The Locked Hatch

My earliest memory is of the hatch in the ceiling. I was four, and we had just moved into the old farmhouse on Sagebrush Lane, a place my parents could barely afford after my father’s mill shut down. The realtor, a nervous woman with a twitch, handed us the keys with a warning: ‘Don’t open the attic. Just don’t.’ The hatch was a square of varnished plywood in the hallway ceiling, sealed with a thick coat of white paint that had yellowed with age. It looked like a wound that had scarred over. My father, a practical man, shrugged and said, ‘Probably just a bad insulation job. We’ll leave it.’ But I remember staring at that painted seam, feeling a cold draft seep down, even in the heat of August.

The first sign something was wrong came two weeks later, when my mother saw me in the kitchen. She swore I was standing by the window, but I was in my room, sleeping. She called out, and the figure turned, and it was me, but the eyes were too dark, the smile too wide. It vanished when she blinked. She never told my father, but I saw her clutching a cross that night. Then, after my brother was born, he would wake up screaming, with red marks on his arms, like tiny pinches. My mother found bruise-like patterns on his crib sheets, shaped like small hands. She started sleeping with the lights on.

My own experience happened on a Thursday, a day that would forever be etched in my mind. I had wandered into the hallway, chasing a beam of sunlight that danced across the floor. The hatch was directly above me, and for the first time, I noticed the paint around its edges was cracked, as if something had been pushing from inside. I felt a pull, not physical, but like a hook in my chest, drawing me upward. I dragged a chair over, climbed up, and pressed my ear to the wood. I heard breathing, slow and wet, like something was waiting with its mouth against the other side. And then, a voice, soft and singsong, whispered my name: ‘Riley… Riley, come up and play.’ I scrambled down, my heart pounding, and ran to my mother, but she thought it was a dream.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I heard footsteps in the attic, slow and heavy, crossing from one side of the house to the other. Then the scratching began, like fingernails on the inside of the hatch. My father went to check, but the sound stopped as soon as he approached. He inspected the door, found the paint seal intact, and grumbled about mice. But I knew. I saw the shadow under the door, pooling like dark water, and it had a shape, a hunched, almost human form. It seeped out, stretching toward my father’s feet, but he turned and it retreated. From then on, I would find dead flies in my room, and the air felt thick, like we were breathing in something stale.

Years passed, and I grew up with the hatch as a constant presence. My brother, now a toddler, would stare at it and babble in a language that sounded like backward speech. My mother confessed she had seen our father’s double again, standing in the yard, but when she looked again, he was gone. She said it meant death, and she started to drink. I became obsessed, researching the history of the farm. I found that a previous owner, a hermit named Elias, had built the house and had a reputation for cruelty. He’d locked his wife in the attic, they said, and she’d died there. When they found her, her fingers were worn to the bone, and the hatch was painted shut to keep her spirit in.

One night, when I was seventeen, my father was away on a business trip. My mother was passed out on the couch, and my brother was crying in his crib. The hatch began to rattle, violently, as if something was throwing itself against it. I ran to the hallway, and the paint was peeling, as if the wood was sweating. The lock on the hatch, which we’d never used, snapped open. The door swung down, and a staircase descended, but it wasn’t wooden—it was made of twisted limbs, like knotted roots, covered in a slimy film that gleamed in the dim light. The smell hit me: rot and wet earth. And from above, the voice returned, no longer a whisper but a guttural snarl: ‘COME UP, RILEY. YOUR MOTHER IS WAITING.’ I felt my legs move against my will, my hands gripping the first step, the wood slick and warm.

I climbed, step by trembling step, into the darkness. The air grew cold, and I heard my mother’s voice from above, but it was wrong, like a recording played backward. When I reached the top, I saw a room made of shadows, and in the center, a shape that wore my mother’s face, but its eyes were like the void. It reached out with fingers that were too long, and said, ‘Now you can take her place.’ I screamed, but no sound came. I felt my mind being pulled apart, and I realized that I was not me—I was a part of the attic now, a piece of the house. The last thing I remember was the hatch slamming shut below, and the sound of my own breathing, but not from my chest—from the walls around me.

They found me the next morning, sitting in the hallway, my eyes open but unseeing. My mother died that night of a heart attack, the doctor said. But I knew better. And when I try to speak, my name comes out as a whisper that belongs to someone else. I am not Riley anymore. I am what lives in the attic, and I am always watching, always waiting for the next person to come and open the hatch. The family moved out, leaving me behind, but I am patient. I know they’ll be back. They always come back.