There is a monster in Ilses attic

Ilse Schulz was a seven year old who, she thought, knew many things. She knew she was a German and that she should be proud of being German, that she had a baby brother called Joseph and that Mama didn’t want her to hold Joseph for too long because Ilse would drop him. She knew how to count to a hundred and that her birthday was on the 12th of September and that the year right now was 1941.

She also knew that there was a monster living in her attic.

She heard him at night, wandering around her attic, the monster's feet stepping on the creaky attic floorboards. The first night she ran to her Papa, jumping into his and Mamas bed, yelling about a monster in the attic about to eat her. Mama was cross with her, Ilses screaming woke up baby Joseph and Mama couldn’t get him down until the early morning. But Papa still obediently went upstairs and checked before coming down shortly after and saying that “after rigorous inspection he did not find any monsters” and that was the end of it.

But it wasn’t the end of it for her. She could still sometimes hear it as she layed in bed at night, she could hear the floorboards upstairs creaking as the monster still wandered about her attic. It must have hidden well when Papa came upstairs, so well that even a man as observant as him couldn't see it, but it was still there.Ilse would stay very still under her covers, so that the monster wouldn’t hear her rustling from upstairs. She imagined it with a big nose to sniff out little children and big ears to listen out for bad girls moving under the covers. It would have thick black fur to hide in the shadows, the only thing that would stick out would be its big dark eyes. They’d be shiny, like black vinyl fabric. It would be massive, with big hands for snatching children and whisking them away into the night to roast with an apple in their mouth and gobble them up with its tea.

She started lighting candles every night, to keep the monster away. Everyone knows that monsters only exist in the darkness, where you can only see their silhouettes shifting around in the darkness, you could almost see it’s crooked back and uneven shoulders, slouching in the corner waiting for the moment to pounce. Light is the only thing that kept it away, kept it upstairs because light would mean Ilse would see it and she would scream and Papa would come and chase away the monster so that it runs far, beyond the Alps and the Mediterranean sea and all the way across the world until it reaches the edge and falls off.

But when the darkness came, when the candle burned out or when Mama called her a silly girl and told her not to waste candles. Then the darkness came and all she could do was lay under covers, paralyzed by fear and stare at the corner hoping that the monster hadn't somehow gotten inside her bedroom. After all, monsters were sneaky, who knew what they were capable of.

During the day Ilse would sit at the bottom of the stairs to her attic and stare at the door, thinking of the monster hiding behind it. It must be planning how to steal them, sitting in their attic and planning day and night how to get two nice, plump children for his dinner. She thought of baby Joseph and her heart clenched. Joseph wasn’t like her, he was so little, he didn’t know about the monster. And he was so much fatter than her, even at seven Ilse was quite thin and bony but Jospeh wasn’t like that. He was small and seemed to be all fat, so vulnerable, a great target for an evil monster. She imagined its long arms and large hands reaching for her baby brother, snatching him away and running away into the night. It would jump on the roof of the neighbouring house and frolic away, her brother screaming in its hairy arms. She couldn’t even light a candle in his room, she could already hear her mothers shrill voice.

“What are you doing Ilse Schulz?! Put that out before you burn the house down!”

No, she couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t let a dirty monster steal away her poor baby brother. So, she armed herself with a rolling pill, took the key to the attic from the kitchen drawer and bravely went upstairs. As she turned the key the door creaked open, revealing the old attic. There was one window, the sun coming out illuminated the dust clouds flying in the air. She stepped in, letting the warm, stuffy air envelop her.

She didn’t see any monster, not among the old boxes or in the corner or under the old table from Papas study. She almost gave up on her feat when she remembered something. A hidden room at the back of the attic, the one she used to hide in when she was little and angry, she would climb in there and sit for hours and her Papa would come in and pretend to be searching for her for a long time despite the fact that she always hid in the same place. She quietly came up to the door, not making a sound so as to not spook the monster. Gently, she pressed against the door and watched it open. She expected a monster to jump out, but it didn’t, it just sat there. This made Ilse even more curious and she opened it wider, peeking inside the little room.

She did not find a monster. Instead she found a ghost. A boy she felt she's seen before though she couldn’t remember where. He had messy dark blonde hair, big brown eyes that seemed to stick out of his head when he looked at her and a deathly pale complexion. He was thin, scarily so, his thin arms wrapped around the thin legs which were clutched to his chest, which was heaving in fear. He seemed more terrified of her than she was of him. He sat on a dirty old mattress, hid legs covered by an old blanket and behind him was a dirty white pillow. He brought a shaking finger up to his lips and whispered a quiet “Shhhhhhhhhhh”.

Ilse stared at him for a few moments, before bringing a finger up to her lips and whispering a quiet “Shhh”.

They just looked at each other afterwards, they did not speak. The ghost boy looked like a normal boy, not a big hairy monster, he wasn’t hairy except for the bird's nest on his head, he was dressed like a normal boy though the clothes were older and dirtier than the ones the boys she saw wore. He even seemed to be around the age of her cousin. There was no big nose or big ears or big hands, just an ordinary boy. She shouldn’t be scared of an ordinary ghost boy, should she?

She quietly left the little room, closed the door and went downstairs. She played with her dolls, read a book and went downstairs for her dinner like normal. The next morning, as she sat at the breakfast table she finally spoke to her mother.

“I found a ghost in the attic yesterday,” she said calmly, taking a bite of her toast. Her mother stilled, her back rigid and Ilse thought she could see her eye twitching.

“What are you talking about?” she asked in a strained voice.

“I found a ghost, in the attic” she repeated, her mouth full of toast,

“Don’t be silly Ilse Schulz, you have found nothing of the sort.” she rolled her eyes at Ilse, turning around “You have such an overactive imagination” she shook her head “There is no ghost in the attic because there's no such thing as ghosts. And don’t you go around telling tales like that, I don’t want people thinking I raised a liar” the expression on her Mama's face made it clear, she would be in big trouble if she ever mentioned the ghost ever again. So she didn’t, God knows what Mama would do if she found out. The ghost could stay her private secret.

But she still decided to leave some bread and jam and her illustrated version of “Die kleine Raupe Nimmersatt” next to the door into the little room because even ghosts needed sweets and books.