The Dust Always Settles...

• Ebony Broniman, Grade 10
• Poetry
• 2009

It was the piercing scream that lifted the dust once again into the still air. Terrified screams that lasted only a few seconds, then stopped dead, silence oozing its way back, the dust settling once again in the black of the night.
Jesse was sixteen. She lived in a large house out back Tamworth. She always wondered what was in their dark, dusty attic. No one ever went up there because of rats and the previous owner spookily told them to stay away from there.
Her friends, Jack, Luke and Steven all laughed at her suspicions, making up stories about what was possibly up there.
“Probably a little girl cut up into tiny pieces,” laughed Luke, brushing his hair from his eyes.
Jesse hit him. “Luke!” She then laughed. “The guy was glad to throw us the keys cheap. ‘Here take them! One hundred thousand will do. Thanks, bye!’”
They all laughed.
“I,” said Steven, “think it’s a ghoul of Harry Potter or something. It’d be gay like that. Nothing’ good ever happens ‘round here,” he stuck his tongue out in disgust.
“Yeah, it would be fun, for something interesting to happen,” Jack half whispered.
“Might get you off your computer for once,” Jesse laughed.
“Shut up!”
The bell suddenly rang. Every one said goodbye and Jesse walked out the gates to go home.
She’d just stepped in the door when it happened. A cold wind swept through her body and there was a deep, cold hiss. As she fell back, a silver boy materialized in front of her.
“How dare you talk about me like that!” he hissed, his voice cold but distant.
Jesse looked at him in shock. “W-who are you?”
“I’m the little chopped up girl in your attic. My name’s Neville”
Neville was the reason the previous owned had moved then, Jesse decided as she sprinted to school the next day. Jack caught her and tried to calm her as she sobbed what had happened to him.
“We’re going up there,” Luke said and they planned that at the end of the day they’d go into the attic.
They stomped up the stairs to the attic. A wooden door stood tall and solid in front of them. Dust spilled underneath it. Steven pushed open the door and the dust swept up and swirled mysteriously in the air. At the end of the cold, dusty, empty room was an old wooden box; layers of dust covered it like a disease.
They all walked towards it, wondering what could possibly be inside it. Neville swept out of nowhere. “Open it.”
“Go on,” chorused the boys.
Jesse’s fingers slid onto the dusty box.
The lid glided gracefully open, a light erupted into the room, and they saw death itself. All four of them screamed as loud as they could! And the lid closed again to the sound of Neville’s soft laughter, waiting for someone else to open it...
And the dust settled once again in the black of the room.