The Chair in the Attic

When we bought the old farmhouse on Cedar Lane, the realtor mentioned it had been empty for a decade. That should have been my first clue. My husband, Dennis, was eager to start renovations before our daughter Lena was born, so he spent the first month there alone, painting and stripping wallpaper. He’d call me every night with strange reports: the bathtub faucet would turn on by itself, and he swore he could hear someone pacing in the hallway above our bedroom. He eventually gave up on sleeping upstairs and made a nest on the couch.

I dismissed it as the settling of an old house, or Dennis’s imagination fueled by too many horror movies. But when Lena and I moved in, I found out the truth. The house was almost finished, save for one room on the second floor that we planned as Lena’s nursery. The door was always closed, and I figured we’d get to it later. But every night, after we put Lena down in our room (I felt uneasy about the nursery), I’d hear footsteps above us – light, quick, like a child running from one end of the hall to the other. Sometimes they’d stop right above our bed, and I’d hold my breath, waiting. Sometimes they’d stamp, as if in frustration. I never went up there alone.

Even worse, in our bedroom, with Lena’s bassinet at the foot of the bed, I’d wake in the dead of night to feed her, and I’d feel a presence. It wasn’t always menacing; sometimes it felt like a curious child watching over her. But other times, it was suffocating, like the air turned thick and I couldn’t reach for her fast enough. I started keeping Lena in bed with us, curled against my side, because it was the only way I could sleep. Dennis thought I was being paranoid, but he agreed to check out the attic one weekend.

Up in the attic, nestled between water-stained boxes, we found an old child’s chair – oak, with a worn red cushion and a scratch pattern on the armrest. Underneath it, carved into the floorboards, was a name: ‘Evie Harper’. Our house had been a foster home in the 1960s, and a girl named Evie had died there of pneumonia. The footsteps, we later learned, had been heard by every family since. But we were the first to find the chair. Dennis wanted to get rid of it, but something stopped me. I felt a strange pull, a kinship. That night, for the first time, the footsteps walked down the hall and stopped at our door. Then, I heard a child’s voice, soft and pleading, say, ‘Can I rock in my chair?’

I got up, crept to the attic, and sat in that tiny chair, my knees up to my chest. I talked to the darkness. I told Evie she could come and sit with us, as long as she didn’t scare Lena. The footsteps seemed to fade, and for a few weeks, the house was quiet. But then, one night, I woke to find the nursery door wide open. In the pale moonlight, I saw a small shape rocking in the chair – but the chair was in the attic, and the shape was too solid to be a ghost. It was Lena, in her sleep, sitting upright in the chair that had somehow moved to the nursery, rocking back and forth, smiling at something I couldn’t see. Dennis found me that morning, sitting on the floor, rocking with her, whispering that Evie just wanted a friend. He tried to take Lena away, but she screamed and clung to the chair. That was three years ago. Now, we never go anywhere without the chair. It sits in the corner of the nursery, and every night, I hear both of them, laughing, running, stomping – two children playing. But when I go to check on Lena, she’s always alone, sitting in the chair, rocking, with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. And sometimes, I catch her whispering, ‘She’s my friend now, Mommy.’ I know I should take that chair away and burn it. But every time I try, I see Evie’s face in my mind, and I feel that same pull – the pull of a mother who can’t abandon a child, even one that’s not mine.