‘And anyway,’ Brian pouted. ‘It’s not like he has to deal with your insufferable friends.’
It went on like this throughout a BBC documentary about volcanos, until the sofa rocked – the sofa, and everything else within the room, and most likely the house – and an audible rumble followed, similar to that of a fairly distant growl.
Sarah and Brian looked sharply at one another.
‘It’s just the house settling,’ Brian announced, hardly aware that he had said it at least four times in the past two days. Sarah waved a dismissive hand, a gesture that quickly turned into a frantic one.
‘What if it’s the boiler?’
‘It’s nowhere near the boiler, it’s coming from the basement and anyway, we haven’t been down there yet, have we?’
Sarah blanched and leapt to her feet, taking up one of her ski poles from the living room floor.
‘You’re arming yourself? You’re seriously arming yourself?’ Brian raised his eyebrows and followed, picking up the other ski pole, feeling rather idiotic. ‘At least these’ll be used for something.’ He smirked, following his wife down into the cellar. She ignored him and switched the light on.
The bulb came to life, lighting the dingy room. The walls were made up of exposed brick, like a game of completed Tetris, and the only remaining things down there were a steel bed frame, a collection of newspapers from the 1970’s and the box of photos that still needed arranging. Sarah looked around bravely, and lowered her pole. ‘Perhaps it was the pipes. Maybe we should call a plumber.’
Brian didn’t reply. He had found a loose brick in the flooring. He looked towards Sarah.
‘Love, come look at this.’ He moved the brick away, and then another, followed by another. Sarah crouched over him, frowning as he pulled more and more of the floor away. ‘That’s bad, that,’ he said with disapproval, removing so many now that the pair of them had to back up. Beneath, a wooden trap door was gradually being revealed.
Once the handle came into view, Sarah swapped a look with her husband and took hold of it, pulling hard. The hatch shrieked - the hinges rusted with age – and another violent rumble shook them, sending them stumbling into one another. A hot gust of air followed, and Brian pulled out his phone, using the built in light to shine on the contents within.
They peered in together. The space beneath the house was enormous, and of tremendous depth. Something twitched in the shadows and Sarah flinched while Brian waved a dismissive hand.
‘It’s just the house-’
‘Brian, for God’s sake, it’s not the bloody house settling. There’s a dragon living down there!’ Sarah brandished her ski pole in the general direction of the hatch, and when Brian craned his neck to get a look in, he was surprised to find that there was, in fact, a dragon beneath their house.
The light of the mobile phone illuminated row upon row of green scales. They flashed and glinted, and as Brian angled the light further in, a globe sized eye caught it; open wide and angry. A tail flicked back and forth in the darkness, displaying one long row of spines along it, like grave stones in an emerald cemetery. Sarah fumbled to use her own phone to bring attention onto it. The dragon made no noise and it did not twitch. It simply watched and waited.
Brian straightened up, rubbing his head. ‘The estate agent didn’t mention this. Should I give him a ring?’
Sarah crouched down on her haunches, noting the wide passageway tunnelling out, obviously spanning much further than the foundations of just their house and even the street.
‘It’s not trapped down there at any rate. Maybe call Pest Control? The estate agents won’t know what to do with the thing…’
*
‘That’s a type forty-two you’ve got there,’ said the pest control officer, peering into the hole with his industrial torch. It illuminated far more of the dragon than the mobile phone did – drawing particular attention to the spines on its back and its twitching ears; its movements were almost robotic in the gloom, and each scale gleamed like tin foil in the torchlight. Sarah and Brian watched on with anxious frowns. The man got to his feet. ‘Domestic dragon. Typically found in the underground of Suburbia. They feed on a certain atmosphere,’ he gestured to the wisps of smoke rising up out of the exposed hatch. ‘This one’s enjoying itself.’
‘Well, what do you suggest?’ Asked Sarah. ‘When it moves in and out of its tunnel, the entire house rumbles. We can’t live with that.’
‘I can’t make a recommendation based on the negative atmosphere of the house – that’s more of a therapist’s area – but I can say I can’t get rid of it. Not this type, anyway.’ He put his torch away in his case, shutting it with a snap. ‘Good luck,’ he grinned, before heading up the stairs.
What could the pest control man have meant? Brian and Sarah weren’t about to admit that they had a problem.
The dragon was the problem.
With Brian and Sarah’s unwillingness to change; the dragon became a regular fixture, but also a suitable distraction.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t like my spaghetti bolognaise?’ Sarah demanded one night, having caught Brian, sitting by the hatch, dangling said spaghetti over the edge and into the dragon’s chasm-like mouth. Brian had looked up at her, eyebrows raised.
‘Perhaps this is my way of telling you.’
Sarah pouted, but she conceded that despite Brian’s childishness perhaps she should make more of an effort to handle criticism like an adult.
‘Just tell me next time.’ She muttered, disappearing back upstairs; to get rid of the rest of the bolognaise she had never liked, anyway.
On another occasion, Brian appeared in the basement, searching for wood varnish, only to find Sarah dropping old wellington boots, bicycle parts and hose fixtures into the hatch. Each item was promptly incinerated by the dragon.
