The Attic of Unfinished Things

I’m Milo, sixteen, and this summer I got a job at Henderson’s Hardware & Home, not because I was ambitious, but because my dad kept sighing about ‘character building.’ So here I was, on a Tuesday in early December, sweeping out the storage attic above the main store. The attic was our catch-all: old display racks, a dusty mannequin in a wedding dress, stacks of faded paint cans, and a forest of curtain rods we’d used for some winter market event. The event had been on the first, and my manager, a guy named Greg with a perpetual coffee stain on his shirt, told me to ‘clean it up’ before the holiday rush.

I started by moving the curtain rods to one corner, their ends scraping the floor like bony fingers. Then I began dusting the shelves that held special orders: a child’s bike with a bent wheel, a set of mismatched garden gnomes, a box of unopened weatherproofing kits. My coworker, a senior in high school named Derek, was supposed to be hosing out a rug cleaner, but he’d already ditched me to load a pallet of wood pellets using the forklift. I was alone in the attic, humming to myself, when I heard boots behind me.

I turned, expecting Derek, but there was no one. The attic was a maze of aisles, and the light from the single bare bulb cast long shadows. I shrugged, figured it was just the old building settling. I went back to dusting a shelf lined with paint thinner and turpentine. Then the boots again, closer this time. I spun around, heart thumping. Still nothing. ‘Hello?’ I called, my voice swallowed by the dust.

A cold draft slithered across my neck. I decided to get out, but the stairwell door was at the far end, behind a stack of lumber. As I started walking, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before: a small, dark door tucked under the eaves, half-hidden by a torn curtain. It was no more than three feet high, and it was latched with a rusty hook. I’d been in the attic a dozen times and never noticed it.

Curiosity got the better of me. I unlatched it and pulled. The door swung open with a groan, revealing a crawlspace that smelled of mothballs and old paper. Inside, I saw a shoebox tied with twine. I reached in, my fingers brushing cold dust, and pulled it out. The box was light, but it hummed faintly, like a trapped bee. I untied the twine and lifted the lid.

Inside were photographs, black and white, of a family I didn’t recognize. A father with a bristly mustache, a mother with hair pinned up, and a boy about my age, grinning at the camera. In the last photo, the boy was standing in front of a hardware store with a sign that read ‘Henderson’s.’ The boy’s eyes were scratched out, leaving only white voids. On the back of that photo, in faded pencil, were the words: ‘He knows what you did.’

The humming grew louder. I felt a pressure in my ears, like being underwater. Then I heard the boots again, right behind me, so close I could smell wet wool and sawdust. I whirled around, but there was nothing. The door to the crawlspace was now shut, though I hadn’t closed it. The latch was hooked from the outside.

Panic seized me. I dropped the box and ran for the stairwell, but the layout had changed. Aisles that were straight now curved. The curtain rods I had stacked were now arranged like a fence, blocking the stairwell. I pushed through them, but they seemed to resist, their ends digging into the floor like roots. I finally stumbled into the main area, only to find the stairwell door was a wall of unmarked drywall.

I pounded on it, yelling for Derek, but no sound came out. The bulb flickered. I turned, and the mannequin in the wedding dress was no longer in its corner but standing in the middle of the aisle, its veiled face aimed at me. Its hand, I realized, was pointing to the crawlspace door.

My heart hammered. I approached the mannequin, driven by something I couldn’t name. Its plastic fingers were cold as I moved them, and behind the veil, I saw a face. It was the boy from the photograph, his eyes scratched into white voids, but now they were weeping dust. The mannequin’s stiff lips parted, and a voice, dry as leaves, said: ‘He knows what you did.’

‘I didn’t do anything!’ I screamed. The voice didn’t answer, but the mannequin’s arm lifted, pointing to the shoebox on the floor, now open. Inside, I saw a new photograph, still wet with chemicals. It was me, standing in the attic, my own eyes scratched out. On the back, in a fresh, red scrawl: ‘Now he knows.’

I fled, sprinting blindly, and burst through a side door that led to the roof. The cold December air hit my face. Below, the parking lot was empty. I looked back at the door, and through the dusty window, I saw the mannequin watching me. Its head tilted, and I swear it smiled.

I never went back. I quit the next day, telling my dad the job wasn’t teaching me anything. He shrugged, said, ‘Life lessons, son.’ But as I walked away from Henderson’s, I saw the attic window, and there, pressed against the glass, was a hand, small and pale. It waved.

The photographs, I later learned, were from 1978, when a boy named Edwin vanished from that store. He was never found. The store changed hands three times, but that attic door remained, latched from the outside. Some say the latch is a lie; the door only looks closed. And sometimes, if you’re dusting shelves, you hear boots behind you. They’re not echoes. They’re the footsteps of someone who has been waiting a long time to be noticed.

I still have that box. I keep it in my closet, tied with twine. I don’t know why. But every night, I hear the humming, and sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I see a boy with scratched-out eyes standing behind me, mouthing the words I can’t unhear: ‘You know what you did.’