©2006 by Lauren Renée Hotchkiss

"It can’t be true," I told myself as I struggled to move each foot up to the next step of the stairs that seemed to wind endlessly up toward the attic far above, and yet I trembled. I could feel my heart beginning to beat faster and my breathing come in shallow gasps as I moved slowly upward, for this was the place that Everett was kept, or so said my older brother.

I had always assumed that Bill was the eldest, but one night as I was getting ready to go to bed after we had watched a horror movie together on TV, he came into my room and in whispered tones began to tell me of Everett...the first born. A storm had begun earlier in the evening, and now the wind was beating the rain hard against the windows. Now and then the thunder boomed so close that we could feel the house shake. After one particularly violent thunderclap, accompanied by a flash of lightning that streaked past the window, the power went out. Bill smiled, almost as if expecting this.

“Several years before I was born,” he began, looking at me to make sure that he had my full attention, “mom and dad had another son...if you could call him that, for he was born a mutant, with 3 heads, 6 arms, and 8 legs. Somehow they didn’t have the heart to have him destroyed, so they chained him up in the attic, where they thought no one would ever see him.” He paused, looking toward the bedroom door as we heard the sound of mom and dad passing by on their way to bed, and then up toward the ceiling, and it seemed to me, through it to the attic far above. Just as he started to turn back toward me, I was startled by a flash of lightning that lit his face with an eerie glow. With fear in his eyes, he looked at me and said, slowly, “He’s still there.”

Bill had often teased me in the past, like the time he had told me about the monster that lived in the furnace. I had avoided the basement for months, until dad had finally marched me down there one day, opened up the hatch and made me look in and see that there was nothing in there but fire.

It was hard to tell if he was really telling the truth this time, or whether this was just another of his attempts to scare me. He seemed so serious though, that I almost found myself believing him. I could see that he sensed my wavering doubt, but he’d also aroused my curiosity. He knew this too.

“How did you find all this out,” I said. “Did mom and dad just come up to you one day and say, “Oh by the way, Bill, we have a mutant chained up in the attic, so don’t go up there, okay.” I was trying to be funny, only because I was starting to get scared.

“No,” he said, unaffected by my half-hearted attempt at humor. “One day I found mom’s cedar chest open, and found a scrapbook that I was never meant to see. It contained a birth certificate and a picture which I shall not even describe.

“One night when mom and dad were asleep I snuck out of bed, lit a candle, and crept along the landing toward the attic stairs.” He stopped once more, looking at me earnestly. “I’ll remember that night for the rest of my life. A storm was blowing outside, just like tonight, and the thunder crashed loudly as I slowly made my way up the stairs. As I reached the top, a sudden flash of lightning illuminated the attic with brilliant light, revealing the open door that led to the dark corridor where Everett was kept.”

“Weren’t you scared?,” I asked, still only half believing.

“Of course I was scared, but like a fool I paid no attention.” Once again that haunted look had entered his eyes. “I wish now that I had. Instead, I walked through the door and back toward the end of the corridor. As I neared it, I suddenly heard a noise that filled me with dread. It was the sound of chains rattling and of heavy, labored breathing that seemed to echo all about me. Suddenly a hideously dark and gigantic form loomed up out of the darkness, and seemed almost to enfold me. I started to scream, again and again, louder and louder, hoping that someone, anyone, would hear me.

“I don’t remember anything else until I woke up in Dad’s arms as he was carrying me down the stairs and away from that infernal place. As we reached the lower landing he stopped and looked earnestly at me.”

"Son, promise me you'll never go near the attic again."

"But why, wh...?"

"I'll tell you more about Everett one day...when you are older, but for now, just please do as I ask."

Just then mom ran up to where we stood at the base of the stairs.

"Thank God you've found him...alive," she said, hugging us both.

Dad looked at me once more and said, “promise me one other thing, son”

“What, dad?”

“If you ever have a little brother,” and here he looked at mom with a half-smile and a mysterious glint in his eye, “remember this night and warn him.”

