Collaboration 1, part 4

[MP] 

She considered leaving for the space of two breaths. If nothing were wrong, she knew Gramps would be ticked at her for invading his privacy. If. But she knew she would rather Gramps not speak to her for a month than try to live with herself if something were wrong and she did nothing to help him. 

She climbed fully into the attic and nearly leapt a foot as music came pouring from the open door. Reggaeton. God, she hated that crap. The Latino gang-banger-wanna-bes next door blasted it at all hours. Normally it was simply a minor irritation thumping through the common wall of the row house, but up here, with the thin attic floors and this open door, it was an unexpected aural assault that scared her half to death. 

Braving the lion’s den, Vega hurried across to the open door and peered inside. The attic was illuminated only with the meager light from her own attic and with the faintest ribbons of light from minute imperfections in the ceiling and floors. 

Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary that she could see. The attic had the look of living space. A bed lurked in a far corner, and closer to her was what appeared to be the outline of a couch and what was probably a coffee table. Odors of sex and marijuana flooded out of the doorway, gagging her. There was no sign of Gramps. 

She couldn’t be sure he wasn’t in there, thanks to some dim, unidentifiable shapes in between her and the attic entrance to the neighbor’s house, but she was even more hesitant to enter this attic than she had been her own. The worst Gramps would do would be to yell at her. The worst from The Latin Fools as she and Gramps referred to them…. 

She settled for calling his name. Shouting, really, given the volume of the “music” streaming up from the floor below. She strained to hear a response, but there was nothing. If he were in there and if he were hurt, she’d have to go in there to find him. Her only alternatives were to knock on their front door and risk being made a guest of their tender mercies or get the police involved and risk retaliation and Gramps’s arrest. 

She would need light. That meant a trip downstairs. 

She stood and turned toward the attic stairs, and as she did so, she saw another door across the room. She decided to check that door before she went for a flashlight. After all, if one of the doors was open, maybe the other one was, and if Gramps were anywhere other than in the attic now behind her, she’d be a happy camper. 

She jogged across the room past an enormous wooden box standing open and empty in the middle of the space, almost as if it were on display or in quarantine. The slight breeze of her passage rustled the forest of pinned up news clippings. She crouched and tried the small door inset into the wall, but the deadbolt was thrown. Even if it hadn’t been, both it and the hinges were rusted beyond repair. 

A news clipping had fallen from the wall just to her right. She picked up the push-pin that had held it up and then carefully plucked the small yellowed paper from where it lay on the floor. The headline caught her eye: Three Die in House Fire. The dateline read May 23, 1886, St. Louis, Missouri. 

She moved to pin the clipping back in place, and jumped for the second time in five minutes when the door behind her swung shut with a solid thump. She grimaced as she jabbed the push-pin into her finger. A drop of blood welled against her coffee-colored skin before oozing its way down her finger and onto the clipping. 

She jammed the clipping into the wall and ran back across the room, sucking her finger as she went. She tugged on the door, but the rusty hinges wouldn’t give. As she pulled, she could have sworn she smelled the faint odor of roasting meat, and, even fainter, the muted strains of “The Beale Street Blues” wafting out from behind the door.