Attic Whisperer

Varisian Nursery Rhyme

• Is the attic whispering?
• Are we safe below?
• Do you think he’s listening?
• Is that his shadow?
• Do you hear him waking,
• Up above the stairs?
• Do you hear him weeping?
• Is he really there?
• Can you say “I’m speaking?”
• Are you saying naught?
• Is it you who’s weeping?
• Is it you he’s caught?

Beware the haunting sobs of the attic whisperer, for they carry the pained wrath of an abandoned child who perished due to the neglect or absence of their caretakers. Animated by loneliness, the embittered spirit binds itself to the material world in a body made of bits and oddments of a lost childhood—wooden blocks, scraps of blankets, ratty dolls, buttons, carved trinkets, and glass marbles. To give themselves the semblance of a head, they top their patchwork bodies with a small animal’s skull.

Attic whisperers most frequently lurk in old infirmaries, orphanages, and other such institutions where children were forgotten, and they lay dormant for decades in hopes that they might one day find a playmate to ease their eternal loneliness. When they sense the living, attic whisperers attempt to lure them into their clutches by calling out to them using the voice of a small child. Though attic whisperers intend only to play with those they encounter, they drain the breath and voice from living creatures as their dark impulses take over.