‘Sarah, what are you-’
‘I told you to clear that extra crap you brought from the last garage and dumped into the new one,’ she replied with some acid. ‘You didn’t do it.’
‘I’ve got a lot on my plate, love,’ Brian frowned. ‘Why didn’t you just tell me?’
Sarah looked up at him, and her eyes flashed. ‘Perhaps this is my way of telling you.’
*
Months later, Brian and Sarah were still telling themselves the house was settling. The dragon came and went as it pleased, the stress that came with moving house remained, and there came a point wherein both parties realised that it wasn’t just the house settling at all, and it most certainly wasn’t the dragon that was the problem.
In fact, the dragon had become all too familiar.
One am. The bedroom floor rumbled as the beast below shifted. Sarah stared up at the ceiling silently; chewing on her lip. She hadn’t slept properly in months. It couldn’t go on this way. The walls could no longer rock, the crockery could no longer tip out of the cabinet and smash, and certainly, the arguments could go on no longer.
The house needed to be at peace.
Silently, Sarah slid out of bed and padded across the room in bare feet and nightie. She glanced back at Brian when she reached the door, but he was still. Tucking her hair behind one ear, Sarah descended the stairs, venturing through the dark depths of the house until she arrived at the door to the basement.
She flicked the switch, the lights slowly came to life, and she went down, folding her arms and shivering against the chill.
As soon as she opened the hatch, there was a burst of warmth; there always was when they opened it. This time, however, there was an accompanying smell of burning. Sarah didn’t notice at first, too busy looking around mournfully at the surrounding bricks. She wondered why they had never covered the hatch back up. Why they had left it for all to see.
She stepped closer, and something crumpled beneath her foot. She halted and picked it up, only just noticing the distinct smell of burning.
Her eyes fell onto a photograph of her on a snowy slope with those ski poles, and her breath hitched. ‘No??
?’ More and more photos drifted up from the cavernous hole to join other dead images; levitated by the warm air from the dragon’s lungs. Some were more charred than others, stained at the edges and curling at the corners like ancient scrolls.
‘No, no, no!’ She gathered them in shaking hands as they landed at her feet, crying out. She stuffed them back into their overturned box in desperation, trying and trying to salvage memories that visibly eroded before her eyes…
The dragon huffed, sending a heavy smoke up into Sarah’s face. She wafted it away with a small cough and a wave of her hand, and found, when the smoke had cleared, that Brian stood beside her.
He passed her a largely undamaged photograph; smiles on the dance floor with the sweeping white dress and sharp dickey bow. He noted the drying tears beneath Sarah’s eyes but didn’t draw attention to them, instead shrugging with nonchalance. ‘Maybe it’s not just the house settling.’
They watched one another, failing to noticed how the dragon yawned, and stretched its great legs. Scales rippled and claws flexed, and soon there was a violent rumbling, which again, Sarah and Brian paid no heed to.
As the sound retreated and eventually diminished, Sarah took Brian’s arm. Together, they ventured back upstairs, Brian hefting the heavy box of memories under one arm while Sarah delicately clung to the wedding photo.
Finally, the house settled.
Lollipops from Wonderland
Dear Michael,
God, I never thought I’d be doing this – sitting here, writing to no one. They said it would help, but the only thing that could possibly help would be for you to just walk in through that door, as though nothing ever happened...
I wish I’d done something different that morning. I should have made you come back; I should have held onto you tighter, told you how much I love you and how much I need you... Instead of issuing the usual ‘don’t forget to pick up some milk on your way home’, giving you a sideways peck on the cheek; too busy to even wave you off. I’ll regret that moment for the rest of my life.
And, God, Laura – I wish she wasn’t old enough to know, Michael, but at six she seems to understand it all better than I do... And it’s like I’ve lost her too; as if when the shadows fell over you, they stripped away her beautiful buttercup face as well, and I don’t know how to make it better.
I thought my heart had broken completely when they told me I’d never see you again. But it’s almost as if Laura is gone too – and I’ve realised that there are a few shards still left intact, because I can feel them splintering inside my chest now.
Please come back, Michael. I can’t live without you.
I don’t know what to do.
*
The phone rang shrilly throughout the house, but creaking around in the back room Morris Woods almost didn’t hear it – his hearing aid was turned down again. Things had been a bit hectic so far that week and he was trying to catch up with some light pottering; since he turned eighty-three, Morris found he couldn’t really handle hectic anymore...
What was it his wife, Lily, used to tease him?
‘You are old, Father William, the young man said...’
That’s right. Lily and her Alice in Wonderland... She had loved that particular book her entire life; indeed, she was the only person he’d ever met who could quote ‘Jabberwocky’ without a single mistake. Their children had loved it when – back in those heady, younger days – she would snatch up one of their wooden swords, crying ‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son!’ and plunging the blunt blade into some poor ted or other, amidst shrieks of laughter. Though the children eventually lost interest in such fanciful antics, Lil never lost faith in that mad, wonderful story. Morris knew that, secretly, she had hoped to repeat those scenes one day with a brood of grandchildren, but none ever came.
