The Attic’s Echo

Chapter 4: The Edge of the Eaves

The darkness returned, complete and suffocating, yet the vivid image of the towering, weeping shape was burned onto Elara’s retinas. Its sorrow felt physical, a cold pressure that pinned her against the broken window frame.

There was no time for analysis. The sound of the scratching was no longer confined to the walls; it was inside the room, an audible clack-clack-clack moving across the wooden floorboards towards her.

Elara threw her shoulders into the jagged opening, ignoring the sharp pain as splintered glass tore at her jacket and skin. The gap was tight, but she was small enough. Her chest cleared the sill, and she scrambled outward, pushing her hips through the opening.

She tumbled onto the sloped roof of the house.

The cold November air was a shock, cleansing her lungs of the stale attic gloom. She was perched precariously on the shingles, about thirty feet above the ground. Below her, the moon cast long, skeletal shadows of the bare trees across the lawn.

The screaming inside the attic, the weeping mixed with the grinding hum, was deafening now, seeming to emanate from the fractured window itself.

She pushed herself away from the hole, crawling sideways along the slope toward the edge of the eaves, where the gutter offered the slightest handhold. She had to get off the roof and away from the house.

As she looked down, she realized the problem: the nearest drainpipe was fifteen feet away, and the drop to the ground was a sheer, dangerous fall onto concrete.

I have to jump. The thought was paralyzing, but the sounds behind her spurred her onward.

She glanced back at the broken window. In the black hole, the blue light was growing brighter, casting a flickering, unnatural glow over the dust motes and fragments of glass. The weeping sound was now accompanied by a wet, clicking noise, like a tongue struggling to speak.

Then, a long, thin, bone-white finger curled around the edge of the broken window frame, testing the air. It was impossibly thin, ending in a polished, black nail.

Elara didn't hesitate. She pushed herself into a crouch, ready to slide and jump, when the loose shingle beneath her foot gave way.

With a sickening crunch, she lost her balance, sliding rapidly down the wet, mossy slope of the roof.

She scraped her knees and palms against the gritty surface, tumbling toward the edge. Just before she went over the lip, her outstretched hand slammed into the rough, frozen metal of the gutter.

Her body swung free for a terrifying moment, the wind knocked out of her. She hung suspended, thirty feet above the cold, damp earth, her fingers cramping around the metal lip.

From above, the thing in the window was fully visible now, illuminated by its own pale blue light. It was tall and impossibly gaunt, the outline of its skull visible beneath translucent skin. Its mouth was opening, and the sound that emerged was not a sob, but a whisper, stretched and decayed, yet clearly audible:

"Y-y-you h-have the B-box."

The music box. She had left the music box in the attic.

As the creature leaned further out of the window, its weight shifting the brittle frame, Elara's grip started to slip. Her right hand lost purchase. She was hanging by three fingers on her left hand, the metal digging painfully into her flesh.

She knew she couldn't hold on. With a desperate heave, she kicked out, trying to find purchase on the brick wall. There was none.

"No!" she screamed, the word swallowed by the night wind.

Her fingers slipped completely. She fell.

The ground rushed up to meet her, but just as she hit the earth, her body struck the cushioned, overgrown branches of a huge, ancient hydrangea bush beneath the eaves, cushioning the worst of the impact.

She landed hard, her ankle twisting with a sharp, blinding jolt of pain. But she was alive.

Elara scrambled away from the house, dragging her injured leg, pulling herself across the wet grass. The attic window, high above, now stood dark and empty. The blue light and the weeping were gone, replaced only by the cold, quiet hostility of the old house.

It stopped.

She had escaped. But as she hobbled to the edge of the property line, she heard a faint, familiar sound following her, not from the house, but from the darkness of the woods ahead.

The steady, low hollow hum had returned, and it was moving.