“Hey, Astrid! Aunt Frida’s gone to buy some fish! Do you know what that means?” My twin brother Aksel excitedly asked as I peacefully read the latest entry in a fantasy book series I liked while being curled up in front of the fireplace on a quiet January morning as snowflakes gently blanketed our Danish town.
“That we’re probably gonna have salmon for lunch?” I replied , not really paying much attention to him.
“Well, yeah…but it also means we’re home alone! Don’t you want to do something exciting now that Aunt Frida isn’t watching?” Aksel continued.
“I can see where this is going, and no…going to the attic is not a good idea. It wasn’t a good idea the first ten times you tried to convince Aunt Frida to let us go and it still isn’t. And besides, I’ve already been there, remember that time Aunt Frida asked us to help her clean the house and you bailed out to go play with your friends? Well, I had the chance to see the attic and it’s nothing special, just a small crammed room filled with old stuff that belonged to the house’s owners, mainly clothes and obsolete house appliances.” I answered.
“That’s only what they want you to see! I bet there’s some kind of hidden chamber that reveals an awesome secret! What if there’s a hidden treasure that’s waiting for us in there? “ Alex exclaimed.
“And I thought I was the one obsessed with fantasy books…” I jokingly uttered.
“Oh, come on! You’re such a boring nerd! And if you wanna stay that way, that’s your problem, but I know I don’t! I’ll go explore the attic whether you come with me or not!” Aksel declared, slightly offended by my previous comment as he began ascending the staircase that led to the attic. I sighed in reluctance and annoyance as I put down my book and climbed up the stairs following right behind him.
“Ugh…fine! I’m coming with you, but only to make sure you don’t do anything stupid and make a mess! Or better yet, I’ll wait until you do something stupid so I can tell Aunt Frida when she comes back and then I’ll laugh at you for messing up!” I said.
“We’ll see about that! You’ll come back crying once I uncover the coolest thing in this town’s history!” he answered confidently as I playfully giggled.
We reached the top of the staircase and entered the attic. It hadn’t changed a bit since the last time I had been there, it was still the same claustrophobic room with miscellaneous objects scattered around, there was even a large chest leaned against the wall filled with various outdated tools and gadgets such as a clock, and old telephone, a radio, a cassette player and even a Walkman like the one our father owned back when he was a teenager in the 1980s. It seemed the family who Aunt Frida had rented the house to had a habit for accumulating all sorts of things.
“That’s all? It’s just a bunch of useless stuff from 40 years ago!” Aksel exclaimed in disappointment.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! Anyways, we’d better get out of this place before Aunt Frida arrives, I don’t wanna get into trouble.” I replied as I approached the staircase and prepared to leave the attic. But Aksel did not follow behind me, instead he kept standing right in front of the large chest and staring at it in detail.
“Hold on…I thing there’s something in here…” he uttered as he began pushing the chest to the right. I stopped moving and watched his actions without much enthusiasm or expectations.
“Woah…Astrid, look at that!” Aksel exclaimed in awe as a hole on the wall of considerable size that was previously hidden behind the chest suddenly came into view once Alex pushed the chest out of the way. We both stared at the hole for a couple seconds until Alex crouched with the intention of crawling through it.
“What are you doing? It’s probably infested with bugs and mice!” I warned him, but Aksel didn’t listen and crawled through the hole regardless.
“No way…I knew it, I freaking knew it! You need to see this, you’re not gonna believe it! Astrid, there’s a whole room in here!” Aksel exclaimed once he had emerged at the other side of that mysterious hole.
Upon hearing his words, I quickly crouched and squeezed myself through that hole which was just the right size for a twelve year old child of slim complexion to be able to fit through. Thankfully, both my brother and I met that criteria and were able to crawl our way to the other side with ease.
The chamber that awaited for us behind that hole was much more spacious than the crammed room of the attic we had come from, however, if we compare the amount of things that could be found inside of it, then it was vastly outclassed by the previous room despite the difference in size . This other room only contained three elements that caught our attention, at least at first glance: a wooden table with fragments of what seemed to be broken pottery on top, a shelf that displayed a few dusty books so old their pages had acquired a putrid yellowish tone and a large wooden closet.
A cool and eerie breeze which gave me goosebumps could be felt across the entire room, it was another indication of the room’s neglect, as the rest of the house was properly conditioned for cold weather and was pretty warm and cozy. And speaking of the house itself, I think now is a good time for me to tell you just how old it was. My Aunt Frida had rented it from a family who had owned it since the early 20th century, but they had bought it from another family who had been living there for multiple generations after also purchasing it from an even earlier family! It was easily one of the oldest buildings in town. My father is a historian and he speculated it may even predate the Schleswig wars, so that ominous room could have very well remained untouched for over a hundred years until Aksel discovered that hole in the wall.
Aksel didn’t hesitate to open the large closet and jumped back in shock once it revealed what it contained. They were statues, a pair of life sized sculptures of what appeared to be young girls wearing voluminous dresses with wide skirts that fully covered their legs and with bonnets covering their heads. They looked like they belonged in the 19th century, and judging by the house’s age, that hypothesis didn’t seem to be that much of a stretch.
“They look so…creepy!” Aksel exclaimed. And I agreed wholeheartedly, their looks were already odd enough but what really made them stand out was their posture. Both of them had their eyes closed and their hands brought together, as if they were praying. Despite this, their facial expression were drastically different from one another, one of them was smiling, but her smile didn’t look like one of simple joy, it looked unnerving…it had a devious vibe to it, like the one of a child who had gotten away with committing a mischievous act. In contrast, the other statue looked to be in pain, emotional pain, as her face displayed a depressing grimace that almost made you feel her suffering.
