The Scratch in the Attic

I had never believed in ghosts, not really. At fourteen, I thought of them as things for bedtime stories and cheap horror movies. But last year, in the autumn when the maple outside my window turned a bloody orange, my skepticism was torn apart like paper.

My friend Caleb was the opposite. He lived for that stuff. We would spend hours in his basement, trying to summon spirits with an old Ouija board he’d found at a garage sale. One night, the planchette actually moved. It spelled out that there were three spirits in his house: one regular, two poltergeists. They never did much, just watched us from the shadows, white silhouettes that vanished when the clock hit 2 AM. But I’ll tell you, that was enough to make my skin crawl.

Still, I thought it was all in our heads. It wasn’t until I asked the board how to summon spirits in my own house that things went wrong. Caleb, in his usual dramatic whisper, said he’d heard that if you write three words on a piece of paper and hang it over your bed, you could attract a poltergeist. The words were ‘knife’, ‘blood’, and ‘fear’. I laughed it off, but the idea stuck with me like a splinter. One night, when both of us were at my place, I decided to test it. I scribbled the words on a scrap of paper, taped it to the headboard of my bed, and went to sleep.

That night, I woke at 11:11 PM to a scratching noise. At first, I thought it was a tree branch tapping the window. But as I lay there, the scratching grew louder, more insistent, like something with long claws dragging across the inside of my bedroom door. The sound echoed from the attic above. I looked out the window, but the yard was empty, bathed in the cold light of a full moon. The scratching stopped, and I heard a soft thud, as if something had dropped to the floor in my room. I didn’t dare turn on the light. I just pulled the covers over my head and waited, my heart pounding, until the sun rose.

The next morning, I found the paper with the words had fallen from the headboard onto my pillow. The word ‘fear’ was missing, replaced by a clawed tear in the paper. I told myself it was my imagination, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had been in my room that night, watching me.

The scratching became a nightly occurrence. At 11:11 PM, just like clockwork, I’d hear it start in the attic, then move down the walls, ending at my door. I started sleeping with a knife under my pillow, a foolish gesture, but it made me feel safer. One night, I woke to find the knife gone. In its place was a single drop of blood, fresh and red, on the pillowcase.

I told Caleb, but he thought I was playing a prank. He said, ‘You’re just scared because you did the ritual. Sometimes it backfires.’ But I could see the fear in his eyes. He didn’t want to stay over anymore. So I was alone.

Alone in the house, where every creak and groan in the old timbers seemed to have a purpose. Alone, knowing that at 11:11 PM, the scratching would begin again. One night, I decided to confront it. I got out of bed, my flashlight trembling in my hand, and made my way up the creaky stairs to the attic. The door was closed, but I could hear the scratches now coming from inside, a frantic, desperate sound, like something was trying to get out.

I pushed the door open. The attic was empty, save for dusty boxes and an old trunk. The scratching had stopped. But as I stood there, I felt a cold draft behind me, and a voice, dry as old leaves, whispered in my ear: ‘Thank you for letting me out.’ I spun around, but there was nothing. Just the open attic door, and on the floor, my missing knife, its blade stained with blood.

I didn’t have to wait for the next night to know what was coming. At 11:11 PM, I heard the scratching again, but this time it was inside my bedroom walls, all around me, growing louder and louder until I felt something brush against my leg under the covers. I looked down, and there, on my chest, was the paper. The words ‘knife, blood, fear’ had been replaced by three new ones, scrawled in a shaky hand: ‘You are mine.’ I fled the house that night, running to Caleb’s, my bare feet cut on the gravel. When I turned back, I saw a white figure standing in my window, watching me go.

I never stayed in that house again. We moved out a month later. But even now, in my new home, I still hear the scratching at night, starting at 11:11 PM, and I know that I let something out of the attic that will never let me go. And that was my mistake #1.