Rohan Quine, “The Host in the Attic”, V Portrait infected and shut away

[…]

So… Near the end of his hallway, leading off it to the left, away from all warmth and light, there is a narrow, low-lit side-corridor, whose length includes two or three changes of direction around corners. The sole function of this corridor is to lead to a fire-exit. It hasn’t escaped Jaymi’s notice that such a corridor is not included in any of the neighbouring apartments he has been into. However, this is doubtless just a quirk deriving from the irregular elements in the architecture of the Ontario […].

Still carrying his old laptop with its experienced hologram, Jaymi now stands at the very furthest end of this thin side-corridor, where there is a windowless door with a yellow and black label saying “Fire exit—alarmed”.

Just in front of this fire-door, set into the corridor walls opposite each other, are two smaller, dark, open doors.

The door on the left leads into a cramped, poky store-room, which Jaymi hardly ever finds himself needing or wanting to enter.

The door on the right leads into a second bathroom, which neither he nor his guests ever seem to feel like using either, though it is quite functional.

Directly between these two side-doors, Jaymi is soon ferrying the laptop and an extension cable gingerly up a step-ladder, which he has just pulled down from the metre-square opening of a hatch in the ceiling of the corridor. This ladder is well mounted upon the inside of the hatch and will presently be slid back up through it, so as to live inside the attic, before closure of the hatch-door, which currently hangs down from its hinges. He reaches the top of the ladder, feels around inside the hatch for a few moments to find a switch, flicks a yellowish light on and disappears into the attic.

The attic is compact but longish, positioned perpendicular to the fire-escape corridor, its nearer half above that poky little store-room down the step-ladder. It is cluttered with objects, some bulky and some small. Picking his way to the very end, Jaymi clears part of a table-top and places the old laptop onto it. He returns to the hatch to plug one end of the extension cable into a socket beside the light-switch; then back at the table he plugs his laptop’s power cord into the other end of the extension cable and turns the laptop on.

The hologram flickers up, with its crueller mien, just as before.

Feeling something feverish in his eyes, Jaymi blows a little kiss towards it, dark and delicate; then he exits the attic through the hatch, turning the light-switch off as he goes.

He sets off down the ladder, step by step. As he descends, the face of the hologram—alert and bluer-bright in the absence of the yellowish bulb’s light, but somewhat too far away to see in detail from right here—is gradually obscured as Jaymi steps from rung to rung, until its watchful gaze is cut off from view by the hatch’s edge.

Scuttling down the lower rungs at greater speed, Jaymi reaches the corridor’s floor. He slides the two sections of the ladder upwards along its built-in rails, so that it becomes shorter, and pushes it towards the hatch. Holding it there with one hand, he reaches with his other hand for a long hook-ended stick that leans against the end of the corridor. With this dedicated implement he completes the ladder’s smooth ascent through the hatch with a push, takes hold of the hanging hatch-door by sticking the hook through a metal loop attached to the door, and swings the door upwards on its hinges. A last strip of faint blue glow, emanating from that now-unseen little face, becomes thinner as the hinges squeak, and is blocked off at last when the hatch-door snicks shut.

Leaning the hook-ended stick back against the end of the corridor, Jaymi catches his own reflection in the mirror, through the door of the small second bathroom. The mirror is oddly sweaty with condensation, so he is somewhat indistinct where he stands half-illuminated against the darkness of the reflected store-room door behind him. He steps forwards, towards the reflection, and reaches for the hanging light-switch inside the bathroom door … but something makes him stop right there. He turns away; then with a last glance back at the reflection, he sets off down the corridor and around its two or three corners, peering back over his shoulder after every few steps.

For more about "The Host in the Attic" by Rohan Quine, see

https://www.rohanquine.com/the-host-in-the-attic/

For some great reviews of it, see

https://www.rohanquine.com/press-media/the-novellas-reviews-media/

And to pick it up from whichever retailer you may prefer, the retailers’ links for the audiobook are at

https://www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-host-in-the-attic-novella-audiobook/

and for the ebook at

https://www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-host-in-the-attic-novella-ebook/

and for the paperback at

https://www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-platinum-raven-and-other-novellas-paperback/