Eleanor laughed, a sharp, hollow sound. It was a prank. Some neighbourhood kid. But the paper was old. The ink had the sepia tinge of time. She turned the page.
The final entry was a single, chilling sentence: It is not a blockage. It is a plug. I am pulling it out. downpipe blocked
She tugged on her wellingtons, the rubber stiff from disuse, and marched outside. The downpipe, a slender, white PVC column running from the gutter to a cracked concrete splash block, looked innocent enough. But when she peered up at the gutter, she saw it: a dark, wet dam of decomposing leaves, moss, and a single, inexplicably shiny tennis ball. Eleanor laughed, a sharp, hollow sound
The image on her screen made her sit back on her heels. It wasn't leaves. It wasn’t a tennis ball. Wedged in the bend of the pipe, glistening with slime, was a small, leather-bound notebook. But the paper was old
Eleanor had inherited 17 Maple Drive from her Aunt Margaret, a woman who had treated her bungalow like a ship’s captain treats a vessel. Every tile, every gutter, every whisper of the drainpipes had been accounted for. Eleanor, a graphic designer who preferred the clean logic of a screen to the messy physics of the real world, had let things slide. The autumn had been a spectacular riot of colour, and the giant sycamore tree in the front yard had surrendered every single one of its copper-coloured leaves directly onto the roof.
The notebook came free with a wet pop. It was about the size of a passport, the brown leather warped and puckered. The pages were pulpy, the ink a faded, bleeding blue. She carried it inside and laid it on the kitchen table, next to a mug of cooling tea. The first page was blank. The second, too. On the third, written in a tight, frantic cursive, were the words: The water knows where you sleep.