Chapter 13:

I used the flashlight on my phone to light the room, and it became more visible, but not completely. I swiveled around with my phone and saw dust floating across the room like particles in a VR experience. I regretted not having a mask that covered my entire face, but I decided that if it was quick I wouldn't die(hopefully).

The further I ventured inside the year-old attic, the stronger and mustier the smell became. "There might be a rat problem here, UGH." I covered my nose with my shirt as the smell became almost intolerable. And I was right, there it was, a whole dead rat, a victim of this attic, lying on the floor. It was rotting and added to the pungent smell across the space. If those rats escaped the first space they would find refuge in would be my room, so all the more reasons why my sister is my parents' favorite child.

There were no windows or outlets, and it looked like mold and other infectious parasites had taken over the space. Various creatures scuttled in the corners, and I wondered if they had escaped this enclosed space into my room. Like I said, not the favorite child. But this space was so airtight that I didn't smell anything at all when I came into the room. Hopefully, my grandparents didn't either.

Speaking of them, why didn't they clean this room? My grandmother is a clean freak and would do anything if a room was a little out of order. My grandfather said he did weekly and monthly check-ups of the house so it would be in good shape to sell, but no one noticed this attic with rotting animals and diseases. Strange.

"Damn, why did they give me that room? Looks like a prison ward." That was a lie. A prison ward looks cleaner. I frantically searched through some things without touching them too much, afraid of catching something. I want to live, unfortunately.

Something caught my eye: a box. Most importantly, it looked undisturbed and untouched for a long time. It seemed to draw me in with some kind of power, a presence, the kind my mother was afraid of. It felt as if someone else was pulling the strings.

Slowly and carefully, I opened the box. At first, nothing was visible due to the dust escaping the box after its imprisonment.

"COUGH! COUGH!" I coughed frantically, wheezing to catch a breath that wasn't polluted with tiny specs of dust and pathogens.

"I should get the fuck out of here," I muttered, but I knew I was going nowhere. I scrounged through the box, looking for something. It was suffocating and getting harder to breathe.

There it was. A journal. I picked it up. It looked so old, the parchment was tearing away, and the pages were yellow, some with holes from insect attacks. But the ink was visible, the black ink, the words—everything was intact.

My phone battery was draining, so I knew I had to take this outside to read. "Anything else?" I whispered to myself, dragging my hands through the box, hoping for something linking to this house and its possible malice. I felt something rubbery. "What the—" I pulled it out and bathed it in the light of my flashlight.

It was a pair of shoes. Covered in mud. And blood.

"SHIT!" I fell back to the ground, covered in who knows what. The blood was dried and almost unrecognizable, but anyone who saw it would recognize it immediately. Maybe it was the color of the shoe?

But I was sure that it wasn't the color. The shoe was black and opaque and the blood had turned a certain black-maroon color, indicating that it had been there for a long time in this attic in a box, but who wanted to keep a bloody, muddy shoe inside a box for no one? My heart pounded, seeing the dried blood reminded me of Malorie. "I need to get out of here." I exhaled.

I grouped the shoes with the journal. Even if this was all nothing, something else might be going on. "What else have you hid in this house?" I groaned. I tried lifting the box to take it down with me, but I couldn't carry the flashlight and jump down at the same time. Besides, the box was too heavy for me anyway.

"Okay, anything else you wanna give me, magic box?" I ran my hands through the box again and found something else: an envelope. The envelope was not addressed to anyone, there was no sign of clear ink here and it seemed quite in shape, unlike the journal. It seemed to be perfectly sealed but still a little dusty and musty after years of entrapment. I peeped through the box to see if there was anything else.