The Attic.
There are no monsters, he said.
He spanked me that night, like he had done many times before. He didn’t hit me. My Father didn’t hit. Maybe that’s a lie, or maybe I just can’t think of the right word between Spank and Hit. Whatever that word is, some cowardly piece of me wants to believe he never hit me. But I did pass out. I passed out from his spanking.
In the morning my Mother told me what she had told me before: To mind my Father. And just like the last time she told me, she was trying not to cry. But on this morning, she was different. Shaking softly, she had gripped her coffee cup, stood up and stepped to the kitchen window. She stood there for a full minute and stared away at nothing. I remember wondering if she even knew I was still there. I watched her from behind and for a moment, I felt she believed me about the creature in the attic because she seemed as frightened as I. Then softly, without looking at me, she whispered,
“We are leaving this house. All of us”.
I remember being terrified all day. No amount of sunlight could delay the bleak fact that the night would soon envelop this day and darkness would approach my room. I knew that whatever it was that nested in the attic above, whatever ghastly thing looked at me last night, one thing was sure: It was very much at home in the dark. I had closed the door of my bedroom and put a small chair in front of it. I didn’t want to look in the hallway and see the attic. I knew the thing might come and my little plan was to just hope. Hope that the Father I hated was right, that there were no monsters and it wasn’t really up there, waiting for me to drift to sleep.
My parents fought that night. It wasn’t the first time, but this time was different, there was a temperature to the emotion in that house, an intensity. Their raised voices thumped through my door like dog barks. I didn’t understand everything they said, but the assault they threw at each other made me weep. I wanted to hide, or run, or die. I could do it if I wanted to. I knew my Father kept a gun under his bed. He once wrenched my wrist, telling me never to touch it and leaving a bruise where his wedding ring ate into my small arm. I thought about that gun and gripped the blanket around my head trying not to absorb the words they were spitting at each other: Hell. Awful. Bitch. You.
Then it happened. Between the roars of my parents fight, I heard the dry scrape of the attic tile scratching open. They had to have heard it too, I thought. They must have. For an instant I wanted to jump from my tiny bed and somehow cross my room and quickly click on the bedroom light. But I couldn’t move. It somehow knew the thing would be faster than me and it would get me. I imagined it hauling its form from the attic and searching with its quivering wet snout, sniffing the air for me. I stared at my closed door, my muscles tense with cold fear and I saw that the doorknob of my room was beginning to turn.
My parents were still fighting in the other room, seemingly oblivious to my terror and I thought I was going to die right there in my bedroom, torn open, gnawed on and eaten by a beast. No one would ever know. Not my parents, not the world. Everyone would glare at my tiny carcass and never comprehend what horror could have done that and what tortures I must have suffered. Outside, my parents cackles grew louder: Leave. Go. Hate. Their screeching echoed in my ears and my jaw tightened. The door clicked open, inched open, scraping the small chair I had placed as my defense backwards against the floor. A form was revealed. A spindly shadow melted into view, something barely illuminated by the kitchen light. It stared at me, boring those small pink eyes into me, its thin fingers curled around my door, moonlight catching the saliva of its open mouth. My Father and Mother howled again: Hate you. I HATE YOU. YOU MONSTER. Monster? Did they say Monster? Did they know? Then a flash, a lightning burst of color and I knew my Father’s gun had fired, sirening once in my ears.The shadow creeping into my room froze. There was a half-second of silence, then another shot. My ears rung and nothing moved. There was barely a sound. Then the thing at my door turned from me and quietly moved away from my door and crawled up into the attic, leaving me alone in the darkness with the ringing.
