The Toynbee Convector

“No, I been lying here thinking of you. I wanted to call, but felt a fool. Something is wrong, yes?”

“Emma, answer me this. If a house has an empty attic for years, and all of a sudden has an attic full of things, how come?”

“I didn’t know you had an attic—”

“Who did? Listen, what started as mice then sounded like rats and now sounds like cats running around up there. What’ll I do?”

“The telephone number of the Ratzaway Pest Team on Main Street is—wait. Here, MAIN seven-seven-nine-nine. You sure something’s in your attic?”

“The whole damned high school track team.”

“Who used to live in your house, Clara?”

“Who—?”

“I mean, it’s been clean all this time, right, and now, well, infested. Anyone ever die there?”

“Die?”

“Sure, if someone died there, maybe you haven’t got mice, at all.”

“You trying to tell me—ghosts?”

“Don’t you believe—?”

“Ghosts, or so-called friends who try spooking me with them. Don’t call again, Emma!”

“But, you called me!”

“Hang up, Emma!!”

Emma Crowley hung up. In the hall at three fifteen in the cold morning, Clara Peck glided out, stood for a moment, then pointed up at the ceiling, as if to provoke it.

“Ghosts?” she whispered.

The trapdoor’s hinges, lost in the night above, oiled themselves with wind. Clara Peck turned slowly and went back, and thinking about every movement, got into bed. She woke at four twenty in the morning because a

wind shook the house. Out in the hall, could it be? She strained. She tuned her ears.

Very softly, very quietly, the trapdoor in the stairwell ceiling squealed.

And opened wide.

Can’t be! she thought.

The door fell up, in, and down, with a thud.

Is! she thought.

I’ll go make sure, she thought

No!

She jumped, ran, locked the door, leaped back in bed. “Hello, Ratzaway!” she heard herself call, muffled, under the covers.

Going downstairs, sleepless, at six in the morning, she kept her eyes straight ahead, so as not to see that dreadful ceiling.

Halfway down she glanced back, started, and laughed.