The Dresser in the Attic

When I was little, maybe four or five, we lived in a cramped flat above a bakery in the old part of Prague. The ceiling was low, the walls were thin, and the whole place smelled of sour dough and burnt sugar. But there was one room, the attic room, where the air was always cold, even in summer. My parents used it for storage, but I was drawn to it. My mother often found me sitting cross-legged in front of a large, ornate dresser that was pushed against the far wall. Its doors would be wide open, and I’d be chattering away to the empty space inside, my voice a low murmur. What unsettled her most was that the clothes hanging inside were always pushed to the sides, as if someone had swept them apart to get a better view. The dresser had come with the flat, too heavy to move, and its wood was dark with age. My mother would close the doors, but they’d be open again the next time she looked. It was the reason we finally moved away when I was seven, to a new development on the outskirts of the city, far from the old quarter.

But the thing, whatever it was, didn’t stay behind. In our new concrete block, the elevator sometimes stopped at our floor even though no one pressed the button. The bathroom door would creak open on its own in the dead of night. And I started seeing faces. At first, they were just fleeting shapes in the corner of my eye, dark blurs that vanished when I turned. But as I grew older, they became clearer. A gaunt, pale face with hollow eyes would materialize near my bed at night, staring at me through the darkness. It never spoke, never moved, but its presence was a constant weight in the room, a cold knot in my chest. My parents dismissed it as nightmares, but I knew better.

We moved again, twice, maybe three times. Each new home felt tainted. Footsteps echoed in empty hallways, shadows darted past doorways, and the temperature would plummet for no reason, even with the radiators blasting. I noticed that the face appeared more often when I was alone, especially when I was in front of any large, dark surface: a closet, a wardrobe, even a mirror. It was as if it used these objects as gateways, watching me from some other place.

When I turned eighteen, I decided to confront it. I was tired of being haunted, of feeling its invisible hands brushing my skin at night, of hearing faint whispers that dissolved into silence. I began researching the old flat. I found old city records, photographs, and even a diary from a previous tenant, a woman named Eliska, who had lived there in the 1920s. She wrote about hearing children’s laughter in the walls and feeling watched in the attic. She described a face she saw in the dresser’s mirror, a man with hollow eyes, who she called ‘the watcher.’ She believed he was a former resident who had died in the attic, and that the dresser held his remnant. The diary ended abruptly. She was found dead in the attic, the dresser doors thrown open, but the cause of death was never determined.

Armed with this knowledge, I returned to the old flat, which was now empty and up for sale. The building had changed, but the attic room was untouched, still used for storage. The dresser was still there, darker and more menacing than I remembered. I stood before it, my heart hammering. I opened its doors. For a moment, nothing. Then, the face appeared in the dark interior, not in the mirror but at the back of the cavity, as if it were a doorway to another room. It was gaunt, pale, with hollow eyes that seemed to pierce my soul. It opened its mouth, and a sound escaped, a dry, rasping whisper that said, ‘You finally came back.’

I felt a cold hand close around my wrist, pulling me forward. Panic surged, but I couldn’t move. The face grew larger, filling the space, and I felt a tug, a pull, as if my very essence was being drawn out of me. Then, with a surge of adrenaline, I wrenched myself free and slammed the doors shut. I stood there, panting, and I heard a furious rattling from inside the dresser, as if something was trying to get out. I backed away, stumbled down the stairs, and out into the street, gasping for breath.

But that night, back in my current apartment, I saw the face again. This time it was in my bedroom mirror, and it was smiling. And I knew, with a terrible certainty, that I had only made things worse. Now, when I close my eyes, I see that hollow face, and I feel its cold fingers on my skin. It’s no longer just watching; it’s reaching out, trying to pull me into whatever darkness it inhabits. I’ve tried to fight it, to cleanse my space, to ignore it, but it’s always there, lurking just beyond my sight. And I fear that one day, I won’t be able to resist its pull, and I’ll be dragged into the dresser in the attic, never to be seen again.