alking as lightly as you can you start making your way through the attic. Little clouds of dust rise into the air as you tiptoe along. There’s something about this place that makes you want to tread carefully. Something that makes you feel very uncomfortable. Something that makes you feel you shouldn’t be here.

You’re nearly into the next room when suddenly you hear a sound. Some sounds might be OK up here maybe, like mouse sounds, or wind rattling the windows, or flies buzzing. But a human whisper? No. No, that definitely should not be here.

You’re frozen with fear, your teeth rattling so hard you’re afraid they’ll cut off your tongue. You’re glad there’s no mirror because you never want to see yourself looking this grey. You try to think, to make your mind work, but it’s locked up completely. It might never work again. If you’re dead, for example, it’ll stop working. And you very well might be dead in the next moment or two. You go to take a step back but then you hear the whisper again. You listen for the words. All too clearly you hear them.

‘All who trespass will die,’ it hisses. ‘All who trespass will die.’

‘E . . . E . . . E . . .. E . . .. E . . .. . . E!’ you say. You don’t know what it means, but it’s definitely coming out of your mouth.

‘Death to the trespasser,’ it says again. ‘Come to me, trespasser, and prepare to die.’

‘Yi . . . yi . . . yi . . . yi . . . yi.’

‘You have thirty seconds to live,’ says the voice.

And suddenly there’s something familiar about it. You’ve heard that voice before. Only normally it says things like, ‘You have thirty seconds to change channels before I kill you.’

‘DANNY, YOU ROTTEN CREEP,’ you yell.

Your big brother pops up from behind a tea chest, laughing his stupid head off.

‘Gotcha, gotcha,’ he chants. ‘Gotcha! What a good one! You should have seen your face!’

‘Very funny,’ you say coldly. ‘I hope you found that amusing.’

‘Yes, I did, actually. Ha ha ha!’

‘How’d you get in here, anyway?’ you ask, hoping to change the subject.

‘Over there.’ He points to a door you hadn’t noticed before. It looks a much easier way than coming through the trapdoor.

‘So do you want to check this place out?’

‘Oh yeah, nothing better to do. What a dump. Here, look at this.’

He starts rummaging through a box of old clothes. Seems like the moths have used it as a restaurant, and dust flies everywhere. You start sneezing so, to get away, you go down to the end of the attic. It’s a real mess there, just a lot of junk, and so dark it’s hard to make out too many details. But you check it out anyway.

The biggest thing is an old trunk, about the size of your kitchen table. It’s huge. Behind that is a heap of machinery. To the left of that is one of those old self-operating wind-up winches, with a thin cable still attached to it. And that gives you an idea. An idea that will let you pay back your sneaky irritating brother.