Part one: Attic

You’re conscious, and yet you are not. You’re aware that you were previously asleep, but your eyes are still shut. Finally opening them up, darkness still surrounds you. A window hangs above you on the ceiling, slanted slightly to indicate that it leads to the roof; that must mean you’re in the attic… Right? The moon graciously illuminates upon you in full body accompanied with a foggy cloud that tries to cover it; but, the stars decided to hide away for the night, thus, giving the night a typical gloomy ambiance. The coolness of the room doesn’t suit you, and so your body almost subconsciously forces you to get up and swift around a little, to get the blood pumping and all. You start to adjust your eyes to the navy blue darkness and begin to see a vague glimpse of shelves around you, as per-usual for an attic. As you scan left to right the very dim light reveals a lamp in front of you, feeling a bit cheerful, you walk over and snatch it. It’s an old fashioned one from the late nineteenth century, of course, so you need some sort of flame in order to ignite the oil. 

A silent noise catches your attention and so you listen closely. It doesn’t sound like it’s in the room with you, but underneath, where the dwelling place of a house should be, the spot where residents hang around. A knocking sound, someone’s knocking at a door, or a wall, that’s what you conclude at least. Who could be causing that knocking sound, and why? Once that inquiry comes to mind, you start to question your entire situation. How did you get up here? Is this your attic? What time is it anyway? Your focus drifts away from the noise slightly until you realize that it suddenly stopped.

You decide to write it off and bring your attention back to the lamp problem, you still need matches in order for it to be useful. Searching the shelves with more precision, you fail to find any from where you stand, and so you begin to explore the room a little more. Stepping out of the moonlight, you feel around as to not bump into anything and end up hurting yourself. Nothing seems to be obscuring you as your bare feet scuffle on the old wood. Finally, your hands brush against something, another shelf. Feeling for something like a small box, your hands scavenge around the plank. The tips of your fingers bump into something, causing it to rattle; sounds like a match box. You reach your hand out to grab it, and to your relief, it is. Your feet stamper as quickly and safely as they can back towards the window light just to see how much you have now, so far, you can make out about five heads in there, that should do you good until you get out of this place.

The hollow knocking comes back and catches your attention again. Does it seem closer than before, or did it just get louder? Why does this even have any importance to you? You should be fixated on getting out of this creepy house. Some psycho probably locked you up in here for a sick little experiment or something. Yeah that’s it, that must be the reason you’re here. You’re not going to let this place break you, the sun will shine upon your skin again and you’ll tell the authorities about this incident… No… They’ll put you on needless pills; you should just keep this to yourself, and put it behind you once it’s over.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

The noise has stopped again and you regain your focus, you need to light the lamp. Your fingers fumble around for a match and you eventually pick one out to take from the box. The head of it scrapes against the wooden floor and a small glimmer emerges with a crack. Acting quickly, you put the match into the lantern and the flame is quick to rivet the oil. Finally, you have some light that doesn’t have a gloomy ambiance to it!  With your new and more comforting illumination you begin to explore more delicately around the attic. What lies on the shelves doesn’t really bring a scare to you, just stuff that you would expect a psycho to possess: glass dolls, spooky masks, satanic antiques, charms, and a bunch of other nick-knacks. Looking around for a while, you can already tell that the person has some sort of mental disorder caused by extended isolation, it seems typical, but you won’t let it get to you, you’re strong. A slight scoff passes your lips in order to force will-power over fear, just don’t run into the weirdo and you’ll be fine. Some of the new antiques begin to gross you out as you walk around, like body parts of animals in jars, but none of it is overly disturbing. You then spot a ring of keys and pick it up. Oh what joy, now you can finally leave the attic! Your feet scurry over to where you remember the door chamber to be; but, as small as this place seems, you can’t find the door that would drop you into the base of the house. Where did it go? You could have sworn it was right here! Maybe it was in another place? You walk all around again with your eyes to the floor in case you’ve missed it somehow. Feeling more hopeless than before, you look up so that you don’t get lost, everything looks as it did before and you place a picture of this particular spot in your memory so you look down to continue your narrow search.

You jump at the sound of the knocking noise stationed so close and loud. This time it came from within the attic, where you are currently. The hearts within your own chest pumps your blood at an alarming rate for a few seconds and then stabilizes again. There was probably a few knocks, but that couldn’t of been from the same thing that caused it earlier… Right? That would be impossible since you didn’t hear any doors open, especially the one that connects the attic to the rest of the house. Forgetting the matter, you continue your search for that opening. There it is again! It was closer this time! Where is it coming from?! Dear God, please don’t let it be that psycho who stuck you in here! He better not be in this exact room with you! A third disturbing chime of the knocking fills your entire being with fear. Move-Your-Feet! One foot after the other and you take a few steps backwards away from where the clatter came from last. Finally regaining enough courage, you turn around and start to scurry all over the place in hopes of hiding from whatever it is that’s making that noise. The chamber door comes into the dim light for your eyes to spot. Another sense of relief flushes into you while your knees bend so you can put your lamp down and shove the key into the lock to get this over with. Before the key goes into the hole one loud knock bangs directly from behind and startles you. In a panic, you turn just to make sure nothing is behind you, but nothing is within the darkness, at least, so you tell yourself. You go back to the key and put it in the lock. The click gives you hope again and the door opens up. Your careful to place your hands near the hole as a gripping mechanism as you lower yourself as much as you can into the base of the house.

Finally, out of that place! You let go of the opening hole and land as softly as you can onto the floor, once again surrounded by the darkness of the night.