The house had never been silent. Old timbers groaned at night, the pipes clanged whenever the furnace stirred, and the roof let the wind whistle through cracks like the faintest breath. For most people, the noise would be background hum. But for Clara, ten years old and too old, her father said, to be afraid of the dark, the house was alive in a way that made her skin prickle.
Her father, a man of logic and measurements, had told her once, "Fear is just imagination misbehaving." He believed in loose nails and drafts, not in shadows that watched. But when Clara lay awake in her narrow bed, she could feel the dark press against her like a heavy hand. And it was worse now, because of the attic.
The attic had always been locked. For years she thought of it as nothing but a place for trunks and cobwebs, but three weeks ago the lock had broken. Her father shrugged. "Don't go up there," he said. "There's nothing but junk and mice." Clara hadn't gone—but the dark things in the house had begun to stir more loudly since then, and sometimes, when the night was quiet, she thought she could hear something moving overhead.
On this night, with rain tapping faintly at her window, Clara woke to a sound she couldn't explain. Not the pipes, not the roof. A voice. A whisper.
"Clara…"
She sat up in bed, every nerve awake. Her eyes darted to the window, the door, the wardrobe. The sound came again, floating down through the ceiling.
"Clara. Come."
Her heart pounded so loudly she thought it might shake the bed. The voice wasn't cruel, wasn't mocking. It was low, gentle, coaxing. Against all reason, against every lecture her father had given her, she pulled her quilt around her shoulders and stepped into the hall.
The staircase to the attic loomed at the end. It always smelled faintly of dust and mothballs, but tonight the air was different—cooler, sharper, like the faint metallic tang of pennies on her tongue.
Each creak of the stair felt like it would wake the whole house, but no one stirred. Not her father, not her little brother. It was as though the house itself wanted her to climb.
At the attic door, she paused. The knob was cold, slick with damp, though the house had been dry for days. She swallowed. Then she turned it.
The attic was dark, but not empty. She could feel presence in the air before her eyes adjusted. Piles of forgotten boxes, old trunks, a rocking horse with one eye missing—all vague outlines under the slant of the roof. But what caught her breath was the figure crouched in the far corner, where the shadows seemed thickest.
"Don't be frightened," the voice whispered again. And now she knew it belonged to the figure.
It was not a man, though it had a man's outline. The shape was draped in something that looked like black paper, folded and layered, like a suit of origami that shimmered faintly whenever it shifted. And its face—Clara bit her lip to keep from crying out—its face was not skin, but a pale mask, thin and cracked, with two hollows for eyes.
"I am Mortimer," it whispered. "I've been waiting."
Clara's knees wobbled. "What are you?"
The figure tilted its head, as if the question amused it. "The truth, Clara. The truth your father will not tell you. The dark is not empty. It never was."
Her throat closed. She wanted to run, to scream, but something in Mortimer's voice held her still, the way a lullaby holds back tears.
"You hide beneath your blanket," he said, "pretending it is only shadows. But the dark hides more than you know. It hides me. It hides what came before me. And it hides what is coming."
"What's… coming?" she managed.
A long silence. Then a soft laugh, like paper tearing. "Another voice. Not as kind as mine."
Her stomach knotted. "Why are you whispering to me?"
"Because you hear," Mortimer said simply. "Most do not. Most close their ears, blind themselves with reason. You listen. That is why the dark listens back."
Clara shook her head hard, clutching the quilt to her chest. "No. No, this isn't real."
"Ah," Mortimer sighed. "That is what they all say. Until the dark moves."
Something stirred behind him. A box slid across the floor by itself, scraping wood. Clara gasped. Mortimer leaned forward, mask glinting in the faint light.
"I will tell you a secret," he whispered. "The dark does not fear you. But it remembers you. It remembers all who try to hide from it. And it does not forgive being ignored."
A sound answered him from deeper in the attic. Not a whisper this time, but a shuffle, a drag, as if something heavy had shifted. Clara froze.
"There," Mortimer murmured. "Do you hear it? That is what the dark has been hiding from you."
She wanted to slam the door and run, but her legs wouldn't obey. In the blackness, a second pair of eyes blinked open—low to the ground, gleaming yellow like an animal's, but too wide, too human.
Clara's breath hitched.
"Run, if you like," Mortimer said softly. "But it will find you again. Better to know the truth."
The thing in the dark began crawling forward, limbs jointed wrong, elbows sticking at sharp angles. Its mouth opened—not with teeth, but with darkness deeper than the room around it, as if its inside was a hole to somewhere else.
Clara's scream finally ripped free. She stumbled backward, nearly tripping down the attic stairs. The door slammed behind her of its own accord, rattling the frame.
She bolted back to her room, threw herself under the blanket, heart galloping. The house was silent again, as though nothing had happened. No footsteps, no whispers.
But in the silence, just as her eyelids began to blur with exhausted tears, she heard it.
Not the crawl. Not the shuffle. Mortimer's voice.
"Remember, Clara. The dark remembers you."
And in the quiet beneath her quilt, Clara realized her father had been wrong. Imagination wasn't misbehaving. It was warning her.