At the Top of the Maid's Staircase

Staying home from school was a luxury, and one I was not given too often. But on this occasion I would say I was quite ill, near death for sure. My mother wasn’t too happy when she pulled the thermometer from my mouth, the fever tipping just over 101 degrees. I’d certainly not be allowed to attend school. As she stood there over me waving the thermometer and grimacing with displeasure, she made a decision. Not wanting to miss out on her daily lunch mimosas and gossip fest with her friends to stay home with a feverish child, my mother decided that 11 years old would be the perfect time for me to learn how to fend for myself, plague and all.

She left explicit instructions: no cooking on the stove, no TV, no soda pop, and certainly no leaving the apartment. She laid out a handful of ibuprofen on the bedside table; I was to take one every two hours with water and buttered toast. I nodded and rolled over in bed, shutting my eyes and snuggling my face into the cool pillow. I listened as she walked down the hallway, grabbed her purse and keys, exited the front door, and locked it behind her.

I counted slowly to 100 before sitting up. My head swam and pounded, so I popped a pill and swallowed it with a gush of lukewarm water. Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I slid my feet into my soft unicorn slippers and stood up, pulling the crocheted blanket with me and wrapping it around my tiny frame.

I couldn’t decide what to do first, but I was certain I didn’t want to waste the few precious hours I had alone just laying in bed. Perhaps I’d make myself a hot chocolate, microwave only of course, and curl up on the sunny side of the couch with something good to read. I glanced around my puny bedroom and searched for my favorite chest of books.

I suddenly remembered that we hadn’t unpacked all the boxes yet. We'd only moved into the small apartment a few months prior; there was storage upstairs and I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to sneak up the weird looking back staircase. The building was over 100 years old, I knew, and my mother had called the strange steps “the maid’s staircase”. If my chest was anywhere, it was up there.

I found the key to our storage unit hanging on a hook by the odd looking back door and stepped through, stuffing a rag into the door frame to make sure it wouldn’t close behind me. I followed my feet up the steps and pushed open the heavy wooden door. The attic space was dark, the only light filtering in through circular windows on the far ends of the walkways. Our storage space was labeled with a large, ornate 5 and the key slid into the lock effortlessly, clicking it open.

The door swung easily but loudly on its rusted hinges. The room wasn’t originally a storage area, it looked more like a tiny bedroom with an even teenier window. "This must’ve been the maid’s quarters, how cool!" I thought. On the wall was an old gas lamp, hanging upside down and no longer attached to any piping. The room smelled of musty old boxes and the air was still, save for the trickling of dust that passed in front of the sunbeams coming in through the window.

I closed my eyes and imagined what life might have been like for the people that used to live in this room. The work must have been tiresome, but the freedom to close your door and have your very own space seemed like a slice of heaven to a girl my age. I began to hum and sway, my soft blanket brushing the floor and kicking up more dust into the air. The floorboards creaked lightly under my weight as I sashayed with slippered steps towards the window.

I pulled a heavy crate under the windowsill and climbed up, crossing my arms under my chin as I gazed into the bright morning sky. Other buildings obscured my view but there was a small forest just on the edge of the horizon and I could see the tops of the trees swinging in the light breeze. What a beautiful day today was for a little child like me, plague and all. I ran my finger along the old window and it squeaked as I moved the dust around to write my initials: NC.

The floor creaked behind me, the sound just outside the door of our storage area, and I froze. I thought I would have heard if someone had come up the steps. I scrambled down from the crate and ran to the door, ready to apologize to my mother for leaving the apartment. But there was nobody there. I was safe!

As I turned to go back into the room, I saw something small move at the end of the hallway, just out of the corner of my eye. It looked like a kitten, or maybe a little bird that had gotten in through a crack in the roof. "Well," I thought, "I'm going to save it!" I hurried down the corridor to where I saw the shadow cat/bird and instead found an old, dusty mirror with a gorgeous brass handle. I squatted low to the ground to pick it up when I heard a loud creak directly behind me.

I’d never felt ice in my veins before that day. Every tender hair on my body stood directly on end as my nerve endings shivered through my skin. I felt frozen breath tickle the back of my ears as if something was hunched over me, looking directly at the back of my head. My ability to take in breath ceased, and tears dripped from my eyes, but I remained rigid, hunkered over with one hand pressed to the floor and the other wrapped around the mirror.

My gaze was fixated on my terror-filled likeness in the reflective glass, my eyes adjusting to the horrifically dark corner when the shadow behind me suddenly shifted. There was a flash of green light, fuzzy and hazy, pulsating with emerald ribbons. I could feel fingers gliding up the back of my head and through my short red hair. The green glowing eyes never wavered from mine as we stared at each other through the mirror.

The fingers felt as sharp as eagle’s talons, leaving tiny scratches along my scalp, drawing thin trickles of blood. More tears fell as I struggled to breathe, my chest shaking, my back starting to ache with the weight of 100 years of shadow pressed against me. The green light shriveled darker as the phantom terror pressed its lips against my ear and snarled...

“No more pretty girl.”

A sharp stabbing of bright, white light filled my vision and my body went limp.

***

That was how my frantic mother found me; curled up in a ball, unconscious and bleeding in the corner of the maid’s hallway. They told me I must have passed out from my fever, bending over to pick up the mirror and collapsing on it, shattering the glass and cutting my face. The scars should fade, the doctors said, but I couldn’t bring myself to look in a mirror to check.

I stayed in the hospital an extra night for observation. My mother was now back to her usual self: angry at me for disobeying her, costing her an ambulance ride, and having to sleep on an uncomfortable chair next to an ungrateful child that will probably need plastic surgery to fix her face. Maybe it really was just the fever that made my face smash the mirror…

I laid there with my eyes closed waiting for the soft sounds of her snoring to start. I peered out from under the gauze wrapped around my face to see she was fast asleep, with a suspicious looking flask tucked into the corner of her arm. I peeled away my layers of dressings and brought my hands up to touch the slashes that crisscrossed my face. They didn’t feel as bad as they looked. Maybe they would fade, and I should get to start wearing makeup soon.

I laid my head back against the lumpy hospital pillows and stared up into the warped reflection of the blank TV on the wall. I could see the chair my mother was slumped over in, and the soft yellow and blue lights of the IV machine attached to my arm. I was so sleepy, I could feel my eyes drifting closed as the lights danced and swam together, forming a green eel-like wave that flickered around my mother’s sleeping body.

The room crawled with shadows and the air suddenly became fetid and damp. The gloom of the TV grew darker as the green light stretched out and snaked its way towards the edge of my bed. The same talon-like fingers scraped along the blanket covering my legs and started tapping as they crept their frigid way to my stomach. My eyes grew wider as I saw another set of eyes staring back at me through the black screen of the television set, as a cloudy darkness twisted its way across my chest and belched its putrid wind through my hair.

I was paralyzed, my lips parted in a feeble attempt to cry out to my mother. Instead, I could only stare and weep as the green light slithered over my face and pushed its way into my mouth. My body seized violently as I felt the rotten mist filling my lungs and burning my throat with the taste of decay, drowning me in the steamy, noxious air until I passed out.

***

They call them night terrors, “nothing to be afraid of”, but the terror doesn’t always come back at night. I’ve spent the last 25 years of my life running from this thing and one day I swear I’m going to fucking kill it.