The Attic by Amber Stone

illustration by Austin Spencer

The roof was gone. Just gone. And just the roof. The peak of the house stood up defiantly, mostly untouched by the tornado last night. Mom said they hopped around which I guess is why the neighbor next to us was fine but the one across the street and two houses up lost most of their porch and I think every tree in the block was in the street, but still.  

We stood out on the lawn to stare at where our roof used to be, bare feet burrowed into the too green grass (all the colors were so bright after, like it was making up for lost time), me in my nightgown and Bes in just a t-shirt. She was 3, though, so that was okay.  

Dad stood out there staring at it, hands on his hips and making unhappy noises until he went out to the garage and came back with the tallest ladder. The one that was scary and wood and didn't have a back.  

We had to move out of the way when he came around the corner and Bes squealed like she was being chased by a monster so I grabbed her hand and we ran, shrieking and giggling and Dad made more noises like we were annoying him but mom said we “needed an outlet” so he didn't say anything.  

We settled back when he let the ladder rest on the side of the house and we watched him climb.He got the top and then let out a yelp and we saw his arms flail out at his sides and Bes gripped my hand tight as he hit the ground.  

I held my breath, stood so still while he lay there.   

And then he was rolling to his side, standing up, holding his back with one hand and swearing bad words and I let out a screech and a laugh and Bes and I were off again, scrambling around the yard. Mom came out and asked if he was alright and I remember laughing because he was okay and he waved her off and then she saw the two of us being ridiculous out in the yard and yelled at us to go put shoes on.  

When we came back out, mom was close to dad. She looked pale, one hand over her mouth like he was telling her something bad and they stopped talking when they heard us on the porch again and Dad made a face “and went back to the ladder. Mom hurried over like she wanted to hold it but didn't want to get closer to the house so she just watched him go up the ladder again, while he crept up those last couple of steps and stared out into the attic like he was staring at a cave or something.  

We'd never been in the attic. The door was on the front porch which is weird, right? But there it was, this cut-out on the ceiling of the porch, just a couple of overlapping boards tacked up with nails or screws or something. It was shut tight and hadn't been open since before we bought the house and, anyway, our insulation was good, Mom said, so we never a reason to go up there and we just left it.  

We watched Dad creep along the edges of where the roof used to be, staring into the attic like he couldn't look away from it, but he did, eventually, coming back down pale and quiet and trying not to act like anything was wrong or weird.  

Then, he took the ladder away.

Other people came over to talk with him. Some neighbors stood on their own untouched rooves and stared across at our attic until they shook their heads and made their way over to talk to Dad.  

Soon there were all kind of people hovering around on our lawn and Bes and I watched them in between digging furrows in the dirt and picking up nails and other stuff that had blown over.  

Eventually, we got called in for lunch and Dad went to the hardware store. When he got back, we were piling up nails on the sidewalk and we went back to our spot in the grass to watch.  

Neighbors came and went until there was a solid group of dads with a bunch of ladders and we watched them climb up and wander around the edges of the attic, carefully staying away from the back of the house.

After they stood around looking at it for a long while, they got to work, hanging a long rope on the peak at the front while Dad took the other end of it and moved his ladder all the way to the back of the house. 

We got up to go back there so we could see but Mr. Hallman from down the block was only halfway up his ladder and he came down and shook his head at us and told us to go back to the front of the house so we had to go sit in the grass again.  

When Dad popped up at the other end of the house, he worked quickly nailing up some stuff and then running the rope through. He pulled it tight like a tight rope.  

We watched them for a few hours, all the neighbors helping and more kids and moms coming over to find out what the dads were up to and our neighbor Mary Kathryn who just came out to see why everyone was over there walking through her grass. She made Mr. Hallman clean her gutter while he was “up there” (even though he wasn't “up there” on her house). 

