows, facing the wardrobe, bedded down on pillows we’d dragged from our beds. The wardrobe doors were wedged open, the desk on one side and a tea chest on the other, and in the middle was an empty space.

“I feel silly,” I said.

Caleb zipped up his sleeping bag and handed me the torch. “Then you can take the first shift.”

“We’re not taking shifts,” I said. “We’re in this together.” But within minutes he was fast asleep, and I was watching light patterns flit across the ceiling.

It was never completely dark in the city, or even very quiet, but the night was peculiarly still, as if the neighborhood had been covered with a tarpaulin. I looked over at Caleb, breathing slowly. His sleeping face was exquisite, like something out of a pre-Raphaelite painting. I wanted to run my finger down the length of his nose and over the bow of his lips. I wondered if his skin felt as smooth as it looked, and tried to imagine what it might taste like. Then I caught the direction my thoughts had been going in and stopped them. Caleb was just a boy. I had no business thinking about him in that way, none whatsoever.

I shone the torch into the wardrobe and directed the beam upward, illuminating a lone spider in its web. Next to my head, the carpet smelled of dead beetles and shoe dust, and something like sour milk, the stain from a spilled coffee perhaps. The torch was rubbery and heavy in my hand, and I felt my grip on it loosen as my body relaxed. Lulled by Caleb’s regular breathing and the sound of distant traffic, I let my eyes close, just for a minute or two, and enjoyed the weighty feeling of exhaustion. The torch swooned to the bottom of a coffee pond and I swam through floating beetles toward a pair of dirty socks. How long I was under, I’ll never know, but the pull upward was violent and complete, as though being wrenched from a hot bath and held up naked in a blizzard. Gasping, I opened my eyes, or thought I had opened them, but nothing registered except darkness so thick it was like trying to see through oil. I thought the disorientation was because I had been asleep, but rather than abating as I came to, it increased.