Chess

Tracie Warner brushed a strand of blonde hair off her cheek and wiped her forehead with her sleeve, leaning back against the wall. Who knew a set of stairs to an attic could be so long? It was obvious no one had been up here in years. Corpses of beetles and moths and houseflies cluttered the stairs, caked in thick gray dust. It was an altogether unsettling atmosphere.

Tracie shook her head. Here she was, freaked out over dead bugs when she had a job to do. She continued walking. As unhappy as she was to be staying at her grandparents’ house over the summer break, she had to admit she liked that they trusted her enough to pull their antique china sets down from the attic. Nan wanted to sell one, and the client had narrowed it down to two he wanted to pick from.

Nearing the top of the steep staircase, Tracie pulled the narrow, slightly rotted wooden door open.

She was greeted with a musty, moldy smell and a cluttered room, lit only by the light from the hall, which cut through the wall of dust kicked up by the door. Tracie coughed and held her hand over her nose, eyes watering, as she peered into the room and waited for the dust to settle. How many centuries had it been since this place had been disturbed?

The dust had cleared enough for Tracie to enter. She nudged the door a bit wider and crept into the room. There was barely space to step, crowded as the floor was with ancient furniture, chests full of jewelry and, in some cases, old table linens that were more moth-eaten holes than fabric, artists’ easels so covered with dust that Tracie couldn’t make out what had been painted underneath, and a surprisingly large collection of clocks, along with about ten sets of tools that might be for jewelry fixing, clock making, or lock picking.

How was she ever going to find the china?

Tracie began her search by the door, finding an ancient-looking set of dentist’s tools stuffed between a bin of half-disintegrated teddy bears of varying sizes and a sealed crate that smelled like death--some kind of long-spoiled food, she guessed. A glass swan caught her eye, nestled on a table among a collection of delicate glass animals. Not the china she was looking for, but they were beautiful.

Tracie waded through a stack of old books and maps, noticing a stately armoire with a clouded glass front. She took hold of its small, intricately decorated iron handle and attempted to tug the door open. The magnets released, the ancient hinges squealed, and the armoire door popped. A porcelain candlestick toppled off a top shelf, and Tracie barely managed to catch it before it shattered on the ground.

The china cabinet! Tracie had hit the jackpot. Expensive-looking wooden boxes crowded the shelves, surprisingly clear of dust. Nan had requested “the white ones with the gold birds and the black ones with the red fish.” She hadn’t given any description of the boxes they were housed in, so Tracie would have to look through them all to find them.

After setting the candlestick back on its ledge, Tracie pulled a box off the lowest shelf. The wood was a honeyed gold color, shiny with lacquer. Tracie set it on the floor, undid the latch, and lifted open the hinged lid.

A little girl’s tea set waited inside, simple porcelain teacups and saucers colored white with blue edges in imitation of a real set. It was clearly not as valuable or expensive as much of the other china Tracie had seen in her grandma’s meager downstairs collection, but it was still a lot nicer than the metal set she herself had played with at a young age. Tracie set the box aside and pulled another off the shelf.

This box had almost reddish wood and was much lighter than the previous box. Inside Tracie found embroidered napkins and fancy silverware.

The next box to be opened was a lucky find. The china set inside was cream-colored with golden peacocks and storks, which seemed a bit random but beautiful nonetheless.

It took three more boxes before Tracie could find the other set her Nan had requested. The simplistic, squarish teacups were black with red jumping fish engraved on the handles and insides. Tracie stacked the two boxes together and set the rest carefully back on the shelves.

Tracie stood up to leave, when suddenly a gleam caught her eye.

The light from the hallway reflected off a marble chess set, alone on a spindly side table. Unlike everything around it, the chess set was totally dust free. While nothing appeared wrong with it, Tracie seemed to feel a somewhat malicious aura coming off it, like she was being warned to stay away.

Tracie shook her head in disbelief at herself. First the bugs, now this? What wasn’t she scared of? It was just a chess set. She made her way over to it.

Now that she was closer, Tracie could see faint words carved into the base of the board. Property of… She couldn’t read the name.

