Skellig

Chapter 2

I NEARLY GOT INTO THE GARAGE that Sunday morning. I took my own flashlight and shined it in. The outside doors to the back lane must have fallen off years ago and there were dozens of massive planks nailed across the entrance. The timbers holding the roof were rotten and the roof was sagging in. The bits of the floor you could see between the rubbish were full of cracks and holes. The people that took the rubbish out of the house were supposed to take it out of the garage as well, but they took one look at the place and said they wouldn’t go in it even for extra money. There were old chests of drawers and broken washbasins and bags of cement, ancient doors leaning against the walls, deck chairs with the cloth seats rotted away. Great rolls of rope and cable hung from nails. Heaps of water pipes and great boxes of rusty nails were scattered on the floor. Everything was covered in dust and spiders’ webs. There was mortar that had fallen from the walls. There was a little window in one of the walls but it was filthy and there were rolls of cracked linoleum standing in front of it. The place stank of rot and dust. Even the bricks were crumbling like they couldn’t bear the weight anymore. It was like the whole thing was sick of itself and would collapse in a heap and have to get bulldozed away.

I heard something scratching in one of the corners, and something scuttling about; then it all stopped and it was just dead quiet in there.

I stood daring myself to go in.

I was just going to slip inside when I heard Mum shouting at me.

“Michael! What you doing?”

She was at the back door.

“Didn’t we tell you to wait till we’re sure it’s safe?”

I stepped back and looked at her.

“Well, didn’t we?” she shouted.

“Yes,” I said.

“So keep out! All right?”

I shoved the door and it lurched half shut on its single hinge.

“All right?” she yelled.

“All right,” I said. “Yes. All right. All right.”

“Do you not think we’ve got more to worry about than stupid you getting crushed in a stupid garage?”

“Yes.”

“You just keep out, then! Right?”

“Right. Right, right, right.”

Then I went back into the wilderness we called a garden and she went back to the stupid baby.