Scratching. Slow and deliberate, coming from somewhere above my head. At first, I laughed it off and figured we had squirrels in the roof again. But this sound was different somehow. Too rhythmic, too purposeful. Like someone was dragging a piece of furniture across the floor.
My old Navy training kicked in, and I found myself listening more carefully. The sound would come in the evenings, always around the same time, always from the same spot. Right above the kitchen. Right below the attic.
My heart started thumping harder every time I heard it.
One night, I grabbed my old Navy flashlight and the spare keys Martha kept hidden in the kitchen drawer. I’d seen that ring of keys a thousand times over the years, keys to everything in our house and half the neighbors’ too.
I climbed those creaky stairs and stood in front of that locked attic door. One by one, I tried every single key on Martha’s ring, but none of them worked.
That struck me as mighty strange. Martha kept everything on that keyring.
The shed, the basement, the old filing cabinet, and even keys to cars we’d sold years ago. But not the attic key.
Finally, frustrated and more curious than ever, I went down to my toolbox and got a screwdriver. It took some doing, but I managed to pry that old lock right off the door.
The moment I pushed that door open, I sensed the musty and thick smell inside. It smelled like old books that had been locked away too long. But there was something else mixed in there too, something metallic that made my stomach turn.
I clicked on my flashlight and stepped inside.
At first glance, the room looked normal enough. Cardboard boxes stacked against the walls, old sheets draped over what looked like furniture, just like Martha had always said. But my flashlight beam kept getting drawn to the far corner of the room.
There, sitting by itself like it was waiting for someone, was an old oak trunk. Heavy-looking, with brass corners that had turned green with age. And locked tight with another padlock, this one even bigger than the one on the door.
I stood there for a long moment, staring at that trunk and listening to my own heartbeat echoing in the silence.
The next morning, I drove to the care facility for my usual visit.
Martha was doing her physical therapy, working hard to get her strength back, and she seemed in good spirits. I decided to test the waters and see how she’d react.
“Martha, honey,” I said, settling into the chair beside her bed. “I’ve been hearing some scratching sounds at night. Thought maybe we had critters in the attic. What’s in that old trunk you’ve got up there?”
The change in her was immediate and terrifying. All the color drained from her face in an instant. Her hands started shaking so badly she dropped the water glass she’d been holding, and it shattered on the floor.
“You didn’t open it, did you?” she whispered, her eyes wide with something that looked like pure panic. “Gerry, tell me you didn’t open that trunk!”
I hadn’t opened it yet, but the fear in her voice wasn’t normal. This wasn’t about old furniture or dusty clothes. This was about something much bigger, much more important than that.
That night, I couldn’t sleep a wink. I kept tossing and turning, thinking about the look on Martha’s face, the way her voice had cracked when she asked about that trunk. Curiosity was clawing at me from the inside, demanding answers I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear.
Around midnight, I gave up on sleep entirely. I went down to the garage, found my old bolt cutters, and climbed those stairs one more time.
The lock on that trunk snapped more easily than I expected. My hands were trembling as I lifted the heavy wooden lid, and what I found inside made my knees go weak.
The trunk was full of letters. Hundreds and hundreds of them, all tied up in faded ribbons and organized by date. The oldest ones were from 1966, the very year Martha and I got married. The newest were from the late 1970s. But these weren’t letters from me or anyone else I recognized.
They were all addressed to Martha, and they were all signed by someone named Daniel.
I picked up one of the oldest letters with shaking hands and read it by flashlight. It started with, “My dearest Martha,” and talked about missing her something terrible, about counting the days until he could come home to her.
But it was the ending that made my heart skip a beat. Every single letter ended the same way: “I’ll come for you and our son when the time is right. All my love, Daniel.”
Our son? What son?
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