The Fungus in the Attic

In the autumn of my twelfth year, I discovered that mold could grow on more than just damp bread. My family had just moved into the old Harbinger House, a three-story Victorian relic that had been abandoned for decades. My parents saw it as a fixer-upper; I saw it as a labyrinth of creaking floors and peeling wallpaper. The attic, however, was off-limits, locked with a padlock that rusted like a wound that never healed.

School was a different kind of torment. My new middle school, Stonewall Junior High, was a squat brick building that smelled of floor wax and old sweat. The upper floor, reserved for the seventh and eighth graders, contained the boys’ and girls’ restrooms. Rumors swirled about the girls’ bathroom on that floor. They whispered that it was ‘wrong,’ that the mirrors distorted reflections and the taps ran cold even in summer. I dismissed it as the superstition of bored kids.

But one sweltering October afternoon, after a lunch of questionable meatloaf, a cramp seized my gut. The nearest available restroom was the infamous upstairs girls’ room. My heart hammered as I pushed open the heavy door. The air inside hit me like a slap: icy, thick with the smell of damp earth and something else, something sweet and sickly, like rotting fruit. The fluorescent lights flickered, casting the room in a strobing pallor.

I entered a stall, but a growing unease loosened my bladder. The cold seeped through my jeans, and a faint whisper, like a dozen voices speaking in unison, seemed to emanate from the pipes. I tried to focus on the graffiti etched into the stall door, but the words blurred and shifted. Just as I finished, the lights went out. The darkness was absolute, and then, pinpricks of green light appeared on the walls, pulsing like a heartbeat.

I stumbled out of the stall, fumbling for the door. The green lights grew, branching into patterns that looked alarmingly like veins. They crawled along the tiles, leaving glistening trails. I glanced at the mirror above the sinks; my reflection was there, but it was wrong. My face was pale, my eyes hollow, and behind my mirrored self, I saw the outline of a figure, tall and skeletal, with tendrils where its hair should be.

I slammed the door open and ran into the hallway, slamming into a hall monitor. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, her voice distant. I tried to explain, but the words came out as gibberish. She looked at me warily and sent me to the nurse’s office. The nurse, a plump woman with kind eyes, gave me a mint and asked if I’d had too much sugar. I said nothing, but I couldn’t shake the image of that figure.

That night, back at Harbinger House, I couldn’t sleep. The encounter had shaken me more than I’d admitted. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about the mold in the bathroom, the green veins. Then, I heard a soft scratching above me, in the attic. The padlock was still in place, but the sound was insistent, like nails on wood.

I grabbed a flashlight and a stepstool, unlocked the attic hatch, and pulled down the ladder. The padlock had been undone, hanging loosely. I climbed into the dark, dusty space, and my flashlight beam swept across boxes and old furniture. In the corner, against the far wall, was a patch of black mold, growing in a strange pattern, like a door. It pulsed faintly, just like the lights in the bathroom.

I reached out to touch it, and the mold gave way like a membrane, revealing a hidden crawlspace. Inside, I found a journal, bound in cracked leather. The pages were yellowed and covered in spidery handwriting. I read a few lines: ‘It came from the deep, carried by the rains. It waits in the dark, feeding on the cold. The mold is its body, the damp its spirit. Do not let it spread.’ The journal was signed ‘E.M., 1912.’

I snapped the journal shut, my hands trembling. The scratching above had stopped, but now the air grew colder, and I could see my breath. I turned to leave, but the hatch was gone. In its place was a vertical patch of mold, glowing with the same green light from the bathroom. The tendrils reached toward me, and the skeletal figure from the mirror emerged from the blackness, its face a mask of decay.

I screamed, and the figure lunged.

I woke up in my bed, drenched in sweat, the journal lying on my nightstand. It was open to a page I hadn’t read: ‘It feeds on fear. The only way to stop it is to burn the host.’ I looked at the ceiling, and the patch of mold above my bed was larger, spreading across the plaster like a disease. The scratching started again, and I knew it was only a matter of time before the house, and everything in it, became its host.

I’ve since learned that the previous owners of Harbinger House all moved out within a year, leaving behind a strange, black mold that no exterminator could kill. And I’ve learned that the girls’ bathroom at Stonewall Junior High is now permanently shut down, boarded up after a student claimed to see a ‘tree growing out of the wall.’ But I know the truth. The mold isn’t a fungus; it’s a gateway. And it’s already inside me. I can feel it, cold and creeping, spreading through my veins, just like the veins I saw on the bathroom tiles. Last night, I found a patch of green on my arm. I tried to scrape it off, but it burned like frostbite. And in the mirror, I saw my reflection smile when I wasn’t smiling.

The journal said to burn the host, but the host is me now. I’m writing this as a warning. If you ever see mold that glows green, if you ever feel an inexplicable chill, run. Don’t investigate. Because the thing in the attic, the thing in the bathroom, it’s patient. And it’s always growing.