Through the Cracks Read Online Free

filthy fucking face. I should burn you. I should throw you in the fire.
    Adam had to check the hiding spot behind the wardrobe for the gun. Even though to do so brought back memories of that day. There were no magazines, not anymore, and no gun.
    In one of the unused rooms, Adam noticed a filmy covering of oil lubricated the door hinges. There was a lock near the handle, but the bolt was on the inside. Adam had been pulling up the blinds in each room as he searched, opening the windows to let the air in. Something made him leave this room’s blind down. There was a worn path in the floor across to the far corner of the room. The carpet edge was frayed and unravelling. Adam peeled the carpet back. The floorboards below it weren’t nailed down. Each plank was resting on the supporting beams. The sides of the boards were smooth and dark from being handled. Monty and Jerry sat outside the room. They wouldn’t come in, not even when Adam called them. He lifted the loose boards, laying them in order in the centre of the room. Dry dirt smells lifted through the open floor. The drop down to the ground wasn’t much. A few rooms on and the backroom concrete pad began. The backroom was built on a slab. The rest of the house was raised on stumps.
    Not a lot of light found its way under there. At first he couldn’t make out what he’d found. Even when he could see, he couldn’t make sense of it. Then it became clear.
    Lying on the dirt was a big black safe. It was on its back, the door and lock facing up. The safe was as long as a person and twice as wide. Adam took the brass key from his pocket. He climbed down, knelt beside the safe. The key fitted the lock. Adam turned it. And he turned the metal handle. He had to use both hands to lift the heavy door. Green velvet lined the inside of the safe. Adam’s nose flared with the unusual smell of the interior. His eyes were wide and dry. In one corner of the safe was a bundle of money. He ran his fingers over the velvet and picked up the stack of notes. Two elastic bands held the bundle together, one at each end. He smelled the money. It was cold and crisp from being kept in the dark.
    The gun wasn’t in the safe.
    Adam put the money back and shut the heavy door, relocked it, climbed back up into the room, put the boards in place, and then the carpet.
    He finished searching the other rooms.
*
    Adam opened a tin of spaghetti and made some toast. He stood in front of the oven, tossing up whether or not to heat his can of food. He’d only ever watched his father cook and use the stove. The small pot used for spaghetti was in the cupboard. Adam decided against it, poured his spaghetti cold over his toast. He sat on the couch to eat. When the Colgate ad came on he got up and brushed his teeth. That night Adam slept in his old bedroom. It was a narrow room beside the laundry. Before getting into bed he cleared away the downy white spider nests from the creases in the pillow and from the crinkles in the sheets. Mouse droppings littered the quilt. Adam found, tucked away between the wall and mattress, the little plastic tiger he’d put there as a child and forgotten about . . . or not forgotten about. Something he’d trained himself not to think of.
    He looked at the toy now, warily, with his chin lifted. He rubbed the moulded flank, belly, legs and the pointy ears. The tiger had once been his daring friend, unafraid in every situation. At night, it had come to life, prowled the rooms, stalked the hallway, padded down the steps out into the yard, strong enough to leap the fence and bound back over if he didn’t like what he found on the other side. He’d growled hushed stories to Adam, told of his adventures, of the people he’d scared beyond the fence. The fierceness of the toy had never changed and the whispered message had always stayed the same –
he can’t hurt me, let him try
. Adam put the toy back. By wedging it between the wall and mattress he was returning it to the time