Chapter 8: Echoes in the Attic

Chapter 8: Echoes in the Attic

The image of Sheriff Brody placing his pathetic offering at the foot of the oak tree burned behind Leo’s eyes. He drove back to the house not with fear, but with a cold, hard fury that left no room for panic. He was caged, yes, but he would not be a passive animal waiting for the slaughter. He was done with hoping for outside help. The town was a lost cause, a cult dedicated to appeasing its own private demons. The law was complicit, his neighbours were spectators at a funeral, and his only ally was a grim healer who seemed to believe surrender was the only strategy.

He slammed the front door shut, the sound echoing in the sealed-in silence of his prison. He crossed the unbroken salt line, the fine white powder a constant, glaring reminder of both his safety and his confinement. He needed more. The threshold ward was a shield, but a shield wasn't enough. He needed a weapon.

He called Clara. Her voice was as taut as a bowstring when she answered. "What now?"

"The Sheriff," Leo said, his voice low and tight with rage. "He's one of them. I saw him. He made an offering at the treeline."

A long silence on the other end. When Clara finally spoke, her voice was heavy with resignation. "Of course he does. His grandfather was the sheriff when the dam broke. Some debts are passed down through generations. I told you, Leo. The whole town is bound to this tragedy."

"I'm not going to be another 'accident,' Clara," he bit out. "I'm not going to be a story Mrs. Steinhop tells the next poor bastard who moves in. There has to be more. Your warnings, Steffy's journal… they're not enough."

"There is more," she admitted, her voice dropping. "But it's not a path Steffy wanted anyone to walk. She was an academic, but her final years were spent practicing something much older, much more dangerous. She compiled her own grimoire. She called it her 'Atlas of Wards.' It’s not about defense, Leo. It’s about engagement. It contains rituals that can bind, blind, and injure. But every one of them carries a terrible price."

"Where is it?" Leo demanded. "I'll pay the price."

"I don't know," Clara said honestly. "She kept its location a secret, even from me. She said it was too dangerous. But if you're going to survive, you need to find it. Search the house again. Look for places of deep concealment. Steffy was paranoid, but she was also methodical."

The call ended, leaving Leo alone with his new, desperate quest. He tore through the house with a renewed, frantic energy. He re-examined the false panel behind the encyclopedias, tapped on floorboards, and ran his hands along the backs of every bookshelf, searching for a hollow space, another secret compartment. Nothing. He felt the weight of the Hollow Children’s attention on him, an unseen pressure that made the hair on his arms stand up. They were watching, waiting for him to make a mistake.

Hours bled into a long, frustrating afternoon. He was covered in dust and sweat, his hope dwindling. Where would a woman who fought ghosts for a living hide her most powerful weapon? He sank into a dusty armchair, his gaze drifting upwards. The ceiling. And above it, a small, square outline with a pull-cord hanging down like a forgotten noose.

The attic.

He pulled a stepladder from a utility closet and positioned it beneath the hatch. The chain was cold and gritty in his hand. With a firm tug, the hatch creaked open, releasing a cascade of dust motes and the hot, stale air of a space that hadn't been disturbed in years. It smelled of ancient paper, dried wood, and time itself.

He climbed into the oppressive heat, a single bare bulb casting a weak, yellow glare over a landscape of forgotten things. Old furniture draped in white cloths stood like shrouded corpses. Cardboard boxes, their sides bowing with age, were stacked into precarious towers. It was a mausoleum of his aunt’s long life.

He moved through the narrow pathways, his footsteps loud on the dusty floorboards. He opened trunks filled with old clothes that smelled of mothballs and faded perfume, boxes of yellowed photographs, and stacks of old magazines. He was about to give up, to believe Clara was wrong, when his foot bumped against something heavy and solid beneath a pile of old blankets.

He pulled the blankets away, revealing a dark green, metal footlocker, the kind soldiers use. It was sealed with a heavy padlock. Hope surged through him. He found a crowbar in a corner and, with a grunt of effort, wrenched the lock free. The lid groaned open.

Inside, resting on a bed of what looked like dried wormwood, was a book. It was enormous, far larger than Steffy’s journal, bound in dark, cracked leather with no title on its cover. Its sheer weight and presence screamed importance. He had found it. The Atlas of Wards.

But it wasn't alone. Beneath the massive tome, nestled in carefully cut foam padding, were eight metal canisters, the kind used for storing old motion picture film. Beside them lay a small, surprisingly heavy 8mm projector.

Why would Steffy store these things together? The book of powerful magic and a collection of old home movies. The question gnawed at him. He couldn't resist. Understanding the enemy was as important as fighting them. He needed to see what was on these reels.

He hauled the heavy projector and one of the canisters, labeled simply Town Picnic, 1934, downstairs. He cleared a space on a table and aimed the lens at a bare patch of wall in the living room. The mechanics of threading the brittle, celluloid film were surprisingly intuitive. With a flick of a switch, the projector whirred to life, its fan a loud drone in the silent house. A bright, white square of light hit the wall, flickering with dust specks.

Then, the image resolved.

Grainy, black-and-white figures flickered into existence. It was a town picnic, just as the label promised. Men in shirtsleeves and hats, women in simple print dresses. He saw what must have been the old town square, a place now deep beneath the reservoir's waters. In the background, stark and new, stood the concrete face of the dam, an monument to the town's ambition and its impending doom.

The camera, held by an unsteady hand, panned across smiling faces. It felt achingly real, a window into a world of ghosts. For a moment, Leo was just a historian, watching a lost time. Then the camera operator turned towards the edge of the woods, near the riverbank.

A group of children were playing there.

Leo’s breath caught in his throat. Even in the grainy, flickering image, he recognized them. There was a boy with slicked-back hair skipping a stone. A smaller boy chasing after a ball. And there, sitting on the grass, weaving a daisy chain, was a girl in a simple, light-colored dress. Her hair was pulled back from her face. It was the face he had seen in the woods, the one who had held the rusty nail.

His blood ran cold. These were not apparitions. These were real children, alive and breathing in the summer sun, mere weeks or days before the flood would claim them. This was the source. The original wound.

The camera zoomed in slightly, lingering on the group. It was as if his aunt, or whoever held the camera, knew they were important. The children continued their play, oblivious. All except one.

The girl with the daisies stopped. She lifted her head, her movements slow and deliberate, as if she'd heard a distant sound. But she didn't look towards the camera operator. She looked past them. Her gaze seemed to push through the lens, through the eighty years of history, through the very fabric of time and space. Her eyes, dark and piercing even in monochrome, found his.

She was looking right at him. Sitting in his aunt's living room, in the oppressive silence of his sealed house, he was being watched by a little girl who had been dead for nearly a century.

And then, she smiled.

It wasn't a child's happy, innocent smile. It was a slow, predatory curving of the lips. A smile of recognition. A smile that said, I see you. I’ve been waiting for you. The game is already afoot.

The projector clicked, the loop of film ending and beginning again. The girl's knowing, terrifying smile flickered on the wall, over and over, an echo from a drowned world that had just broken through the surface, right in the heart of his home.