***All characters are over 18 and are fictional. Any resemblance to any real-life persons or situations is purely coincidental.
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MYSTERY BOX
"What's taking you so long?" Tracy called out from the bottom of the attic steps.
"There's no light up here; I'm still trying to find the last box," Walt yelled back. "I know I've seen it up here somewhere before."
The light fixture in the old attic was no longer working; Walt was sure it hadn't worked in years. He was using an electric lantern to get the old boxes and other items out of the attic, but the battery ran out of power. He was now using his smartphone's flashlight; it wasn't too bright, but it got the job done. He saw only a few boxes left before the lantern went dead. He found two of them and brought them back downstairs and was now trying to look for the third. He knew he could've found it by now if his wife wasn't yelling at him every few seconds.
"He'll be down soon; stop yelling at him," said Rita, Walt's sister.
"We're going to be late."
"No, you're not. It's too damn early to get ready for your stupid party," said Rita. "You just want to get out of here faster."
"Can you blame me? This place is spooky, and it smells funny."
Rita doesn't know why her sister-in-law would think the old house is spooky, but she can agree there's an old, musty smell that can't be ignored.
They were cleaning out the attic of the house once belonging to Walt and Rita's grandmother, who died last year. She left them everything in her will, and when the legal and tax stuff that comes along with an inheritance was finally over, they decided it was time to start thinking about what they were going to do with the house and all of their grandmother's belongings. They considered fixing up the place and renting it out on Airbnb to make some extra money on the side, but they thought it was just too much of a hassle to deal with, so they decided to just sell the place.
As for their grandmothers' belongings, they donated most of the furniture, old clothes, kitchenware, and so on, to charity and sold a bunch of other stuff online whenever they could. They kept a few things for themselves, but not a lot considering how old-fashioned some of the stuff was.
Walt finally found the box he knew was there. He forgot it was behind some old insulation piled up in the corner. He took the box down the attic steps, and Rita took it away from him so he could relax. They were trying to clear out whatever was left in the old house before the new owners moved in in a few days.
"Is this the last of it?" Tracy asked. "Are you sure we didn't miss anything? I don't want to keep coming back here for any reason."
"I got everything except for the cobwebs and bones of some dead squirrels up there. But that'll be the new owner's problem."
They were using Walt's jeep since it was bigger to haul away whatever was left back to his place. There, they placed everything in the garage with some of the other old stuff they took from the house. Rita lived in an apartment, so she didn't have a lot of room for most of these boxes, so it was agreed they would keep whatever they could in Walt's garage until they figured out what they could do with it.
Just as they got everything in the jeep, Tracy had to run back inside to use the bathroom. As they waited for her to return, Rita noticed how each of the last three boxes Walt had taken from the attic had the same name on each of the top corners.
"Hey, these boxes all have the name Gertrude on them," said Rita. "Do you think it could belong to our great-aunt Trudy?"
"I remember meeting her when we were younger," said Walt. "Wasn't she Grandma's beatnik sister?"
"I think she was more of a hippie than a beatnik," said Rita. "She was also into a lot of mystical and supernatural stuff."
"Now I remember, didn't she also become a witch or something like that?"
"Wiccan, I believe it's called," said Rita. "She got into it after her hippie days. She only dabbled in it, just like she did with voodoo, paganism, and druidism, and she even joined a few cults."
"I'm starting to see why our parents rarely wanted to see her when we were younger."
"Yeah, I guess simple Presbyterianism just wasn't good enough for her," said Rita.
From what they remember their parents telling them about her, their great-aunt Trudy died about 15 years ago. Her will insisted on a Viking funeral, but burning a body on a boat as it floats away wasn't entirely legal. Instead, their grandmother cremated her sister and spread her ashes on a lake. She felt it was as close enough to what her sister wanted as the law would allow.
Rita was too curious to wait until she got to Walt's place to see what was inside these boxes. She decided to just open one of them to see what was inside. Besides a few old clothes and an old hand brush, she found a bunch of trinkets, crystals, small statues, tarot cards, and so on. Some items may have to be thrown away, but she did want to keep some of these items, especially the jewelry. The tarot cards and other occult stuff she found may be good to keep just for fun.
The most unusual item she found was a small, handmade doll that felt like it was made of canvas and was stuffed with beads. The doll had simple clothing on it, had no hair but had two X's sewn in for eyes, and had no other facial features.
"What the hell is this thing?" Rita asked.
"Maybe it's her old childhood doll she kept her whole life," said Walt.
