Maisy rooted through her grandmother's attic. She was bored and there was never anything to do when she stayed over while her mother was at work. There were no games to play, board games or otherwise, the only books in the house were outdated romance novels with men who were hardly handsome, with their small eyes and almost sneering mouths. Her grandma was fast asleep so she couldn't even make idle small talk, though as conversation between them had run dry in the first half hour she'd got here, that was probably a good thing.
She wasn't sure what she was looking for amongst the abandoned clutter and assortment of broken appliances. Part of her was hoping for something shiny, like a forgotten treasure or some valuable jewellery, some relic of the past that could fascinate her for a while. There were piles of meaningless paperwork about real estate and who knows what, rolls of dusty fabric that made her sneeze when she got too near. A broken vacuum with tears running up the plastic tubing was hardly what Maisy had in mind. Moving to the other side of the room she looked for something more promising. Against the far wall blocked by a dining chair that was so rotted she wouldn't dare sit on it, was a dusty table draped in an old burgundy curtain. She grabbed a handful of it, wrinkling her nose at the stale, dusty smell it released. As she threw it aside, she noticed a cardboard box under the table that had been hidden by the curtain. Apprehensively dropping to her knees, she pulled the weathered cardboard box from beneath with both hands.
"Ugh!" She squeaked, shaking cobwebs from her hands and brushing herself up and down. The attic was completely filthy! She pulled open one of the flaps with the tips of her fingers, loathe to touch anything else grimy. The muffled scrape of the cardboard made her slightly excited. Good things always came out of cardboard boxes, new stuff like presents. Maybe she'd find a good gift for herself in here. What the peeling back of the remaining flaps of the box revealed however was bemusing. Maisy leaned over the box and peered into it. Although the box had been big and heavy, at least a foot in diameter, all that it held was a single strip of wood with indents along its surface. She reached a hand into the box and as she grasped it she realised that it was a fan, one of the old fashioned types made of fabric and wood that spread out to push air around.
No longer needing it, she pushed the cardboard box aside and sat cross legged, examining the fan. The box skittered away, the quiet sound of it sliding over the wooden floor the only sound in the attic apart from Maisy's steady regular breaths. Once it was opened, the fan seemed a lot bigger. It was only about 30cm long but when opened it stretched around so that each end almost met the other. The wood was made of a thin, light wood that looked and felt as though it would snap and splinter under the slightest pressure, thinner than the stick in an ice cream. The fabric of the fan was white and silky and to Maisy's disappointment, completely plain. She turned it over in her hand a few times, looking for any interesting markings but it was completely featureless except for the miniscule holes punched into the wooden panels. She snapped it shut with a flick of her wrist, enjoying the sharp click it made.
She snapped it back open with a flourish and fanned herself with it. Again, she snapped it closed and open, this time shielding her eyes as though she were a noble lady in a more ancient time. As she stared into the glossy fabric, it stared back at her. A curved black line appeared directly across from her right eye and, mimicking an eye opening, it fluidly changed into a slanted eye with a small black pupil inside. Screeching, Maisy threw the fan to the floor in front of her and began frantically pulling herself up to run away. The pupil followed her movement in the stark white of the eye, and then the whole eye itself slid across the fan into the edge of the fabric, to the closest point to Maisy.
She was too terrified to concentrate on escaping the attic as she watched the fan tremble and rattle against the floor. It seemed to fold in on itself in different directions and the fabric was lengthening and pouring out from between its wooden confines. The white silk gathered in a pile and rose up, morphing into the shape of a long flowing kimono, worn by a woman with a face painted deathly white. She turned her head sharply to stare at Maisy, directly in the eyes, and a rigid smile that reached high up in her cheeks snapped onto her face with a speed that was truly unnerving. Her lips were painted a bright blood red but not fully, as though someone had started in the centre and given up. The woman's eyes held no iris, only the small pin prick of a pupil and were heavily lined in black liner, exactly the same shape as the eye on the no longer remaining fan.
Maisy was whimpering between laboured breaths and she couldn't think at all. All she saw was white and all she felt was fear. The white woman giggled. It was a high pitched and jarring sound that seemed to snap Maisy back to focus. Squealing she turned and ran for the trap door, still open thank god, that led back downstairs. Not stopping to turn around or even to hold onto the ladder, she put a foot onto one of the rungs and flung herself out.
She hit the floor hard, sharp pain piercing different points of her body but dulled under the blanket of terror Maisy was under. She started to get up and quickly turned around to glance at the trap door as she made to flee downstairs, but while she was still on her knees, she got locked in the stare of two dark rimmed eyes. The woman's face was completely motionless, still stuck in that terrible smile that slashed her face, even as she giggled. She brought one arm up, sending fabric billowing beneath from her long sleeved robe. The material fluttered loudly and the sound seemed to echo through the air. On the glossy white fabric hanging from the woman's arm, appeared two mirrored shapes. Blinking quickly on the canvas of the woman's kimono were Maisy's blue eyes. Unlike the previous inky outline of the eye against the fan, these eyes held complete realism, from the dark flecks of blue in the iris, to the way the eyelashes seemed to curl, even from within the fabric. The two eyes travelled up the kimono, siding over folds and temporarily disappearing through creases, until they reached the top where the kimono met the woman's collarbone. The skin there was a yellow tan unlike her painted white face. The eyes disappeared from the fabric but a second later two blue irises pushed up from beneath the woman's lower lids and settled over her pupils. The woman blinked slowly and the shark-like smile pulled higher up her face. She swung her outsretched arm back towards her as though to hug herself, material billowing out again, but her body turned as well and like a magic trick the woman disappeared within the rippling fabric. The soft fluttering of her clothes faded and the attic stood completely empty.
Maisy was still on all fours looking back at the trap door. Now though her eyes were completely white, without even pupils.