The Mannequin in the Attic

I never considered myself a believer in the uncanny. I was raised in a strict Lutheran household, but by my late twenties, I had drifted into a comfortable agnosticism, content to think of the divine, if it existed at all, as a distant, indifferent engineer. Still, I remained open to the idea that the world held more than what our senses could perceive. That openness, however, did nothing to prepare me for what happened during my stay at my grandmother’s farmhouse in rural Nebraska, a place I had visited countless times as a child but had come to know only through the lens of sunlit summers and apple pie.

The farmhouse sat on a hundred acres of corn and soybeans, a two-story white clapboard structure with a wraparound porch and a gabled attic that we kids were always told to avoid. My grandmother, a spry woman of eighty with a sharp tongue and a softer heart, had insisted on maintaining the place herself, even after my grandfather’s death. She had a peculiar habit of collecting old mannequins, the kind you might see in a department store window from decades past. They stood in a dusty corner of the attic, their painted faces cracked and peeling, their limbs posed in unnatural positions. I had always found them unsettling, but I dismissed this as a child’s fancy.

This visit was different. My grandmother had fallen and broken her hip, and I had come to help her out for a few weeks. The house felt different now, as if its walls had absorbed years of solitude and silence. The stairs creaked in places I didn’t remember, and the air in the attic was thick with the smell of old wood and mothballs. On the second evening, I decided to take a look around, partly out of nostalgia and partly to reassure myself that the place was still sound. When I climbed the pull-down ladder to the attic, the mannequins were still there, but there were more of them than I remembered. There must have been at least a dozen, arranged in a semicircle facing the gable window, as if they had been watching something outside.

I laughed at myself, the way you do when you’re alone and trying to dispel unease. I ran my fingers along one of the figures, feeling the cool, smooth plastic. Its eyes were painted a faded blue, and its lips were curled into a faint smile. I moved to the next, and the next, noticing that each one had a slightly different pose, but all were facing the same direction. I looked out the window, but there was nothing but the darkening fields and the distant line of trees. As I turned to leave, I heard a sound—a soft, rhythmic scratching, like fingernails on wood. It seemed to come from inside one of the mannequins. I froze, my heart pounding. The scratching stopped, and I thought I had imagined it. But then, from behind me, a voice, thin and reedy, said, ‘You shouldn’t be up here.’

I spun around, but there was no one. The mannequins stood in their silent semicircle, their painted eyes seeming to follow me. I backed toward the ladder, not taking my eyes off them, and descended as quickly as I could, nearly slipping on the rungs. I slammed the trapdoor shut and locked it from below, my hands shaking. I told myself it was the wind, the old house settling, my imagination playing tricks. But that night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, listening to the hum of the refrigerator and the distant bark of a dog, and I could swear I heard the same scratching, now coming from above, directly over my room.

For the next three days, I avoided the attic, but the presence of the mannequins seemed to pervade the house. I would catch glimpses of them in the corner of my eye, only to turn and see an empty hallway. My grandmother, noticing my jumpiness, asked what was wrong. When I told her about the voice and the scratching, she grew quiet, then said, ‘They were your grandfather’s. He used to talk to them, you know. Said they were his friends.’ I felt a chill run down my spine. My grandfather had been a taciturn man, and I couldn’t imagine him conversing with plastic figures. I pressed her for more, but she just shook her head and said, ‘Leave them alone. They’re harmless.’

But I couldn’t leave them alone. One night, I woke to the sound of the attic ladder creaking, as if someone were stepping down. I grabbed a flashlight and crept to the hallway. The trapdoor was open, and I could see the bottom rung, still swaying slightly. I climbed up, my heart in my throat, and shone the light into the darkness. The mannequins were gone. In their place was a single figure, standing in the center of the attic, its back to me. It was dressed in an old flannel shirt and overalls, a faded cap on its head. I recognized it as my grandfather, or at least a crude mannequin made to look like him. The voice that had spoken to me days before now came from this figure, but it was my grandfather’s voice, warm and kind, the voice I remembered from my childhood. ‘I’m sorry you had to see this,’ it said. ‘I never wanted you to know.’

I dropped the flashlight. It clattered to the floor, casting wild shadows. The figure turned slowly, and I saw that its face was not painted like the others. It was a mask of stretched, thin skin, with holes where the eyes should be, and inside those holes, something moved. I scrambled backward, falling through the trapdoor and landing hard on the floor below. The ladder retracted with a snap, closing the attic again. I lay there, gasping, and when I looked up, I saw that the trapdoor was sealed, as if it had never been opened.

I did not sleep that night. The next morning, I told my grandmother I had to leave, that there was an emergency at work. She looked at me with a knowing sadness, and as I packed, she pressed a small, tarnished locket into my hand. ‘Open it when you’re far away,’ she said. I drove for hours, not stopping until I reached a motel on the other side of the state. In the safety of my room, I opened the locket. Inside was a tiny photograph of my grandfather, and on the reverse, in his handwriting, were the words: ‘They don’t just watch. They listen.’ That night, I heard the scratching again, coming from under the bed. I didn’t sleep. I haven’t slept since.