"She was into weird occult stuff; maybe this is a voodoo doll," Rita said excitedly.
"That wouldn't surprise me."
Rita just threw the doll back into the box and resumed looking through it. A moment later, Tracy came back out of the house and locked it up. She walked up to the jeep and handed Walt the key to the house.
"Now let's get the fuck out of here," said Tracy. "I don't care if it's still early; I want to be ready in time for my company's business dinner."
Rita was annoyed by how her sister-in-law didn't even bother to say hi or even look up from her phone.
"We're all ready to go," said Walt. "There's literally nothing left to do here."
"Finally," she said before looking at the box Rita had opened. "What's all this?"
Rita explained it was a bunch of items that used to belong to their great-aunt Trudy and explained about her crazy history with the supernatural. Tracy looked through the box out of curiosity; Rita was worried she was going to take something despite claiming the box for herself.
"This looks cute," Tracy said as she pulled out an old wooden hairbrush.
"Yeah, it's alright for something so old and worn down," said Rita.
Rita also had her eyes on that brush and was worried Tracy might try to take it, which was why she made it sound like it was nothing worth having. As Tracy turned it around in her hand, one of the bristles pricked her index finger, and she dropped the hairbrush as she yelped from the small pain of it. Rita was happy because it meant Tracy wouldn't try taking the brush anymore.
"Are you alright?" Rita asked.
"It's just a prick," she replied.
Tracy grabbed the first thing she could find in the box to stop the bleeding. It was only a tiny cut, but she wanted to stop it from dripping right away. The item she grabbed was the voodoo doll. She didn't care how ragged it looked or what it was; she just wanted something to quickly wipe away the few drops of blood and then threw the doll back into the box. Rita was disappointed because she felt Tracy ruined the doll for her. She thought it would be fun to have as a joke, but now she might have to throw it away later.
"You should just throw these boxes in an incinerator," said Tracy, who walked away and got into the front passenger seat of the jeep.
"I think I'll keep these boxes for myself," said Rita.
"Are you sure?" Walt asked.
"There's some fun stuff in here I can use."
"Alright, it's all yours," said Walt.
"Can you two hurry the fuck up?!" Tracy yelled out the window.
"How can you stay married to her?" Rita asked. "She's such a bitch."
"She's alright," said Walt. "She's just been under a lot of stress at work."
"You've been using that excuse for her behavior for a few years now."
"She's still a good person; you just don't know her like I do," he said. "You used to like her also."
"Like you said, I 'used to' like her. Then she started being a bitch, and I'm just putting up with it for your sake."
They decided not to talk about it anymore before they started an argument neither one of them wanted. Walt helped Rita put the boxes she wanted in her car and said goodbye as they drove their separate ways.
On her way home, Rita wondered what she was going to do with her brother, who didn't seem to understand that his marriage was on its last legs. She could tell he wasn't really happy about how his marriage was going but just didn't want to admit it to himself. She was worried about how it was going to fall apart for him, and he wouldn't be ready for when it happened.
THE DOLL
When Rita got home, her live-in boyfriend, Raymond, helped her carry the boxes up to their apartment. They spent the next couple of hours sorting through what Rita brought to see what they could keep. There were a few things they agreed to keep around the apartment for themselves, but a few others definitely needed to just be thrown out regardless of how vintage they were.
During this time, Rita complained to Raymond about her bitchy sister-in-law. Raymond just nodded and agreed with everything she said. He also didn't like Tracy that much, but he didn't want to get in the middle of their relationship since he was also good friends with Walt.
A couple of hours later, they were sitting in the living room when they got to Great Aunt Trudy's box. Rita kept the jewelry, the hairbrush, and some of the trinkets she thought would look cute around the apartment, besides the other items she got from her grandmother's old house. When they got to the occult items, they had fun looking up online about what each one does. There were a couple of talismans that were supposed to ward off evil spirits in the house, and Rita joked she could use them to keep Tracy from ever entering her home. They also decided to keep tarot cards because they thought it would be fun to learn and use for when guests come over and wanted to have some extra fun.
Raymond found the voodoo doll very interesting. He thought it was the ugliest thing he ever saw but was kind of fascinated with what the internet had to say about it. The common use was the healing and protection of loved ones, not like what you would see in the movies whenever these things show up. But from what he read, they can be used to inflict harm or control others in a malevolent way.
"Maybe you could use this against her," said Raymond.
"Who? Tracy?"
"Yeah, get her to do your bidding," Raymond said jokingly.
