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When you're young, the monsters hide under your bed, but when you're old, they hide in your attic...
“They’re coming in through the vents.”
“Grandpa, it’s your heart medication. No one is coming in through the vents.”
It was 2007 and my Grandfather was slowly dying. His body had been on the fritz for a while and now his mind was starting to slip. My Grandma had passed away two years earlier from a stroke. I think my Grandpa had just wanted to give up, but I wouldn’t let him. My Grandparents were part of the “Greatest Generation” and they lived up to that. To this day, they’re still the best people I ever knew.
“It’s Al Qaeda.”
“Grandpa, Al Qaeda is not climbing into your attic vents.”
My little brother had joined the Marines just before 9/11 and he found his end over in Iraq in 2005. My grandfather never got over his death. If my brother had still been around in 2007, maybe I would have had a little help with my Grandpa. Maybe things would have been different.
“I know it sounds crazy, but I hear them up there every once in a while. Can you please just take a look?”
I remember looking at my watch. I was going to be late for one of my classes if I didn’t nip the issue in the bud right then and there.
“I will check.” He smiled and I grabbed a little step ladder from his garage. I popped the heavy access panel up. For some reason, my father decided to enforce the panel with a length of 2x4 on each side. Nothing my dad did made any sense, and my mother was the exact same way.
I shined a flashlight around the tight space of the attic. My Grandparent’s house was pretty large, so I couldn’t see every nook and cranny of the attic. I had no ambition to crawl along rafters and insulation to confirm that it was empty.
“You see anybody up there Jay?”
“Nothing Grandpa. Just rafters, cobwebs, and insulation. You’re all good.”
I made it to class on time, but I had to ask to borrow notes from someone afterwards, because all I could think about was my Grandpa. My parents lived only a few miles from my Grandpa, but they hardly ever went by to check on him. They were wanting him to go ahead and get things over with as well. They couldn’t wait to sell the house.
I checked on him everyday just after work and right before class, and on the weekends I would see him just before my night job. I was in the process of rebuilding a life that I had ruined on my own. I was living out of my car. I would have moved in with him and been around a little bit more, but my parents refused. We didn’t get along very well.
\-
“Hey Jay? I’m still a little worried about those vents.” It was a couple of weeks after he had first asked me about checking his attic. His face was a little more haggard than usual, but he was old.
“Did you see something?” My question made his eyes dart over to the back window. He shook his head, but I knew it was the new medication they had him on. The hallucinations were happening far more often. I asked my mother on the phone if there was an alternative. That went nowhere.
“Grandpa, what did you see? You can tell me.”
“They creep around the yard at night. Can you please just get up on a ladder and make sure the vents are secure. Put some big screws in them?”
“Ok.”
I walked around the house. He had three metal vents under three gables. From the ground they looked just fine, and I expected nothing less, but I would need to get a ladder. I walked into his garage and found his old aluminum extension ladder. It was buried behind a tremendous amount of dusty junk covered in cobwebs.
It was no longer my grandfather’s garage. When he was able bodied, my Grandfather was a regular Hank Hill, and everything was neatly organized. This was now my parent’s dusty two car storage bin, where they would throw odd bits of shit they found at estate sales. I looked at my watch. I had a test that night. I knew I didn’t have the time and I told myself that I would come over a little earlier on Saturday so I could do what he wanted. I walked back inside.
“Hey Grandpa? It’s all good!” He was in his recliner watching the Shootist. He was watching that one every week now.
“Ok. Are you going to class?”
“Yeah. I’ll be back tomorrow. Call me if you need anything.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
\-
As the weeks went on, I noticed that he was declining. He was seeing things more often and he was having trouble remembering things. I had been doing his dishes every time I was over, and I would handle the trash because he kept forgetting, but when he stopped showering is when I got really worried. His eyes were also drawn. He wasn’t sleeping.
“I thought you screwed the vents in.”