Instead, there had been the illness. In her last weeks, Morris would sit and read to Lily from those same dog-eared pages, trying so hard to bring the story to life as she did. He nursed a childish longing of his own, that if he spoke the words just right, he might really transport her into Wonderland, where she could live forever amongst the characters she knew so well...
This thought was still lodged with him, as were all thoughts of Lily, when he finally managed to snatch up the phone – barely two seconds before the tinny answer-machine woman clicked on.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Dad? It’s Jonathon.’
‘Oh, hello son.’
‘How’re things?’
And so it began: the usual conversation. Morris reflected briefly how funny it was; before Lily passed, she had always answered calls from their sons – she had that rare gift of always knowing what to say, never chiding or interfering. Just... perfect. It wasn’t that Morris didn’t want to talk to his children; words just never seemed to fit together as well for him. He was more attuned to action – doing, being, living – even if life had slowed him down a bit now.
‘I put out freesias in the front window this week; your mother always liked them around this time of year.’
‘Sounds nice, Dad.’ Morris could hear Jonathon moving something, the tinkle of glass loud down the line. He felt a spurt of resentment for the capricious fancies of his hearing aid – it could pick up Jonathon emptying the dishwasher seventy-five miles away, but when the phone was ringing inside his own house...
‘I thought about taking some next-door too,’ He continued, momentarily forgetting that Jonathon didn’t know what had happened next-door; he rang once a week, but it seemed to come around so quickly that Morris lost track. Days had become indistinct without Lily.
Right on cue, Jonathon paused.
‘Why next-door, Dad?’
‘Oh – I thought I told you? Terrible sad it is. All that rain last Thursday – when I almost came a cropper on those slick pavements? Well, late afternoon, I hear a car pull up and it’s flashing blue lights in through the blind...’ Morris paused, the blue glare from the police car seared into his brain like fire from Hades. ‘Her husband had a car accident – died before they reached the hospital. Poor woman.’
‘God, Dad, that’s awful. Is that the young couple with the little girl?’
Morris nodded sadly, a wasted action, but genuinely heartfelt.
‘Alice Winsor; your mother loved it when they moved in, you know. Her favourite character come to life next-door! And she liked hearing that little girl playing in the garden, said it brightened up the neighbourhood to have a little ’un running about...’ He sighed heavily, before realising that it sounded like a rebuke to his childless son; quickly he carried on. ‘Now she’s a young widow – gone headfirst down the rabbit hole, as your mother would say.’
‘That’s really awful. Poor girl.’
“Funeral’s next week; Mrs Gunney mentioned it when she called round to say there’ll be a collection for flowers.’
‘Maddest tea party of all, huh?’ Morris smiled in spite of himself. That was what they’d started calling it, during those last few weeks as they made the gut-wrenching arrangements – another Lily-ism. He and Jonathon clung to Lily’s Alice sayings like drowning men to life-rafts, desperate for her spirit not to slip out of reach – the only thing they ever fully shared.
‘It comes to us all in the end. I do hope she’ll be alright – and that little girl. She’s got such a beautiful sunny smile. Lil would have known the best thing to do to help.’
‘Dad,’ Jonathon’s tone echoed faint sternness. ‘God knows it’s an awful situation for the poor woman – but it’s not really your place to get involved...’
‘I know,’ Morris cut him short, matching his son’s firmness. ‘I won’t interfere – I know you think I stick my nose in where it’s not wanted. I just don’t like to think of that young woman struggling alone. Not with the little ’un, losing her father and all upset like...’
‘Dad – ’
‘Oh, I know, son. But if your mother was here, she’d say the same. Lily alway
s knew what to do for people, especially when things were topsy-turvy. I guess she learnt it all from that book.’ Morris paused, glancing out of the window at the curve of garden leading to the grieving house next-door. As he ruminated, his eyes slid down the light-spangled panes of glass, following his thoughts, until they alighted on a vase of flowers exploding in a riot of pinkish buds atop the sill. He had bought the vase for Lily on their first anniversary – every couple of weeks, for the entirety of their marriage, she had filled it with flowers. It was a practice that Morris tried to continue – for her.
A ray of sunlight shone through the crystal and it was like she was there, whispering to him. He squared his shoulders, forgetting that his son couldn’t see his conviction.
‘You know, I think I will take those flowers round. That poor, poor girl...’
*
Dear Michael,
I’m sorry it’s been weeks since I last wrote, it’s just – I guess I’m scared... of what comes next; of facing the rest of my life without ever hearing your voice again, or seeing you push your glasses up the bridge of your nose when you’re concentrating, or feeling your fingers knotted through mine as we watch Laura play in the park...
Little Lolly. Most of all I’m scared of ruining everything for her.
She barely speaks, Michael. She just clings onto Willoughby Bear everyday and plays silent games in her head. I still haven’t seen her smile, not since...
God, all I want is for someone to tell me what to do! Tell me how to speak to her, Michael, you could always reach her, always lasso her heart and reel her back to us without even trying, like your souls were tethered together. Please, Michael; please come back –