The Dust in the Attic

I was nine when we moved to the house on Bramblewood Lane. It was a sprawling Victorian with a sagging porch and a turret that seemed to lean into the sky like a curious child. My parents called it a fixer-upper, but I saw it as a maze of hidden rooms and forgotten corners. My sisters, Clara and Maeve, claimed the two largest bedrooms, leaving me the smallest, which had a window that looked out onto the tangled garden. I didn’t mind; I’d always preferred small spaces. The first year was quiet. The house creaked and groaned, but old houses do. My mother hung wind chimes on the porch, and my father repainted the shutters a deep green. We planted roses that never bloomed, but we pretended they would.

When I turned thirteen, my father gave me a pendant for my birthday. It was a small silver locket in the shape of a key, with a tiny emerald at the center. He said it was from a trip he’d taken before I was born, found in a market in a city he couldn’t pronounce. I wore it every day, even to bed, until my aunt visited and told me it was a pagan symbol, bad luck, and that I should get it blessed. So I took it off and placed it in the jewelry box on my dresser, planning to have it blessed the next week. But the next week came and went, and I forgot. A month later, I went to get it for a school dance, but it was gone. I searched every drawer, under the bed, in the pockets of my coats, but it was as if it had vanished. My sisters swore they hadn’t taken it, and I believed them because, annoyingly, they always returned what they borrowed, usually with a note. I told myself I’d lost it, and after a while, I stopped looking.

Two years passed. I was fifteen, and my memories of the locket had faded to a dull ache. Then one afternoon, I was in the attic, digging through boxes of Christmas decorations, when I saw a glint in the dust. I brushed away the cobwebs and found a small wooden box, carved with symbols I didn’t recognize. Inside, nestled on a bed of black velvet, was my locket. But it was different. The silver was tarnished, almost black, and the emerald had turned a murky red. I picked it up, and the box snapped shut on my finger, drawing a bead of blood. I shook the box off and put the locket on, feeling a sudden chill that ran down my spine. I thought I heard a faint whisper, like a voice calling my name, but when I turned, no one was there.

That night, I dreamt of a woman in a white dress standing in the corner of my room. She had no face, just a void where her features should be. She pointed at my chest, where the locket rested, and I woke with a start, my heart pounding. I thought it was just a nightmare, but when I went to the bathroom, I saw that the locket had left a mark on my skin, a faint red circle. I tried to take it off, but it was stuck, the clasp jammed. Panic rose in my throat. I tugged and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. In my panic, I grabbed a pair of scissors and tried to pry it open, but the locket only scratched my neck. I felt a cold breath on my ear, and a voice—my mother’s voice—whispered, ‘Don’t take it off, sweetheart. It’s you.’ I spun around, but the bathroom was empty.

The next day, I told my mother about the dream and the locket. She looked at me strangely, then said, ‘I never gave you that locket.’ I was confused, ‘Dad gave it to me.’ But she shook her head, ‘Your father never gave you any jewelry. He gave you a book, remember?’ I didn’t remember. I pulled out the old box and showed it to her. She grew pale, and she took the box from me, turning it over. In the bottom, there was a name carved: ‘Margaret.’ My great-grandmother who died when I was born. I asked my mom about her, but she just shook her head and said, ‘She was… troubled.’ I could see she didn’t want to talk about it.

Over the next weeks, I began to feel watched. The house seemed to hold its breath. The wind chimes outside my window would tinkle in the stillness, and I would see shadows move in the hallway out of the corner of my eye. My sisters started sleeping in the same room, complaining of bad dreams. I still wore the locket, now black as coal. I tried to forget it, but it was always there, cold against my skin. Then one night, I woke to see a figure standing at the foot of my bed. It was the faceless woman from my dream, but now she was solid, and she was wearing my locket. Or rather, a different one, one that looked like mine but with a red gem. She raised a hand and pointed at me, and then she spoke, her voice like the rustle of dead leaves, ‘You have my key. Give it back.’ I looked down at my chest, and my locket was gone. I was lying in my bed, but I could feel it was still around my neck, tucked under my shirt. I clutched it, and the woman’s head tilted. ‘You cannot keep what is not yours.’

I woke up screaming. My parents rushed in, and I told them everything. My mother went to the attic and came back with the box, and she set it on my dresser. She said, ‘We need to burn it.’ But my father stopped her, ‘No. We need to return it.’ I didn’t understand. Return it to where? Then my mother spoke, her voice trembling, ‘Margaret was a midwife, but she also… she used to make charms. For the women who didn’t want to be mothers. My aunt told me she went mad after losing her own daughter. She had a key, she said, that could unlock the door to the other side. When she died, they couldn’t find the key.’

I looked at the locket in the box, and I realized what it was. It wasn’t a necklace—it was a key. And I had worn it, and it had opened something. I could feel it now, a pressure in my skull, like a door beginning to crack. And behind that door, I heard the voice again, but it wasn’t whispering. It was singing, a lullaby I knew from somewhere deep in my memory. My mother was crying, and my father was trying to call someone on the phone, but the line was dead. The locket in the box began to glow, a soft red light, and the box started to shake. The door to my room slammed shut, and the lights flickered. And in the mirror, I saw the faceless woman standing behind me, her hand reaching for the locket around my neck. I couldn’t scream. I just watched as her fingers, long and pale, touched the chain, and I felt a coldness spread through me. And then she pulled, and the locket came off in her hand. The room went silent. The lights came back. And the woman was gone. The locket in the box was just a silver bauble again, and the mark on my neck was fading.

But I still feel her. Sometimes when I’m alone, I catch a whiff of perfume—lavender, like my grandmother wore—and I hear a child laughing from the attic. My father sold the house the next year, and we moved away. I never wore a necklace again. But sometimes, when I close my eyes, I see the key floating in the dark, and I know that door is still open. Waiting for someone to find it.