“I did it weeks ago.”
“Well, I heard them up there again. Sometimes they’ll yell all day. They’re angry up there. They’re coming in to get me.”
“Grandpa, I’m here every day. I never hear anything.”
“That’s because they know you’re here. They’re quiet.”
“Grandpa. It’s your heart medication. You need to start taking showers Grandpa. The house stinks. Really bad.”
“I can’t. They’ll get me in the shower. Can you just check the vents again?”
“I’ll check them.”
I didn’t check them. I did something infinitely harder. I called my mother.
\-
“Mom, he’s not doing good.”
“Jay, he’s old. People start to lose it toward the end.”
“Look, I’m just going to ask again…if you guys would just let me stay with him…”
“Absolutely not!” My mother had me on speaker and my father had to chime in. His voice was distant; it seemed poetic to me. “The last thing John needs is some freeloader staying in his house. He can get his own fucking house! Living in a damn car!”
“Honey.” I could hear my mother shushing my father and a muffled protest coming from him right afterward. “You don’t have to go over there everyday. Your grandfather is perfectly capable of taking care of himself.”
“But he’s not mom. Come on, he’s your dad…”
“Who do you think you are when it comes to my relationship with my father?!” I could hear my dad in the background telling her to hang up the phone. After a couple more remarks, that’s exactly what she did.
**-**
“I’m sorry, but we can’t risk decreasing the dosage. This is what his heart needs. Unfortunately, he’s one of those rare people that have a reaction to it.” His doctor was a cold balding man. I took a shot.
“Doctor, he’s not doing good. I need your help”
“Son, to be honest I shouldn’t even be talking with you as much as I have. This is your mother’s father. She’s the one responsible for him. I can’t legally do anything unless you think some abuse is going on.”
“Ok.”
“You yourself can always reach out to Adult Protective Services if you think there’s abuse going on.”
“Then they’d just throw him in a home, huh?”
“That’s a possibility, yes.”
“I could never do that to him.”
“Son, talk to your mother. Share your concerns with her. She’s a very nice woman and she cares about her father very much.”
\-
As the weeks went by, his house started smelling worse and his face was hanging lower and lower. I was trying my best.
“Son, I know I’m old. I know I’m losing it upstairs, but I want you to be honest with me. Did you ever put those screws in those vents for me?”
“Yeah.” I was fixing him something to eat that didn’t come out of a box. I had started cooking dinner for him every night. He was at least going to have real food.
“I think you’re fibbing.”
“Here, eat it while it’s hot.”
“You’re not answering me.”
“You know what Grandpa, before I leave, I’m going to run up the ladder and I’ll check all of them again. I want you to trust me.”
“Can you check the access panel too?” I cleaned up his kitchen and grabbed the stepladder. I hadn’t been down the hallway toward the rest of the house for at least two weeks. I noticed that there were chunks of sheetrock on the carpet, and when I looked up, I saw quite a few holes in the ceiling. I walked through every room in the back of the house and every room had holes poked through them.
“Grandpa?” I dropped the step ladder in one of the spare bedrooms and walked back into the living room. “Where did all the holes in the ceilings come from?”
“I’m telling you, they’re up there. I use the broomstick to try and shut them up. Poke them real good.”
“Grandpa, you can’t poke holes in your ceilings.” He got up from his recliner and took his dirty dish and dropped it in the sink. I noticed that there was a gun on his recliner.
“What’s this?!” I grabbed it. My Grandfather was a correctional officer in his later years before he retired. It was his service pistol.
“My gun.”
“Why are you sitting on it?” He walked back over to me and took it from my hand.
“It’s mine. I can do what I want with it.”
“Grandpa, you can’t…”
“I’m tired of everyone telling me what I can’t do! Everybody else is just sitting around waiting for me to die!” He yelled, but then he was silent for a moment before he collected himself. When he spoke again, his voice was low; almost a whisper. “Please don’t act like your mother. For the love of God, never act like your father. Outside of your Grandmother and your brother, you have always been the best thing in my life. You’re all I’ve got left son. Please treat me like a grown man. I’m not crazy.”
