The Attic Resident

My brother and I were nine and seven when we moved into the old house on Willow Creek Lane. The place had stood empty for years, and the realtor warned us about the creaking floors and the musty smell, but Mom was charmed by the wraparound porch and the big oak tree in the backyard. Dad was more practical, but he sighed and said, ‘It’ll be fine once we clean it up.’

Our bedroom was at the top of the stairs, right next to the attic door. The door was always slightly ajar, no matter how many times we pushed it shut. Mom said it was the humidity, but I saw the way she looked at it. The first week, small things happened. The radio in the kitchen would turn on by itself, tuned to static. The bathroom light flickered, even after Dad replaced the bulb. Our cat, Jasper, would hiss at nothing and refuse to go upstairs.

One night, I woke to a weight on my bed. I couldn’t move, but I felt a small hand press into my shoulder. Then I heard a giggle, high and thin, like wind through a crack. It whispered, ‘Your brother is warm. I like warm.’ I screamed for Mom, and she came running, snapping on the light. There was nothing there, but Jasper was in the corner, fur bristled, staring at the closet.

My brother started having nightmares. He said a girl with wet hair and no eyes would sit on his chest and whisper secrets. He told us she lived in the attic, and that her name was ‘Tomasina’. He’d wake up with scratches on his arms, thin and red. Mom took him to see a doctor, who said it was ‘stress’ and prescribed a nightlight. But the nightlight would always be unplugged in the morning.

Dad was worried, but he didn’t believe in ghosts. He decided to clean out the attic, hoping to find the source of the drafts. He dragged down boxes of old clothes, a cracked mirror, and a child’s rocking horse. At the back, he found a metal strongbox, rusted shut. It took him an hour to pry it open. Inside was a death certificate for a girl named ‘Tomasina Marie Parker’, aged six, dated 1948. Cause of death: ‘fever’. Also inside were a few strands of hair and a faded photograph of a little girl with a severe bowl cut and a high-collared dress.

The night after he found the box, I woke to the sound of scratching from the attic. I went to the base of the stairs, and I heard a childish voice humming ‘Ring Around the Rosie’. The attic door was open, wider than I’d ever seen it. A pale hand, small and bony, reached around the edge of the door, and then a face peered down at me—the girl from the photo, but her eyes were black, and her mouth stretched too wide, filled with needle teeth. She smiled at me and rasped, ‘You found me.’

I bolted back to my room and hid under the covers, shaking. In the morning, I told my parents, but they dismissed it as another nightmare. But that night, I heard my brother scream. I ran to his room, and he was sitting up, pointing at the corner. ‘She’s there,’ he sobbed. I looked, and for a split second, I saw a shadow that didn’t match anything. Then it was gone.

We moved out two weeks later. Dad tried to sell the house, but no one would buy. A few months after, I overheard Mom talking to a neighbor. The neighbor was a woman who’d grown up here, and she went pale when she heard the address. ‘The house on Willow Creek? Oh, that’s the old Parker place. The little girl, Tomasina, she died in the attic. They say her mother went mad and sealed the door shut, but it never kept her in. She likes to appear to children. Don’t ever let her hear you call her by her name.’

But we already had. And sometimes, at night, I still hear humming, and I feel a small hand on my shoulder, and I know she followed us. She’s the attic’s resident, and now she’s resident of our new house too. We just never told the new neighbors.