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“I absolutely can’t live like this anymore!”
Abigail is absolutely pissed off. Wriggling around in her bed sheets, trying to get out from that damned bed in that damned room, she’s cursing at the world for not letting her have a single night of good sleep.
“A nice nap, I haven't had that in two weeks! For God’s sake, I’m done with it!”
She slams the door as she storms out into the living room. “I don’t care that you don’t believe me,” she says to no one in particular, looking up to the ceiling, “I’m gonna fix this thing myself!”
There it is: the trapdoor to the attic.
She’s been having a very hard time sleeping for an uncharacteristically long time now, sure, but Pierre and Caroline have checked everywhere and haven’t found anything. They can’t hear anything – Caroline already is a light sleeper, Abby takes on from her, but she’s not been having any problems whatsoever. They went up in the attic on several occasions, but they saw nothing, no weird prints in the dust, no open cabinets, none. Plus, the attic ends just above the entrance to Abigail’s room, there is nothing above her but the roof. They really don’t know what to do anymore, the poor girl has been having a lot of problems at school for not being able to focus on her classes, but they couldn’t manage anything. Dr. Mia, the neighbour, said this could be “insomnia caused by the natural changes occurring during puberty”, and has prescribed her some light sleep pills. Caroline thinks they helped, but they haven’t fixed the problem entirely – she can’t not pity her daughter, but the doctor said all they can do now is wait it out, there is nothing more she can do...
But Abigail is absolutely, hundred percent sure it’s not that. It’s either she’s going crazy or something really is happening up there, because she is hearing sounds in the middle of the night. Stomps, ruffles, and even weird whoomps , at different pitches, all throughout the night. Not loud enough to wake her up or anything, no, but her bad habit of reading under her blanket until 1 AM is certainly not helping. Yet, still, something is making those sounds. And she can’t find out what, where, or why, and that, that , is driving her crazier than the lack of sleep will ever be able to.
So, now, Abigail has to go up there. She drags the closest dresser just underneath the trapdoor, carefully balances up on it with that rage only true frustration can produce, and fidgets with the lock until the door opens, letting the ladder fall, almost in her head. After finding a flashlight in one of the drawers of her improvised step stool, she grabs it, tests the ladder again, and ventures into the abyss above her.
Okay, maybe abyss is too strong of a word. The place is well lit, anyway, by the paper-covered windows on the walls to the front and back of the house. It’s big, as large as the living room, and it looks like it used to be a separate apartment, a long time ago. Old furniture everywhere, some where it should be in a nice, one-room studio, some shoved around the entrance, probably by her parents. There used to be real stairs here for sure, Abigail is holding onto a nice wooden railing as she takes in this new strange place, it leaves behind splinters that drag on her pajamas.
The yellowish light, the old stuff, the dust, the thick and undisturbed dust on the ground (except for a few steps, Pierre’s, from the last couple of days), it’s all… kinda exciting, really, it’s like a whole new world entirely!
Sure, Abby’s anger is slowly washing away, but in its place, the girl can feel a new feeling rising up. And she knows it’s because she sees all the webs in the corners, in between the couch and the drawer, in between the lamp’s light bulbs…
No. She can’t think of that, she can’t get afraid. She needs to find what’s been taking away her nights, what is making all those weird, weird sounds, and why she can’t sleep like she used to.
Before the thoughts of spiders can catch up to her, she starts going around the place, trying to decide what she should do now. Finally, she comes to the conclusion that she must open every drawer, each wardrobe, shove away every piece of bed sheet from over each old store cabinet in here, until she finds the… whatever that keeps her up at night.
This is, obviously, way harder than she imagined. The amount of furniture up here is crazy! And most of it it’s still filled with the previous owners’ stuff – that’s such a Dad thing , Abigail thinks, to shove everything up in a drawer, forget it ever existed, and then never try to get rid of it . In this drawer, it’s wire and hemp rope, in this other one, it’s papers and notebooks and magazine clippings. Clothes. Books. Various miscellaneous stuff. But one by one, she lightly rummages through each place she can imagine something hiding inside, after clawing away at the cobwebs with the unused flashlight, and she can’t find anything.
As the atmosphere becomes more dusty, as she advances more through the sea of forgotten furniture, she can’t help but notice the amount of spiders in here. Don’tlookdon’tlookdon’tlookdon’tlook . But the truth is, it’s… a lot of spiders. Maybe too many, even for an attic?
She walks around, swaying the flashlight before her like it could actually protect her from the eight-legged creatures of her nightmares, trying to reach the side of the attic towards her room, where a big, almost imposing wardrobe slouches against the wall. Catching any stray webs with her trusty plastic light, she discovers the thing is pretty sturdy, if not actually stable.
“This is it, then. If there’s anything bothering me, it’s in here.”
She thought saying it out loud would bring her courage back. No, she discovers hearing her trembling voice just makes her more jumpy, and more focused on the thick air around her.
Blowing the dust off the handles, she puts her hands on the ornate, bronze loops, and starts pulling.
The old, hardwood doors cry as they open, untouched in a very long time.