Tracie’s grandpa had taught her to play chess just yesterday. She couldn’t remember how most of the pieces moved, except the pawns… and the horse ones. She knew those moved in a weird way—two squares forward, one square sideways—and they could jump over other pieces. The white horse piece was so pretty, minute details carved into its marble mane… Before Tracie could stop herself, she picked up the leftmost white horse, considered it for a moment, and moved it to a nearby empty square.

A plummeting feeling in her stomach surprised her. She felt like she’d done something wrong, like when she left the hose running in the backyard and only remembered after she’d left on vacation. Like something bad was going to happen, and it was her fault.

Whatever. It was just an old chess set. Tracie picked the china sets up and headed back to the stairs to give them to her grandmother.

The next day, Tracie returned to the attic. Nan had sent her to put the black-and-red set back—she’d sold the white-and-gold to the buyer.

Tracie opened the door, glad the cloud of dust was smaller now. The chess board, familiar from the day before, caught her eye. She struggled over to the armoire, set the china on its shelf, and made her way over.

A piece had moved.

A black pawn, on the far right side of the board, was two spaces forward from where it had been the day before.

Something shattered. Tracie whipped around, spotting a flash of something in the corner of her eye, but when she looked, nothing was there. A glass elephant from the table of animals had toppled off and broken into millions of tiny, sharp shards. And the room was empty.

Heart racing, Tracie slowly turned back to the chess table. It was clear that something strange was going on here. But… who was she to turn down a game of chess?

Tracie moved a pawn, blocking the black one. Then she turned and skedaddled out of the room.

Strange as she felt messing with the chess set, Tracie found herself returning day after day. Whoever was moving the black pieces, they were much better at chess than she was—no hard feat. She’d gotten her grandpa to play a couple more games with her (to his delight), and now she felt confident that she could remember how the pieces moved, but she was far from skilled.

After two weeks, Tracie had lost most of her major pieces and her king was starting to get cornered. The uneasy feeling grew every time a piece disappeared from the board, and the first time her king was put in check, Tracie barely had time to find a bathroom before she threw up from the ball of nervous nausea in her stomach.

But… leaving a chess game unfinished was rude.

She couldn’t stop.

Tracie’s grandparents noticed a change in her. She was distracted, anxious, shifty; she barely ate and didn’t seem to be sleeping. Each day, she disappeared—just for a few minutes, but the attic steps seemed to be less dusty now. She constantly asked Grandpa Warner to play chess, and while he was happy to oblige, he also felt… concerned. Why had she become so obsessed? Every time she lost, she seemed about to burst into tears. The few times she won, a look of almost grim satisfaction entered her eyes.

A month had gone by.

Tracie, sporting dark circles under her eyes, made her reluctant way up the stairs for the last time. She knew it was the last time, because she had been unable to save her king from being trapped and she was only a move away from checkmate. Tracie didn’t know what would happen once the game was lost, but she clung to the hope that she could just forget about the malicious chess set and finally get a good night’s rest. She hadn’t for a month, since she’d moved that first piece.

The set looked the same as it always did. Cast in deep shadow, marble edges sharply carved, cold yet still almost inviting. Tracie sluggishly picked her way through the furniture to the spindle-legged table.

The only move left to her was a useless advancement of a pawn. Her king was immobile, threatened on all sides and soon to be checked for the final time. Tracie, defeated, moved her pawn and turned to leave.

But… what was that? Before she could step away, Tracie could swear she heard a faint grinding.

She glanced back, and almost couldn’t believe her eyes.

A black bishop, the final piece to her king’s demise, was moving.

Cold terror seized Tracie’s heart at the sight of the piece edging slowly across the board, and she stumbled backwards. Her heel caught on a wooden chest, and she toppled backwards onto the table that held the glass animals.

The table broke. The figurines shattered as she landed in the wreckage. Bleeding from dozens of tiny cuts and badly skinned elbows, Tracie scrambled to her feet and fought to get through the clutter.

She glanced back just before reaching the door. The bishop, winking in the dim light, seemed to mock her as it finished its slow journey and came to rest on a square near her king.

Tracie Warner had officially lost.

Her vision tunneled, filled with the evil chess set, and then everything went dark.