“I will. I promise.”

“They didn’t say anything more that night,” Bill continued, “at least in front of me. Since it was after midnight by then, they took me directly to my room and mom tucked me into bed. I didn’t sleep that night, though, nor for many nights thereafter.

“I had been curious, just as you no doubt are now becoming, but I had no older brother to warn me, except...” he paused a moment, looking up once more toward the attic, “...him.
“And now you know why I’m telling you all this, because of that promise I made to dad.” He paused once more, looking like he was trying to decide whether or not he should tell me something else.

“What is it?”

”I don’t know if I should tell you this, but...”

“What?”

“Well, you probably have always thought that, except for Doug, you were my only little brother...”
“Y-you mean I’m not?”

“No...” He paused a moment, considering, before he spoke again. And when he did he seemed to be changing the subject.

“You know that I am quite a bit older than you, right?”

“Yeah. So. What’s that got to do with it?”

“Well, there have been several other little brothers over the years, little brothers who had not believed me and had wandered up to the attic never to be seen again.”

“And why wasn’t Doug eaten by ...by the monster. Didn’t He ever go up to the attic?”

I was really getting really scared now, and the storm outside, which had grown still fiercer, wasn’t helping.

“Oh, he went, all right. But luckily Dad was able to save him in time, as he had me. Don’t ever ask him about it though. Even now he won’t speak of it. He was fortunate. The others were not.”

Just as he’d finished saying this, we saw candlelight under the door.

“Bill, are you in there bothering your brother,” mom’s voice called out. We’d never even heard her footsteps, but mothers are like that.

“No mom, I was just saying goodnight.”

“Well, go to bed. It’s time for both of you to go to sleep.”

“All right, mom.”

He got up to leave, but as he reached my door, he looked back one last time and said softly, “remember.”

After that night, I'd often lay awake late at night imagining I could heard the faint sound of Everett’s chains rattling. And as I'd lie there shivering in my bed, my heart pounding but afraid to move for fear that he would know I was awake, it almost seemed that I could hear his dry, rasping, labored breath echoing through the house.

One day, when Bill was out, I decided, despite his warning, to ask Doug about it anyway. He merely looked at me, though, and didn’t say a word. He just closed his eyes tightly for a moment, as if trying to forget a memory almost too painful and terrifying to remember, and walked away.

Mom and dad weren’t much help either. When I’d asked them in the living room one night, Dad simply said, “We will not speak of it...now.” He gazed toward mom who looked back at him, almost pleadingly I thought, but he would say no more. At last she turned toward me and said, earnestly, “Listen to your brother, dear.” That was all.

One day, however, I saw her walking toward the attic stairs with a bucket of raw meat. I didn’t even ask her who, or what, it was for. I already knew. I began to wonder whether they were all in on the most elaborate prank that Bill had pulled on me yet or whether it was all real.

I had reached the first bend in the stairs now, a small landing littered with old books and papers that had never quite made it all the way up to the attic. Stopping for a moment and looking back the way I had come, I though I saw Bill’s head, a strange smile upon his face, disappear around a corner. Turning around once more and looking up, I saw the dimly lit attic looming above me. Slowly I continued upward.

At last I reached the top step and stood gazing at the open expanse of the finished attic and at the door that led to the dark corridor that was Everett's domain. How different it all looked than in the daytime.

The room was filled with trunks of old clothes, boxes of books, my uncle's abandoned accordion, piles of toys, and other cast-offs of the generations of Hotchkisses who had lived there. Spread across the floor was an old, threadbare carpet which had once been mock-Persian but which was now so faded that it’s original design was almost impossible to make out.

Outside in the night sky, the quarter moon, shining through the wind-blown bare branches of an old oak tree that stood not far from the window, cast a pale, uncertain light about the room, creating shifting shadows that seemed to give life to all the objects they touched. In one corner, a stuffed crocodile lay crouched in a threatening attitude, as if poised to pounce, and the old Evinrude outboard engine, on its gimbaled stand against one wall, looked, in the gloom, like the moving head of a Tyrannosaurus.

