by Kate Donahue

 

If you’re on the top floor walking towards the stairs at the end of the hall, on the opposite wall as the elevators, there is a door. It is labeled ‘Fire Door Keep Closed” in white on a red sign but it is only a utility closet. We knew exactly what was in that room. What we didn’t know was what was above it.

            Lily and I had lived here since we were born. The halls, stairs, and elevators were more our home than our own apartments. The utility closet was just a part of our games, but neither of us would hide in there for very long because the black square on the ceiling scared us. Perhaps if we had moved in at an older age we would have immediately explored the trapdoor with the wooden ladder leading to its always open mouth. But our fear was a habit by the time we reached sixth grade. It wasn’t until my friend from school, Anna-Maria, found out about it and decided to explore that anything came of our curiosity.

            We were bored. Anna-Maria and I were wandering, passively looking for something to do. We were walking towards the stairs, our feet hushed by the dingy red carpet, when she noticed the door—not for the first time—and opened it. I kept walking as her eyes hit the lockers across from her then headed right to the ladder and followed it up to the hole.

            “Hey, what’s up there?” she asked.

            “I don’t know. We’ve never been up.” I replied, opening the door to the stairs.

            “Why not?” she persisted, “We should go up.”

            “Umm, I guess we could. Are you sure you want to?”

            “Are you kidding? If I had something like this at my house I’d explore it in a second.”

            “Okay.”  Without Lily there to defend whatever reasons we had for not going up, my apprehension dissolved a little. I couldn’t remember why we were scared.

            I released the door to the stairs and followed Anna-Maria into the dark utility closet. I turned on the light. To our right was a dirty sink and between that and the ladder sat buckets of ‘Promar 400 Interior Latex Semi-Gloss’. Brooms and mops were propped against the walls and leaning against the four tall, tan lockers under the loft. To our left were two water heaters that started to tick, making us jump.

“Someone’s doing laundry.” I said.

“We won’t get in trouble for going up there?” Anna-Maria said. It was almost a statement, but I reassured her anyway.

“Nobody comes in here except the cleaning people, but they only come on Mondays.” Today was a Saturday. “But we can go back if you want.”

She ignored my last suggestion and moved toward the ladder, crossing the red peeling paint and the drain on the floor in three steps, and began to climb. The door closed behind us and I tried not to imagine the horror movie music playing in my head. By the time I got up past the sink she was ready to plunge her head into that blackness. Then she noticed the light switch next to the trapdoor. She flicked it on and the music stopped playing in my head. We hadn’t noticed the light switch before.

            “What’s up there?” I asked from the middle of the ladder as she swiveled her head.

            “Well there’s a bunch of metal air vent tubes and wires and wooden beams and stuff,” she answered, continuing the climb and carefully placing her feet as she stepped out.

            Now I could see the single, naked bulb in the peaked ceiling above. I hesitated, looking down at the room below me, before realizing that I would rather go up with Anna-Maria than stay in that closet alone. I climbed the rest of the way up and found my footing on the vertical planks of wood that made up the floor. Anna-Maria was already in the middle of the long peaked hallway were there was a wide plank to walk on. I made my way to her, looking around the attic.

It was about twelve feet wide and probably 30 or 40 feet long. We had come up near one end and we could see a pale glow coming from the floor at the other end. Pipes snaked their way along the walls and out into the room where chords hung to the floor. We walked a little further and passed through a row of two-by-fours connecting wall to ceiling. We were about to be disappointed, when we noticed a lowered area to our left. It was filled with boxes, which you would expect in an attic, but also unexpectedly housed a chair. It was only a two foot drop, but we had to climb over some metal earthquake support bars. There was a lamp clipped to the bar. I could feel my hairs raising on my arms and legs a little. I turned on the light. The lowered area was carpeted.

            We looked around at all the boxes. Had they been labeled ‘A/P + Financials 1998’ like the ones in the utility closet, we probably would have left them to the rats that we suspected were near, but they were not marked.

            “Should we have a peek?” Anna-Maria asked, already reaching towards a box near the chair.

            I swiped an index finger across the seat of the chair. Dusty. I shrugged one shoulder and gave her a ‘why not?’ look but I hung back, imagining dead body parts, but the first box was full of papers that we began to rifle though and take out to look at under the light. They were all forms; grades, transcripts, bank statements, some bills, even adoption papers and a birth certificate. And they were all related to someone named Heji Kim. I started to get pulled in to her story, even though she seemed pretty normal. Apparently she was a pretty good student at Cal. She was in the anthropology department. She was Korean and born on the 27^th of December at 2:44 am in 1967.

            “Hey, she’d be the same age as my mom.” I exclaimed after counting decades on my fingers.