But, pretty soon, there were tarps, big, giant tarps, stretched out over the rope and tacked down with nails cuz, “we're gonna hafta replace all of it anyway so what do a few more holes matter?”. They kept hanging tarps to make us a roof in case the rains came back and, by the time the sun was going down, they had three big tarps across the whole house and Dad came down and was thanking everyone for their help but they all still seemed weird about it. Like, they kept looking up at the tarps and just staring, like they couldn't take their eyes off of it even while they walked back to their houses. I watched it, too, though, with the sun bright and red behind it making me squint.  

Something snaked out from under the tarp. Something dark and too black-- like when you turn the contrast up too high on the tv and you can't see details anymore. It whipped back in so quick and Dad caught me looking hard with wide eyes and he ushered me and Bes into the house and told us to go get some dinner. 

After that, Dad kept the ladders locked up tight. Even if Bes and I wanted to, we couldn't have found a way to get up there.  

Sometimes, people would come over and talk to Dad about “taking a look at the roof” or “the damage” like it was code and Dad would excuse himself and Mom would put her hands on my shoulders and squeeze until she was sure I would stay put.  

Sometimes they would come back and they would be pale or coughing a lot and they would make small talk for a while before they left.  

They always left as quick as they could and they shook and knocked things over while they stayed.  

The ones that came back did.  

There were a lot that didn't, that just left without coming back in.  

I always wondered where they went. If they left at all or if... they had to have left, though. Dad said they did and their cars were always gone.  

The neighbors still came out and stood on our lawn and stared up at where our roof used to be. Sometimes I would look out my window and see them just standing there.  

“Dad got tired of it after a while and said he was “going to start charging” if everyone kept coming over to “look at it”. 

Mom said it just made them feel better to see it, that way they knew where it was.  

Sometimes, I snuck out there and looked at it, at the place where our roof used to be.  

Mom and Dad tried to keep us from going outside alone after the tornado, but, one day, mom was at work and Dad was taking a nap with Bes and I snuck out there to see it.  

I'd have never made it to the side of the house with the ladder and it was too big for me, anyway, but I pulled a trashcan up to the end of the house and I sat on it and stared at the tarp.  

It had been a really quiet April with hardly any crickets and frogs (even though we'd had all kinds of rain so you'd think we'd have some frogs).  

“I saw you once,” I told it. “I saw your arm.” 

“I sat there and banged the back of my shoe on the metal and almost tipped the can over.  

“No one ever talks to you. They just stare.”  

The tarp was quiet.  

“I thought I would try to talk.”

I looked at the siding, brow furrowing.  

“I don't know if you can talk, but, you can hear, probably.” 

I could hear something moving beyond the tarp and then the wind kicked once and the tarp puffed up and I suddenly got this chill when I realized that a tarp was a really, really flimsy barrier between you and any thing, whatever that thing is.  

I sat there for a minute after that, my throat tight.  

“I wanted to...” I started, but, I didn't know. I really didn't.  

I saw a curl of black, that too dark black that was less than nothing, that negative color that was more than black. It curled around the edge of the tarp, testing it, this tapered, curling tube, unfurling and moving like a ribbon and very much not like a snake or an octopus arm, no, sir. (It was, though.) 

“That's your arm.” 

There was a moment of something. Some silence where the world held its breath and, I had thought it was quiet before because there were no crickets or frogs or cicadas, but, oh, I was wrong, because this, this was quiet. This was the world stopping for a moment in a silence so loud that it threatened to split my head in two as it filled with this roaring void of nothing and I watched as, one by one, black arms dripped from beneath the tarp, unending, dripping and stretching and folding into the black of the previous set and then, suddenly, the noise and the air were back and the arms were gone and it was just the one friendly arm that I had been speaking to and I felt my breath come back, that narrowing of my vision going away so everything came back again and I squeaked out, “Don't do that.” 

The arm stopped mid-curl like when you yell at a cat and its tail pauses before it settles down again and gets comfortable enough and then it starts up again.  

