I take edibles pretty often. Not because I’m dependent or anything, but being able to relax like that, especially after a really stressful day of classes and exams, really takes the edge off when I’m trying to sleep. I won’t roll around in bed for hours and think of useless things and instead, will lay like a stone, savoring how comfortable my sheets are. I’ve never really had any adverse side effects, no nights I can’t fully remember, no guilty conscience over something I said or did to someone, and no weird or wild hallucinations. All in all, just some good fun for a peaceful night. But lately, whether it’s the strain I’ve been consuming making me hallucinate or my anxiety-driven brain, I swear I can hear something coming from the attic.
For some background- I live with my parents. I’m freshly 18 and just about to go to college, even have most of my stuff packed and waiting to be loaded into the car. I have my own room, supposedly the biggest out of all my siblings, and its chalk-full of collectibles and trinkets I’ve collected over the years. Stuff falls down or I hear things shift sometimes simply cause there’s so much and cause the house is settling- the guy who built it didn’t do a very good job. The attic is in my room. The entrance is right in front of my bedroom door, and basically on the opposite side of my room from where my bed is. My bed is surrounded by curtains, which I know sounds weird, but when you’re as anxious as me, seeing a dark room as your trying to sleep elicits some crazy imaginations that you feel like you can just barely see. So, I have curtains around my bed that I close every night when I sleep. My logic is: if I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. I feel like nothing can get me in my enclosed space, so it’s a safe area for me to sleep.
It started really light at first, as all things we ignore do. Just noticing that the attic door was shifted differently, a corner of the lid lifted but resting on the edge- closed, but not just right. I shrugged it off. Maybe my family went in there while I was away, or maybe it’s always been like that and I just now noticed it. It didn’t change much in the days that followed, but the silence I held so dearly in my room did.
The day after I noticed it, my TV stand started to creak. Just at odd hours. Random, jutting sounds broke the silence and if I wasn’t asleep, I always jumped at the noise, waking me up. I assumed, like most things, this was the house settling or the stand shifting because of the weight. I’m sure it did that plenty when I was awake and I just didn’t notice cause I’m always doing something. So, like the attic door, I ignored it.
Days went on like that. Checking the door, seeing if it had moved while I wasn’t looking, and listening to that TV stand shift every night as I fell asleep. Eventually, I got used to it. The noise became a part of my nightly routine. Weeks went on like that. But, yet again, something new happened.
I had taken an edible. It had been a stressful day and I was having a really hard time falling asleep, so I thought I’d give the new ones I got from a friend a shot. I cut it up and popped a quarter of it into my mouth and waited in bed for it to kick in while I scrolled through my phone. Like always, I could feel when it started to do it’s magic. The things I was watching were hilarious, my body felt light, and I was overall more relaxed. I set my phone down on my table, shut my curtains, and closed my eyes to sleep. I was cuddled up with my pillows, giggling to myself about something I saw when I heard something- a shifting. Not the TV stand, though, but the ceiling. Something in the ceiling, opposite of me in my room, had moved. My eyes shot open and I stared at my wall. I had my back turned from the curtains, and I was not about to turn around. After all, I was high, I could be mistaking the noise for something else, or perhaps the weed and anxiety were mixing together to make me hear things that weren’t really there. I laid there, stuck in fear but listening, my ears on high alert. It was quiet for a moment before my floorboards groaned quietly, and I coiled my legs up into me tightly. Surely, this wasn’t real, right? I was just imagining this? I stayed still, keeping my breathing as quiet as possible and listening for any noise.
Another groan in the boards. A soft, mechanical click of my keyboard. All spaced minutes apart, but just as addling to my faded mind. Finally, I heard something soft move, like two towels rubbing against each other, before everything was quiet again. I laid in my fetal position for several more minutes before working up the courage to fling my blankets off and grab my phone for a flashlight. I switched it on and turned on the light above my bed, swinging my curtains open to an empty room.
Of course there was nothing. I don’t know what I was expecting, really.
I still checked every corner of my room. Inspecting every object, making sure it was in the same position I remember it being in. I walked around, examining, when I tilted my head up to the ceiling to look at the attic door. It had looked exactly the same. The lid was tilted up on the same side, the angle just the same… but something seemed off. The sides… they looked, scratched? Like the paint had rubbed off as someone had lifted the lid up and into the attic space. We use the space plenty, so maybe it could just be worn from my family. I could write this off as something normal so I can sleep peacefully at night once again, ignoring the sound of my TV creaking like I always do but something stopped me from doing that.
A small scraping of fine fur, short and grey, was on the edge of the door. Like something had gotten stuck while retreating into the space just above the bed I had been sleeping in for years, and left some remnants of itself on the entrance. I stared for a few seconds and I could feel my skin draining of color. I write this now, just an hour after it happened. I’m in bed, my lights on, but my curtains drawn. I have music playing to drown out any possible noise and I’m waiting for my boyfriend to wake up so I can call him and have some company. I would wake someone in the house up, but I don’t even want to tell them. None of them know that I get high as often as I do, and telling my family about a monster in the attic makes me feel like I’m a little kid again, but I know there has to be something up there. So I’ll wait it out. I’ll wait and sleep during the day until I move out and into college.
I just hope everything will be fine until then.