"The Thing in the Attic"
By: Rebecca Boyles
When I was child we lived in a white house on Walnut Street. Nothing about the house was your typical "Haunted Mansion" or Hollywood "House of Horror. But, as a child I KNEW there was something awful that lived in the attic!
The funny thing about itis, none of us 3 older children can remember ever discussing it with each other. And, we certainly didn't discuss it with our parents! Never the less, we all knew "The Thing" was real!
There was a staircase in a dark hall, that never got light. It had a bad feel to it. At the top of the stairs was a light that would never work, (I yes, I know - it could have been a bad circuit). There on the 2nd floor landing was a corner that always stayed cold and dark. To make matters worse, once you passed the corner you still had to pass the open access to storage under the eaves. That was where "The Thing" lived!
I don't know how we started playing the game. It actually was more of a "challenge ". But, we played it every chance we got. The stairs and the hall were "off limits" to us but, we found a way to play every chance we got!
You would go up as high as you dared and sit on the steps facing the bottom. It then became a test of courage and will-power to see how high you could go and how long you could stay before "The Thing" got you!
You see, the thing was a cold presence in the dark corner at the top of the stairs. You would sit on the steps, not allowed to look back over your should as the cold presence crept closer and closer to you.. You could feel it coming down the stairs toward you. Your heart would beat faster, you would get goose-bumps, the hair on the back of your neck would rise, and the panic would keep rising in you until one us could no longer stand it and ran screaming with the rest of us following!
No one ever "won" the game. But, we felt compelled to play it over and over.
I don't remember when but, at some point we stopped playing the game or talking about "The Thing".
When I was about 13, my sister and I decided we had outgrown our old bedroom and needed something much larger. As all the rooms downstairs were taken. the upstairs was the logical place to go.
Thinking back, considering how creepy the attic still felt, this was a VERY odd decision for us to make...
We fixed the attic up into a large bedroom. Laura's bed facing one way, mine another with a large open space in between.
One night something woke me from a sound sleep. I layed there for a while trying to figure out why I was awake. The moonlight from the window gave just enough light for an outline of the objects in the room. I was looking at my sister's ned when suddenly it dawned on me that I was looking at something that shouldn't be there!
Standing, bending down was a black, opaque shape with fuzzy edges. I felt a chill come over me as it seemed to reach down to touch Laura. I must have made some sound because the suddenly turned and looked at me! I have never felt such cold, evil, and fear as I did at that moment. It was "The Thing, and it was real, and just as evil as I remembered it as a child!
I bolted down the stairs as fast as I could, screaming for my Mom and Dad (and leaving Laura to fend for herself)! I jumped into bed with them. They tried to convince me it was just a nightmare but, I KNEW I was fully awake! My screaming woke Laura, who quickly joined us in bed. That was the last night we spent upstairs. We moved to our old bedroom the next day. Not too long after that Mom and Dad sold the house and we moved away.
One Christmas years later, we were all home from College when for some reason we started talking about "The Thing in the Attic". Mom and Dad looked at each other and then made a confession. They had felt the same thing but, each was afraid to tell the other who might think they were crazy! The night "The Thing" touched my sister was when they told each other. That's why they sold the house...
Every once in a while a I relive that night in a dream. I always wake-up when it turns and looks at me. I wake in fear and in a panic just as great as that night when I was 13.