The Attic

• Louay Aktifan, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2017

It was 7:30 PM the red sunset bled through the dark storm clouds in the sky. Amy sighed. She hated the fact that she had to move from her beautiful home in the city to a deep dilapidated run down little beach cottage near the beach. She heard a rumble in the distance. Amy sighed and cursed herself again. It was the moving van. Like the cottage, the paint was peeling off. She could only make out the words on the side of the van, 'Home Removals and Co.'
A scruffy dirty looking man with a bristling bush like beard poked his head out of the van.
"Ya'll varmits be wanting yer stuff?" He shouted rudely. Nice I expected an awesome luxurious home! Not one worse than the last one! Amy thought curiously. Without waiting for reply the man unlocked the back door of the truck. All of Amy‘s precious belongings her phone, her Lego, her personal mementos piled up and heap below.
Amy’s dad cheerfully clapped a hand on her shoulder very painfully in fact the wind got knocked out of her ."Home sweet home,eh Amy?" Her dad inquired.
"Yeah, sure dad," Amy grumbled.
Then she stomped off to collect her belongings. Amy felt like she was under a cloud. Literally. She heaped up everything on her bed and she sat down. Outside storm clouds with marching towards her home like a deadly solemn army. Black waves crashed into each other onto the shore spraying the sand with your droplets of blackwater.
Amy surveyed every centimeter of her new room. She found a few cobwebs which she brushed off as briskly as she could be with her witch like broom she had found in the corner. Amy bleakly examined every nook and cranny in that bland bleak home she was living in. But what fascinated her was that door in the corner. It look like it any other ordinary door, wooden, silver brass doorknob a hook on top.
Amy swiftly crossed the room in two strides. She tried to rattle the door knob, but her disappointment it was painted cardboard. Amy sighed.
"Lightbulb!" she shouted slowly. She ran to the houses living room which look more like a jail cell. She opened the wooden creaking about to collapse drawer and took out a silver key which had a smiling skeleton at the end of it.
Amy ran like Usain Bolt back to room and cut out the outline of the door.
"What a let down!" Amy thought. Instead of finding a secret room behind the door or a bubbling volcano, she was just face-to-face with the cemented brick wall. As Amy rush back to the dirty in need of a drop- of -soap -mirror it fell down with a huge BANG!
Splintering into smithereens and scaring the living daylights out of Amy and nearly making her parents jump out of their skin.
"Amy, are you OK?" her mother inquired from the kitchen.
"Yes I’m all right!" Amy answered.
Amy just gave up and went to sleep. It was three hours before Amy heard a rattling noise. Amy woke up in a cold sweat. The sound travel at the ceiling and down all the way until it reached the cardboard door. But this time the door was real! Amy jumped out of bed and hurried to the drawer. She accidentally slipped on a half sucked mango that was lying on the floor.
Amy heart beat faster than ever. Adrenaline was surging through her blood. Lights were turning on in her parents room. Amy grasped the key and jumped downstairs to her room. She opened the door and Rushed inside through a glowing neon tunnel. When she reached the end of it, the door automatically closed behind her. There was a rattling noise behind her.
Amy whipped her head around so fast she felt her neck bones crackling. A navy box was rattling and jumping in the corner. Amy backed up against the wall in terror. Then the box stilled. She approached it carefully, the floorboards creaking under her feet. She blew the dust off the box and opened it. Inside was a human hand, white like marble. It was still for a moment and then… It moved.
The hand said, "Hello you're dead!"
Amy screamed and before she knew it, the hand was at her throat then Amy stilled. She died of loss of oxygen. The hand then traveled up the stairs into her parents house, looking for his next victim…