The Bone Comb

The boarding house at 13 Thornwood Lane was a relic of a bygone era, with its creaking floorboards and wallpaper that peeled like sunburnt skin. I was there for a week, housesitting for a reclusive widow who had supposedly gone to visit her sister in the next state over. The nights were long and oppressive, the silence punctuated by the constant ticking of a grandfather clock in the hallway that seemed to grow louder as the hours wore on.

On the third night, I retired to the guest bedroom, a room that felt colder than the rest of the house no matter how high I turned up the radiator. I lay in the four-poster bed, covers pulled up to my chin, watching the shadows dance on the ceiling as the wind moaned through the bare trees outside. I must have dozed off, because I have no memory of falling asleep, only of being yanked awake by a searing pain on the left side of my face. It felt like someone had pressed a hot iron to my cheek, and I sat bolt upright, gasping, my hand flying to the spot. The pain was so intense that it brought tears to my eyes, but by the time I could focus, it had subsided to a dull throb. Confused and exhausted, I rubbed my cheek and chalked it up to some outlandish dream, then lay back down and eventually drifted off again.

Morning came with a dull gray light filtering through the lace curtains. I shuffled to the bathroom, still half-asleep, and when I looked in the mirror, I froze. There, on my left cheek, was a scratch about two inches long, raised and red, as if a razor had been drawn across my skin. It wasn’t deep, but it was unmistakably deliberate, a clean, straight line that I knew I hadn’t given myself. I had no pets, no long nails, and the widow had assured me the house had no animals. The only other living thing in that house was me. My mind raced, but I could find no explanation.

That evening, I called my closest friend, Mara, and begged her to stay the night with me. She lived an hour away but drove over with a bottle of wine and a skeptical expression. We sat in the kitchen, the only room that felt even remotely warm, and I showed her the scratch. She traced it with her fingertip, frowning. ‘You sure you didn’t scratch yourself in your sleep?’ she asked, but I shook my head. ‘I don’t have fingernails, remember? I bite them down to the quick.’ She nodded, unconvinced.

We decided to stay in the guest room again, thinking that maybe if there were two of us, whatever it was might not show. We pushed the heavy oak bed against the wall and took turns keeping watch, but the hours dragged on, and eventually, our eyelids grew heavy. I think we both must have fallen asleep around two in the morning. I was in a deep, dreamless state when a sound jolted me awake—a metallic click, like a lock turning. I lay still, listening, and then I heard it: a soft rustling, as if someone was riffling through the drawers of the vanity across the room. I turned my head slowly, and in the faint moonlight filtering through the curtains, I saw a shape. It was tall and thin, its arms too long for its body, and it was leaning over the vanity, its head cocked at an unnatural angle as if listening. It held something in one hand, something that caught the light and glinted—a bone of some sort, or a comb, I couldn’t tell.

I wanted to scream, but my throat was frozen. I reached out blindly to shake Mara, but my hand found empty air. She was gone. The shape by the vanity turned its head toward me, and despite the darkness, I could see that it had no face, just a smooth, pale expanse where features should have been. Then it raised the object it held and made a sweeping motion in the air. I felt a line of fire across my cheek, and this time it was deeper, sharper. I cried out, and in that instant, the shape vanished, leaving only the stinging wound and the lingering smell of dust and old perfume.

Mara burst in from the hallway, her face pale. ‘I heard you scream, what happened?’ I pointed at the vanity, my hand shaking, but there was nothing there. The room was empty, save for the two of us. I told her what I saw, and she looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. But then her eyes fell on something on the floor by the vanity—a small, ornate comb, carved from bone, its teeth stained reddish-brown. She bent to pick it up, and as she did, I noticed the marks on her face. Three parallel scratches, raw and new, were etched across her right brow. She looked at the comb in her hand, and then at me, and for the first time, I saw real fear in her eyes.

The next morning, we found the widow in the attic, sitting in a rocking chair, her hands folded in her lap, a smile frozen on her face. She had been dead for weeks, by the look of it, but her body was preserved, unnaturally so, and clutched in one hand was a photograph: a man, tall and thin, with no face, standing behind a woman who looked remarkably like the widow. We ran from that house, and I never looked back. But sometimes, in the quiet of my own home, I catch a whiff of old perfume, and a faint burning sensation lingers on my left cheek. And when I close my eyes, I see that comb, waiting for its next victim.