He did that thing that good men do. His lips quivered and his eyes got wet, his voice was on the verge of breaking, but he refused to cry. Not because he thought it was weak, but because he didn’t like the thought of his feelings being a burden to anyone.
“I’ll make sure they’re good.”
“What?”
“The vents.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
“It's alright. I deserved it.”
“A man’s got a right to defend his house, doesn’t he Jay?”
“Yes he does grandpa.”
\-
I knew that I was going to be about an hour late for class, but I found my grandfather’s drill gun and I dug out his ladder. I sunk ten screws into the vents. I had a little bit of a hard time with the last one.
There was a tree growing right next to the back of the house, and it was really difficult to get the ladder in a decent position. It took me a while to get to it. I almost considered climbing the tree rather than using the ladder. It certainly would’ve been easier.
Once I had all the tools put away. I walked inside.
“Grandpa?”
“Yes?”
“Here, look. I took a picture of each one on my phone so you could see that it's done. Some of them are a little blurry because of the flash reflecting off of the metal.” I handed him my phone.
“Yeah it's getting dark out there.” He inspected the first one and then handed the phone back to me.
“I don’t need to look at them, Jay. I trust you.”
“I want you to take a shower and relax. They’re secure.”
“Nothing getting in or out of those guys. Thank you Jay.”
“You’re welcome. I’m late for school. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m cleaning this place top to bottom. It smells in here.”
“Yeah, I know it. I think a lot of it is coming from when they get in the vents.”
“Well we don’t have to worry about that anymore, right?”
“Yep.”
“We’re also going to fix all those holes in the ceiling. I don’t want you poking any more.”
“I won’t.”
“Grandma wouldn’t be happy with you running around destroying the house.” He smiled at me and his lip started to quiver again.
“No, I don’t think she would. I love you son.”
“I love you too. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
\-
I had a nightmare that night. When my brother and I were younger, my Grandpa loved to tell us scary stories next to the fireplace at night. The dream felt so real. My grandmother was sitting in her chair with my little brother in her lap while I sat on the floor.
They were both from Iowa and he was telling his favorite story; one that both of my grandparents grew up with.
The ax murders of Villisca, Iowa. A long time ago, a man hid away in an attic of a large ranch house out in the middle of nowhere.
He stayed there all day. The police found multiple cigarette butts in the attic, proving that the murderer just sat up there all day waiting for the family who lived in the house to go to sleep. Once they were asleep, he murdered them all with an ax and the killer was never caught.
When my grandfather finished the story, I turned around and saw that my brother and my grandmother had both disappeared. I asked my grandfather where they went and he pulled out his gun.
“The man in the attic got them.”
I woke up in a cold sweat in the back seat of my car. Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t the dream, it was something else. I picked up my phone and dialed my grandfather but there was no answer.
I couldn’t shake a feeling of fear that had come over me. A terrifying knot in the pit of my stomach. I was sweating. I felt like I missed something. I stepped out of my car and had a cigarette while I tried to get a handle on my thoughts. I was halfway through it when the flesh on the back of my neck started to tingle as if someone was watching me. The pictures.
I grabbed my phone.
I opened my pictures and looked at the ones I had taken for my grandfather. When I got to the last one, my heart dropped. I was staring at a monster.
I jumped in my car. My hands were shaking on the wheel. I have never felt fear like that since. It took me seven minutes to drive to my grandfather’s house.
\-
When I pulled down my grandfather’s street, it was filled with police cars. Neighbors were standing in groups outside of a police line. I stopped my car and ran underneath the police tape that was around my grandfather's house. Two cops stopped me and I explained who I was.
A detective dressed in a suit walked over to me.
“What happened?!”
