Laina sat on the couch, staring at the floor. There was absolutely nothing to do. It was two days into summer break and she was bored already. Her parents were at work until dinnertime. They wouldn’t let her go outside or anywhere by herself unless they were at home, she had no new books to read, her dog was sleeping and hated to be disturbed, all her friends were on vacation already, and her phone was dead. She couldn’t think of anything new to do.

I guess I’d better get some lunch then, Laina thought. She fixed herself a peanut butter sandwich and an apple and sat down to eat. As she was cleaning up her dishes, she suddenly had an idea. I could explore the attic! Mom and Dad never said I couldn’t do that! There were lots of old, interesting things up there since she lived in an old, large house that her family had lived in for generations. Her parents never bothered to clean out the attic. There was probably lots of cool, unwanted things up there.

She walked up the creaky, winding, stairs until she reached the top. Her bedroom was located at the end of the hall. She dashed into it, rummaged through a couple of drawers in her oak desk, and finally found her flashlight. Then she walked to the other end of the hallway and slowly pulled down the ladder that led to the large attic. It squeaked loudly from lack of use.

Her footsteps seemed to echo eerily as she walked across the creaky floorboards of the attic, pausing to look through boxes with labels such as “Tools,” “Hats,” and “Mom’s Stuff” in her mother’s neat handwriting. Further to the back, things looked less new and the labels weren’t written in her mom’s handwriting. She even found a couch covered in a real bear skin and a box with a label reading, “Taxidermy.” She decided against opening the latter. Lounging on the couch, she dug through a small box of shells from the beach. She hoped her mom would let her keep some of this stuff.  

A beam of light shone through a small circular window in the back corner. It alighted on a cardboard box covered in dust. This one had a label written in her grandmother’s looping scrawl. It read, “DVDs.”  Why is this all the way back here? Laina thought. It looks fairly new. I guess whoever put it here did not want it to be found.  She brushed the dust off and opened the lid.

Laina tucked her long blonde hair behind her ears and took out the disc on top. It was enclosed in a flimsy, clear plastic case with nothing written on it. She decided to watch it on the TV downstairs. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt she needed to watch it. So she went downstairs and inserted it into the DVD player and flopped onto the black leather couch.

Once she started watching, she figured out it was a compilation of videos of her as a toddler. One showed her in a kiddie pool, splashing around. But who was that with her? There was another little girl with wavy red hair that looked exactly like Laina’s, except red. She assumed it was a friend, although she couldn’t remember her. When the girl turned to face the camera, Laina gasped. This girl was the spitting image of her, except for the hair color! Same blue eyes, same wavy hair, same slender nose, same pale skin, same freckles. It was almost as if...she was a sister. But that couldn’t be possible. Laina knew she had been an only child all her life.

She heard the garage door open. One of her parents was home. Surely they would know who that girl was. As her mom came in, Laina rushed over and showed her the DVD. “Who was that girl with the red hair in this video?” she asked. “I can’t remember her.” Instantly her mom’s face paled. Her blue eyes grew wide.

“Where did you get that?” Laina’s mom’s voice rose slightly and her eyes seemed to shoot daggers at the DVD in Laina’s hand. Her expression looked oddly fake somehow.

“In the attic. I was just exploring because I was bored.” Laina wondered why her mom was acting this way. “Could you please tell me who that girl was?”

“What? Oh. Her. She was just an old friend.” Her mom gave a halfhearted nervous laugh and brushed her blonde hair out of her eyes. “Now run along and make yourself busy. I have something to do for work. And don’t ever go in the attic again.” With that her mom turned around, went downstairs to her office, and slammed the heavy wooden door. What is with her? Laina wondered.  And what happened to that girl? I have to find out more. But that means going into the attic again.

When her father came home, she tried asking him about the girl, but got the same response. She was an old friend. But why are they acting so defensive? They wouldn’t even tell her why they weren’t friends anymore.

