Claudia dumped her knapsack on the creaky bed. Flinging open her curtains, she looked down on the small Connecticut town below at the foot of the hill their house was built upon. White buildings against endless green fields and pine forests.
"Wow. It just screams 'rural wasteland'."
Mrs. Lowe entered the room, dropping three boxes and a suitcase on the wooden floorboards.
"I don't think it's that bad, sweetie. Granted the downstairs is horrendous and needs to be redone, but your room isn't so terrible. Look, you're on the third floor and you've got a phenomenal view of the town."
Claudia sighed and started unpacking. Ever since her mother, Elizabeth Lowe, saw a picture of the house recently put up for sale, she had her heart set on it. The inside of the building, however, looked like it had been designed by a mad scientist, with all its mix of dark steel and futuristic furniture and stone slabs. But the upstairs mainly lay untouched. The country furnishings and roomy attic were just what the Lowe's needed.
Elizabeth wanted to put the house back the way she had seen in early pictures of the home from the eighties, when it was owned by a couple who unfortunately had an accident on the local bridge and died. The owners before the Lowes, by the name of the Deetzs, had to leave only a decade after purchasing the house because their daughter went off to college and they felt they needed less space.
So now Claudia had taken up residence in the attic. Wallpapered and outfitted with electricity, heat, and central air, the room wasn't all that bad. Her small wooden twin bed fit in a corner, and her bureau got the wall near the head of her bed. But one part of the room was left untouched; a small wooden cupboard near the door. The doorknob was old and rusted, and the key hung on a hook near the lock.
Claudia looked at the key and thought out loud. "It's my room anyway. Why shouldn't I get to know what's in that closet?"
She stepped over to the door and started to reach for the key, when suddenly the small piece of crafted metal jumped off of the nail it was hanging on and bounced under the stairs.
Claudia eyed the nail, surprised and suspicious. She hadn't touched it. She hadn't even been within six inches of it when the key fell.
And where was that draft coming from? Her whole body felt chilled as she looked around.
"What's going on here?" she asked herself. Reaching under the stairs, she brought the key back up to the lock and started to turn it. Just as the lock clicked and she began to turn the knob and open the door, a huge weight threw itself on the thin wood and held the door in place, closed.
"What the hell?" Claudia yanked at the knob, her whole body freezing, as if someone icy cold was standing right where she was.
Finally, with a last wrench, the weight went away and the door flew open, revealing a man dressed in a black and white striped suit with shoulder-length, disgusting hair, hanging by his neck from a noose. His eyes were clouded and blood trickled from his lips.
"Jesus Christ!"
Claudia slammed the door shut and held it closed. Sinking down, her back against the wood, she stared, frozen, at the opposite wall.
Suddenly, the door of the closet flung open, throwing her onto the floor and causing her to slam her head against the foot of her bureau, knocking her senseless. An echoing laugh, sinister and cruel, echoed through the room and Claudia felt a wind blow past her, out the window.
