The Locked Drawer

Years had passed.

The house had aged with them — quietly, steadily — the way all old things do when no one’s watching.

Miria's just turned twenty-five. It has been almost a decade when she had that odd experience. She didn't know if she could call that thing an experience or dream. It slipped away from her memory time to time, let her forget for the time being, before start haunting her.

She worked alongside her father in the small workshop behind their home, hands steady and strong, calloused from shaping wood and fitting joints. She built things that stayed where they were placed, things with corners and weight. There was comfort in that. In craft. In control.

She told herself it was enough. Enough to keep her going, being able to feel belong to somewhere rather than feeling lost and upset all the time. 

But there were moments. Always the quiet ones. When the kettle clicked off, or the last customer left the shop. When the day fell into stillness and the house remembered how to breathe again.

That’s when she would feel it.

The faintest ripple at the edge of her perception. Like something brushing against her memory from beneath the surface. Like the house was asking permission to come alive, to show and tell her things. She knew there was something underneath of all those quiet moments, a storm coming closer. 

A presence she had never quite forgotten, though she had learned not to speak of it. Not to ask. Not even to write it down.

After a decade, on an unremarkable afternoon in early autumn, she felt that odd feeling again. It came to her without a warning or any sign, like it knew that was the time.

She’d gone looking for a bundle of twine they used for packaging — her father had said it might be some in the attic, buried under the old garden tools or sewing kits no one used any more. She couldn't remember when was the last time anyone stepped in the attic. It was like a forgotten space in the house, everything they've needed was either in the workshop or in her studio. 
Her father didn't ask her to bring it or something, it was like a statement of where twines might be. 
While he was focused on the task on hand, she quietly left the workshop and moved her body towards the attic. Hoping that she might find something useful. She was wondering the smell of the place, her heart started beating faster like she was about to discover some kind of hidden treasure.

The ladder creaked beneath her weight. The air was colder up there, and smelled of lavender, old paper, and something she couldn’t name — metallic and faintly sweet, like rain-soaked iron.

Light trickled through a narrow window, casting long, tired shadows across the floor.

The attic was dim, and quiet in the way graveyards are — not lifeless, but full of things that once were. Ready to be awakened and do not want to be disturbed.

Dust rose around her, motes of it catching the thin light spilling from a cracked window. It smelled like dry wood, old fabric, and something faintly metallic—like rain on rust. She walked towards the windows, this place needed some air; not because of the smell but because of trapped things in here.

The silence pressed against her ears, so heavy it felt like sound should be leaking through from somewhere — breathing, maybe. Whispering. Waiting.

She moved carefully between covered furniture and stacks of boxes labelled in her father’s handwriting. One box simply read “J.” She knew no one whose name starts with a “J”.  There were a lot of boxes there which marked with this letter. She couldn't make any sense of it. Her fingers hovered over it, but she didn’t open it. It felt like invading someone's life. “At least not yet.” she thought. Like she knew there would be time for her to uncover everything here, just required a bit more time.

Instead, something behind the covered desk drew her eye — a piece of fabric that sagged just slightly, as if it concealed something more than dust. She forgot the window entirely and reached to the fabric, pulled it back slowly and there it was, almost waiting for her to come there and discover it. 

It was a small drawer box. Wooden. Dark-stained. Worn at the corners. It bore a faint carving — an almost-circle, made of broken lines. A symbol that tugged at something half-formed in her memory. She wasn't sure what it was, searched her memory, trying to find something similar, but there was nothing. 

She didn’t remember seeing it before, yet she felt something familiar just looking at it.
She kept herself steady, didn't try to touch the box directly but waited patiently. Examined the outlines, the shape, the colour, the carving…
They all seemed too familiar but too arduous.

She reached her hand to it, and it was locked. “Of course it would be locked.” She thought. Otherwise, would be so easy to uncover the things. “Going back from here would be a waste of time and energy” she though. But what the solution could be. She didn't see any key. Her hands started moving, desperately trying to find a way to open the box. She didn't even know why she was feeling this way.

