A light flickers in the home of little Thomas Adams. All the doors in the house creak in the middle of the night. It’s the middle of the night. The doors creak when you walk through them. Just kidding, it’s not. They don’t. The electricals in the house were intact and the hinges, smooth. There was no need for any tacky horror-element to give this story an eerie undertone. Thomas was getting ready for Halloween and all he needed was a scary costume for a party. Most of his old ones were thrown away and a few survivors were left in a box in the attic. The attic; that was one place he wasn’t allowed to set foot into. Not for reasons of general safety, but the safety of other kinds. He was warned about wandering around the attic more than sufficient times for any 16-year-old to obey. But you know, these kids have problems far beyond our sphere of comprehension. After the baffling disappearance of Tom’s grandmother, the 2nd floor of the house he lived in, was sealed shut. And that resulted in the attic’s off-limit status.
The progress of every thriller begins with the protagonist entering the prohibited region, as always. And that is exactly what happened here. Thomas managed to steal a spare key to the door that revealed the lonesome corridor of the second floor. The procurement of a Halloween costume was his mission. And the timing of its execution was decided around 7 pm when there is no one at home.
The clock struck 7:00 sharp and that was Thomas’ cue to pry open the door that leads to a really odd evening. Now, there are some red flags that one must always notice at lonesome places in order to avoid them. As soon as he managed to open the second floor, he was welcomed by the unsettling silence emitted by the area. The walls reverberated the sounds of the air-vent aggressively coughing an ugly sound. Without even a gulp, Thomas starts walking to the elevated attic door. The door was reachable with the help of a forgotten ladder that had the company of rust for all these years. Without much effort, he got into the attic. The one weird thing about the entry was, that the door opened easily. Almost too easily, as though someone as pulling it from the other side. That, right there was red-flag number one. Thomas, despite his high-level of ignorance, felt that too. You know; sometimes you can just tell if someone is there with you. It was incidentally, one of those times.
An hour had passed and Thomas was unable to locate the box where his (hopefully still wearable) Halloween costume lay. The light source in the attic was nothing but a bulb. The might of this light would only reach till a certain part of the attic and then abruptly stop. Why would it do that? No one knows. Thomas decided to check over there (bold move). The attic gave off the chills of restaurant storage, where they keep the meat and a strange silence that allowed Thomas to hear his blood-vessels pump.
The moment he walked into the dark side of the room, the light behind him flickered off. Thomas felt like a fool, more importantly, terrified. He quickly sprinted back to the switch and put the light back on. He took a glance at the dark side of the room. To his astonishment, a box appeared slowly out of the blackness, as though someone’s hand had slid it there quietly.
“Wh-who is it?”, Thomas questioned hesitantly.
“I said…who is it?”, another time.
He heard a sound which accurately resembled someone taking a deep breath. That was red flag number two! “Do you want?” a whisper from the dark speaks.
At this point, Thomas was speechless and had almost done the deed in his pants.
“W-wha-”, Thomas stuttered for the first time in his life.
“Do you want a costume?”, The whisper of an elderly lady spoke again.
Thomas could not move as though in a trance (obviously).
“Come and take it.”
Thomas almost mesmerised by the voice began to pace towards the box.
The sounds of deep breaths leaking from the inclined walls of the attic echoed throughout the room.
“Who are you?”, Thomas spoke in complete fascination and horror.
“Take the box.”
The very second Thomas touched the box he found two eyeballs staring back at him in the dark complemented by a full set of human teeth. Thomas could not even screech. He picked up the box and sprinted towards the door. On his way out, he saw a wrinkled hand switch off the lights in the attic, in his peripheral vision.
The lights went off and whispers began to resonate throughout the second floor.
“This Halloween, you wear the reflection of your thoughts and go as the projection of your insecurities”
Thomas raced out of the second floor with the box in his hands. His feet along with his eyes and nose were partaking in the running. He slipped on the staircase and rolled down to the first floor. The box fell down with him, out of which his costume was tossed onto the floor. It was a set of clothes, identical to what Thomas was already wearing and a mask alongside arm-length gloves and stockings. The last three items were made of a material that resembled human skin.
Thomas leaves out a deafening wail and collapses. The night had closed on him.