The Book That Fell

The day we moved into the house was damp and grey, a low pressure system pressing down on the valley like a thumb on a bruise. The realtor had described it as ‘characterful,’ which I later learned meant the floorboards creaked in a pattern that seemed to follow you, and the attic door was nailed shut. I told myself it was just settlement noises, the house settling, the wind, my imagination. But my brother, Leo, was only a year old, and the baby monitor was our only link to him when he slept. He stayed in the spare room, whose closet had a peculiar recessed ceiling, directly beneath that sealed attic. We never opened that closet. We had our reasons, though we couldn’t articulate them.

The first thing that happened was with the book. Papa had inherited a leather-bound tome from our great-grandfather, a man named Ogale. We kept it on the top shelf of the living room bookcase, a relic of a culture we didn’t fully remember. One evening, as we were clearing dinner, I joked to my wife, ‘Ogale sounds like ogre, if you slur it.’ A stupid joke, I know. But as the words left my mouth, the book slid off the shelf and hit the floor with a thud. The spine cracked, pages splaying. There was no explanation. The shelf was level. The book had been firmly in place for months. My wife stared at me, her face pale. I laughed it off, but a cold knot tightened in my stomach. That night, I noticed the book had landed on a page describing a burial rite for a patriarch, with a drawing of a figure ascending to a realm above the rafters.

The footsteps began a week later. At first, it was just occasional thumps from the hallway, which I blamed on the cat, Milo. But more than once, I’d be in the lounge reading, and the sound would come—heavy, deliberate strides, like a man in boots. I’d look up, expecting to see someone, but the hallway was empty. The cat would be curled on the sofa beside me, ears forward, eyes fixed on the ceiling. ‘It’s just the house settling,’ I told myself. But it wasn’t. The footsteps would pause outside the spare room door. I started carrying the baby monitor everywhere, even when Leo was awake, because I needed to hear him, to know he was safe.

The baby monitor. That was the worst. Leo slept in that room, in a cot against the wall, and the closet was on the other side. The monitor was placed on a shelf next to the cot, its microphone facing the bed. At night, we’d hear the usual white noise, the occasional murmur of a sleeping baby. But then, the voices. They were low, muffled, as if coming from inside the closet. At first, I thought it was a radio station bleed-through. But the words were distinct, guttural, like liquid consonants and vowels that didn’t belong to any language I knew. I’d rush in, but the room would be silent, Leo asleep, the closet door slightly ajar, though we never touched it. I’d close it firmly, but by morning, it would be open again.

I tried to rationalize. I bought a new monitor, but the voices continued. My wife heard them too, her eyes wide with inexplicable fear. We began to argue about whether to leave. I was the skeptic, but then I found the attic door in the hallway, the one we never opened. It was a rectangular panel in the ceiling, and one day I noticed a thin line of dust had been disturbed around its edges. As if someone had opened it. I got a ladder and pushed it open reluctantly. The attic was empty, just insulation and a faint smell of old wood. But at the far end, against the chimney, there was a small stack of boxes. I crawled over and found a child’s drawing, in crayon, of a figure emerging from a dark square. On the back, in shaky handwriting, was the name ‘Itshe.’ My great-grandfather’s name. I had never told anyone about the joke.

That night, I sat with the drawing, the book on the table, and the monitor crackling with static. And then I heard a child’s voice, clear as day: ‘It’s not shite, it’s Itshe. You said it wrong.’ I turned to the monitor, and the closet door was open, and the attic panel above was slightly lifted. A cold draft swept over me, and the footsteps started in the hallway, coming closer. My wife screamed from the other room, and I grabbed Leo, and we ran out of the house, leaving everything behind. We never went back.

We moved to a city apartment with no attic, no closet with a recessed ceiling, no book. But sometimes, when the apartment is quiet, I hear a faint thud, like a book falling, and a muffled voice on the baby monitor, even though Leo is now a toddler and we don’t use it anymore. It says, ‘You didn’t say it right.’