The Girl In My Attic - Ch.1

*If you have not read the intro (or if you read it a while ago) you may need to (re)read it to understand this chapter*

~The Girl in my Attic – Chapter 1~

I sat in a cold room. I could hear dark whispers floating through the air… Was this a dream??

A bright orb of light made hissing noises. I felt trapped and concealed in the room, like the world had frozen.

I felt a cold embrace pull me toward a faint shadow I the air… ‘Who are you?’ I whispered

‘I am, the girl in your attic,’ hissed the ghostly voice, ‘My name is Alice.’

Then I was laughing. It was a dark, sweet and innocent laugh. It felt so faint yet so real as if the dream was a memory…

Then suddenly it was like a crack had appeared in the dream, it started to blur and echo. I looked into my face to see a painful crying girl and I heard the piercing scream of fear.

Then I saw her again, ‘I am the girl in your attic,’ she repeated…

‘And…’ she continued in a hushed tone as the dream went silent… ‘You have trapped me here…’

Suddenly the dream raged with noise. Shatters, screams and ghostly whispers… ‘You shall not keep me here!!’ The girl ghost screamed and I tried to grab her; to pull her back into that hug I first saw… But no.

A force of energy hit me through my stomach and I felt gravity take me down. I looked up to see a purple dress simply slide into the wall…

The there was a crack, a scream, a pain, an echo and a hissing voice all at once and I…

Woke up… My eye’s shot open, my heart was racing and I was damp with sweat… I sighed and rolled onto my back.

I squinted at the light filling my bedroom and sat up. That was one of the worst dreams I’d had in a while…

I glanced around my room checking for any signs of the dream, but the girl and the voice were gone.

I perched onto the edge of my bed and pulled a small book out from under the mattress. It was my dream diary; I had started it a few months ago when I started having these terrifying nightmares.

I wrote down what I could remember of the dream before placing the book back under my bed and going out into the hall way and down for breakfast.

I entered the dining room to be greeted by a fresh smell of lemons and waffles. The room was brightly lit with daylight streaming in from the garden.

My Mum came out of the kitchen with an extra plate of breakfast.

‘Lilly, why are you still in your pyjamas?’ she asked and then she saw the white faded expression on my face, ‘Did you have another nightmare?’ I nodded faintly.

We sat down together for breakfast. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Mum asked gently, but I just looked down and pushed the food around on my plate.

Mum took the hint and understood I didn’t feel like talking. We ate in silence until Biff started licking my feet from under the table, so that I couldn’t resist smiling.

‘You’re going to be late to school sweetie,’ mum pointed out and she was right. I would have missed the bus by now so I would have to walk.

I went into the bathroom and washed my face. The water felt cold and I could hear the water pounding through the pipes, they were very old. In fact… the whole house was very old. Mum’s parents bought it for practically nothing after the fire ripped through and tore most of the house apart. The fire also killed the previous owner who lived here by himself after losing his daughter and wife.



By the time I arrived at school the first lesson of today was almost over… The halls were deadly quiet and the sound of me walking echoed all over the school.

‘Hello Lilly,’ said Mrs Page as I walked through the door, ‘Nice of you to decide to show up,’ she said sarcastically. I blushed and sank into my seat.

‘Why are you so late?’ she asked me but I didn’t reply. ‘Well… Okay then, if you don’t have a reason now, you better have one when I send a letter to your parents about it,’ she said but I still didn’t feel like replying so she got on with the lesson.

‘Now for your homework, I want everyone to create a timeline of their life with pictures. Start off with when you were born and add a picture for each year.’ Mrs Page announced before dismissing the class. Sounds easy enough, I thought to myself.

I arrived home at the end of the day and walked into the living room to find mum and dad.

Dad looked up as he heard the door close; ‘Hello Lil!’ he said with a warm smile, ‘How was school today?’ ‘Okay,’ I replied softly. They were the first words I’d said all day.