            We soon moved on to the next box. Anna-Maria twitched her hand away and I jumped as we saw the head of black hair that was only a wig. There was also a stuffed gray and white shag dog, some wooden, red bookends, and several small notebooks that turned out to be Heji Kim’s diaries. We hesitated before opening them but since neither of us had ever heard of this person, we started to read.

If you find a mysterious diary in a mysterious attic you would expect the diary to contain some exciting secret. Of course that was not the case. They were mostly boring, the earlier ones discussing school and later ones sometimes referring to work but never specifying what exactly that was. One of them was quite depressing but she seemed to pull out of it after a few months. A photograph fell out of that one. A woman with straight dark hair stood, smiling next to a brown haired man. They both looked like they were in their mid-twenties and must have been at some park because there were trees and sky with a sun spot behind them. We assumed the woman was Heji Kim and the man was her husband, though this was just a guess based on the love letters we found in the next box.

The love letters were all from her husband while he was away in Palo Alto working. Apparently the commute was too long so he had to live up there while she finished school. There were a lot of references to frogs, some kind of an inside joke, and would often say things such as ‘at least the frogs don’t mind’.

We glanced into a few more boxes before leaving the place a bit messier than how we had found it.

“Who’s Heji Kim?” Anna-Maria asked as we climbed down the ladder.

“Why is all her stuff up there?”

“How did they get the chair up there?”

“Why is there a chair up there?”

“Why is there a lamp up there?”

 

We looked up her name on the internet only to find an article about cooking out of your garden. Who knows if the Heji Kim who wrote it was the same one or not. But how common is that name?

They next day I told Lily about our adventure and she wanted to go up, but her interest was held only momentarily. When we got down into the lowered part she decided the whole place was creepy. She preferred hearing about it to experiencing it and before I could even turn on the lamp she was climbing back over the earthquake bars. Her fear was contagious and I followed quickly. As I climbed over the bars behind her I almost knocked the light off. I grabbed it, secured the clip, and was back in the utility room before I realized the significance of the moment.

“That lamp was warm.” I said. We ran.

           

Once in the safety of my room, we settled to discuss the amazing mystery that had presented itself to us. We started with questions.

            “How could the lamp be warm? That means someone else was up there. Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?” Lily was not convinced.

            “I’m positive,” I assured her, “I think.” I just couldn’t believe it myself.

            Someone else had been up there just before we had, or else they were up there at the same time.

            “How did they get the chair up that ladder anyway? And I don’t think it could have made it through the trapdoor,” said Lily.

            “Maybe there’s another way up.”

             “And why was it carpeted?”

            We formed a theory that we revisited and added to so often over the next few weeks, that we started to believe it must be true.

            We decided Heji Kim was the secret identity of a woman in hiding. All her official documents and other items that would make her true identity known had to be hidden. She had visited an old boyfriend in apartment 617 who had showed her his secret door to the attic and when she needed a place to hide her love letters and papers, it was the first place that came to mind. Since 617 was right next to the attic we figured it was likely that they shared a wall, or the top portion of one, and a secret door could be possible, maybe probable. When Heji Kim’s husband returned from across California it became clear to her that he had been cheating on her, so she drowned him in their frog aquarium. Heji Kim changed her name and hid away all of her personal items so that the cops would not find her. Then she moved to Canada with a fake ID that her college friend made for her.

            “But why is she back?” Lily asked.

            “Or was it her up there at all?” I returned.

            “So you think it’s a detective?”

            “Or the ghost of her husband.”

            “Or the boyfriend in 617.”

            “Or the frogs.” I said with wide eyes as I jumped at Lily, shrieking.

            The next time we went up, I did further investigating (after making sure 617 was empty and the lamp was cold) while Lily stood by nervously looking around and shifting her feet. I looked through the diaries again, reading some parts aloud.

            “’I think I’m just being paranoid but sometimes I get the feeling that Tom doesn’t want to come home. Or maybe that’s just my subconscious and I don’t really want him to come home.’ She’s getting depressing, but her husband is cheating on her, so I guess it makes sense.” I continued reading as Lily began to relax and poke around a bit.

            “Hey look, another frog reference, ‘Well I guess I’ve just eaten all the flies here and I need to hop to some other lily pad.’ She doesn’t seem to be—“

            “Hey,” Lily interrupted, “Can I see that photo you found.”

             “Oh yeah, I think it was in this diary.” I flipped ahead and when I didn’t find it, looked through all the others.

“Are you sure you put it back?” Lily asked.

“Positive, I remember slipping it back into the diary. I was sure it was this one.” But after shaking all of the journals, I was forced to conclude that the photo had disappeared.