As we both stood before the statues, I couldn’t help but feel an irrational desire to…touch them, to be close to them, to the one with the sad face in particular, since it was the one right in front of me. That might sound nonsensical, but Aksel felt the same, I could tell because we both took a step forward and put our hands on them at once without talking to each other, with Aksel touching the one with the disturbing smile, it was as if something we couldn’t explain had moved us to do it. We spent a considerable amount of time mesmerized by the statues before ultimately leaving the attic once we heard Aunt Frida had finally come back.
Later that day, Aksel, Aunt Frida and I were gathered at the table having lunch and casually chatting with each other. Aunt Frida was my father’s younger sister, a woman in her mid 20s who we had loved to spend time with since we were toddlers. Her young age and energetic attitude helped her relate to us better and be significantly more lenient and less strict than our parents to the point she almost seemed like our older sister at times. But that being said, she still had a really strong maternal instinct despite having no kids of her own and she was perfectly capable of behaving like a loving and responsible parental figure when it was needed, her job as a preschool teacher undoubtedly helped her develop those skills .
“Dad…he used to go on a boat and hunt for this kind of fish before the war against the Prussians. I wonder what became of him…” Aksel said out of nowhere as we were eating baked salmon. Aunt Frida and I stared at him in confusion for a few seconds.
“What are you talking about? Your dad is on a trip to England with your mom celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of their wedding. That’s why you’re staying with me, remember? Your sense of humor is very weird, Aksel!” Aunt Frida replied. Aksel did not reply and kept eating silently.
It didn’t take long after we had finished eating lunch for me to start feeling…off. That salmon I had eating was delicious, but for whatever reason, my stomach didn’t seem to have taken it very well, even though the salmon looked to be in good condition and I had eaten salmon without an issue plenty of times beforehand. I couldn’t take it anymore and went to the bathroom to vomit all the salmon I had eaten.
“I’ve always hated salmon. I never understood why dad loved to catch it that much…” said an unknown voice that I could hear pretty clearly even though there was no one in that bathroom other than myself. I tried to identify its source but it was clear I was all alone and it completely vanished once that strange sentence ended, so I assumed I had imagined it and went about my day.
That evening, Aunt Frida realized she had forgotten to buy something she needed for her preschool class next Monday and asked Aksel and I to accompany her to the store while we still had time before it closed and also use the occasion to go on a little stroll along the way. I agreed to go with her, but Aksel strangely refused, saying he was tired and wanted to go to bed, despite the fact he had never gone to bed that early on a Saturday. It was still 8 PM and even in schooldays he usually stayed up at least until 10 PM.
The weather was chilly, but it was tolerable as long as you were properly dressed for a typical winter in Denmark, so a gentle walk across the snowy outskirts of town with Aunt Frida should’ve been pretty enjoyable….if it weren’t for Aksel’s suspicious behavior and all the odd things that had happened that day, which I couldn’t stop thinking about.
“Astrid, don’t you think your brother’s been acting pretty weirdly today? Perhaps he didn’t want to stay at my house…” Aunt Frida asked worryingly.
“It’s not that! Aksel and I love you, Aunt Frida! To be honest, I don’t know what’s the matter with him either…” I assured, not mentioning our secret expedition to the attic and also omitting the fact I was also feeling kinda funny. Our stroll was originally planned to be brief, but we felt reinvigorated by the great outdoors, the peaceful frozen fields outside our town and the starry sky hovering above us and ended up spending nearly two hours roaming around until it started getting too cold for comfort and we headed back home.
We arrived home and I headed to the bedroom where Aksel and I slept in to put on my pajamas. With the amount of time we had spent outside, surely Aksel was fast asleep by then, right? That’s what I thought until I noticed Aksel wasn’t in bed…My mind was immediately drawn to one place where I was convinced he would be at, I felt it inside of me. And so, when Aunt Frida was distracted watching TV, I rushed upstairs and went to the attic.
I peeked through the hole in the wall that led to the hidden room we had found earlier and indeed…there he was. He had opened the closet where the statues were kept once again and grabbed one of the old books from the nearby shelf. He then stood right in front of the statue of the girl with the devious smile, opened the book and kneeled before her while raising his arms and hands towards the statue while carrying the book, as if he was offering it to her.
I accidentally made noise with my feet, Aksel heard me and instantly dropped what he was doing and turned around. He started walking towards the hole on the wall as I frantically searched for a hiding spot. I crouched behind the large chest from earlier as he briefly came out of the hole and scanned his surroundings with his eyes. And speaking of his eyes, they had inexplicably changed, they looked dull and lifeless, almost as if he was sleepwalking, but I knew he wasn’t, his actions were too strange to be normal but too oddly coherent to be the product of his dreams.
I contemplated the option to reveal myself and confront him, but I ultimately opted to stay hidden as it was obvious he did not want to be seen for a reason. I never thought there would come a day where I’d be genuinely scared of my brother, but it was clear something was wrong with him. I spent over a minute holding my breath and staying completely still behind that chest until Aksel finally decided to give up on searching for the cause behind the sound I had made and retreated back to the hidden room with the statues.
“What in the world is up with him? Why is he doing this?” I whispered to myself.
“Because that’s not your brother anymore.” said an unknown voice inside my head.