Graveyard in the Attic

A few evenings had elapsed since Grandfather’s death had settled in. I slept in the attic where they took all his clothes. Old wooden floors creaked as I settled into the musty air. A lingering sense of emptiness seemed to fill the house, and the attic placed a weight on my weary soul, suffocating and relentless. 

Night never came there. Instead a perpetual gloom, never quite light, never quite dark, hung over it as if time itself had taken pity on this place and its memories.

I struggled to cover my feet under a thin, old blanket that might have belonged to a baby. The attic felt like a doorway to another present, where the border between the future and the past was homogenous. The remnants of my grandfather’s life merged with the fragments of dreams that haunted my sleep.

I dreamt of a boy whose eyes held deep pools of dark water. He stood among the shadows of trees, looking awfully familiar, with skin as pale as feathers on a deathbed. His slender fingers gestured towards the forest beyond. I walked behind him, understanding that I was a part of his saddened soul. 

Specters and phantoms seemed to form a mercurial kaleidoscope around us, taking the shapes of forgotten spirits, their forms inconstant and floating — impermanent. I felt their gaze upon our shadows. The air grew thick with their unvoiced anguish, their spectral laments pulling us into the same abyss of grief that ensnared them. 

The boy took me to a rotting tree in bloom, gnarled with roots spread like fingers of a dying hand, and pointed to a grave below it. 

“This is my grave,” he whispered.

“It is empty…”I murmured. “You aren’t in it…”

“It is empty…You aren’t in it…” he replied, his tone heavy with resignation.

The silence that followed suffocated me, as if the very air had drained from me. The grave’s emptiness stretched down endlessly, a hollow void that swallowed not just the boy’s physical form, but the essence of what once was. His words echoed, deepening the ache within me.

Now I became a quiet observer in this forest of shadows, watching the misguided creatures who roamed it. Ethereal, shadowy forms, they drifted silently, like forgotten whispers, moving with a deep, primal yearning to understand existence itself; not monsters, but reflections of fears that lay dormant in my heart. 

I faced their ugliness as they faced my existence. Our eyes met and stared into the dark vividness of our separate truths. I shuddered, feeling my mind pull away. Nightmares are dreams as well, and perhaps in the end, the line between the two is but a thin veil.

Perhaps a thin, old blanket that seemed to have belonged to a baby or a little boy: A little boy whose eyes held deep pools of dark water. Perhaps even my grandfather —

I awoke trembling in the dim light of the empty attic. The remnants of the dream clanged inside me like a chilling fog. Every creak of the house and every whisper of the wind outside seemed to echo the terror. As I struggled to sit up, throwing off that thin blanket, the stark reality around me felt unnervingly close to the images of the dream. 

Has the line between the dream and the wakeful world always been so thin? I have never been more afraid to close my eyes. My neck is stiff. My hands are too cold now for me to hold my past. 

I will leave it with you. Keep it warm. I had a horrible dream and if I write I might think it into existence…

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Vasi Angelova

+ postsBio

Vaska "Vasi" Angelova was born in December 2001, in Strumica, North Macedonia. Creativity
is the sole characteristic from their childhood that has managed to extend its presence into their adult life.
Writing has been a long-standing tradition in Vasi's family, and reading the works of Vasi's great-grandfather,
grandfather, and father has revealed that they have all been captivated, adorned, and haunted by the same
things: the rich historical soils of their land, the ever-present and buried human longings for
companionship, and the sound of the waterfall in our mountain village.

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