“You’re the grandson?”
“Yes! Where is my grandpa?!”
“Son, I need to ask you some questions. We’ve been trying to get a hold of your parents, but we can’t find them.”
“They’re on vacation somewhere.”
“Ok. Well as far as we know…”
“Where is my grandpa?!”
“I hate to tell you this, but your grandfather was murdered.” My legs were rubber and my hand went to my mouth.
“How…how…”
“What time did you leave your grandfather’s last night?”
“Sometime around five.” It was a struggle to stand.
“Did you notice anything strange about the house while you were here?”
“No.”
“Why were you here so late? Neighbors told us you always come and leave at the same time everyday. They said you were here over an hour later than usual.”
“He’s…he’s on this new heart medication and it makes him hallucinate. He kept telling me for weeks that people were trying to get into his attic. He’s…he’s losing it. So after a few weeks of lying, last night I finally put a bunch of screws into his gable vents so no one could get in.”
“Ok. We uh…we’ve apprehended a disturbed individual that we believe was living in your grandfather's attic for quite some time.” I felt like throwing up.
“Oh my God.”
“He’d come out every night and go back in before morning. Looks like he was using the oak tree out back to climb to and from. Apparently, he was in there when you screwed in all the vents and he couldn’t get out. So, a few hours ago he crawled out through the inside of the house down through the attic access. Your grandfather must have heard him because he tried to shoot the intruder. He grazed him once, but the man was able to disarm your grandfather and then it appears he beat your grandfather to death with the access panel. I’m sorry.”
I staggered over to one of the cruisers and sat on the front bumper. I took out my phone as the detective stood over me.
“We were trying to find some contact information on you. How did you know something was wrong?”
“I took some pictures last night to prove to my grandfather that the vents were secure. I woke up and I took another look at them.”
I handed the phone to the detective. He looked at the picture. The last photo had a slight glare from the flash on my phone. If you looked closely, you could see a blurry face hiding behind the vent.
The face of the monster that took my grandfather.
“They’re coming in through the vents.”
“Grandpa, it’s your heart medication. No one is coming in through the vents.”
It was 2007 and my Grandfather was slowly dying. His body had been on the fritz for a while and now his mind was starting to slip. My Grandma had passed away two years earlier from a stroke. I think my Grandpa had just wanted to give up, but I wouldn’t let him. My Grandparents were part of the “Greatest Generation” and they lived up to that. To this day, they’re still the best people I ever knew.
“It’s Al Qaeda.”
“Grandpa, Al Qaeda is not climbing into your attic vents.”
My little brother had joined the Marines just before 9/11 and he found his end over in Iraq in 2005. My grandfather never got over his death. If my brother had still been around in 2007, maybe I would have had a little help with my Grandpa. Maybe things would have been different.
“I know it sounds crazy, but I hear them up there every once in a while. Can you please just take a look?”
I remember looking at my watch. I was going to be late for one of my classes if I didn’t nip the issue in the bud right then and there.
“I will check.” He smiled and I grabbed a little step ladder from his garage. I popped the heavy access panel up. For some reason, my father decided to enforce the panel with a length of 2x4 on each side. Nothing my dad did made any sense, and my mother was the exact same way.
I shined a flashlight around the tight space of the attic. My Grandparent’s house was pretty large, so I couldn’t see every nook and cranny of the attic. I had no ambition to crawl along rafters and insulation to confirm that it was empty.
“You see anybody up there Jay?”
“Nothing Grandpa. Just rafters, cobwebs, and insulation. You’re all good.”
I made it to class on time, but I had to ask to borrow notes from someone afterwards, because all I could think about was my Grandpa. My parents lived only a few miles from my Grandpa, but they hardly ever went by to check on him. They were wanting him to go ahead and get things over with as well. They couldn’t wait to sell the house.
