The Blue Room at Bellweather Flats

Some say that truth is stranger than fiction, but the truth I found in Bellweather Flats was stranger than any nightmare. In our mid-twenties, my best friend Derek and I scraped together enough cash to rent a two-bedroom in Portland’s Old Town, in a building that had once been a Victorian hotel. We were both fledgling graphic designers, and the rent was impossibly low, which should have been our first warning.

We met the landlord, a frail man named Bernard Hoyle, in the ground-floor office. He had the papery skin of someone who’d spent decades indoors, and his eyes were the color of old pennies. He led us up the creaking stairs to Apartment 3B, a sprawling unit that smelled of dust and lavender. The rooms were oddly shaped, with a long hallway that bent at an unnatural angle, leading to a small bedroom at the back. The walls were painted a deep, murky blue, and in the center of the room sat a heavy oak dresser with a single, ornate mirror.

‘That room was my wife’s sewing room,’ Bernard said, not meeting our eyes. ‘She passed a few years back. I’ve left it as it was. You can use it as an office or storage, but the door must stay open at all times. It’s in the lease.’ We exchanged a glance, but the rent was half of what we’d budgeted. We signed.

The first week was uneventful. We set up our desks in the living room, which had tall windows overlooking the street. But the blue room drew us. Derek would often pause at the threshold, staring into it. ‘It’s the light,’ he said one evening. ‘It feels like the room is humming.’ I dismissed it, but I felt it too, a subtle vibration under the floorboards.

Three weeks in, I was alone. I had left a sketchbook in the blue room. I stepped inside, and the air was thick, like wading through syrup. The mirror on the dresser seemed darker than before, and I caught a flicker at the edge of my vision—a woman in a long dress, her face obscured. I turned, but there was nothing. I grabbed my book and left, but as I passed the mirror, I saw my own reflection age twenty years, my hair gray, my eyes hollow. I blinked, and it was back to normal.

Derek started sleeping with his door open, complaining of suffocation in his room. He also began talking in his sleep, murmuring words I didn’t recognize. One night, I heard him get up. I followed him to the blue room. He stood before the mirror, his back to me, his voice low and flat. ‘She says the blue is the color of the deep, and we are all sinking.’ I grabbed his shoulder, and he spun, his eyes wide with terror. ‘Don’t close the door,’ he whispered. ‘Ever.’

The next day, Bernard came for a routine inspection. He saw the blue room door open and let out a breath. ‘You’ve been keeping it open,’ he said. ‘Good. Some tenants tried to close it. They didn’t last long.’ I asked him what happened. He sat heavily on our couch, rubbing his temples. ‘My wife, she was a seamstress. She made a dress the color of that room. A deep, ocean blue. She said it was her masterpiece. But she also said it was alive, that it wanted to cover the world. She spent hours in there, sewing. One night, she closed the door. We heard a single scream. When we broke in, she was gone. Only the dress remained, hanging on that mirror. We buried it in the yard, but some things don’t stay buried.’

That night, Derek tried to close the door. I wrestled him away. ‘Are you crazy?’ I shouted. He was shaking, tears streaming. ‘She told me to, she says it’s the only way to stop it, to seal it in.’ I looked into the room. The mirror was pulsing, and the blue paint seemed to inch like a living stain. I saw the woman again, her face now clear—it was Derek’s mother, who had died when he was a child. She mouthed, ‘Let me in.’

We moved out the next morning, breaking the lease. Bernard didn’t charge us. He just nodded, a sad smile. ‘It follows, you know. It’s in the fabric now.’ We live together in a new apartment, but we keep all doors open. Last week, I found a spool of blue thread in my coat pocket. Derek found a needle in his shoe. And sometimes, late at night, I hear a faint hum under the floor, and the walls seem to lean in, as if eager to swallow us. We don’t speak of it. We just keep walking, and we never, ever close a door.