All Mine

•5•

So here you were, standing in front of Brahms' grave. It read this:

Brahms

1983-1991

...he shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

You shook your head lightly as you stared at the grave's headstone, reading the inscription over and over again. You could understand what the Heelshires were going through and had been going through. Did the doll really help them?

---

You had placed a metal bucket underneath a leak, terrified it would stain the floors and the Heelshires would force you to give you back your pay from them. You needed this money desperately, so you didn't take the risk of not doing anything about the leak.

---

After making sure the house wouldn't flood, you decided to try and find your way around the house, hoping to apply the twists and turns of every turn to memory.

That's when you noticed, the attic stairs were down. Why they were down, you didn't know. But who had the strength to get them down?

You didn't and you knew the doll certainly didn't have the strength. This was when you knew it was Malcolm. It had to be! There was no other explanation for this!

"If somebody's up there.."

You were sick of this, so you grabbed the hook as a weapon to defend yourself and reluctantly made your way up the stairs, with an angry and fed up expression on your face.

As soon as you were eye-level with the attic floor, you automatically looked around, searching for any intruders or anything of the sort.

"Hello?"

You walked up more of the attic stairs and eventually grew more relaxed. Nothing seemed to be up here, so that was good.

However, as soon as you stepped off the last attic step and looked around for a few seconds, the stairs went up, folding up. It made you jump and you nearly screamed in shock. On reaction, you lifted your hand up to your mouth and knelt down, in front of the stairs, hoping they would go back down and you could get out of this godforsaken house. Try as you might, the stairs were not going back down anytime soon.

Using a bannister that was randomly placed by the stairs, you got up, still holding the metal hook in your hand. You could have sworn you heard footsteps as soon as you got up, though. Looking around the attic, you couldn't see anything. But you heard another sound that was extremely familiar to you.

Thudding.

The sound of thudding came from behind you but not like someone was behind you. It sounded like the slamming of a car door. You sprinted to the pile of boxes that were behind you and wrenched them out of the way, with all of your strength. Your destruction revealed a metal vent, that you heard wind flowing out of. It was probably the vent that kept the house cold all day round.

The attic stairs withdrew and slid back into position, shutting you inside the attic. Your eyes widened in horror and adrenaline rushed through your veins.

You looked out of the slits of the vent and saw Malcolm, walking away from his car. He just got out of it, because of the slamming of the door, you perceived.

"Malcolm!" You shouted out, trying to get his attention. "Up here!"

You were pounding your fist against the vent but that only made it ache. You saw him walking up the stairs to the front doors of the huge house.

You heard him knock on the door, surprisingly. Did he think you were deaf or something?

"No!" You yelled, hoping Malcolm would hear you and in frustration.

Devastatingly, you saw, through the slits of the metal vent, Malcolm walking back down the stairs, towards his car.

He drove away, his car quickly disappearing into the dark of the night.

After that, you turned around, staring down at the floor as if you were a naughty child who had just been told off for stealing a saucy sweet. You had started to breathe heavily, which wasn't a good sign. Because you had no light source, you put your hands a few feet in front of you to avoid bumping into things; you had enough to deal with, you didn't need to start tripping over things.

You spun the wheel on a bicycle that seemed like it was on a rack and carefully stepped over something that was on the floor.

Then, you decided to look forward, in front of you.

You saw what looked like the outline of a man, with a light shining behind him and you gasped, tripping over something in the process, which you didn't want to do.

The fall backwards had been a big one and instantly knocked you out as soon as you hit the floor.

Everything seemed to go in slo-mo.

---

It seemed you were on the floor for hours, as the sunlight had begun to seep through the windows in the attic.

The light was a nice golden brown, which reminded you of sunlight in a meadow or curling up with a mug, sat on a windowsill. It comforted you but only for a moment. All you could think about was who you saw last night.

As you sat up and rubbed the back of your head, trying to soothe the pain but failing tremendously. God, your head. It was pounding like you had the worst hangover.

After you got up, you felt the warm sun on your skin. However, your eyes wandered to what had scared you last night.

As it turns out, it was a mannequin, with clothes on it.

"Oh, God," You mumbled to no one in particular.

Something caught your eyes though. It looked like a photo album. Maybe you could find out what Brahms really looked like, instead of seeing a fake smile plastered on his face on a painting. You bent down to pick it up. The cover was thickly covered in dust, it felt revolting underneath your fingers.

Even though it was grimy, that didn't stop you from thumbing through the pages. On the pages were photos of Brahms, Brahms as a baby, Brahms as a toddler and, eventually, Brahms as an eight-year-old child. You had to admit, he looked cute as a kid.

"Hmm," You hummed, in thought. You raised your eyebrows at him as a kid. You wondered what his personality was like when he was younger.

One particular photo, however, stood out from the rest. It was a photo of the painting downstairs but this time, there was a photo behind it.

As you pulled out the original photo, you were right.

You looked at Mr and Mrs Heelshire's faces first and they were exactly like they were in the painting, but Brahms' face was.. different.

Brahms' face was grim and there was no smile on his face. He looked.. depressed and something else you couldn't quite grasp. Bored? Fed up? You just couldn't place your finger on it, so you gave up.

As if on cue, the attic stairs opened.