William faded towards him, side-stepping disrupted items, careful not to break anything. All his bravado left him when he shone his phone down upon what Edward was looking at. It wasn’t the contents of a box but something on the ground. Something that a box had hidden until Edward moved it.
Words had been carved into the floor, chipped away by something sharp, the letters harsh and jagged. But that wasn’t it. As William shifted the torch, he noticed the carvings also affected the wall in the corner of the room. Old wallpaper was coated in mould from the lack of ventilation behind the boxes, but even that did little to hide the sheer number of etchings.
As much as William wished, he knew no mice could do this.
“Do not forget me,” Edward read aloud, tracing his finger through the words. “Help me. Teddy. Let me out.”
“Stop it,” William gasped, noticing how most of the etchings were just the same words repeated over and over. But that wasn’t it. The horrid smell he’d noticed when they entered was stronger here in the corner. A dark stain was partly hidden by the box that Edward just moved. With the nudge of his shoe he moved it a little more, only to find that the stain spread far beneath it. Brown in colour, a patch in the shape of a cloud. At first, it looked like dried blood until his mind told him exactly what it was.
“Fucking hell,” Edward snapped, getting back to his feet, backing away from the uncovered stain. He’d worked it out, too.
It was dried human excrement.
William had washed his hands over five times, scrubbing the skin raw, the water almost unbearable against sensitive skin. But the pain didn’t register since he’d drunk almost the same number of glasses of wine – downing one bottle whilst Edward drank from another.
“Do you think… surely they didn’t lock him in there,” William said, as if saying it out loud would convince his deepest horrors that they were wrong.
“I hate to say it, but I think so,” Edward replied, eyes fixed on Robert’s journal, which rested on the kitchen table. “And I think our only way of finding out is in there.”
William took a seat opposite, the space between them stretching apart like an otherworldly yawn. Since leaving the attic, he wanted nothing more than to stand beneath a hot shower and scold himself clean. Even the concept of eating dinner turned the saliva in his mouth sour. “Maybe after another couple of glasses, then I’ll be brave enough to read it.”
“I don’t want to make tonight any worse for you, but there’s no more wine left after this.” Edward lifted his bottle in cheers, the dull light above shining through enough to see only a quarter of the liquid left. Sediment floated like ashes at the bottom, making William’s urge to vomit more pronounced. He swore that if Edward were one of those people who enjoyed chewing wine’s sediment, it would be enough to lessen how attractive he was becoming to him.
It was a wasted hope because as Edward ran a hand through his sweeping brown hair, casting it back from his face, William couldn’t help but marvel at the man. He was proving to be a great distraction from everything that was happening around him.
“Good,” William chimed, shaking himself from losing his focus to Edward. “An excuse to get out tomorrow is exactly what I need.”
“I’m not going to argue with that.”
William took a hearty sip from his glass, swirling the rich red around his cheeks to rid himself of the tang of dust and grime from the attic. Little by little, it was helping. Or perhaps he was just getting drunk. “Should we, I don’t know, ring the police or something?”
“And tell them what?” Edward asked, almost laughing at William’s notion. “That the previous owners of this house potentially locked their son in the attic because he was in love with a man?”
“Not to mention he was locked in the room he eventually killed himself in.”
“We still don’t know if that was the reason. Or if both events are linked.”
“Oh, come on, Edward. What else would it be?” William felt his hackles rise. “This is all too much.”
Edward’s eyes widened, realisation settling in. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring this to you. It’s just…”
“You didn’t do anything. I came here, the house is in my name.”
“I know. To be honest, I don’t even know what’s going on anymore. Everything is blending into one.” Edward sparked to life, taking something William said and running with it. “We need to map out everything we’ve learned so far and put it in some sort of order.”
“Take the lead,” William said, quite happy to lean back in his chair, drinking his wine. “Paper and pen?”
“On it.”
William returned to the Edward once he found both items. When Edward took them from him eagerly, their hands brushed briefly in a moment of pure electricity.
If Edward noticed the feeling, he didn’t say. Instead, he began mapping out everything they’d learned.
“Robert Thomas killed himself in the attic because he believed that the man he loved, Teddy Jones, died in service to his country during World War Two. What we know is that Teddy never made it to the war and that the telegram used to confirm his death was forged. This was weeks after Teddy had arranged with his sister, my great aunt, to collect him and Robert from the station. What we can take from that was that both men were trying to leave Hanbury together, to escape. But something happened between the creation of that plan. They were separated – by what, we can only speculate. At some point, Robert was locked in the attic. We don’t know how long for, but it was long enough for him to… to…”
Defecate on the floor.
William reached over the table, laying a hand on Edwards’s where it had stopped moving. “You don’t need to say it.”
