The Attic

“There’s no where you can hiii i-ide,” the harsh voiced man taunted from somewhere in the house below. Liz Martin, secure for the moment, knew she would have to find somewhere to hide if she wanted to stay that way. Damp summer heat billowed down from the attic to the landing at the bottom of the stairs, she stood motionless and tried to still her hitching breath enough to assess where he might be in what had been her grandparent’s home. The sound of doors yanked open and furniture scraped across the floor as he searched squeezed her pounding heart high into her throat. He was already on the third floor. Her only option was to keep moving. “Come out, come out wherever you are, Liz,” he called again.

She had spent summers in this old Victorian home as a child under much happier circumstances. Liz and her brother ran down the long halls and played hide and seek in the rarely used upper floors, but they never dared to hide in the attic. Their grandmother had warned them away from it with a mythology about some monstrous creature that made its dark home in the dusty shadows during the day and walked the halls at night grazing its sharp claws along the walls. As adults, after they inherited the house, and understood that the stories were created to keep them in their beds at night and out of the attic where no one would hear if they fell, they still hadn’t gone into that foreign space.

It sounded to Liz as though the man had moved on to the next bedroom, and she crept up the first step with an indiscreet creak that stopped her next step mid-air. She held her breath to discern if the man had heard before taking another tenuous step. She had been awoken earlier that night by the sound of a long, slow scratching, and for the instant that she hovered on the cusp of consciousness, she thought that the monster had finally come for her. Then she heard the decidedly real sound of the intruder of the first floor at the bottom of the first floor stairs.She had left her cell phone at the front door in her purse when she had arrived, and she couldn’t go down and risk being discovered. She knew that the man must have been sent by her husband. They had separated just a week ago, or rather, she had left him while he raged against her like some wounded demon. He was the only one that knew she might be here. She couldn’t be certain why her husband had sent him after her, but she could guess. Had he intended to have her kidnapped, and brought home forcibly, ensuring that this time she could never leave? Did he intend to have her killed, to teach her one final, permanent lesson? Was she wrong on both counts, and the victim of some random psychotic fantasy? Each possibility spurred her to rush towards the top.

A loud thud from the bedroom before the attic door and twisted her intestines. Sweat fell in hot drops over her feet, and stung her eyes. At the top of the steps, propped against the unsteady rail that shifted against her weight threatening to drop her to the bottom of the stairs, her fingertips grasped the bottom of the bulb, and she strained to loosen it from the fixture so he would not be able to turn on the light. The man turned the handle at the bottom of the door, and desperately, she swung her hand at the bulb. Pain seared through her hand as the glass shattered against the force of the blow, the broken fragments scattered over the steps. "I've got you now, Lizzy," he said in a hungry growl.

She heard him flip the light switch and when the light didn't go one, she saw his flashlight shine against the wall at the top of the stairs. "Uh, oh, Lizzy. You've been a baaaad girl.”

Working her way through the thick darkness of the attic, Liz took quick uncertain steps. There was no light that reached the back corners of that forbidden space. Help me, please, she begged, a silent, desperate prayer as she moved her bare feet over the uneven boards, feeling her way across the floor. Her toe hit something, and moved a box with an obvious thud . The flashlight jumped towards the noise, and she avoided it by a whisper, and followed deep, scraped grooves that scored the wood boards as he continued his search. Liz continued to frantically feel her way in the darkness watching the sweeping light pass over small, clean skeletons scattered between the bags and boxes that cluttered the floor.

She reached the back of the attic, and felt a structure she could hide behind. The pungent smell of sweat and rot permeated the area, but she ducked behind it spite of that, breathing the hot dusty air through her mouth. Liz sensed something next to her then that swelled and depleted with silent breaths. and she knew that she was not alone where she hid. For a brief moment, Liz thought the man might be toying with her. That he was standing close enough to smell her terror, teasing out the last thrilling seconds of his chase, but his searching light still scanned the floor planks far on the other side of the room. Boxes were shoved aside, and she heard their contents spilled and scattered across the wooden floor. “I’m gonna get you, Lizzy.”

The man was getting closer, and his searching grew more frenzied, his feet kicked blindly at the obstacles in front of him and stomped hard shaking the ground so that Lizzy could feel his rage from where she hid. “I’m gonna make you f ing screeeeaam, Lizzy.” Liz backed instinctively away from the man’s fury, and the thing next to her shifted away slightly when her body brushed against it. She understood then, with a new terror, that she was not mistaken about the thing next to her being alive. Unable to control the trembling that crept through her, she squeezed her eyes tight, and tried desperately to divine her next move. She lifted her shaking, uncut hand towards whatever stood next to her, and prayed that it would be something less threatening than the man the was closing in on her. A moist and sticky, rough-bumped surface like fresh scabs covered its palpable surface, and every nerve in her body screamed with horrified tension, but she was unable to stop herself from lifting her other hand cautiously towards whatever the thing was.

The man was enraged, yelling indecipherably now, but Liz could think of nothing but the thing beside her. Maybe ithad been burned. Her fingertips grazed their way up its surface. Its hushed, gargling breath grew faster as Liz reached her hand to either side of its face. Maybe it was a squatter, some homeless man, diseased. She leaned her head closer trying to make out the features when she felt something hot and wet snake around the backs of her hands like an eel. Or a nightmare tongue. In spite of her best intentions, Liz gasped out loud and backed away.

“Ha!” the man screamed, and with a triumphant flourish shoved away the case she had been hidden behind, and for a horrible moment, his flashlight illuminated a horrible face. The thing’s misshapen head and body were covered in chalk-white bumps, and it’s milky eyes sloped to the sides of its face as though melted. Clots of blood hung from the mouth that enclosed a dangerous circle of jagged teeth, and from somewhere inside it, a low animal growl ascended. Before the man dropped the light to run, she saw the thing crouch back in anticipation for a chase. There was a quake of movement, and a wild howling rolled in front of her, so that she was uncertain where to run to avoid being caught in the fray of whatever it was that caused it.

Stunned and motionless, she stood frozen until set into motion by a slap of something hot and wet in her face. Liz ran. She ran over the disarray from the man’s searching, across the broken glass, down the steps. She ran from the screaming and grinding sounds of the attic. Liz ran until she reached the busy lighted streets where concerned strangers began to notice the blood covered woman outside barefoot still in her nightgown, and she never looked back.



1,427 words