The Girl in the Wall

Nancy was the one to find the body in the attic.

This house was just too open for her, that was the problem. Mum had been saying so. She’d meant it as a warning – don’t go in the cellar before Builder Man goes down there first, don’t go in the dumbwaiter until Suit Lady has looked down the chute, and, Nance, don’t go near the attic at all, ok?

This house was a honeycomb, though. Made of holes, gaps and places for little things. Firstly, Nancy went in the cupboard under the sink and sat there next to the yellow bottles and spotty rags until Mum found her and told her off for giving her a Fright, whatever that was. Nancy imagined a Fright looked something like a bat or a nasty bird. She didn’t like the sound of it.

Builder Man put her box of toys on the bed the first day. She’d been very happy about that. No one left behind, she reckoned, but she wanted to be sure, wanted to check everyone had gotten here safe. No – everyone was fine, every friend was accounted for. She’d lost Artie Rabbit in the park once and had spent the rest of the day thinking about him lost and alone in the tall grass with only the bugs for company. Dad had helped her find him. He’d sat on the floor with her and carefully picked the caterpillars out, one by one. She’d wondered if it had been so bad to let them be if butterflies would one day crawl out of Artie Rabbit and burst out in a big wave. Maybe not – maybe they had teeth like moths did, maybe they’d eat him.

This house has history, Nance, said Mum, picking her up one day. She was getting too big to be picked up – Mum let out a little huff like an old dog, every time now. One day she’d put her down and never pick her up again. Nancy didn’t like that thought.

Lots of families lived here, before us. said Mum, pointing out something on the wall – ruler lines. Lotsa little girls, just like you. Look – can you see the names? Henrietta, Sally, Faith, Grace ….

Right at the bottom, near the floor, was Felicity. Maybe a fairy had lived here. The ruler lines were height marks, she realised. After she had asked, Dad had put hers on the wall with a blue crayon, at the old house. Mum did the same now - a little star and a line of numbers, like coordinates on an adventure map – Mum said it was the date. Nancy liked the idea of them being coordinates, though, and liked the idea that the house was a map she needed to learn. Mum’s handwriting was nicer than Dad’s. Harder to read, though. Put my name, too, please? I wanna be with the others.

Mum did so. Nancy liked the look of her name on the wall. A good strong mark.

Nancy went to the back of her wardrobe next and crouched there with her comic book and big torch until the dust got too bad and she had to crawl out again, blinking against the light.

She needed to dig the dark out of the house. That way there would be nothing sitting there, grinning. If she’d been in there digging with her torch, crawling about and kicking up the dust … well, no monster worth its salt would want to be there, would it?

She also needed somewhere to hide. Somewhere away from the light, with all its missing friends and Frights and Builder Man’s noisy laugh.

Noisy. The house was noisy. If she lay on her back, she could hear the motions of it, back and forth, like a body. The whispered breathing of wind in the windows. The rumbling digestion of people on the stairs. The scrape of doors, like the clearing of a throat. The house was introducing itself to her and she wanted to make a good first impression.

Nancy located the problem as soon as she reached the top of the ladder. The floorboards had rotted away in vast mouldy patches, like when Mum’s shirt had gotten all chewed up by the moths. Nancy had thought that was a very funny idea, that moths had nibbled away at it with their little teeth. The floorboards reminded her of her wobbly teeth when she walked on them – only bad if you pressed hard on them. The memory of her teeth hurried her up. If fairies wanted her teeth, monsters might want the rest of her. Mum was always telling her about bad people who might want the rest of her.

She made her way right to the back of the room, reminded of when she used to climb trees in her old park before Dad’s hands got too shaky to help her up into the branches.

It was then that she saw it. A shoebox, just hidden under the lip of the broken floor. She flattened herself to the floorboards and reached down to get it. Her mother had warned her about the mould – she held her breath as best she could and jumped up when she’d retrieved her prize.

She placed it on the bed, and watched it, carefully. This had to be a sign, surely. A message from the house. She put her hands on either side of the lid, sudden fears of spiders and Frights springing to mind. Or mould! The box was only cardboard, after all, it could be full of all sorts of stuff. She ran downstairs, grabbed a pair of rubber gloves from the sink and returned to the box. She made it back to her room and took off the lid in one smooth move before her heart could settle from running.

There were no spiders, or Frights, or mould. It wasn’t a sleeping monster in the box – it was a little body. A doll.

A girl’s doll. She had no hair, a spotted bald scalp above her bright smiling face. She had a badge pinned to her – one made out of the top of a glass bottle, but not the ones from Dad’s beers. It had a picture of a lemon on it. Her dress was a dull purple – it was brighter in the creases. Nancy remembered from one of her detective stories that sometimes sunlight could fade colour away sometimes. That meant this was an old doll. An old doll who’d been loved. Nancy held her gently - there was a scroll of paper tucked into the front of her little dress. She took it out.

Sorry. I hope that’s ok, she told the doll. The paper left white dust on her hands and almost cracked in two when she opened it. The writing was very girly, like all the right-handed girls at school, who always managed to write the date with no smudges or crossings-out. It read,

Dear Felicity,

I do hope you won’t be sad here. I know I’ll miss you, but this is for the better. Ma wished to take you away. I did not want her to – she already got the marble horses and the picture books, and I think Clara is next. She rid the house of them when I was at school. She tells me I’m too old now. I don’t understand. I don’t think she wants me to. You’ll be safe, in here, I’ll get you out when I can and we can run away to the moon or the strawberry fields behind Ellie’s house. Just hold on, for me.

Love from,

Hettie.

Nancy replaced the message. Dad would love this. She reckoned she’d take Felicity to him tomorrow and sit in the dirt with her and tell him all about it, about this new friend. Maybe the butterflies were at him by now, maybe he was a honeycomb of bits and bugs, six feet under. She hoped so. Maybe he was a home, too, now, with a little girl in the walls.