Only the arm didn't. It just hung there in a little “u” until, in one firm yank, it pulled itself beneath the tarp again.

It didn't come back out.

I sat there for a while, not sure what to say, and then our across the street neighbor pulled into his driveway and I ran around the back of the house in case he saw me and when I thought he was inside I went back in, too.  

People still came over to see the thing in the thing in the attic after that and they still came back looking like they'd seen a ghost or, more probably, like they'd just had all their sound taken away and I started thinking that maybe that's just how it talks or maybe how our brains have to see it. Like it takes both our eyes and ears to get it in there.  

But, I didn't know what to think about it since it's not like I could talk to it and I wasn't keen to try that silence again.  

Sometimes I laid awake at night and I stared at the ceiling because it lived there. For a long time. And it wasn't really fair of me to be all weird about it because he'd always been there, but I wouldn't talk to him from my room and maybe that was selfish and he was lonely but I didn't want that in my room.  

It was hard to sleep knowing there was a thing that could take your sound, that's voice and presence were so big that it would take all of you to even see it.

It was another few weeks before I could find it in myself to talk to it again. The truth was, as much as mom and dad watched us, I had the chance to get out there alone a few times a week. I just didn't take it.  

I think my dad thought we forgot and maybe Bes did and most of the neighbors who hadn't seen it had forgotten. Even mom was just like, “When are they coming to give us an estimate on the roof?” like there wasn't a giant arm monster living up there. She hadn't seen it, though. So, eventually, it was only Dad trying to keep us from going outside without one of them and that meant I had all kinds of time to get myself killed if I wanted to.  

I came prepared the next time, my lunch box packed with a juice box, a cookie and a hot dog wiener. I pulled the trash can around the side of the house and hopped up onto the lid, the metal denting and making noises.  

I sat there and ate my cookie in silence, feet knocking the garbage can.  

It was only a few minutes before an arm snaked out, then another, then another, until there were 5 (sometimes 7) in various states of crawling down the wall.  

“Hello.” I took a pull from my juice box trying very hard to feel brave as the arms moved and “squiggled on the wall. The arms settled, one in the middle seeming to curl more than the others.  

“I came back,” I said, obviously.  

“I didn't mean to hurt your feelings last time. I'm sorry.” 

The arms stilled.  

We sat there for a minute or two.  

“Are you from here?” 

The arms curled. 

I stared at them. “I don't know what that means.” 

The arms whipped almost like a worm flopping on pavement, curling around a point, flipping, twisting.  

The world grew quiet again, my mind narrowing down to him and only him.  

“Don't.”  

The world came back, a heartbeat pulse of color and sound and warm and normal.  

“Don't, please. That's how you talk?” 

The arms curled.  

“I can't do that. It feels like...” I scrunched up my face. “Like I'm not here?” 

The arms slowly receded until there were only a few left peeking out.  

“Sorry.” 

I sat there for another few minutes, not really sure what else to say and the weird black of the arms making me cold even in the warm sun, even with the hot metal of the garbage can against my skin.  

“Hmph.” I rocked forward on the trashcan and felt it going over, clattering to the ground while I was dumped onto my hands and knees.  

I stood up, dusting my knees off to look over at the house, the arms trailing out and down, more of them than I had seen since that first brush with silence when I froze, the arms sliding forward and questing and reaching toward me.  

They stopped, paused, drew back, most of them going back under the tarp but a single one snaking around the garbage can to right it before pulling backwards up the wall beneath the tarp.  

I felt like my heart was in my mouth and trying to beat its way out of my chest at the same time.  

I left the trashcan where it was and picked up my lunch box watching the lone arm while I opened it.  

“I'm going in, now.” I put the lunch box down, spread open on the grass.  

“I brought you a hot dog.” 

Then I ran.  

I don't know why I ran, but I did and I ran all the way into my room and curled up under my blanket until I remembered that he lived on that end of the attic and I ran back to the living room to curl up on the couch. 

