‘I can hardly keep my eyes open,’ complained Alex.
Chloe too found the urge to sleep irresistible. Alex lay down first while she fought against her feeling of deep fatigue.
Gradually though she slid to the floor, sending up a puff of grey dust. There she lay half-awake, half-asleep for a few minutes, caught in that twilight world when the mind flutters in a pleasant state of tranquillity before fully dropping off. How pleasant it was to finally let go and fall, fall, fall, as if into a deep forest pool of warm feelings. Let the world carry on without her.
Just before she dropped off completely she felt her mother pulling up the bedclothes and tucking her in. Her mother seemed to have black hairy claws instead of hands. And her breath smelled of something foul, like rotting cabbages or old drains. But Chloe was too far gone into sleep to worry about things like that.
Once, during the night, she woke up to see a dark figure sitting on a stool. The figure was all in black and difficult to see in the very dim light, but he appeared to be painting. There was a canvas on an easel before the figure and, though very drowsy, almost to the point of unconsciousness, Chloe could see the arm wielding the brush. This brush was dipped in a palette of paints then brought to the surface of the canvas with a sweeping motion. When he saw that his subject’s eyes were slightly open, the figure in black smiled, and shook his head as if to say, ‘Back to sleep, Chloe.’
Is he painting me? thought Chloe. I wonder why?
Then she dropped off again, into a deep, deep slumber.
Don’t they know anything?
A dust sprite formed, and then ran like an upright lizard on its back legs for about twenty paces, then seemed to silently explode into a cloud of settling specks.
You’d think the number of dust sprites around would be warning enough. The place is full of them. They’re running around like cockroaches.
‘They don’t see dust sprites. Their eyes aren’t good enough.’
Do you think they want to sleep for ever? Some do. I know a board-comber who came here and gave himself up.
‘These are outsiders – they want to live.’
You’d think they’d recognise the signs then: the mouldering mounds, the tombstones at the heads of the graves. You think they’d smell what it was. They must have sawdust for brains.
‘Don’t be so hard on them. You remember what it was like when you first came to the attic. You didn’t know a thing. It was a long time before you found out there were malevolent board-combers like this one. How are the children supposed to know he collects souls?’
Eternal rest. Up here it means what it actually says. To sleep for ever under a dust sheet. There’s something a little tempting in that, when you feel as world-weary as I do. But how could they not realise? Look, it even says DORMIRE on that sign. Don’t they teach them Latin these days? I was taught Latin at school. I’ve got the scars to prove it.
‘It doesn’t say DORMIRE,’ the bat points out. ‘It says DORM.’
Well, it’s meant to say DORMIRE. There’s winding sheets all over the place. Who could miss such signs?
‘You did once – and you called them shrouds in your day. Are you going to get them out of there before it’s too late, or what?’
I’d have to touch them, says the board-comber, shuddering with disgust, his breath hot against the inside of his mask. I’d have to lay hands on them.
‘Well, I certainly can’t do it. I’m a bat.’
I’ve a good mind to let them stay there.
But the board-comber knows he will not do that. He still has enough humanity to motivate himself into helping his own kind when they are in trouble. He berates the children for being ignorant, but knows it was the same when he first arrived. There are many traps in the attic, many pitfalls and hazards. If one manages to avoid the first few, one becomes wise to them. One becomes attuned to the rhythms of the attic, so that when unknown dangers appear, warning sounds go off in one’s head. It wasn’t necessary to know how all the traps worked, just to know what might be a trap and avoid it. It got so he could smell snares from a safe distance.
The board-comber sprays one of his kerchiefs with cheap scent found