Little Maggie

The attic

Maggie woke up at 3 in the morning to the sound of Sue's night terrors. She had them a lot but not daily. After her yelling, Sue fell right back to sleep. Maggie felt weird. She must have fallen asleep without knowing. The whole house was dark and cold, except for the night light on in the bathroom across from her room. The heat was on and Maggie was under her blankets and it was still freezing. Maggie could here the trees rustling outside because they were scraping against her house. She went to open the window again to check for wind. Once again, no wind. Before Maggie could loose her mind thinking why the trees scraped against the house, she feel asleep again. She woke up around 10am to find a note from her mom on her nightstand. It said, "Hey Maggie, I went to go grocery shopping. Won't be back for a couple of hours. There's some cinnamon buns on the stove if you're hungry. Love mom." Mom wrote that note at 9:30am. Maggie thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to investigate. She went down stairs, grabbed a cinnamon bun, and went back upstairs. This time, she walked normally. She sat down on her bed and thought, "I got to think of a plan." The only thing she could think of was to look in the attic. She was surprised at her own bravery. She finished the cinnamon bun and got to work. She got a flashlight and went into the hallway. She stood under the attic. She felt cold again and she was wearing a large sweater. She stretched her arm out to pull that string. She felt nauseous. She like she shouldn't be doing this. But, she did anyways . She yanked the string and caught the stairs before they almost hit her in the head. She unfolded them and started climbing. The attic smelt so weird. It was extremely cold and damp. Maggie felt gross. She switched on her flash light to see a lot of dust, mold, and a couple dead mice. But, there was one thing in there that she didn't notice until she started looking around more. There was one box. She went towards it. It was a typical cardboard box that said "dishes" on it in black marker. Maggie got curious so she opened it. What she saw confused her. It was just a normal wooden cross. She picked it up, and all of a sudden,  a huge black cloud of thick smoke came out of the cross. It  almost looked like a cars exhaust. She tried not to breathe in the cloud but she couldn't help it. It filled the whole attic. Maggie became cold again. Now the inside of her body was cold. She was choking as she attempted to breathe for fresh air. Her eyes started to water as if the cloud bothered her eyes. She threw the cross back into the box and tried to find her way to the attics staircase. After about a minute of struggling to find the stairs through the darkness, she almost forgot that she had a flashlight. She switched it on, she didn't even remember turning it off, and it was still pitch black yet you could see a beam of light from the flashlight. Maggie finally found the stairs. She started to walk down but, she stopped. She gave the attic one more look. The black smoke was starting to clear up. She flashed her flashlight one more time towards the box. She thought be might have seen something different. Like a face. It was shadowy, dark, had deep sunken eyes, and a large mouth. She was scared as it was and she didn't need anymore of this. She hustled down the stairs and closed the attic as soon as possible. The attic sting usually swings back and forth constantly but, this time it was as straight as an arrow. Maggie poked it and it didn't even move. She then heard the front door open. Moms home. Just in time.