The Ceiling Song

My name is Elias, and when I was eight, I learned that our house in the dusty town of Morrow Flats was not empty, even when I was alone. It started with the song. Not a real song, but a hum, low and wobbly, like a neighbor’s radio through a wall. It came from the ceiling, right above my bed, every night at the same time. I told my father, a practical man who fixed tractors, and he said it was the pipes. But pipes don’t hum in a minor key, and they don’t stop the moment you sit up and listen.

My great-aunt Marta was the family’s anchor, a woman with eyes like wet stones and a habit of humming to herself. When I described the sound, she went pale. She told me that in the old country, they called it the Ceiling Song, and that it was a lullaby for the dead who couldn’t find their way. She said that some people are born with a crack in their vision, and that I might be one of them. She gave me a small iron nail and told me to press it into my palm if the song ever got too loud. It didn’t feel like a gift. It felt like a curse.

The first time I saw her, I was sitting on the floor, playing with my toy cars. She was inside the ceiling, but not like a person in a room. She was pressed into the plaster, her shape visible like a bas-relief, her face a smudge of grey. Her mouth moved, and the air vibrated. I screamed, and my father came running. He saw only the cracked paint, which he blamed on the heat. But I saw her eyes – dark pits that seemed to pull the light out of the room.

Over the next week, the song grew more insistent. It wasn’t just at night. It followed me into the kitchen, into the yard, even into the school bathroom. The other kids complained of headaches, and the teacher said it was the new ventilation system. But I knew better. One afternoon, I looked up during a spelling test, and the ceiling tiles were moving, rippling like water, and I saw her face emerge – long, grey, with a mouth that opened too wide. She was singing my name. I raised my hand, but the teacher told me to put my head down and rest. When I closed my eyes, I felt a cold hand on my shoulder. I spun around, but the seat behind me was empty.

I begged my father to let me stay with Aunt Marta, but he dismissed it as a phase. So I tried to ignore it. I wore earplugs, and for a while, the song faded to a distant thrum. But then the visions started. They weren’t just in the ceiling anymore. They were in the reflection of the toaster, in the grain of the wooden door, in the swirling dust motes that danced in the afternoon sun. I saw an old woman, her skin hanging in folds, her fingers like twigs, crawling on the ceiling above my bed. She would stop and stare at me, her head tilted, and her mouth would move in a silent song. I wanted to tell my father, but the words wouldn’t come. My throat felt like it was filled with cotton.

On the third night, I woke to the song so loud it made my ears ring. The ceiling above my bed was bulging downward, like a balloon filling with water. And then it burst – not with water, but with a cascade of grey dust and plaster. In the middle of it, the old woman dropped to the floor with a wet thud. She was wearing a shapeless dress, and her feet were bare and gnarled. She turned her head, and her jaw unhinged, and she began to sing a song I knew from a dream. It was about a child who was lost in a field of yellow flowers, and how the wind carried his name to the ground. I felt my own lips move, and I was singing too, my voice thin and reedy, matching hers. I couldn’t stop. I cried, and the tears blurred my vision, but I kept singing.

Aunt Marta had told me to use the iron nail if the song got too loud. I reached for my pocket, but I was wearing my pajamas, which had no pockets. The nail was on the bedside table, just out of reach. I stretched, but my body wouldn’t obey. The old woman crawled closer, her face growing longer, her mouth widening, until it was a black cavern. Her breath was cold, like an open fridge, and it smelled of dust and decay. I felt her fingers on my ankle, light as dry leaves. I opened my mouth to scream, but only song came out.

Suddenly, the door burst open, and Aunt Marta was there, her grey hair wild, her eyes blazing. She was holding a Bible and a jar of something that glistened. She shouted a prayer – I didn’t understand the words, but they cut through the song like a knife. The old woman’s head snapped toward her, and she hissed a sound that was not human. Aunt Marta threw the contents of the jar at her – salt and iron filings – and the old woman recoiled, her skin sizzling where they touched. She let go of my ankle and scrambled back to the ceiling, her body moving in impossible ways, and then she was gone, leaving only a faint outline on the plaster.

Aunt Marta gathered me in her arms, and I cried into her shoulder. She whispered that the old woman was hungry, and that she had been feeding on my fear and my song. She said that the gift I had was not just to see the dead, but to give them voice, and that I had to be careful with what I sang. That night, she sat by my bed, holding my hand, and the song didn’t return. But I know it’s still there, in the ceiling, waiting. Sometimes, when the house is quiet, I hear a faint hum, and I press the iron nail into my palm until it hurts. I have learned to keep my voice low, and never to sing words I don’t understand. But the ceiling above my bed still has that dark stain, and I always sleep with one eye open, watching for the outline to move again.