Chapter 10
‘Right foot, left foot, right foot…and down we go.’ Marc slowly descended to the basement. Had the noises been real or just in their imaginations? Well, in any event it would please the two of them if he were to go see what the fuss was about.
Reaching the creaky bottom step, the dusty atmosphere hit his nostrils immediately, making him choke violently for few seconds. After clearing his throat, he walked across the uneven floor. It smelt musty and seemed to be decaying before his eyes. No one really ventured down here, unless they had a power outage, a fairly regularly occurring event. It was ‘fun’ for all three of them; they left the candles down here, of all places. ‘What a place to leave candles during a power outage, when you could not see anything beneath you…’ This scared Jack the most as his vivid imagination would begin to conjure up all sorts of images and sounds.
‘I knew it was mice… oh, just look at this bloody mess!’
“Yeah Rachel…only godammed rodents!” ‘Hmm, and they thought it was a ghost, an old man…a phantom in our own house…yeah, right!’
Stinking mice scuttled across the floor, making him jump as they ran over his feet, clad only in socks. He could feel their pinching claws and felt disgusted but he ignored them as best he could, focusing on something else that caught his eye.
Down here lay old, scattered pieces of forgotten memories and objects from past vacations, birthdays, anniversaries and so on. Around his feet lay old newspapers which dated from at least the mid-forties, possibly even further back. But why would they even have them? Maybe Hilda, in her younger days, had dumped them down here during her spring cleaning sprees and had simply forgotten about them? That would be it. Another item down here that he had forgotten about for too many years, was a…
“Marc! Are you alright down there? What have you found? Was it mice, like you said? And when are you…”
‘Jeez, would you just listen to her?’ The sound of her voice alone aggravated him.
“Quiet! I’m looking around, okay? Just go… just go do something useful, will you?”
In front of him stood that object; it was the last piece of his childhood that he had kept hidden down here for years. It was his High School year book.
’The final years huh…where did those days go?’ The last day of school was a magical time for most, a fantastic end to all education, teachers, and most importantly, homework. For Marc, and many more who never spoke up for help, it was a difficult, endless torment of torture and humiliation from the time he arrived until he left. In his first year he was the stereotypical acne-plagued teenager; by his second year, most of it had gone. By this time, though, he had been called various names and pushed around. His mother, Hilda, had concerns and sat him down many times at home, asking him about school, how he was coping and how he found the other kids there. But he never would tell her how it really was for him, not wanting to worry her.
* * * * *
Every morning, Marc would get up bright and early for school. He was partly excited about going but, in truth, he didn‘t want to. He felt trapped and likened it to being in a children’s prison cell, closeted with the tormenters of the school. The thrill of meeting new people, the awareness and satisfaction of learning new things blew his mind, and he even admired the teachers. He was every teacher’s pet, but he had no friends. No one would talk to him, they would all shun him, put him down, breaking and destroying whatever self-esteem, confidence, or individuality he still had left. He was a rejected child in a monstrous abyss.