I checked on him everyday just after work and right before class, and on the weekends I would see him just before my night job. I was in the process of rebuilding a life that I had ruined on my own. I was living out of my car. I would have moved in with him and been around a little bit more, but my parents refused. We didn’t get along very well.
\-
“Hey Jay? I’m still a little worried about those vents.” It was a couple of weeks after he had first asked me about checking his attic. His face was a little more haggard than usual, but he was old.
“Did you see something?” My question made his eyes dart over to the back window. He shook his head, but I knew it was the new medication they had him on. The hallucinations were happening far more often. I asked my mother on the phone if there was an alternative. That went nowhere.
“Grandpa, what did you see? You can tell me.”
“They creep around the yard at night. Can you please just get up on a ladder and make sure the vents are secure. Put some big screws in them?”
“Ok.”
I walked around the house. He had three metal vents under three gables. From the ground they looked just fine, and I expected nothing less, but I would need to get a ladder. I walked into his garage and found his old aluminum extension ladder. It was buried behind a tremendous amount of dusty junk covered in cobwebs.
It was no longer my grandfather’s garage. When he was able bodied, my Grandfather was a regular Hank Hill, and everything was neatly organized. This was now my parent’s dusty two car storage bin, where they would throw odd bits of shit they found at estate sales. I looked at my watch. I had a test that night. I knew I didn’t have the time and I told myself that I would come over a little earlier on Saturday so I could do what he wanted. I walked back inside.
“Hey Grandpa? It’s all good!” He was in his recliner watching the Shootist. He was watching that one every week now.
“Ok. Are you going to class?”
“Yeah. I’ll be back tomorrow. Call me if you need anything.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
\-
As the weeks went on, I noticed that he was declining. He was seeing things more often and he was having trouble remembering things. I had been doing his dishes every time I was over, and I would handle the trash because he kept forgetting, but when he stopped showering is when I got really worried. His eyes were also drawn. He wasn’t sleeping.
“I thought you screwed the vents in.”
“I did it weeks ago.”
“Well, I heard them up there again. Sometimes they’ll yell all day. They’re angry up there. They’re coming in to get me.”
“Grandpa, I’m here every day. I never hear anything.”
“That’s because they know you’re here. They’re quiet.”
“Grandpa. It’s your heart medication. You need to start taking showers Grandpa. The house stinks. Really bad.”
“I can’t. They’ll get me in the shower. Can you just check the vents again?”
“I’ll check them.”
I didn’t check them. I did something infinitely harder. I called my mother.
\-
“Mom, he’s not doing good.”
“Jay, he’s old. People start to lose it toward the end.”
“Look, I’m just going to ask again…if you guys would just let me stay with him…”
“Absolutely not!” My mother had me on speaker and my father had to chime in. His voice was distant; it seemed poetic to me. “The last thing John needs is some freeloader staying in his house. He can get his own fucking house! Living in a damn car!”
“Honey.” I could hear my mother shushing my father and a muffled protest coming from him right afterward. “You don’t have to go over there everyday. Your grandfather is perfectly capable of taking care of himself.”
“But he’s not mom. Come on, he’s your dad…”
“Who do you think you are when it comes to my relationship with my father?!” I could hear my dad in the background telling her to hang up the phone. After a couple more remarks, that’s exactly what she did.
**-**
“I’m sorry, but we can’t risk decreasing the dosage. This is what his heart needs. Unfortunately, he’s one of those rare people that have a reaction to it.” His doctor was a cold balding man. I took a shot.
“Doctor, he’s not doing good. I need your help”
“Son, to be honest I shouldn’t even be talking with you as much as I have. This is your mother’s father. She’s the one responsible for him. I can’t legally do anything unless you think some abuse is going on.”
“Ok.”
“You yourself can always reach out to Adult Protective Services if you think there’s abuse going on.”
“Then they’d just throw him in a home, huh?”
“That’s a possibility, yes.”
“I could never do that to him.”
