Previously: “Lorraine.”
This week, a short and shivery little tale from Japan: “The Village In The Attic,” a creepypasta, or kowai hanashi (怖い はなし), about a boy who finds something unexpected in the ceiling crawlspace of his home. Translated over at the Okaruto Tumblr in November of 2013, it’s one I haven’t seen rendered in English anywhere else — but when I stumbled upon it the other day, I found it a delightful little surprise that I think really should be more well-known that it is.
A caveat: This is a rare instance where I wasn’t able to track down the source material. Given that most, if not all, of the translations on the Okaruto Tumblr are English renderings of posts from the 2ch paranormal boards, my assumption is that this one originated somewhere on 2ch, as well; I’ve been unable to figure out the correct search terms for it in Japanese, though, and, as such, haven’t been able to dig up the original text. And, as always, it’s distinctly possible that there aren’t any extant versions of it anymore, anyway, given the ephemeral nature of 2ch.
[Like what you read? Check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available from Chronicle Books now!]
The Okaruto Tumblr has also regretfully been defunct for quite some time; it’s last post is a brief admin note that was posted in July 2015, after which nothing else was forthcoming. I assume its translator simply got to a place in their life where they no longer had the time or available resources to keep it going, which is understandable; at the same time, though, it’s a little bit of a loss: The translations were smooth and well-localized, and the selections included both heavy hitters like “Resort Job” and lesser-known tales that still deserve their time in the spotlight.
“The Village In The Attic” is one of the latter types of stories. It has a delightfully eerie little twist delivered right in the very last line, so stick with it until the end. It’s short — I promise. And it’s absolutely worth five minutes of your time. Find it excerpted below, and read the full story at okaruto.tumblr.com.
***
A new kid came to my class one day. He never talked to anyone, though, so he didn’t really have any friends. He just put his head on his desk and moped all day. After a while, I began to wonder about him and decided to talk to him.
“You always look so sad,” I sat at the desk in front of him. “Is there anything you need to talk about?”
He started shaking a little bit when I startled him out of whatever he had been thinking about, but finally he began talking.
He said that about a month ago, something really bad happened. He was sitting in his room playing video games when he just happened to look up at his ceiling. He noticed that the board covering the entrance to the attic above his room seemed to have been moved. Darkness was all he could see in the gap, but rather than being scared of what moved the board, he wanted to know what it was. He moved his chair right under the entrance and pulled himself up after grabbing a flashlight to bring with him.
***
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[Photo via Tama66/Pixabay]