Foreward:
The ancient Celts called Halloween 'Samhain', and for them it was a day that did not exist in time; a gateway between the old year and the new. Because the veil between the realms of the dead and the living are so thin on this day, spirits and mortals have the opportunity to walk together and mingle their existence. The setting for this story is All Hallow's Eve, Halloween, this day-between-days.
* * * * *
When I was a little girl, I often spent much time in my Grandmother's attic, sifting and sorting through old boxes and trunks. I recall a floor-length folding mirror up there, tall and dusty. I would stand before the middle mirror and close the other two sides around me, caging myself in with an image of myself every direction I turned, and echoing into the reaches of infinity within the reflections of the silvered planes. In this way I was never alone.
But then, I was never alone in the attic. My parents had been killed in a car accident before I was too young to mourn them, and I went to live with my Grandma Emily. Grandpa Jack had died before I was born, and it was just me and Emily, so I suppose I should have felt very much alone- but in the attic I surrounded myself with ghosts of the past, memories waiting to be discovered and explored. It was these long forgotten nicknacks that kept me company, and in childhood, it was to these things that I attached myself, spoke with and divulged my secrets to.
My Grandma Emily died this past month. It has been many years since I have visited the attic- I stopped venturing up there sometime during my early teens, recognizing that only
babies
played games of the imagination. And so, perhaps, this attic has not been visited for twenty-some odd years, and now I climb the wharped wooden stairs to the dusty realm of my childhood.
I am not sure what has drawn me to Emily's attic this afternoon, other than the comfort that this place brought me in my youth. I have inherited my Grandmother's century old farmhouse, and have just finished bringing in the last of my moving boxes, stacked them in the living room, taped up and labeled neatly. It is my place now, as are the things inside, but half of these objects are long forgotten, lost somewhere in the recesses of my mind. I am on a journey of discovery.
---
Ascending the stairs that led to her Grandmother's attic, Katherine Mallory was assaulted first with a musty smell, and secondly with large ammounts of dust. Peeking her head up into the attic, she could see dust motes dancing lazily about in the sunlight that the room's only window provided, and laying in a thick coating on the floor. Scrambling excitedly up the steps, she smiled about herself, taking in each trunk and pile; the small square window; the rusted birdcage in the corner; there in the center of the room, a folding mirror. Her eyes drifted down to the floor, noting scuffed footprints in the thick dust.
"What the...?" Kathy bent down, tracing a line near one of footprints with a drawn finger. A small circular track had also been made, the imprint of the rubber at the base of a cane.
So, the attic hasn't been untouched these past years.
Judging by the freshness of the footprints, her Grandmother had visited the attic not long before she died.
Kathy tried to imagine her Grandmother struggling up the steep stairs, pausing every so often to take a rest. It must have taken forever for the old woman who could barely walk.
And she had a nurse. Why didn't Emily call the nurse to fetch something from the attic if she needed it so desperately?
Kathy boggled at the notion.
What could have been so important?
Intruiged, she followed the trail in the dust, which ended abruptly near a wall, and then turned around. The footprints thickened here, the dust muddled. There was a spanse near the edge of a wood panel in the floor that seemed to be cleared of grime and boasted several smudged fingerprints. In sudden realisation, Kathy sat down indian-style near this spot, curiosity her motivation, and dug her fingernails along the edge of the board. A few minutes and a splinter under her thumbnail later, the board relinquished its task of guarding her Grandmother's hiding spot, and Kathy set it aside, peering into the space under the floor.
A box. Covered in packing tape.
Kathy grasped her fingers around the small parcel, extracting it from its nest. Turning it over and examining its outer surfaces, she found the end of the stiff and powerful tape. Pulling on it almost frantically with excitement and anticipation, Kathy threw the tape aside, tearing and digging.
When she had finally finished with her task, she set the box in front of her, unopened, staring down at it. It was cardboard, and she could see places where the tape had torn off the surface layer. A box. And Katherine Mallory was scared of it.
It wasn't so much that Kathy was scared of the box, so much as she was scared of the sanctity she had disturbed by finding it. By opening this parcel, she was however indirectly but nevertheless disobeying the woman who had raised her.
And what did Emily have to hide?
Kathy recalled her grandmother: sweet, charming, loved by all. Unease. An image rose in her mind- that of her Grandmother rising from the grave and extracting revenge on her naughty kin, but she quickly pushed it aside.
