The Tailor In The Attic

Sorry for this stories length, this happened last month a couple weeks before Christmas. I am also typing this from my iPhone, so please disregard minor misspellings. Thanks.

I am stationed in Italy, and am renting a house from an old Italian gentleman. He speaks a jumbled bunch of English, and I can speak a form of "spatalian" (Spanish/Italian). We can kind of communicate. When I first met the man, he told me that he was sorry for the junk in the attic, and that it was his wife's. I had never gone up in the attic until one night in December when I thought I heard some shuffling.

I proceeded to pull down the attic stairs and armed with a flashlight, I looked to see if something had happened. The attic is divided into two rooms about 20' x 20' each with a wall separating the two and a small doorway allows access to the further of the two rooms. Each of the rooms has four 1' x 1' windows with small drapes. There are two on the north side of the room and two on the south side, same with the other room. I thought maybe one of the windows was not shut and was allowing a breeze and possibly blew something around. However, all were tightly shut and locked. While I was up there I took the chance to snoop through the landlords "junk" as he called it. It was mostly some old clothes, a few antique furniture pieces, an old grandfather clock, and a few children's toys. When I turned around to leave, the light from my flashlight just barely lit up the far corner, and as I was turning there was a figure. I gasped and about had a heart attack. As I lit the corner up completely with my flashlight, I saw that the figure was one of those body figures that tailors use to hang shirts on so it fills the shirt out. On the ground to the left of this was sheets of what I assumed were silk in many different colours. They were stacked up neatly in a sort of pyramid style, except for one. A roll of black silk was on the floor directly in front of it. I told myself that this is what must have made the noise. I picked it back up and placed back on the pile and left the attic. Everything was good for another few days, until one night I heard the same shuffling noise as before. So, again I took my flashlight and went back into the attic to discover that the black roll of silk had fallen off of the pile again. I picked it up, and instead of putting it on top I placed it upright leaning against the pile. I went back down stairs, and I went back to cooking my dinner.

After I was done eating, I took a shower, but it was cut short due to the fact that my water heater broke mid shower... I called my landlord and he said he would be by in the morning to fix it. So, tired, cold, and frustrated because my water heater is also part of the house heating system, I went to bed. That lasted about 25 minutes before the shuffling noise happened again. Now I'm becoming angry at this stupid silk pile. As I climb into the attic I decided I was going to push the pile over so rolls would not fall off anymore. As walked through the doorway and rounded the corner, I froze in my tracks. There were now two rolls of silk on the floor directly in front of the tailors body stand. The black one and a white one. They were side by side perfectly even with each other. I was unsure if this was a coincidence that they had fallen like this or what. At this point I was not scared, but more intrigued. As I walked closer to pick up the two rolls of silk to try and recreate the placement of the silk, my phone started ringing. I ran back down stairs and answered the phone. It was my landlord. He stated that he didn't realize how cold it was supposed to get tonight, and was going to come over and fix it so I would have heat.

My landlord arrived and had the water heater fixed within 30 minutes. As he walked around the house to check all the radiator heaters on the walls, to make sure it was working, he noticed that my attic stairs were down. He asked me if it was all right if he could go up and look to make sure the roof tiles weren't leaking. I told him that it was his house, and that he was more than welcome to check out the house. I followed him up and he looked around the ceiling and floor of the first room to see if there were any wet stains or marks and proceeded to walk in the second room and check. When he got to the far corner where the silk was he stopped and asked if I knew what this was. I stated that it was silk and that rolls kept falling off the pile. He looked at me and said "nope" As I continued to look at him in an awkward look; he asked me if I could walk with him back to his house, because he had something that I had to see. I obliged. When we got to his house he asked me to sit down while he went and got it. He came back with a photo album binder and a bottle of wine. He poured us each a glass and opened the album. The very first picture was a newspaper article that showed a vehicle collision. As I looked at it, and attempted to translate it in my head, he started to tell me what I was looking at.

He told me that the accident killed his wife and daughter. His wife was on her way to drop their daughter off at a school party, I assume he meant dance, when a driver ran a stop sign and t-boned their car. He also told me that his wife was a dress/fashion designer and that she made the dress for their daughter. He then showed me something that made me get that feeling when the hair on the back of your neck stands up. He showed me a picture of his wife making the dress; she was making it in the attic of the house that they used to live in before they died. My house. As I examined the picture closer, I saw something that I cannot believe I didn't see sooner. The dress was made out of black and white silk. Not only that, but the two silk rolls were lined up perfectly with each other just like they were earlier that night. I asked him when this was taken. He stated that it was the night before the school party. He then told me two things that probably would have freaked me out a little bit if I hadn't already thought about this in my head while he was telling me about the picture.

The first thing was that, the anniversary of their deaths was tomorrow. The second thing was that he asked me if the rolls had fallen down before, I told him that the first one was about a week ago. He then told me that it took her a week to make the dress. He then started to tell me stories about their family and things they used to do. We talked for almost 6 hours. I think he liked talking about what happened. There was a few times during the stories that he had some tears in his eyes, which in return made me almost tear up. This man is in his 70's. The date on the paper was from either 76 or 78; the numbers were kind of run together and faded, so it was kind of hard to read. When I got home at 4 in the morning, I saw that we forgot to shut the attic stairs, I started to walk up, but stopped and just shut the stairs, I had no reason to go up there, nor did I care to. I figured out why the rolls kept falling. I was content with that.

-Dub