Dad came home later and brought my lunch box in with him. He asked me why it was on the front porch and then gave me a weird look.  

I had nightmares that night about just how far the arms could reach.  

I felt kind of bad about that.  

After that, I tried to leave him something every few days.  

“Don't put it back on the porch,” I said when I put a plate down.  

“He left the plate there and I would bring things out to him.  

He liked the ham and chicken, didn't finish the cheese and played with the apple but not much else with it. I'm pretty sure he threw the tomato into the next block and he didn't come out for a week after that one. 

More people came by to see the roof.  

Dad would keep us inside while they were here and I would watch out the windows. 

They would stare and talk to one another, talk about things like “what is it?” and “what are you doing to do about it?” and “Have you called anyone about it?”.  I don't think they knew I could hear them. 

They wouldn't talk to him, though, and I don't think he came out for them. I sat in my room while they talked outside and I looked up at my ceiling.  

Then I broke my rule. 

“They don't know any better,” I said to the ceiling.  

After that, I talked to him all the time. I told him about my day at school (when we went back after Spring break) and about the cartoons I watched and even about “how much I hated P.E. Class, about the boys I liked and the ones I hated, the girls who were mean to me and the girls who were friends with me, about homework problems and math and even what we had for dinner and what I would bring him tomorrow.  

I would fall asleep talking to him and wake up saying good morning to him.  

I was still afraid to get too close to him or see all of him but I could do this. I could keep him company.  

Then my dad got off the phone one day and said, “Insurance came through. Roofers start tomorrow.” 

Mom said, “Finally.”

I said, “What about the attic?” 

My dad looked at me like I was being weird and I felt my face go red.  

We stared at each other.  

He narrowed his eyes at me. That was his, “What the hell have you been up to?” look, but I kept looking at him.

“You can't hurt him.”  

“Hurt who, honey?” My mom's voice was confused. I made a face at her.  

Dad glared at me. “Go get your plate.” He pointed at the kitchen and I hurried from the room knowing I was in trouble.  

By the time I was back to the dining room, mom had forgotten. Dad just looked tired. He wouldn't look at me all through dinner.  

I lay in bed that night and I told the attic. Told him people were coming tomorrow and they wouldn't understand him and they couldn't see him and he should go. He should go.  

And I cried a little.  

Not, like, a lot, I was still afraid of him. Afraid that he could eat me, afraid of the thing that happened when he tried to speak, afraid of what he was, of how he got here, of what it meant. But I would miss him, even as he scared me.  

When I came back form school the next day, my dad was out on the lawn and he grimaced at me, his eyes tracking to a white plate on the porch rail and then back to me, his frown getting deeper and I knew that he knew. I hurried into the house without stopping. 

The arm monster was gone.  

The roofers never said anything or acted like anything was weird up there.  

There wasn't a bunch of dead pigeons or squirrels. I wondered what he was eating the whole time.  

Dad settled down, stopped glaring at me a few days after construction started.  “You know I was just worried, right?” 

I did.  

They finished the roof by the end of the week and even Dad seem to forget about the arm monster.  

Neighbors would stand out on their lawns staring at our house with a confused look on their face like they forgot why they were doing it and then they would just go back inside like nothing had happened.  

The electric bill went up.  

I would hear mom talk about it and Dad would look at the bill and grunt, also unsure what was going on but he seemed almost relieved about it. 

As if a slightly higher bill was a small price to pay for getting rid of a huge monster in the attic. It made him feel better to have something to look at  and go, “Ah, see! There! There is proof that something is different.” even if he didn't know what that different thing was.  

And I would go to bed and stare at my ceiling and tell it about my day, just like I had started doing a few months ago.

Because habits are habits.  

And because sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and I would be cold and someone that I couldn't see would pull a blanket up to my shoulders.  

I would have very strange dreams those nights.  

But, I suppose that's a small price to pay... for getting an attic under your bed.