Flesh-Colored Horror - Long Hair in The Attic

Long Hair in The Attic

• Originally appeared in "Monthly Magazine Halloween" November 1988

The story begins with a car screeching to a halt outside of the Amano house. A young woman sits in the car silently as her (ex)boyfriend (Hiratsuka) tells her to stop calling him because their relationship is over. He mentions her making big changes for him - her style of dress, perfume, growing her hair long - that he liked at first, but that the girl - Chiemi Amano - needs a more sincere guy and he's more into one night stands. She quietly says goodbye and gets out. The car zooms off.

Chiemi walks inside and is greeted by her sister, Eri, who tells her that there are rats in the house, right above her room. Chiemi seems distant and inattentive as she goes to her room. Eri comes in to ask about the rats, and Chiemi says their father needs to set up more traps.

A flash downstairs to Eri telling their father that Chiemi is home but seems depressed, then back upstairs where Chiemi is burning a picture of the formerly happy couple at the ocean. She flashes back to her, with short cropped hair, and Hiratsuka telling her she should grow it out to about waist length. Back to the present she laughs about how selfish he was even then and begins to sob.

Chiemi wakes in the morning to find a dead rat tangled in her long black hair. After a small freak out, she washes out her hair and decides to cut her hair. She asks her sister to get scissors and help her, but as Eri asks their mother for the scissors Chiemi screams from the other room. Eri runs back to Chiemi and finds that she has been decapitated and her head cannot be found. Neighbors come and call the police, Mrs. Amano faints, and Eri sits screaming in the hallway about rats biting her sister's head off.

Flash to a week later. Hiratsuka, half asleep, gets what he thinks is a prank call from Chiemi. A strange grinding noise comes over the phone, and then hangs up. Waking up a little more, he realizes that Chiemi has been dead for over a week and reminisces about how emotionless Chiemi was towards him. He then realizes that the noise over the phone reminds him of the sound Chiemi would make at night when she was grinding her teeth. Then the phone rings again.

Back at the Amano house, Eri asks her dad for a flashlight. She says she wants to go check the rat traps in the attic since she hasn't heard them lately and he offers to go with her. He goes up with the flashlight first, but when he doesn't come back down or answer her calls, Eri goes up after him. She find him dead - face frozen in terror - staring at Chiemi's head which has suspended itself from the rafters of the attic. Eri tries to get her sister down by pulling at the hair but the hair cuts into her hands. Eri turns to go get scissors and the hair - opening Chiemi's eyes and grinding her teeth - makes a break for it, crawling out of the attic and down through the house. The last scene shows Hiratsuka in his house where black strands of hair are coming in through cracks in the ceiling and breaking through the walls while he begs for it to stop.