“Son, talk to your mother. Share your concerns with her. She’s a very nice woman and she cares about her father very much.”
\-
As the weeks went by, his house started smelling worse and his face was hanging lower and lower. I was trying my best.
“Son, I know I’m old. I know I’m losing it upstairs, but I want you to be honest with me. Did you ever put those screws in those vents for me?”
“Yeah.” I was fixing him something to eat that didn’t come out of a box. I had started cooking dinner for him every night. He was at least going to have real food.
“I think you’re fibbing.”
“Here, eat it while it’s hot.”
“You’re not answering me.”
“You know what Grandpa, before I leave, I’m going to run up the ladder and I’ll check all of them again. I want you to trust me.”
“Can you check the access panel too?” I cleaned up his kitchen and grabbed the stepladder. I hadn’t been down the hallway toward the rest of the house for at least two weeks. I noticed that there were chunks of sheetrock on the carpet, and when I looked up, I saw quite a few holes in the ceiling. I walked through every room in the back of the house and every room had holes poked through them.
“Grandpa?” I dropped the step ladder in one of the spare bedrooms and walked back into the living room. “Where did all the holes in the ceilings come from?”
“I’m telling you, they’re up there. I use the broomstick to try and shut them up. Poke them real good.”
“Grandpa, you can’t poke holes in your ceilings.” He got up from his recliner and took his dirty dish and dropped it in the sink. I noticed that there was a gun on his recliner.
“What’s this?!” I grabbed it. My Grandfather was a correctional officer in his later years before he retired. It was his service pistol.
“My gun.”
“Why are you sitting on it?” He walked back over to me and took it from my hand.
“It’s mine. I can do what I want with it.”
“Grandpa, you can’t…”
“I’m tired of everyone telling me what I can’t do! Everybody else is just sitting around waiting for me to die!” He yelled, but then he was silent for a moment before he collected himself. When he spoke again, his voice was low; almost a whisper. “Please don’t act like your mother. For the love of God, never act like your father. Outside of your Grandmother and your brother, you have always been the best thing in my life. You’re all I’ve got left son. Please treat me like a grown man. I’m not crazy.”
He did that thing that good men do. His lips quivered and his eyes got wet, his voice was on the verge of breaking, but he refused to cry. Not because he thought it was weak, but because he didn’t like the thought of his feelings being a burden to anyone.
“I’ll make sure they’re good.”
“What?”
“The vents.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
“It's alright. I deserved it.”
“A man’s got a right to defend his house, doesn’t he Jay?”
“Yes he does grandpa.”
\-
I knew that I was going to be about an hour late for class, but I found my grandfather’s drill gun and I dug out his ladder. I sunk ten screws into the vents. I had a little bit of a hard time with the last one.
There was a tree growing right next to the back of the house, and it was really difficult to get the ladder in a decent position. It took me a while to get to it. I almost considered climbing the tree rather than using the ladder. It certainly would’ve been easier.
Once I had all the tools put away. I walked inside.
“Grandpa?”
“Yes?”
“Here, look. I took a picture of each one on my phone so you could see that it's done. Some of them are a little blurry because of the flash reflecting off of the metal.” I handed him my phone.
“Yeah it's getting dark out there.” He inspected the first one and then handed the phone back to me.
“I don’t need to look at them, Jay. I trust you.”
“I want you to take a shower and relax. They’re secure.”
“Nothing getting in or out of those guys. Thank you Jay.”
“You’re welcome. I’m late for school. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m cleaning this place top to bottom. It smells in here.”
“Yeah, I know it. I think a lot of it is coming from when they get in the vents.”
“Well we don’t have to worry about that anymore, right?”
“Yep.”
“We’re also going to fix all those holes in the ceiling. I don’t want you poking any more.”
“I won’t.”
“Grandma wouldn’t be happy with you running around destroying the house.” He smiled at me and his lip started to quiver again.
