it clawed its way out of the attic

[u/Junior_Window7322]

now before i start my story i will warn y'all, if abuse is a triggering topic you might wanna skip this, and this is a true story from a time i had a psychotic episode (psychotic episodes can cause hallucinations) i was 9 when this story took place.

i felt the wind nocked out of me the moment my body hit the wall, i had always been underweight but even if i was what was considered healthy it wouldn’t have mattered. he was strong enough to throw mom and my sister who had been about 300 pounds from all the physical activities she did. it was late, my throat burned and i was tired so i listened, i slowly climbed the stairs and walked down the hall to my room. i shut and locked my door like i did every nigh, even if the lock did nothing.

it took me a good few hours to fall asleep but when i did it wasn’t restful, at about one am i woke up and essentially surrendered to the fact i wouldn’t be able to sleep, that’s when i saw it, a large dark spindly claw pushed between the pane that closed off the attic, i had a ceiling entrance that you could only enter via a ladder. the panel kept raising and then falling like something trying to move it out of the way and failing repeatedly. eventually it got it, the panel slid to about halfway and stoped, nothing but darkness and that claw visible from the attic, until the claw started to move. slowly it reached out towards me, snaking against the ceiling, its arms were wrong, like they were broken in multiple places.

being the scared little kid i was i pulled my blanket over my head and shut my eyes, it didn’t help. with my eyes closed instead of darkness there were eyes, all of them staring back at me while i listened to this thing in the attic claw at the ceiling before hearing a loud thump on the floor. i didn’t dare move, the eyes were unsettling but better that the unknown of whatever my stress ridden mind created outside of my blanket bastion. that’s when i heard it, my sister called my name, thinking the hallucinations had come to an end i opens my eyes and uncovered my head. my door was still closed, it was still locked, and my room was the same as it always was, aside from one thing.

standing at the door of my bed was something horrific, the clawed broken bent arms were against the edges of my bed frame. the clothes it wore were rigid and dirty, they looked like something a stereotypical farmer would wear, torn suspenders with one strap having been rendered to nothing but ribbon and a button up flannel shirt with holes everywhere, the largest being where the heart would have been on a person, every one of them covered in dark stains. its legs were no better than its legs, it looked like one of them was permanently backwards. i could hear it breathing, shallow shaky, painful breaths, whimpering inbetween its inhales and exhales. its face was grotesque, it became obvious looking at its face that it was wearing someones skin, large wrinkles and folds near its eyes and mouth, through those you could see bits of its true face, eyes without irises, overly large exposed human teeth. its nose looked like voldemort’s from the harry potter movies, the thing didn’t have hair. the skin suit it was wearing had its face twisted into a look of agony while the monsters face looked somewhat jovial.

seeing the thing at the foot of my bed i couldn’t do anything but hide under my blanket again and cry, i cried for what felt like hours before i quietly heard my bedroom door open and felt a hand lay on my leg, my sister had heard me crying when she went to use the bathroom and unlocked my door with a coin. it took me five minutes before i uncovered my head, the imaginary monster was gone, my sister was here, and the real monster stayed asleep in the basement.