THE ATTIC DOOR
CHAPTER 2 —
Claire Miller broke the front door glass with a garden stone.
She hated herself for doing it.
Even as she swung.
Even as the first crack spread through the glass panel.
Even as Emma screamed inside and the deadbolt refused to turn.
A reasonable part of her mind said she would scare the children.
A deeper part said the children were already scared, and doors were not sacred when mothers were kept outside them.
The second strike shattered the glass.
Claire reached through, cut her wrist on one sharp edge, and twisted the inside lock.
The door opened.
Emma fell into her arms so hard they both nearly went down.
“Mommy!”
Claire wrapped herself around her daughter.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
She looked over Emma’s shoulder into the dark hallway.
Nothing.
No doll.
No movement.
Only the runner rug, the family photographs, and moonlight slanting in from the nursery.
Then Lucas cried.
Claire’s heart started again.
She scooped Emma up even though Emma was seven and too big to carry comfortably. She ran down the hallway with her daughter on her hip and found Lucas in the crib, red-faced, furious, alive.
The mobile above him was still.
The rocking chair was empty.
Claire grabbed the baby with one arm and backed out of the room.
Emma clung to her neck.
“It was there,” Emma whispered. “The doll was there.”
“I know.”
Emma pulled back.
Her wet eyes searched her mother’s face.
“You know?”
Claire did not answer fast enough.
Children notice that.
“Mommy?”
Claire carried both children into the kitchen, the brightest room in the house because the oven clock still glowed green and the neighbor’s porch light reached through the back window.
She locked the kitchen door.
Then she put Lucas in his carrier on the table and sat Emma on the counter like she had when Emma was little enough to believe crackers fixed everything.
Emma’s hands shook.
Claire took them.
“Listen to me. We’re leaving the house.”
“Is Daddy coming?”
Claire hesitated.
“Daddy is at work.”
“Call him.”
“I will.”
That was not exactly true.
Claire had called Mark six times before she got locked outside.
No answer.
At first, she thought his phone was in a meeting. Then she saw the attic light go on from the driveway.
That was impossible.
She had locked the attic door herself.
Then the front door slammed behind her while she was getting a package from the porch.
Not wind.
Not a draft.
A slam.
And when she turned around, the deadbolt clicked from inside.
No one had been in the foyer.
No one living.
Emma whispered, “Why was the doll in Lucas’s room?”
Claire closed her eyes.
Because I should have burned it.
Because your grandmother told me not to bring it into this house.
Because your father said old family things only have power when women make stories out of them.
Instead, she said, “It belonged to your father’s family.”
Emma looked toward the hallway.
“I thought you said it didn’t belong to us.”
“I said that because I wanted it not to.”
The baby fussed.
Claire rocked the carrier with one foot and reached for her phone with her free hand.
Still no answer from Mark.
She called her mother-in-law instead.
Margaret Miller answered on the second ring.
Before Claire spoke, Margaret said, “Is it the doll?”
Claire’s blood went cold.
Emma watched her face.
Claire turned away.
“Yes.”
Margaret was silent for one long breath.
Then said, “Get the children out of the house.”
“I’m trying.”
“No. Now. Do not go upstairs. Do not open the attic. Do not let Emma touch the doll.”
Claire looked at the hallway.
The attic door was at the far end, past the narrow stairs.
“What is it, Margaret?”
Her mother-in-law’s voice changed.
“I told Mark not to keep it.”
“Mark said it was his grandmother’s.”
“It was found beside his grandmother.”
Claire went still.
“What do you mean found beside her?”
Margaret’s voice dropped.
“After the fire.”
Emma whispered, “Mommy?”
Claire forced herself to keep her face calm.
The sort of calm mothers wear when the roof is falling.
“What fire?”
Margaret did not answer right away.
Claire heard a door close on the other end.
Then Margaret said, “There was a baby before Mark.”
Claire’s grip tightened around the phone.
“What?”
“His sister. Rose. She died in the old Miller house fire. Mark was three. His mother never recovered. That doll was in Rose’s crib.”
Claire looked at Lucas.
The kitchen seemed suddenly too small.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Because men in this family call grief superstition and women’s memories exaggeration.”
Claire almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because the sentence was so painfully true.
Mark had done exactly that.
When Claire first found the doll in the attic, he said, “My mother had stories. You know how she got after Rose.”
After Rose.
He said it like Rose was an illness, not a child.
Margaret continued.
“Mark’s father locked the doll away after the fire. When Mark inherited the house, he brought boxes here without looking. I told him to throw it out.”
“He didn’t.”
“No.”
A soft sound came from the hall.
Claire stopped breathing.
A scrape.
Wood against rug.
Emma heard it too.
Her eyes widened.
“Mommy…”
Claire grabbed Lucas’s carrier and lifted Emma down from the counter.
“We’re going out the back.”
But the back door handle would not turn.
Claire pulled harder.
Locked.
She had not locked it.
The kitchen lights flickered once.
Then again.
On the counter, her phone crackled.
Margaret’s voice turned distant.
“Claire? Claire, listen to me. If the doll is moving, it means the truth is moving with it.”
“What truth?”
“Rose didn’t die in the fire.”
The call dropped.
Claire stared at the dead screen.
Then from the hallway came a child’s voice.
Not Emma’s.
Not Lucas’s.
Small.
Soft.
Singing.
Claire turned slowly.
At the edge of the kitchen light, the old porcelain doll sat upright on the hallway rug.
Its cracked face angled toward Lucas.
Emma hid behind Claire.
The doll’s glass eyes did not blink.
May you like
Then the attic door upstairs creaked open.
Continue to Chapter 3 — because the dead baby sister everyone mourned may have survived, and the doll is not trying to haunt Emma. It is trying to show her where Rose went.