“No, I don’t think she would. I love you son.”
“I love you too. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
\-
I had a nightmare that night. When my brother and I were younger, my Grandpa loved to tell us scary stories next to the fireplace at night. The dream felt so real. My grandmother was sitting in her chair with my little brother in her lap while I sat on the floor.
They were both from Iowa and he was telling his favorite story; one that both of my grandparents grew up with.
The ax murders of Villisca, Iowa. A long time ago, a man hid away in an attic of a large ranch house out in the middle of nowhere.
He stayed there all day. The police found multiple cigarette butts in the attic, proving that the murderer just sat up there all day waiting for the family who lived in the house to go to sleep. Once they were asleep, he murdered them all with an ax and the killer was never caught.
When my grandfather finished the story, I turned around and saw that my brother and my grandmother had both disappeared. I asked my grandfather where they went and he pulled out his gun.
“The man in the attic got them.”
I woke up in a cold sweat in the back seat of my car. Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t the dream, it was something else. I picked up my phone and dialed my grandfather but there was no answer.
I couldn’t shake a feeling of fear that had come over me. A terrifying knot in the pit of my stomach. I was sweating. I felt like I missed something. I stepped out of my car and had a cigarette while I tried to get a handle on my thoughts. I was halfway through it when the flesh on the back of my neck started to tingle as if someone was watching me. The pictures.
I grabbed my phone.
I opened my pictures and looked at the ones I had taken for my grandfather. When I got to the last one, my heart dropped. I was staring at a monster.
I jumped in my car. My hands were shaking on the wheel. I have never felt fear like that since. It took me seven minutes to drive to my grandfather’s house.
\-
When I pulled down my grandfather’s street, it was filled with police cars. Neighbors were standing in groups outside of a police line. I stopped my car and ran underneath the police tape that was around my grandfather's house. Two cops stopped me and I explained who I was.
A detective dressed in a suit walked over to me.
“What happened?!”
“You’re the grandson?”
“Yes! Where is my grandpa?!”
“Son, I need to ask you some questions. We’ve been trying to get a hold of your parents, but we can’t find them.”
“They’re on vacation somewhere.”
“Ok. Well as far as we know…”
“Where is my grandpa?!”
“I hate to tell you this, but your grandfather was murdered.” My legs were rubber and my hand went to my mouth.
“How…how…”
“What time did you leave your grandfather’s last night?”
“Sometime around five.” It was a struggle to stand.
“Did you notice anything strange about the house while you were here?”
“No.”
“Why were you here so late? Neighbors told us you always come and leave at the same time everyday. They said you were here over an hour later than usual.”
“He’s…he’s on this new heart medication and it makes him hallucinate. He kept telling me for weeks that people were trying to get into his attic. He’s…he’s losing it. So after a few weeks of lying, last night I finally put a bunch of screws into his gable vents so no one could get in.”
“Ok. We uh…we’ve apprehended a disturbed individual that we believe was living in your grandfather's attic for quite some time.” I felt like throwing up.
“Oh my God.”
“He’d come out every night and go back in before morning. Looks like he was using the oak tree out back to climb to and from. Apparently, he was in there when you screwed in all the vents and he couldn’t get out. So, a few hours ago he crawled out through the inside of the house down through the attic access. Your grandfather must have heard him because he tried to shoot the intruder. He grazed him once, but the man was able to disarm your grandfather and then it appears he beat your grandfather to death with the access panel. I’m sorry.”
I staggered over to one of the cruisers and sat on the front bumper. I took out my phone as the detective stood over me.
“We were trying to find some contact information on you. How did you know something was wrong?”
“I took some pictures last night to prove to my grandfather that the vents were secure. I woke up and I took another look at them.”
I handed the phone to the detective. He looked at the picture. The last photo had a slight glare from the flash on my phone. If you looked closely, you could see a blurry face hiding behind the vent.
The face of the monster that took my grandfather.
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