The Carpet’s Hunger

It was the summer I turned twelve, and my father had brought home a stack of old videotapes from a garage sale. Among them was a film he insisted was a classic, something about a haunted hotel. I didn’t catch the title; I was more interested in the candy he’d also bought. Our house was an old Victorian that creaked and groaned like a living thing, and the living room where we watched movies had a thick, dark red carpet that had been there since before we moved in. I remember the smell of dust and mothballs.

I was in the living room one afternoon, sprawled on the floor, when my father popped the tape into the VCR. He was an avid film buff, and he’d pause to explain cinematography, but I was half-watching, half-reading a comic book. Then came the scene with the old woman in the bathtub. I didn’t see much, but the image of her decaying face, the way she rose from the water, made my stomach turn. I left the room, my heart pounding. I never finished the movie.

A week later, my father was out of town on business. My mother was upstairs with a migraine, and I had the run of the house. It was about midnight, and I was in the living room again, but this time I was watching a cartoon on the new TV we’d got. I was sitting on a beanbag chair, right up close to the screen, the way I liked it. The only light came from the TV, casting flickering shadows on the walls. Behind me, to my right, was the staircase that led up to the dining room. I heard a creak from the top of the stairs, but I ignored it. Old houses make noises.

Then I heard it again, but this time it was a rhythmic tap, tap, tap, like footsteps coming down the stairs. I turned around, but the staircase was empty. I shook my head and returned to my cartoon. But then I felt a presence. The air grew cold, and the smell of dampness and rot filled my nostrils. I turned again, and there, at the top of the stairs, was a figure. It was a girl, about my age, in a white dress. She was standing perfectly still, her head tilted. I blinked, and she was gone.

I tried to tell myself it was my imagination, but a knot of fear had formed in my stomach. I reached for the remote to turn up the volume, to drown out the silence. But as my hand touched the remote, the TV flickered, and the cartoon was replaced by static. Then, through the static, I saw a hallway, long and dimly lit, with a patterned carpet that looked exactly like the one in our living room. And at the end of that hallway, the same girl stood, her back to me. She began to walk towards me, but she didn’t walk on the floor. She floated, her feet not touching the ground. As she got closer, I saw her face was pale and her eyes were black voids.

I screamed and scrambled to my feet, backing away from the TV. The girl stopped at the screen, her face pressing against the glass from the inside. Then the screen went black, and the TV hummed and powered off. The living room fell into darkness, except for a sliver of moonlight from the window. I heard a voice, soft and childish, coming from all around me: ‘You shouldn’t have watched us.’

I ran to the stairs, intending to go up to my mother, but the staircase seemed to stretch, growing longer than it should have been. I turned around, and the living room was gone. I was standing in a long hallway, similar to the one I’d seen on TV, but here the carpet was worn and stained. The walls were peeling, and the air was thick with dust. The girl was standing at the far end, her back still to me. Then she turned, and her face was not a girl’s face, but the face of the old woman from the bathtub, rotten and crawling with maggots.

I woke up on the beanbag, the TV still on, playing some late-night commercial. I checked the time; it was 3 AM. I told myself it was a nightmare, but when I looked at the carpet, I saw a faint stain, dark red, that hadn’t been there before. I never went into the living room alone again, and I never watched that film. But the stain remains, and sometimes, when the house is quiet, I can hear a faint laughter, coming from the walls, and I know that the carpet is hungry.