Chapter 2 The Attic
The first time I hear it, I think it’s the pipes.
A dull, dragging sound above my head, like someone shoving a heavy box across the floor. The ceiling light flickers once, then steadies. I’m standing at the kitchen sink, fingers submerged in dish water gone lukewarm, staring through the window at the empty yard glowing in late-afternoon haze.
Then it comes again.
A scrape. A thud. Then silence.
I turn off the faucet.
The house settles around me in familiar ways. The slow stretch of wood, the pop in the wall near the pantry—but this… this is different. The air thickens, dense like humidity before a storm. I tilt my head, listening. For a few seconds, all I hear is the ticking clock and faint cartoon voices drifting from the living room where Maya is sprawled on the couch.
Then: three soft, deliberate steps overhead.
My heartbeat jumps.
The attic.
We never use it. When I moved here after leaving Marcus, I shoved everything I didn’t want to unpack up there, old journals, childhood photos, my mother’s things, the boxes my father dropped off without asking.
No one should be up there.
I wipe my hands on a dish towel and force my legs to move. “Maya?” I call, tone too bright. “Baby, are you downstairs?”
“Yes!” she shouts quickly. “I’m watching the sparkle show!”
Okay. So not her.
My gaze rises to the narrow pull-string hatch in the hallway ceiling. The white metal frame suddenly looks sinister, like an eye waiting to open.
“Get it together,” I mutter. “Old house. Old wood. A squirrel.”
But the skin along my neck prickles anyway.
I grab my phone, even though I have no one to call. I can’t exactly dial the police and say: Hi, I think my dead best friend is haunting my attic, can you check?
Right. They’d ask what meds I’m on.
I step into the hallway. It’s dimmer here, lit by only one bulb. The attic hatch sits in the center like a waiting mouth.
The string moves.
I freeze.
It sways gently, brushing the air like fingers. There’s no open window. No draft. Nothing that should make it move.
“Maya,” I say again, pulse racing, “come here for a second.”
Her footsteps patter across the hardwood.
She appears at the end of the hall, hair in a puff, clutching her stuffed panda. “Yeah?”
“Stay right there,” I say. “Don’t move.”
She senses the shift in me. “Are we playing a game?”
“Kind of.” My voice strains. “It’s called ‘stay where Mommy can see you.’”
She giggles, but softly. “Okay.”
I step beneath the hatch, take the swaying cord in my fingers, and breathe. “One… two…”
I pull.
The attic ladder slams open with a rattling clatter, dust raining over my hair. Maya jumps; I flinch. A cool draft spills down from the dark opening above, wrong and sharp, like a breath exhaled from something too still for too long.
I flip the hallway switch, then the tiny attic light. A weak yellow glow flickers, then steadies.
“Sera, you’re overreacting,” I whisper. “You’ll sleep if you just look.”
“Maya,” I say again, “see that line on the floor?” The faint mark from when I taped a “jumping zone” for her.
She nods. “Mm-hmm.”
“Don’t cross it.”
“I pwomise.”
I climb.
The ladder creaks under me. My palms are slick as I rise into the heavy warmth of the attic. Shadows stretch long across boxes and trunks. Dust motes float like tiny planets caught in the bulb’s weak beam.
No intruder. No animal. Just the stale, quiet breath of a place forgotten.
Still, the feeling of being watched tightens around my ribs.
I pull myself fully inside and turn slowly.
“Mommy?” Maya calls from below, small and nervous. “Do you see the lady?”
My heart stutters. “No, sweetheart. There’s no lady.”
But my eyes snag on a box pulled out from the rest, its lid crooked. Those boxes were stacked perfectly months ago. I remember because I nearly fell trying to reach them.
“Mice,” I tell myself. “Gravity. Anything but what you’re thinking.”
I kneel and push the lid open.
Inside: photo albums, a frayed Nike shoebox, bent-spine journals, tangled necklaces. Pieces of my life I shoved out of sight.
A glossy photo peeks from under the shoebox. I slide it out.
It punches the air from my lungs.
Three teenagers stand on the bank of a creek, muddy to their knees. Trees bend overhead. In the middle: Kahlia, wild curls and bright smile, water streaking her brown skin. To her left, arms crossed, pretending not to smile, Eli. And on her right, shielding my eyes from the sun, is me.
We lean toward each other subconsciously, like gravity.
The caption scrawled at the bottom reads: We’ll never leave this place. Summer blood.
My throat tightens.
“Kahlia,” I breathe.
My hand brushes the Nike box. I pull it out and lift the lid.
There, on top of old ticket stubs and friendship bracelets, is a necklace. A silver chain with a crescent-moon pendant. The one she wore almost every day sophomore year, smoothing her thumb across it until the metal dulled.
She was wearing it the night she disappeared.
My fingers close around the pendant. It’s cold. Too cold.
How did it get here?
It should have been with her. Or at least with her family. Not buried in my attic.
A chill spiders down my spine.
I slip the pendant into my pocket.
“Mommy!” Maya’s voice rises.
“I’m coming,” I call back.
I put everything as I found it and moved to the ladder. A shape shifts in the far corner, just a flicker, too quick to grasp. I squint hard.
Nothing.
Just an old lamp.
I descend fast, my heart pounding with each step. When my feet hit the floor, I shove the ladder back up until it clicks into place.
The house feels brighter with it closed.
Maya stands exactly where I left her, toes curled over the taped line, panda pressed to her chest.
“You took forever,” she says.
“I was gone one minute.”
She frowns. “It felt like forever.”
A laugh sticks painfully in my throat. “Did you see anyone?” I ask gently.
She tilts her head. “Like who?”
“Anyone. Behind me. Near the stairs.”
She shrugs. “I saw the lady. But you didn’t.”
My blood freezes. “Where?”
She raises her small hand and points up the stairs.
I turn.
The staircase curves into deeper shadow. Empty. Absolutely empty.
Goosebumps crawl up my arms.
“She was right there,” Maya says. “She waved. Then she went poof when you started coming down.”
“Poof,” I echo.
“Yeah. Like TV.” She frowns. “She was sad.”
My voice shakes. “How do you know she was sad?”
“Her eyes,” Maya whispers. “They looked like yours when you think about Daddy.”
I flinch.
I lift her into my arms. Hold her too tight.
“Mommy, you’re squishing me.”
“Sorry.”
I loosen my grip but don’t let go. I carry her toward the living room, hand pressed over the necklace burning in my pocket.
Behind us, the hallway light flickers once.
I don’t turn.
But I feel it.
Someone is watching us leave.