The Green Serum

I remember the summer heat pressing against the windows of my grandmother’s old house, the one with the peeling wallpaper and the staircase that creaked like a dying animal. It was the summer I turned nine, and my cousin Mira had come to stay with us for a week. Mother had dragged us to that relic of a house to sort through boxes of my grandmother’s belongings, but kids don’t care about inheritance or dust. We cared about adventure.

Mira was a year younger than me, with wide eyes and a laugh that could fill a room. She was my favorite cousin, the one who never tattled, the one who dared to follow me anywhere. That afternoon, while Mother was buried in the basement, I nudged Mira and whispered, ‘Let’s check the attic.’ She didn’t hesitate. We climbed the narrow stairs, the wood groaning beneath us, until we reached the heavy trapdoor with its iron ring. I lifted it, and a puff of stale air hit our faces, carrying the scent of mothballs and old paper.

The attic was a chaos of forgotten things: a rocking horse with a missing eye, a trunk full of yellowed letters, and a single window with a cracked pane that looked out onto the overgrown garden. Dust motes danced in the slanted light. We were giggling, poking through the junk, when I saw a spider crawl across a stack of old magazines. I screamed—just a little—and bolted for the stairs, a stupid prank forming in my mind. I reached the trapdoor and slammed it shut, my hands pressed against the wood as I heard Mira’s muffled cries from inside.

‘Let me out!’ she shouted, her voice thin and strained. But I didn’t. I felt a thrill of power, the kind that makes you do horrible things without thinking. But then the shouting stopped. A silence fell, so complete that I could hear my own heartbeat. And then, through the cracks of the door, I heard Mira’s voice, but it wasn’t scared anymore. It was low, almost awed. ‘There’s a woman at the window,’ she said. I pressed my ear to the wood. ‘She’s wearing an old nurse uniform. She has a needle. The stuff in it is green.’

I should have opened the door then. I should have pulled her out, but I was frozen, my mind unable to process what she was describing. The window in the attic faced the back garden, and there was no ledge outside—just a sheer drop. How could anyone be at the window? And then Mira’s voice broke into a whimper. ‘It’s coming through the glass,’ she said. ‘It’s reaching for me.’

That’s when I screamed. Mother was in the basement, but she must have heard me, because the next thing I knew, she was on the stairs, her face pale. ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded. I couldn’t speak, just pointed at the trapdoor. She yanked it open, and Mira burst out, her face streaked with tears, her hands shaking. ‘Close it, close it!’ she shrieked, pointing at the open doorway. I slammed it shut, and the three of us stood there, breathing hard.

In the car on the way home, Mira told Mother everything through sobs. The nurse, the green liquid, the way the woman’s face had been too thin, her smile too wide. Mother’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, and I could see her jaw tighten. But when she finally spoke, all she said was, ‘Don’t ever do something that stupid again.’

I thought that was the end of it. But that night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the green serum, and how Mira’s voice had changed when she described it—not terrified, but fascinated. And then I heard the floorboards in the hallway creak. The sound was heavy, deliberate, like someone walking in shoes that were too big. I pulled the covers over my head, but I could still hear it, moving closer to my door. And then it stopped. Just outside. A voice, thin and reedy, whispered through the keyhole: ‘The serum is for you.’