I went into the kitchen with mum, ‘Mum, where are the oldest photos of me?’ I asked. ‘Why’s that sweetie?’ she replied. ‘I have homework to do a timeline of myself. Like a photo when I was born, when I was one year old, when I had… The accident. Do we have any photos of me after I was pushed down the stairs?’

Mum suddenly turned away. ‘What’s wrong?’ I said slightly confused. ‘Lilly, you fell down the stairs in the attic,’ Mum confirmed

That’s not how I remember it…’ I said. ‘That’s because you were two, I’d be surprised if you remembered anything at all about it!’ mum replied laughing in disbelief, ‘You couldn’t have been pushed; there was no one up there with you. In fact it is still a mystery what on earth you were doing up there in the first place!’

There was no point arguing back because what mum said was true. ‘So do you know where the photos are?’ I asked but she was suddenly silent again… ‘They are… In the attic, in one of the trunks,’ she said almost regretfully

‘I’ll go get them later,’ mum said.

‘Why can’t I go and get them?’

‘Because of what I just said remember, the last time you were up there you fell down the stairs and broke your back! You are not going up there.’

‘But I’m ten now,’ I replied but what mum has stated was final

I went to sit in my room and watched Biff asleep on my bed.

I know it must have been horrible for mum after my accident… I thought to myself, but I’m older now and I’m aloud to do what I want…

I left my bedroom and walked along the long corridors leading to the attic. I was only going up there for a minute and I would be careful on the stairs, but I still felt wrong for disobeying mum… Then it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t been through this part of the house since I could remember…

The attic… It was dark and cold and exactly how I remembered it as a dream. Except it was quiet and still. I stood at the top of the stairs listening… waiting for the ghostly voice to show its face… but no… nothing.

I crept through the junk and tiptoed across the room as if I was trying to hide from something… At the end of the room I found a trunk with Lilly on the label. I opened it to see it only contained two books.

I sat down on the floor and looked closely at them; they were photo albums. I opened the first one to find pictures of a cute cubby little girl… me.

Almost the whole photo album was photos of me in the attic… I must have loved it up there. I was smiling, laughing, playing… But then I turned the page and saw a very strange photo…..

I gasped… The picture on the next page showed me sitting with something or someone who had disappeared on film… The photo quality was horrible so it was fair to argue it could have been anyone… But I think I had met this person in my dreams last night. However as I turned the page there were no more photos.

Suddenly I heard something move behind me. I jumped up and crouched behind an old wine cart…

But as I looked up there was no one in the attic.

But as I looked down I saw something in the rubble… A teddy bear. It was an understatement to say the bear was beyond repair; it was charred from clearly being in the fire almost 30 years ago and it was a miracle that it was still in one piece.

I bent down and picked up the rotten teddy in my arms, when I heard a dark hissing noise… the noise from my dream…

I shot up. I felt suddenly concealed and trapped. I felt like I was being watched, like I was in my own dream… I felt frozen with pure terror…

I grabbed the two books and kept hold of the teddy and I ran as fast as I could from the attic, down the corridors and to my room without looking back.

I sat down on my bed and looked at the bedroom door half expecting a furious nightmare to burst in and take me away… But nothing came… Nothing had followed me…

I set the teddy in the comer of my room and sat down with Biff to try and calm my nerves.

Then I remembered I had the second photo album to look through… but the photos didn’t calm me at all…

The photo with me and the strange object at the end of the last book was the last photo of me before…

I fell down the stairs in the attic and broke my back…

That night I went to sleep and put the old teddy I found by the corner of my bed.

Then I saw her. The ghostly face, but she wasn’t in the attic… ‘You’ve got my teddy,’ she hissed…

I woke up. Then I screamed.

‘Lilly!’ my mum screamed as she ran into my room, ‘what’s wrong!? What’s happened!?’ she said gasping for breath. ‘It’s her!’ I cried…

‘It’s the girl in the attic…’