Shelved

Shelved Part 1

The stairs creak and groan as I feel my way upwards in the dark. I run one hand along the cold paint of the stonework to guide me as my shoulder brushes the narrow stairway's opposite wall for balance. My notepad is tucked in the crook of my elbow as I labour upwards. At the top of the stairs, the attic door's latch gives a rusty squeak and clunk before it grinds open and I breathe in the musty scent of dust, old wood and damp. Through the grime, ivy and cobwebs on the window I see the sky turn its first shades of deep blue. It's still dark enough that if my breath makes fog I can't even see it in front of my face.

Autumn and winter are the best time of year because dawn comes later and lasts longer than the summer months. This is important because the first light of dawn is when I want to be here in this room, because at this time each day, this is the most fascinating place in the world to me.

Every Sunday I use the weather forecast to look up when sunrise will be for the following week, down to the minute. I mark it on my calendar and set my alarm 15 minutes beforehand so I have time to get my things and make the climb. There are no other obligations to interfere with this routine of mine as school is a distant, bitter memory and I don't work. This morning, the forecast said there would be an 80% chance of precipitation. The temperature would be 3˚C but the wind speed would be 21 km/h which made it feel more like -1˚C. It's not the best day for visibility because of cloud cover or the most hospitable, but here I am. Outside, the birds call out their morning breviary among the bare treetops. I pull my scarf up around my mouth and nose and push my hat down over my ears. The cold numbs and pinches at them but I'm willing to put up with it. I shift my weight between each of my feet to keep my circulation going.

The first details in the room come into view from the black of night. In time I can pick out how the ceiling slopes under the shape of the roof, the bare wooden floorboards, and there in the middle are the shelves.

The shelves are unvarnished and uneven. They bulge, sag and have gone grey with time. They are the most ordinary, unremarkable set of shelves ever seen. Next to them is a rough wooden desk that is simply four stout legs and a table-top. No one knows who made it all, it could have been anyone, at any point in time, but they are the reason I keep coming here. This is because in this room, at the first light of each day, these shelves would show what they held on them at some point in the past of this old house.

I don't know how it works, what kind of illusion or haunting makes these visions appear, ghostlike, on the old wood. I don't know what memories or dreams the night would forget to take away with it, at least for a while, until the sun rose high enough to awaken the house and break the spell.

With my back to the window I see things left behind from the dark as light grows; a silhouette here, a glint of light there. I fumble for a pen and hope my fingers aren't too numb to grip it and write what I see. As soon as the first details of the shadowy, indistinct shapes come into view and a fresh page in my notebook turns a spectral grey I am ready to record.

A funeral urn is on the top row of shelves. The light glistens on its smooth, ceramic surface and picks out a pattern of lotus flowers and butterflies outlined in gold. A biscuit tin is next to it, in the crux where the shelves make an L shape. Embossed letters gleam with the words 'Merry Christmas' and beneath that '1954'. The tin is ajar and the top row of shortbreads has some missing. Beside that is a glass jar full of paint brushes, flecked with blobs of colour.

The books under the biscuit tin are The Bronte Story by Margaret Lane, Character by Samuel Smiles and The Last Enemy by Richard Hillary. Next to it is a ceramic jug full of pens and pencils that bears the inscription 'When nights are dark then think of Clarke who's hit the mark precisely...' the rest is obscured in the shadow of a venerable edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Its cover is blue with gold decoration. From my own research I understand this was the 14th edition, published in 1936. Today, on top of the series of Encyclopaedia Britannica volumes (twelfth and thirteenth in the wrong order) is an apple. Rosy, speckled and with skin that gleams in the light, it has a chunk missing which has started to go brown, hours after having been bitten then forgotten about, back in 1954.

These were Arthur's shelves. I have seen them at least a hundred times and noted much of this before. I recognise the urn (for his mother perhaps, or wife?) but so much today is new, like the biscuit tin, or the apple. I move to a new area that I know my notes don't cover and try record what I see as quick as I can. I note the title of each book, the author and publisher, the colour of the cover, and any other notable detail I see. The next shelves down are filled with books on mosses and lichens which I know is Arthur's favourite subject. Maybe he was writing a book. Maybe he did write a book and got it published. I wish I could find out some day. I know his first name is Arthur because one day a letter addressed to him was open on the desk. Maybe, judging from the art supplies, Arthur even did the illustrations for his book. The more I look the more flecks and smudges of paint I see on and around the desk and the shelves alike.

It's hard not to get fixated on the apple. Who else can say they had ever seen a piece of fruit from the 1950's, half-eaten and still fresh? It's fascinating to look at, but what else can I write about it? It looks so real that I could pick it up and take a bite from it myself. Bitter experience taught me that wasn't the case. If I were to even touch something, then whatever this was; this spell, this mirage, would wisp away, no more tangible than a fistful of smoke. It wouldn't just be the item I touched that disappeared, but the whole damn lot. Everything on the shelves and desk would fade away like it was never there, as though the room came to its senses and woke up, dissipating the old memories of its daydream. If I was to brush against something with a sleeve, graze something with a stray hair from my beard or even breathe too hard on it, then it would all pass back to dust and emptiness. Any camera, old or modern, would shatter the illusion as much as swiping a fist straight through it. The picture it took would be indistinct and underexposed; worthless. I couldn't even bring a lamp, torch or even a candle to the room to see better. Believe me, I tried it all. Everything on the shelves would dissipate like so many shadows and not return until the next day. I would be left alone in the bare room, stood there with a notepad full of unfinished scribbles like a fool. Those were the worst of times. The last time it happened I felt sick. I couldn't eat all day. I screamed into a pillow and kicked my mattress until it brought Keith and Maureen up. They were furious.

There's no time to think about that now. I note down all I can from the area I've never notarised before. I do it as swiftly as I can, while keeping things at least legible as I twist the jotter to the growing light. On the next shelf are editions of Botanical Gazette, starting Vol. 111, No. 4 (Jun., 1950, The University of Chicago Press) followed by a brass model of a Hurricane fighter plane.

Finally, after several frantic minutes of note taking, the sun becomes bright enough to wake the house from its reverie. The books, the biscuit tin, and the apple fade away.

It hits me hard to see them go, even if I did a good morning's work. It draws a sigh out from me, as deep as they come.

I note down the last book I can remember; Manual of Bryology; The Hague by Martinus Nijhoff. I think I got that name right. For the record, the last part of the inscription on Clarke's ceramic jug read 'for his night lights create bright nights in which you see quite nicely'. I managed to catch that last bit just as dawn became bright enough to read it. The blue detail on the white ceramic depicted a Victorian scene with a suited man, his workhorse and a small boy.

Now I'm left alone in the empty room, with its rough old wooden desk and shelves and it all seemed unreal, like a dream. I replace my glasses after massaging sight back into my eyes. My glasses are thick enough without this ruining my vision any further and my knees hurt from crouching to see the lower shelves. I'm willing to put up with it.