Her father’s workshop key still sat in the pocket of her coat. She had borrowed it yesterday to find string for the garden. She hadn’t returned it. Just the thought, but she had only one key with her, and it was her only option to chose from, so she did take the key out from her pocket and slipped into the old rusty lock.

The lock clicked open too easily. It was like a miracle. There was a box in the forgotten attic and there it was a key in her pocket. That key was her dad's office drawer key. He kept important documents and some old plans of his work. She wanted to look at his previous work to get an inspiration and forgot to put the key back to his office. 
Now, she felt like she was invading her dad's life, the box was clearly belonged to him, and she had no right to peek into it, but she opened it anyway.

Inside were neatly stacked papers, brittle with age. A photograph lay on top — faded at the edges. A woman with dark hair and tired eyes smiled faintly, holding a baby wrapped in a knit blanket. The woman’s features were gentle, but there was something in the way she held the baby—a tension in her shoulders, a weariness in her eyes—that unsettled Miria. A distant kind of love. The sort that had already begun to say goodbye. Miria knew, instinctively, that she was the child. The woman… her mother.

Her throat tightened. There was something painful in the way the woman looked into the camera — like someone smiling from the edge of a storm.

Beneath the photograph: letters. Dozens. None addressed. None dated. Some were torn. Others had words scratched out violently. But one page stood out.

It was handwritten, with graceful, slanted penmanship. Not her father’s.

“I wonder if she will ever hear the words from distant places as I did, will they keep pursuing her now or will this thing finally end with me. ”

Her hand trembled as she read it again. What did she mean with the 'distant places', who might be pursuing her? She read it again to make sense of this.

And again.

A breeze passed through the attic—sharp and sudden. Papers fluttered. The scent of lavender filled the air, sickly sweet.

She turned toward the window, drawn by instinct.

There, behind the dirty glass, stood a figure.

A woman. Just outside the house.

She couldn’t make out her face, but her posture was still, as if carved from grief. Her hair moved slightly in the wind, yet her body did not. Her eyes were closed, and her lips parted—

But there was no sound.

She stepped back, heart pounding, knees unsteady.

Miria blinked—and the figure vanished. “ What just has happened? “ Miria thought. Was that just a coincidence or something from her imagination. She tended to daydream sometimes when she felt overwhelmed with emotions. Was that one of those moments. She couldn't make any sense, and she felt like she was losing her reality. 

Something creaked below.

Footsteps.

Her father must be looking for her, she wasn't sure how long she was here.

Panic surged in her chest. Not fear of being caught, but something deeper. A need to keep what she had found to herself. She needed some more answers maybe, but not yet. Not until she understood. She wanted to ask him about all those boxes and about her mother and this box, but she knew that wasn't the time to do that.

With shaking hands, she returned the photo and letters to the drawer, but instead of locking it, she slid the entire box into the folds of a moth-eaten quilt tucked behind the desk. It disappeared beneath layers of cloth and forgotten things.

By the time her father reached the top of the stairs, Miria was standing by a dust-covered trunk, wiping her hands on her skirt.

“There you are,” he said casually, but there was a tightness in his voice, just beneath the surface.

“I got curious,” she replied, keeping her tone light. “Figured I’d see what kind of ghosts you’ve been hiding up here.”

He chuckled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Just old junk,” he said. “I keep meaning to throw most of it out.”

Miria nodded and stepped past him toward the attic ladder.

“You’ve been up here before, right?” she asked, not looking back.

“A long time ago,” he said. “There’s nothing worth remembering.”

She said nothing more—the small key, still hidden in her pocket.

In the evening, after they've finished with the day's project, both of them went to their rooms. Miria meant to keep the key with her, but she changed her mind. There were a lot of things happening around her, and she didn't need another complication in her life. She gave the key back without hesitation. Somehow she knew that when the time is right, she will reach to that wooden box again and maybe learn a bit more about this mystery floating in the air.

But until that time she had to wait, think, try to understand if she was going mad or was there something else waiting for them, for her.

Something unexplainable,
Something older,
Something almost forgotten...