13 steps into the attic

They say never count the steps to the attic. But I did.

Thirteen.

Thirteen creaking wooden steps, each one groaning under a weight that didn’t always feel like mine. The first twelve were ordinary, dusty, old. But the thirteenth? It never made a sound. Never creaked. Never shifted. As if it weren’t a step at all.

Just... a threshold.

When my sister Liz vanished, it wasn’t from a parking lot, or a school, or a gas station. She vanished from our grandmother’s attic. The police said she must’ve run away. No signs of a break-in. No struggle. Just a single sandal left on the top step.

And the attic door locked from the inside.

---

I came back to the house a year later, just after Granny passed. She’d left it to me—maybe guilt, maybe pity. But I knew it wasn’t just a house. Not anymore. Something in there had taken Liz.

And I was going to find it.

I moved in on a rain-heavy Thursday. By Sunday, the whispers started.

Late at night, from above my room, I’d hear footsteps. Not rats, not raccoons—
footsteps.
Slow.
Dragging.
And the soft thump of something moving across the attic floor. When I tried to record it, the audio came back silent. so, was it all just in my head?

Every single time.

---

The attic door was at the end of the upstairs hall, locked with a rusted bolt and a smaller, strange lock I didn’t recognize— old but sturdy . I pried it open on the fourth night.

The air changed instantly. It wasn’t musty or warm. It was... still. Like a grave.

I turned on my phone’s flashlight and began counting as I stepped up.

One. Two. Three.

The steps groaned, as they should, coated in dust and something sticky beneath it. Something like syrup or old blood.

Seven. Eight. Nine.

I felt watched.

Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

Then silence.

Step thirteen made no sound under my foot. My breath caught. My light flickered. I turned it back toward the attic.

And the attic wasn’t empty.

---

There was furniture that didn’t belong—an antique chair, a broken crib, a mirror that hadn’t been there before. None of it was Granny’s. I knew this house. This room had changed.

The mirror caught me.

Not my reflection.

Just me, staring back—no phone in hand, no light. And in the reflection behind me stood a girl with one eye sewn shut.

I turned around.

Nothing there.

---

I came down shaking, locked the door, and told myself it was grief. Insomnia. Trauma.

Until I looked at the photos on the hallway wall.

All the family portraits had changed.

In every one, Liz was missing.

Not blurred.

Erased.

And in her place, further in the background than before, was the one-eyed girl. Closer. Clearer. Watching.

---

I started sleeping downstairs. I nailed the attic door shut. I drank. I left lights on. But each morning, the door was unsealed. The nails untouched. And the thirteenth step always clean—free of dust, blood, anything.

It wanted me back.

---

On the seventh night, I found my phone sitting on the kitchen table, playing a video I never recorded.

It showed me, climbing the attic steps. But in the video, I never turned back. I reached the thirteenth step... and vanished.

I don’t remember doing it.

I don’t remember leaving my phone.

But the video was dated tomorrow.

---

I should’ve left.

I didn’t.

At 11:47 p.m., I climbed the stairs again.

One. Two. Three.

I was shaking.

Six. Seven. Eight.

The walls felt tighter. The shadows deeper. The air still, pressing against my chest.

Twelve.

Thirteen.

Silence.

---

The attic was darker now. The crib was gone. The mirror cracked.

And in the corner sat Liz.

She hadn’t aged. Not a day. Same striped hoodie, same scuffed knees, same bitten nails. Time hadn’t passed for her—it had paused, like a broken clock caught between ticks. While I’d grown older, grayer, heavier with guilt, Liz remained exactly seven. Trapped not just in space, but in the second she disappeared.

She looked up. One eye sewn. The other crying.

She stared at me like I was a stranger. Her one good eye wide, unsure. “Are you... the new babysitter?” she whispered, voice trembling like it hadn't been used in years. My heart broke in places I didn’t know were still intact. “Liz,” I said, kneeling down, “it’s me. Your sister.” She shook her head slowly. “No... my sister’s thirteen. You’re... you’re old.” The words didn’t hurt. Not like the way she flinched when I reached for her—like I was something dead pretending to be alive.

“Don’t look in the mirror,” she whispered.

But I already had.

It didn’t show me this time. It showed stairs—thirteen steps, descending.

And from the top, the one-eyed girl was crawling down.

Toward me.

---

I grabbed Liz. She screamed. The room buckled, twisting like a stage set on wires. Wood split. The mirror shattered into dust. The attic door slammed behind us.

And I ran.

I didn’t look back.

---

We tumbled down the stairs together. My hands bled. Liz was sobbing, shaking, half-real, half-gone. I held her until morning.

When the sun rose, the attic door was gone.

The hallway wall was smooth, painted over. No hinges. No knob. As if it had never existed.

But Liz remained.

---

A month later, we live in a different house.

We don’t talk about the thirteenth step.


We told the world she was my daughter.

There was no other way. No one would believe the truth—that my little sister vanished into an attic and didn’t age a single day in over a decade. That I pulled her out of something not made for human minds and brought her back. You can’t put that on adoption papers.

So now, Liz is “Liza,” short for Eliza. Nine years old, homeschooled, “new to the area.” I forged records, invented a backstory, filled in blanks with quiet smiles and tight-lipped excuses. We moved to a small town where people don’t ask too many questions. Where secrets can sink into the soil.

whenever someone asks why she wears black tint glass for only one eye, I tell them it was a birth defect, she likes to hide it.

She doesn’t talk much in public. She watches people too closely, like she’s trying to memorize how normal works. She clings to old cartoons and sleeps with the lights on. But she’s learning. Slowly. Carefully.

And me? I’ve learned to pretend I didn’t find her in a place that defies explanation. I tuck the truth behind my teeth every time someone says, “She looks just like you!”
I just smile.
Because saying it out loud would be worse than not being believed.

It would mean the attic might hear me again.