Land of Smoke and Ashes

The Article in the Attic

Natalie Porter couldn't get out of the attic fast enough.

There was something decidedly creepy about the space at the top of Little Moreton—which was the name her father had so blithely given the echoing, dusty mansion they'd moved into five years ago. Maybe it was the unopened boxes and old steamer trunks, the promise of what could be behind the dusty surfaces of the lids. Or the full-length mirror in the corner, cracked and listing slightly on one side of the wooden frame, reflecting her freckled face back at her in a truly warped, funhouse mirror style.

The windows were only partially boarded, as if the previous tenants had grown bored halfway through and abandoned the project, and light slipped in through the open spaces, painting the wooden floorboards in bars of yellow sunshine.

For a moment she hesitated in the doorway. It wasn't just the spookiness of the place that gave her pause. Here was the place that Derrek Porter had regulated his long dead wife to. The only memories of her that were allowed to exist in the house were here.

Natalie could hardly remember her mother, she'd died years ago, when she was only six. There were vague memories, sometimes, in the place between waking and sleep. When she was drifting off, she would imagine a woman's face, blurry around the edges, the warm lilt of an accented voice and the subtle scent of lavender. A tumble of chestnut hair over a pale shoulder.

But maybe they were only dreams. The picture her father kept, the only one that was allowed in the house, was of a much different person. Stern dark eyes and short cropped hair. Her mother had been in the military, she knew, but that was the extent of her knowledge. Derrek Porter was, for the most part, easy going. He had a bright, contagious laugh and was upbeat most of the time. But if someone asked about his dead wife the transformation was almost alarming. Natalie had seen him go from smiling to grave in the same instant, his face pale and drawn. He wouldn't talk about. About what happened to her.

It used to drive her crazy. In her desperation to know, she had become macabre. Sitting in her room writing out theories in her pink, My Little Pony diary. Her mother had been killed by an exploding tank. She had single-handedly taken out one hundred enemy soldiers before finally succumbing. She had sacrificed her life for a busload of schoolchildren.

Or maybe it was nothing so heroic as that. Maybe Mrs. Porter had died from food poisoning, or choking on a bit of cracker. Life was weird and unpredictable, and Natalie no longer dreamed up what had become of her mother. After all, it didn't help things, did it? All it did, when she dared to ask, was drag her father's smile down and create long, awkward silences between them.

She sighed, rolling up the sleeves of the loose-fitting green smock she wore. She set to work dragging the nearest chest to the center of the room. Most of this stuff would be crap, but if she got lucky, she might find a few antiques the last person had left up here. Her dad had promised if she found something, she could sell it.

The trunk was heavy but she threw her weight behind it. The thought of her meager college fund was enough to lend her a burst of furious strength. She was going to college, a good one too. Far away from this hicktown and the people in it. And she would never have to see Cresswater Highschool again, with it's two electives.

Other highschools had creative writing and kayaking and first aid and hair school. And what did Cresswater have? Cooking or auto.

Typical for the town of Ashton. What will it be, kids? A housewife or a blue-collar worker?