but maybe that’s just my head’s faulty memory. Every fiber of my being tells me to climb back down and leave this alone, but that key belongs to something. Something my father wanted me to find.
So I climb up into the attic. Thin gossamer strands of cobwebs tickle my skin, as I stand upright, noting the door to be approximately, as I guessed, to the height of my shoulders. There is no lock, only a handle, and as I approach, I notice the hardness of its surface, like steel.
Boards creak below me, marking every step forward, and a cold fist clamps around my lungs when I reach out for the handle on the door.
Fingertips curling around the metal, I screw my eyes shut to another flash of memory.
“Get inside! They’re coming.”
“Daddy, who are they?”
“They’re the bad people. But don’t worry, they won’t find us in here. I promise they won’t get you.”
The fist tightens with a sudden thickness in my throat. I throw back the door and find a small room, perhaps the size of a bathroom, with a cot. A thin, faded, red mattress.
Across from me, wires spill out of a hole in the wall, and as I edge closer, I can see, in my mind, a television monitor. Small, black and white. A security camera. I lower my gaze to a small panel of switches below it, and as I flick one, a memory pops inside my head.
My father flips a switch on the panel and studies the image onscreen, in which the back of the house stands empty. He flips another switch, and the parlor pops up. Another brings up the view of the kitchen. Each switch seems to coincide with a different part of the house, as if every room contains a camera there.
I twist around to see the locks, heavy steel locks, like something one would find on a bank vault, stretched across the inside of the door, and another unbidden memory slips through like photographs falling from my hands.
The sound of scraping metal skates down my spine as Daddy slides the lock into place. “We’re safe, sunshine. They can’t get in. Nothing can get in here.”
“I’m scared, Daddy.”
“Don’t be scared. I won’t let them hurt you.” His arms wrap around me, and I bury my face into his chest, blinding myself to everything around me.
“I see you.” The foreign voice reaches deep inside me, rattling my fears, and I turn just enough to see a white horned white skull taking up the width of the TV screen across from me. “I’ll find you,” he whispers, before the camera cuts to blackness.
I snap out of the memory, back to the small room whose walls seem to be closing in on me. The air turns heavy, too thick in my lungs, and I lurch toward the door that’s now closed. I must’ve shut it while lost in the reverie of my father doing so.
A tremble vibrates deep inside of me as I push against it, trying to open the damn thing. “Hey. What the hell?”
Locked.
I grip the handle of the lock to slide it out, but it doesn’t move. Stuck.
Panic explodes inside of me, rising up into my throat on a scream. “Let me out! I want out!”
I drop the lantern.
The room flickers to darkness.
Pitch blackness.
“Minou, minou …”
Terror rips from my throat on another scream, and I blindly grapple for the lock. My father’s loud, throaty screams echo inside my head, goading my panic.
“Help!” I slam my palm against the steel panel of the door.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Three. Two. One.
The lock slides.
The door flies open. The empty attic stands on the other side, all four walls illuminated by light. Behind me, the lantern beams, as if it has done so this whole time. As if I imagined the darkness inside that room.
Inhaling a shaky breath, I swipe it up off the floor and stride back toward the ladder, ignoring the incessant tremble beneath my skin.
“Brain movie, eh, Russ?” I mutter climbing back down, not daring one look back at that room.
Every nerve in my body flickers and flares like livewires, while I make my way back to the hallway. I’d give anything for a couple shots of liquor to settle it, but that would probably mean more hallucinations, so instead, I pull the small bag of pills from my pocket. Only about a couple dozen left, give, or take. Turns out, Tammy back at home started using pills to help her sleep after her daughter went off