Steps In The Attic

As always, with every great story, there is a beginning. So, I shall start from the point of childhood, at eight years old.

My Maternal Grandmother had passed away early in the year of 1984 (I was born in late 1976). She was a woman that took no crap from anyone. She, at the end of her life suffered with a heart condition, blindness due to Glaucoma, and Diabetes. She passed days after I last saw her outside her ICU window.

In her better years, Grandma loved to wear those thick-heeled, four-inch pumps. Everywhere. When she passed, she had a pair on for her funeral. This was to be the second "big" loss in my life of those that I dearly loved, and were close to.

Not long after her burial at sea, and us trying to lead a life without my Grandma living with us (or being alive period), I noticed odd occurrences. Primarily at night. Rustling, sounds like mice or other small animals roaming in the attic above me.

Mind you, NONE of us in all the years we (mainly my Dad and I, along with my mother who passed in 1989) went up in to the attic. I never once can recall that door EVER being opened.

One night, as I lay in bed to rest up for yet another school day, approximately three, maybe four weeks after Grandma died, I heard something familiar to my ears. Yes! Familiar. It sounded like her SHOES. Those thick-heeled pumps could never be mistaken. They had a sound that was unique to the sense of hearing of all their own.

It was a hard thumping 'click'. And that click was going slowly at first, only to pick up pace with my ever-faster beating heart. Finally, it became a fast-pace walk back and forth. It was almost like the person walking and pacing had a worried sound to them.

This walking noise came at a time where I wasn't asleep, but I wasn't awake, either. I was in bedtime-limbo. I was drifting off when that first thick-heeled click came about. Of course, I then lay wide awake from the fear and the constant back and forth movement of the feet, as well as the wood underneath them creaking with each hurried step.

For an hour, I hid in silence as I listened. Finally, I fell asleep. But never for years and years (even after my own mother's death), did I tell a single person, not even my father, what I had witnessed that fateful night.

From that point on, the strange happenings in my house got more frequently active. And I lived with it on my own. Then again, that is a tail for another time.