The thought that Uncle Arthur had been hiding beneath the house in a bunker he'd started building as a child sounded ridiculous and yet there he was, wearing my father's missing clothes and holding my younger brother by his limp neck.
With a garbled sound that might have tried to be words, he let go and my brother fell to the floor like an old ragdoll. Uncle Arthur walked back through the hidden passageway behind the fridge and we didn't see him alive again.
As far as the police were aware, my brother had been walking up the stairs and slipped. They'd believe that more than a dead relative coming out from a secret door holding an already dead child with no context as to how or when he'd died or even if he was the killer.
The smell was a gradual thing, it slowly rose through the floorboards and clung onto everything in its path. It was that sickly sweet meaty stench that didn't go away no matter how many times we washed the curtains or cleaned the carpets or reupholstered the furniture.
We eventually found a way into Uncle Arthur's bunker when I was helping my parents spring clean the garden. The doorway had been hidden by about forty years worth of ivy and was so badly damaged by woodworm, the ivy's deep roots and four decades of rain that I could pull it apart with my bare hands.
It crumpled like wet cardboard and behind it lay the source of the stench that had been plaguing the house.
With a garbled sound that might have tried to be words, he let go and my brother fell to the floor like an old ragdoll. Uncle Arthur walked back through the hidden passageway behind the fridge and we didn't see him alive again.
As far as the police were aware, my brother had been walking up the stairs and slipped. They'd believe that more than a dead relative coming out from a secret door holding an already dead child with no context as to how or when he'd died or even if he was the killer.
The smell was a gradual thing, it slowly rose through the floorboards and clung onto everything in its path. It was that sickly sweet meaty stench that didn't go away no matter how many times we washed the curtains or cleaned the carpets or reupholstered the furniture.
We eventually found a way into Uncle Arthur's bunker when I was helping my parents spring clean the garden. The doorway had been hidden by about forty years worth of ivy and was so badly damaged by woodworm, the ivy's deep roots and four decades of rain that I could pull it apart with my bare hands.
It crumpled like wet cardboard and behind it lay the source of the stench that had been plaguing the house.
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