And inside…
It’s nothing. The thing is literally empty. There is not even a need to waft around the flashlight, it has a single, giant compartment, and it’s clearly empty.
What now?
As she stares at the lack of critters making sounds, and as she wonders if she’s actually going crazy, a black spider with thick, hairy legs swings down on a piece of web, just in front of her eyes. For a second, her vision gets blurry, unable to focus on the thing just in front of her, but just as she realizes what’s going on, the giant beast lets itself down on Abigail’s nose.
All Void breaks loose.
She starts screaming, her silent terror scream, and, as she claws at her face, feeling those pointy legs on her skin, she walks around in a haze, not perceiving anything. She must knock over a drawer or something, because the next thing she knows, she falls over something, she hears cracks as the wood collapses under her, and a sharp pain in her shoulders makes her vision go black.
A few seconds pass before she dares to make a sound. She opens her eyes, and realizes the darkness is coming from all around her. As her eyes adjust to it (and her body, to the pain), she figures out she tripped over a cabinet and the two of them have managed to break the wooden wall into… another room?
Pushing the pieces of the former cabinet away from her, she slowly rises to her knees and looks around into what seems to be the tiniest room in this house. Rising to her feet, she finds herself inside a narrow corridor-like room, as from a cave… The walls almost slide towards one another, the ceiling is slowly coming towards her, the place is breathing, it’s alive!
She waits a couple more seconds, as the throbbing in her head slows down. The ceiling is not coming down, it’s just slanted, but the room still feels… alive. Yeah, there’s something flowing through here, and it’s not just the draft. It’s a warmth, and a fresh smell that has no business being in here, a feeling of being watched and not in a bad way, a presence, flowing wall to wall like blood through her arteries, like blood through her veins. It’s like the room knows she’s here and is saying hello. And it sure feels like there’s no spiders here, it just feels like that.
The flashlight is laying there, at her feet, ready to make itself useful. Finally .
The first flickers of light are amplified by something: apparently, as she crashed through the wall, Abigail broke a small mirror on that wall, and now its shards help her see around.
The walls are covered in an old-timey, yellow wallpaper, so worn out, any designs are totally lost. The cold fall breeze rustles through her hair – was it that cold back when the small stove fireplace before her held a roaring fire?
The room has no windows. Or, no, what was that flicker? To her right, towards the backyard, there is a door with a small glass pane, boarded up from outside. So, there used to be a window, after all.
Next to the door is a large wardrobe, looking extremely old in spite of its simple, timeless design. It has no brass handles and flowery decoration, but in its stern, plain doors lies a dignity only time and use could give. Curiosity takes over Abigail, as she steps over the rubble and heads towards the biggest piece of furniture in the room, to open it.
The thing is filled, and not only with dust – and, surprisingly, no spiders. But something is weird about the clothes: shuffling her hand between the neatly hanged pieces, taking in their smell of old and rot and herbs and sweet things, she sees dresses, of the kind her grandma wore in pictures when she was young, and gentleman’s pants and shirts from the same age. A coat, no, two, very worn out and with way too many pockets for it to have been bought like that. A bunch of scarfs, a construction hat looking thing, and a white woolen jumper. One, two, three, four dresses, a dark purple-reddish color, of the kind they wore in illustrations of the old history, Elemental Wars and before. A flowery blouse. A pair of boots, stylish ones, the ones her classmates are wearing (!), and a pair of the ugliest, most worn out boots she has ever seen. A bunch of leaves, hung on a string, that break off under her touch. And many, way too many comforters for a normal person to have.
She takes one of the comforters out (she is, after all, in her pajamas, and it’s mid fall, and it’s drafty in here), and she puts it around her shoulders, enveloped in its stale, old, kinda nasty, but sweet and herbal smell. Now warmer, and convinced nothing noisy hides in the wardrobe, she starts scanning the room more carefully.
The southern wall, the one that’s on the front of the house, is completely covered by a big desk, wide and solid, and so, so old looking. It has little, short drawers underneath it, and small ornate designs on its sides – it’s the kind of thing she has seen in museums. A chair is tucked underneath it. The desk is covered in paper, it looks like an old notebook that broke off, and pieces of candles, burnt to a stump. Above the desk dangs a light bulb. As she walks towards the writing table, she realizes it’s the same kind of paper as in the drawers in the attic – um, the main room of the attic? Anyways . It’s all handwritten in the most unreadable script ever, but it’s not some different script, she can make words on them. This one talks about levels, mine levels, look, here it says “bats” and… something something eating flesh? This page is about some fish thingies, it says “gills”, this one, about rocks. As she scans through the papers, Abigail understands two things: they are so interesting! She needs to read them all!
And… something was here. The dust has been wiped out by moving the papers, and some of them are crumpled, some of them are wet (the room is, funnily enough, pretty dry), and they are for sure not in their written order.
Abigail decides to not think too much, ignore the slight scare the thought gives her, and just take them. She feels like this is what she should do. If taking them can stop the thing that comes here every night from making a ruckus, then the problem is solved; if taking them would cause the thing to come to her room… then, at least she’s not crazy, right?