Suddenly a gust of wind blew through an open window, and the corridor door, which I thought had been shut, slammed back against the wall, sending my heart up the chimney, and echoing down to the basement far below. An eternity seemed to pass until my breathing came back to normal and I once more began to move toward the now open door that beckoned me to Hell.

With shaking fingers I lit the candle I had brought with me, for there was but one light on either side of the dark corridor that wound around 3 sides of the attic. Though I knew that it must have been just my imagination, the darkness felt so intense, so strong, so...entrenched, as I walked through the doorway, that it almost seemed to laugh at such feeble attempts at illumination, attempts that could not begin to light the murky and ancient blackness that lay within.

By the weak, uncertain light of the candle, which barely kept back the flickering tongues of darkness which seemed intent on devouring me and the puny, intruding light that I bore, I saw dark stains on the floorboards, leading back toward the rear of the house.

Slowly I made my way toward the darkest corner of the corridor, back beyond where the Christmas ornaments were kept. As I crept along, strange sounds seemed to pulse through the musty gloom. Was it Him, I wondered, or merely the pipes and wiring, the arteries and veins which gave life to the house itself.

Suddenly the door behind me slammed shut once more, blowing out the candle, and plunging all into total blackness. I ran towards it, stumbling over something in the darkness that seemed to move and skitter away toward the end of the corridor, and frantically fought to open it. It was locked. I was trapped, alone with....

As I fumbled to re-light the candle, with hands shaking almost uncontrollably, a strange sound came from behind me; from somewhere within the impenetrable darkness. My heart began to burst within my chest.

The candle lit at last, I watched in horror as a shape began to emerge from the shadows, moving quickly toward me, inexorably, all claws and fur, its shadow immense. Was it...? but no, it was just my cat that had followed me up the stairs.

I had just let out a long sigh of relief, for I had forgotten to breathe, when suddenly a terrifying realization filled me with horror: What had frightened her?”

I watched as she shot past me, fur bristling. Crouching at the base of the door, she began to make a low rumbling sound in her throat as she clawed frantically at the crack under the door and the one glimmer of light that promised ... survival, occasionally looking back toward me,...no, beyond me.

With a feeling of dread, I turned slowly around once more and suddenly... I saw it. No story, no warnings, no amount of preparation could have prepared me for the sight that now met my eyes. With a heavy shifting sound a shape had lifted itself out of the gloom, hideously darker than any darkness had a right to be. It rose up, and up, a towering shadow of blackness, a hissing issuing from three sets of dark and formless lips. Slowly it began to move toward me, dragging its chain as it came. As it grew nearer, my nostrils began to fill with a noxious smell, and I felt myself beginning to grow nauseous and dizzy. The last thing I remember was a feeling of falling toward the floor, and the impression of the door opening, once more, behind me.

I awoke, screaming, my throat raw, gasping, as I struggled for breath, until at last I couldn’t scream any more. I was alone in the darkness; in my own bed, in my own room. Safe. It had been only a dream then....or had it?

My heart finally began to return to normal, the room no longer ringing with the screams which had awakened me. But above in the attic I heard, very slightly, the sound of chains rattling and a soft chuckle in the distant darkness.

"There will be another night, Bradley, another night. Not tonight, but soon."

But it never happened.

Eventually, I got over my fear of Everett and the attic became my favorite place to read. Everett and I even grew to be friends. Though those outside the family called him imaginary, as did my own family much of the time now, I knew better. He was very real.

As the years passed, I grew up to be a writer and a musician, and as for Everett..., why he became a lawyer, for which he was inestimably well-suited by nature.

So, you query, where is the transgender element? Well, the main character is me as a young child and I'm post-op TS now, so it may be loose but it's there. Bill, BTW, sensing that there was something different about me even then, would tease me unmercifully, calling me "Bradelina." Everett, as far as I know is not transgendered, more trans-species.