Later that day, after we had left the attic, Lily and I went home to our own apartments to work on our homework. I was looking for the stapler on my mom’s desk and when I tried to open the drawer it was stuck on something. I yanked on the drawer and it popped open. There was the stapler and after I took it our, I reached into the back of the drawer to see what had made it difficult to open. I pulled out two bent pictures. One was a photo of two girls about my age. Though I had never seen the photo before, I recognized the girl on the right as my mother. I did not recognize the other girl, but after studying the second picture, which I recognized with a gasp, I was pretty sure she was Heji Kim. I quickly shoved the photos back in the drawer and, leaving the stapler forgotten, ran out the door across the hall and all the way into Lily’s room.

“I think my mom knew Heji Kim,” I breathed out heavily.

“What? How?”

“I just found the photo that was up in the attic before. It was in my mom’s desk drawer with another photo that looked like it was my mom with Heji Kim when they were kids,” I continued.

“Weird. So you think they were friends? Can I see the photos?”

“I put them back in the drawer.”

“Why? Can we go look again?”

“I don’t know, my mom is obviously hiding them.”

“Is she? Maybe she just hasn’t mentioned Heji before, it doesn’t have to have been intentional.” Lily suggested. “You should ask her about it.”

“Maybe,” I said, sitting down on Lily’s bed, ”I’m not sure where she is right now, I think she went out for a bit.”

“Well, you can ask her later anyway. I can’t believe she knew Heji Kim. Maybe all the stuff up there is somehow connected to your mom. It must be.”

“Yeah. This is so weird.”

“Hey let me see the photos while your mom is out. We can put them right back if she comes in the door.”

“I guess, okay lets go.” I stood up and Lily followed me to the door which I shut nervously immediately after I opened it.

“What was that for?” Lily asked as I turned. I was starting to freak myself out.

“There’s a woman in front of 617,” I said as I went on my toes to look through the peep hole.

“So what?” Lily said, giving me a weird look.

“She’s looking around. She must have heard me slam the door. Now it looks like she’s deciding whether to knock again or not. Nobody’s home I guess.”

“Okay what’s so exciting about this?” Lily poked my side but I didn’t move.

“She has straight dark hair.” I said giving Lily a significant look.

“You think it’s Heji Kim?!”

“Well she is knocking on apartment 617.” I said as Lily pushed me out of the way and looked through herself.

“She’s leaving!” Lily reported. “She’s pushed the elevator button. Do you think it really is Heji Kim? Let’s go out there and follow her, she doesn’t know who we are.”

The elevator dinged.

“Wait,” I reclaimed my position behind the peep-hole. Heji Kim was getting into the elevator and reaching for the ground floor button. I was tempted to run out there and stop her but then something else startled my hand away from the door handle. “My mom’s just come out of the utility closet!”

“What? What is she doing? Is Heji Kim still in the Hallway?!” Lily’s hand was turning the handle now but I leaned my weight into the door and watched as my mother glanced up into the open elevator doors and jumped. I was sure that my mother had recognized Heji Kim but Heji Kim had not seen her as the elevator doors closed. My mother rushed down the hall towards me and our apartment. When she got closer I could tell that she was crying. And in case there was any doubt as to where she had been, in her hand was one of Heji Kim’s diary’s. “Oh my God.” I said as my mother opened our apartment’s door and disapeared inside.

“What is going on!” Lily pulled me aside once again but before she got her eye to the glass I heard the door snap shut. “Where’s your mom? Did she just go into your house?”

            “I can’t believe this. My mother just came out of the attic with one of Heji Kim’s diary’s, saw Heji Kim in the elevator and started crying!” I explained hurriedly.

            “Did Heji Kim see her.”

            “No.”

            “Oh my God you have to go ask your mom what the heck is going on here and then come back and tell me!”

            “But she’s obviously upset. I think we should just pretend we never found all of that stuff up there in the first place,” I suggested.

            “Are you kidding me?! We can’t do that! Oh my God, you have to tell Anna-Maria, she’ll be so curious. She would’ve followed Heji Kim right away.”

            “We don’t even know if that was Heji Kim,” I said, but I knew it was too late to convince my self. Something strange was definitely going on.

            “Oh just go home and ask your mom about it. Bye! Hurry back!” Lily said, practically pushing me out of the door.

            Back in the silent hall, I glance around searching for some evidence that would prove that what I had just seen in that peep-hole had actually happened right here. I look over at the elevator and then down the hall to the utility closet. There on the floor was exactly what I was looking for. A few pieces of paper that I knew at once my mother must have dropped when she was startled by the sight of Heji Kim. I patted silently over to them, snatched them up and continued into the stairwell, closing the door behind me. They were the adoption papers and a newspaper clipping. In the box full of papers up in the attic, before we knew anything about this woman, the adoption papers had not seemed very significant. Sitting there in the stairwell I realized how crucial they were to understand Heji Kim, as well as my mother. Now I read them in detail, as I did the newspaper clipping. Apparently Heji Kim was my mother’s adopted sister, almost twin. She had gone missing 30 years ago from today.