Next to the desk, there’s a small bed, a narrow and short bed, too little for any grown person to sit on. True to Abby’s thought, the wide footrest of the bed is dented and splintered towards the middle, as if someone has been putting up their feet on it; where it’s not dented, half backed against the wall, is a small pot with a dried-up plant. At the foot of the bed, there’s that stove she first saw when she lit up the flashlight: it still has wood inside it, carbonized wood, and on top of it there’s a rusty pot and a nice-smelling bag. Next to it, between the stove and the wardrobe, it’s another chair, possibly the pair to the first one from the desk, with a rusty, ceramic washbowl on it. It still has water inside!
But, honestly, that’s not that interesting. Or it’s not as interesting as the papers she holds.
She puts the flashlight on the desk, and tries to sit down on the bed…
…but she almost sits on top of something.
Of course, she hasn’t looked at the bed that closely: it’s dirty (but honestly, what isn’t), and it looks just slept in. She tries to approach it, but she feels her leg strike something soft: it’s a… satchel of some kind, but a very old-looking one. Like uncool, shapeless looking, totally “practicality over beauty” type. She knees down next to it, and shines her flashlight inside.
The bag has one single compartment, and it’s filled with, uh, stuff. A bunch of herbs, a bunch of PENS, literal pens she uses at school, a notebook, and a whole lot of other things she couldn’t name if she tried.
Notebook! Abigail remembers the papers she has been holding in her hand, and shoves them inside the bag, thrusting it over her right shoulder, underneath the comforter. She sure wouldn’t forget about them this way.
As she tries to go back up, her light shines over something, slightly underneath the duvet. She grabs at it, pulls it, and…
It’s a sword! Abigail has a sword in her hand, a dark, long blade, with a shiny, wooden handle! “This is SO cool”, she says, mesmerized by the sheer idea of its existence.
“Abby? Are you up there?”
Abigail jerks awake at her mother’s voice, confused and annoyed; she’s coming closer to the open trapdoor, and, by the sounds of it, she’s with Dr. Mia. Shit, I can’t let her see me with a sword! Panicking, she shoves it under her right armpit, next to the satchel, and turns around, flashlight behind her, facing towards the main room of the attic, towards the gaping hole in the wall she has just made. Just in time to hear Caroline coming up the stairs.
“Abby, are you okay? Mia was telling me she heard this cracking sound in the attic, next to her apartment, have you broken anything? Did you break the roof? Is this about the not sleeping thing?”
As she comes closer, Abigail becomes more flustered by the second. She’s gonna get a good yell as soon as Dr. Mia goes away, and she’s gonna have to clean this up…
As Caroline gets in front of her and glances behind into the hidden room, her tone switches up suddenly, sweet and calm.
“Abigail, baby, please get out.”
Shivers run down the teenager’s spine. Something is very wrong.
“I can explain, I was looking, I-”
“Please, Abby, don’t look back.”
Caroline grabs at Abigail’s left hand, making her drop the flashlight, and gently drags her out of the room.
“My flashlight!” She tries to turn back, but Caroline catches her face, looking her in the eyes with the warmest look she can muster. Abigail’s face turns in horror, understanding something is extremely wrong.
As Caroline mouths a silent please , Abigail finally starts walking through the dusty attic, back down into the house and directly in her room, all while Caroline grabs onto her nervously.
Because Caroline didn’t want Abigail to see the dark spots on the duvet and the darker spots on the bed underneath it. Because Caroline didn’t want Abigail to see all the dirty rags underneath the desk, the chair, from between the rubble. Because Caroline didn’t want Abigail to realize that there is no rust in the ceramic washbowl. Because Caroline didn’t want Abigail to see what she was seeing.
Because Caroline didn’t want to see the secrets of this old house she’s been calling home anymore.
***
This night would have been the last night Abigail wouldn’t be able to sleep because of the weird sounds; she doesn’t notice them, though, because she is busy reading all the notes she gathered from up there. The more she reads, the more she finds she understands the handwriting, and the more secrets she unveils.
She slept through the whole day, missing out on how Pierre and Caroline abandoned the Fair preparations to go up the attic, burn everything that scared Caroline so much, and board the wall up again. Like magic, Abigail slept through the many visits they had that day: Lewis, going out the kitchen and returning with the oldest register the teenager would have ever seen, or Dr. Mia, back and forth and back again, or Jodi, coming to help calm down her friend. Later in the night, when Pierre is asleep, a cloaked, purple figure appeared, got inside the sealed room, and confirmed Caroline’s fears. She slept through some of the last of the attic noises. She slept through it all, an uncharacteristically deep sleep no one could wake her up from. When she usually goes to sleep, she wakes up, as if nothing happened.
She spends the rest of her Sunday night reading through the diary of an unknown woman, taking in the strange world she lived in in such a weird way she almost sees it all, as she grabs at the still sharp sword underneath her own covers. This is such a strange thing. She feels like she should be freaked out, but something tells her she is doing the right thing, whatever that may be.
Only years later would she realize what happened that day, and who she “met” up in her attic; then, she would start to visit this odd grave in the town cemetery, of a person no one knew anything about, yet now Abigail would feel she knows better than her own mom.
But that would happen years later. Because this is the night Abigail becomes Abigail.