Chapter 10 The Attic Box
Eli does not give me time to argue with his declaration.
He moves through the house with a focused violence I’ve only seen from him twice in my life. Once, when a man cornered me behind the gym in ninth grade, and once when Kahlia’s body was found.
Both times, his anger scared me and comforted me in the same breath.
This time is worse.
He’s breathing hard, jaw clenched, shoulders tight as if he’s wrestling every instinct not to tear the walls apart with his bare hands in search of whoever left that footprint outside Maya’s window.
I follow close behind him. Not touching. Barely breathing.
We sweep the house again.
The bathroom, empty.
The pantry, old cereal, and dust.
The basement door, locked from the inside.
Windows, latched tight.
Maya is still asleep on the couch, her tiny chest rising and falling peacefully, unaware of the terror humming beneath our floorboards.
It should calm me.
It doesn’t.
Eli stops beneath the attic hatch. He stares up at it like it’s a living thing.
“We’re checking up there,” he says.
My stomach knots. “Eli-”
“You don’t have to come.”
“I do.”
He pulls the string. The ladder groans as it drops, releasing a cloud of dust that drifts down.
He climbs. I follow.
The attic looks the same at first, quiet, dusty, cluttered with forgotten things, but the air is wrong. Thick. Heavy. Pressing against my ribs like something unseen is leaning close.
Eli sweeps every corner with sharp, controlled movements.
“Stay by me,” he murmurs.
We move toward the box, the one with the necklace, the bracelet, the objects that keep appearing as if the house is coughing up secrets.
The shoebox on top sits open again.
But something else is wrong.
The photo albums.
One is half-slid out, like someone stopped looking through it the moment they heard us coming.
Eli notices.
He crouches. “Did you move this?”
“No,” I breathe.
He pulls the album fully into the light.
The cracked leather cover is instantly familiar. My dad made this for me when I turned sixteen, his attempt to bundle my childhood into something normal: creek summers, birthdays, school dances, everything he wished were true.
I kneel beside Eli.
He sets the album between us. “Ready?”
I’m not.
But I nod.
He opens the first page.
Sun-washed photos of Kahlia and me, Crooked braids, dirty knees, our smiles wide and unburdened. The woods behind her mother’s house look impossibly bright.
Second page: me, Kahlia, and Eli. His awkward teenage half-smile. My oversized hoodie. Kahlia’s arm around my neck like she owned the whole world.
Before everything cracked open.
Eli flips to the next page.
There are gaps where photos should be, three empty squares, dotted outlines framing absence.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper. “They were here. I remember them.”
“What were they of?” he asks quietly.
“One was homecoming. One was our last summer at the creek. The third…” My voice thins. “I can’t remember.”
He flips again.
The next photo should not exist.
It’s Kahlia and me standing in front of an apartment building.
Not her building.
Not mine.
Marcus’s old building.
“No,” I breathe. “No, this is wrong.”
Eli’s head snaps toward me. “You never told me she knew Marcus.”
“She didn’t.” My voice shakes. “I met him in college, years after this would’ve been taken.”
He studies the image.
Me at seventeen.
Kahlia at seventeen.
My arm around her shoulders, her smile small, uneasy.
Her body angled away from the apartment door.
“How did this picture get here?” Eli whispers.
It feels heavy in my hands. Wrong in a way that coils through my bones.
“I don’t remember this. I don’t remember being there.” My breath trembles. “And Kahlia… she looks scared.”
Eli’s eyes narrow, sharpening. “Sera. Look behind you.”
I look at the photo background.
In the shadowed doorway of the apartment building, blurred, like he was moving, stands a man.
Tall.
Still.
Watching us.
“Is that-?” Eli starts.
“I don’t know.” My voice is barely a sound. “I can’t see his face.”
But the stance. The height. The tilt of the head.
Familiar.
Marcus?
Or someone Kahlia feared long before I understood why.
Eli grips the photo so tightly that the edges curl under his fingers.
“Sera,” he says low, “someone is forcing your memories back. Or showing you the ones you weren’t supposed to remember.”
My hands tremble. “Why? Why now?”
“Because whoever came inside,” he says, “wants you scared. Wants you questioning everything you know about the night she died.”
The attic creaks.
We both turn.
Nothing moves.
No footprints.
No shadows.
But for a heartbeat, I smell creek water.
Cold. Murky. Familiar.
The memory from last night crawls up my spine.
Eli exhales sharply. “We’re leaving this house.”
“What? No. Maya’s asleep. I’m not dragging her out into the cold.”
“I’m not talking about tonight,” he says. “But soon. Someone’s been inside twice. That footprint was fresh. They’re getting bold.”
A tremor slides through me.
“Where would we go?”
“I’ll figure it out,” he says. “You just stay alive long enough for that.”
Alive.
The word tilts the floor.
Eli steadies me with a hand at my waist.
“Sera. Stay with me.”
His touch grounds me. His breath brushes my temple. The panic eases just enough to let air back into my lungs.
“Do you trust me?” he asks softly.
“I want to,” I whisper. “Everything just feels so… broken.”
“Nothing about you is broken,” he murmurs. “Whatever you’re remembering, whatever happened...it doesn’t change who you are.”
I close my eyes.
He pulls me a fraction closer. Just enough to hold me together.
Then a soft thud from the far corner.
We both jolt.
A stack of books sits on the floor.
Books that weren’t there before.
Eli stiffens. “You didn’t-”
“No.”
He bends and lifts the top book.
My journal.
My name written on the cover in childhood handwriting. The latch broken, pried open recently.
My stomach twists.
“Eli… that journal was at my dad’s house. In a box. I haven’t seen it since high school.”
“Your dad must’ve shoved the wrong box up here when you moved,” he says carefully. “Or someone else did.”
He opens the journal.
Childish scribbles. Doodles. Song lyrics. Crushed teenage hopes.
Then...
A page torn clean out.
Eli turns to the next.
A message written in handwriting that is not mine.
Neat.
Rounded.
Beautiful loops.
You lied once.
Don’t lie again.
\-K
My pulse slams.
“Eli,” I choke, gripping his arm. “Kahlia never wrote in my journal. She hated journaling. She said it felt like confessing.”
He stares at the words.
“Sera,” he says quietly, “whatever happened that night...Kahlia tried to tell someone. And she picked you.”
Tears burn behind my eyes. “But I don’t remember. I don’t remember what I lied about.”
He meets my gaze. “You’re going to.”
A cold breeze brushes the back of my neck.
But the attic window is shut.
A shadow shifts behind us.
For a heartbeat, I feel someone standing right beside me.
Watching.
Listening.
Eli pulls me closer, journal still in hand.
“We’re not alone,” he whispers.
This time, he doesn’t mean the house.