The family ate a quiet, tense dinner of hamburgers. They hardly ever spoke. Even her father’s unruly red beard seemed wilted.

The next morning, after her parents had left for work, Laina decided to finish exploring the attic, even though it was going against her mom’s orders. She had to find out more.

What could be up there that her mom didn’t want her to find?

She pulled down the squeaky ladder again and climbed up, slightly scared about what she might find. Once up there, she started looking on the far right side. She hadn’t looked there yet. It was the place with the deepest, darkest shadows. She looked for about twenty minutes, but didn’t find anything related to the girl. Pausing in her search and gazing up, she saw a large pile of boxes and other objects precariously stacked on top of each other as if hiding something. The pile was about four feet high. Peering over the top, she shone her flashlight over the top to see if there was anything there.

Staring right back at her was a framed photo of herself and the red-haired girl when they were toddlers with their arms around each other. She started at their striking resemblance to each other. They couldn’t be just friends. They had to be related somehow. Cousins, maybe? But they looked exactly like twins. And why would her parents try to hide something about her cousin? Why lie that they were friends? It just didn’t make sense.

Laina climbed over the top of the boxes and almost ran into the wall. There was only about a three-foot space between the pile and wall. The space was a lot smaller than Laina expected.

She carefully picked up the photo as if it were a bomb, and stared at the girl. What happened to you? She thought. Then she flipped it over to see if the back contained any information. What she saw nearly made her drop the photo. On the back was written: The Twins. She had a sister.

But where is she? Did she run away? Did she...die?  She swallowed, dismissing that thought. Nothing made sense. What were her parents hiding from her?

Laina scanned the room with her flashlight, seeing if anything else was in the room. She squinted her eyes at something at the back. This section of the attic was covered in wallpaper, but there seemed to be a faint outline at the back of the space, as if there was a door there. She started to walk toward it, but was hit with a stench so bad she almost threw up. “It smells like something died in here,” she grumbled to herself. At the back of the small space, she could easily see that it was a door. Something told her not to go in there. Maybe it was the smell. And why was it covered up?

She dug her fingernails into the wall and ripped the wallpaper off anyway, making an oddly satisfying sound. She pushed the door open and it creaked ominously. She coughed as the smell got even stronger. She tentatively put one foot forward,then the other. Looming in the corner of a room was a large wooden trunk that was intricately carved with a swirly design. Looking closer, she realized the was something written on it in a blood red color: Scarlett. The smell grew even stronger as she walked closer. The air seemed to grow too thick to breathe as Laina’s fear grew. She didn’t even know what she was afraid of.  Her arm started to shake and her heartbeat quickened as she reached for the latch. Her arms felt weak and she held her breath as she tried to open the lid. She let out a bloodcurdling scream at what she saw. She stumbled around for a moment in shock. Then the floor rushed up to meet her and everything went black.

When she came to, she didn’t have the strength to rise from the hard wooden floor. She knew that was her sister’s body in there, even though her flesh was mostly decayed and her stared blankly upward. I have a sister named Scarlett and she’s dead, Laina said over and over in her head. Nothing added up. Questions swam around in her head, begging for answers: Why is Scarlett in here and not buried? Why didn’t she get a proper funeral? Why would they let her forget about her own sister? And, most of all, how did she die? Why did her parents put her here unless….they killed her themselves? That was the only answer that made sense. But Laina refused to believe that her kind, loving parents would do something so horrible, so utterly creepy. Why would they kill their own daughter? But that would make their odd reactions to the video make sense.

When her parents came home, Laina ran up to them and started yelling. “I know what you did! I know what you did to her! Why would you do something like that? WHY?”

Her dad smiled creepily. Her mom said, her voice dripping with malice, “Because we can. We wondered when you would figure it out.”She reached into her coat pocket and drew out a pistol. Then, before Laina could run, her own father slammed her into the wall and smiled sweetly, his eyes twinkling. “You’re next.” Then, her mother pressed the pistol to her head, grinning. And fired.