The Long Hair in the Attic (屋根裏の長神 Yaneuchi no Nagakami ) is the first story in Flesh-Colored Horror and the fifth story in Museum of Terror vol. 3. It was originally published in Monthly Halloween in 1988.
Plot[]
Chiemi's boyfriend breaks up with her, telling her that while she tried to look her best for him, he still isn't satisfied and believes that they don't belong together. When she returns home, her sister, Eri, greets her, telling her that their house has mice in the attic. Eri notices that Chiemi is depressed, but doesn't know why.
While burning a picture of herself and her ex, Chiemi recalls back to when he asked her to grow her short hair out for him. She then falls asleep crying.
The next morning, Chiemi wakes up to find a dead mouse entangled in her hair. While washing it out, she decides once and for all to cut it off. Later, while Eri goes to find scissors to give Chiemi a haircut, she and her mother hear Chiemi screaming. When they rush upstairs, they find her decapitated body lying on the floor, with the head having vanished. The police are called, but no leads are found.
A week later, Chiemi's ex is awakened by a phone call with a strange sound. He yells at Chiemi for harrassing him as revenge for being dumped, only to remember that she's dead. He mentions that Chiemi would always keep her stress pent up and initially believed that she committed suicide. Suddenly, he realises that the strange sound is how Chiemi used to grind her teeth and stares at the phone in horror as it rings again.
Some time later, Eri asks her father for a flashlight so that she can check the attic for mice, having noticed that the sounds have stopped for a while now. Eri's father insists on going to check himself out of worry of losing another daughter, while Eri warns him of his heart condition. He climbs into the attic but doesn't respond to any of her calls. She goes to check on him, only to find him slumped against the wall, dead of a heart attack.
When she looks to see what caused him to die, she finds Chiemi's head, suspended from the rafters by her hair, which has grown to a tremendous length. Eri tries to take the head down by untangling her hair, only for the strands to slice her palms open. After mentioning she needs scissors, the hair suddenly opens the head's eyes and starts grinding its teeth. It then unhooks itself from the rafters and slithers out of the house. Eri realizes that her sister's hair came to life and killed her because it didn't want to be cut off and suspects that it has some sort of final purpose.
The story ends at Chiemi's ex's house, where to his horror, the long hair is slowly coming through the walls and ceiling.