Downpipe Blocked !!better!! ◉ [CERTIFIED]

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.

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. downpipe blocked

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 image on her screen made her sit back on her heels

She looked out the window at the downpipe. It was no longer silent. It was humming a low, gurgling song. And she understood, with a cold, certain horror, that she hadn't unblocked the pipe. She had opened a door. Wedged in the bend of the pipe, glistening

It was the silence that finally drove her outside.