The Attic
In December of 2004 I bought a house that needed a total rehab.
The previous owner had been mother to a varying number of foster
children over the years and the place had been neglected. There
were a few strange things about the house. All the bedrooms had
heavy exterior doors installed in them with keyed deadbeat
locks. There was also a keyed lock on the door to the small
pantry in the kitchen. One of the bedrooms had been painted pink
but the walls were stained a dingy brown. The stain patterns
were like shadows in a fireplace, sweeping up the walls. At some
point, something had burned in there.
The attic had been finished but it built badly and partitioned
into several very small rooms. I ripped everything out. Sheet
rock, paneling, insulation, carpet, and all the interior walls.
I tore it down to the bricks and the beams. It took a few days
to clean up all the debris and haul it down to the dumpster. I
was sweeping up a pile of insulation and plaster dust when I
noticed something in the corner of the room. The brick chimney
came up through the room near the corner. In the space behind
the chimney, where the slanting ceiling joined the floorboards,
there was a small cushion with a thin blanket laid over it.
I crawled across the floor on my hands and knees. The cushion
was just like a little bed, the blanket spread over and tucked
underneath it. The bed was probably about two feet long and a
foot wide. There was even a small pillow on top of it. At first
I thought this must have been some child's toy, a place to lay
her dolls down and tuck them in at night. But I was disabused of
this happy notion when I found the metal chain bolted into the
bricks of the chimney, hanging next to the little bed.
Welded to the chain was a shiny steel band, two half circles
with a bolt holding them together. The opening could not have
been more than an inch across. It hung there open now, but it
was easy enough to imagine it closed around a skinny wrist or
ankle.
I got up and left the debris sitting there and left the house.
I walked around the block once, then I walked around the block
again. The house was ugly and half wrecked. It held some
horrible memory of burning, of torture and starvation.
Eventually I went back in. Now, a year later, the rehab job was
nearly finished. None of the new interior doors have locks on
them. I didn't touch the little bed in the corner of the attic
or the chain beside it. They're locked behind the new walls.