The Clay Room

My name is Elena, and I was seventeen when we moved into the house on Hemlock Lane. It was a sprawling Victorian in the middle of a Nebraska cornfield, miles from any town. My father had inherited it from a great-aunt he never spoke of. The place smelled of dust and dried flowers, and the walls were covered in faded floral wallpaper that seemed to peel the moment we set foot inside.

My sister, Rosa, and I shared the largest upstairs room, which had a bay window overlooking the field. The previous owner, Aunt Cecily, had been a potter. Her workshop, a separate brick building behind the house, was crammed with clay figures—hundreds of them, each with hollow, staring eyes. We were told not to touch them. My father said they were just her art, but Rosa swore one of them blinked.

The first night, I woke to the sound of scraping. It was like nails dragging across glass, coming from the window above Rosa’s bed. She was already sitting up, her face pale in the moonlight.

‘It’s a branch,’ I said, though the nearest tree was thirty feet away.

‘There’s no wind,’ she whispered.

The scraping stopped. Then, three distinct knocks, slow and deliberate, on the pane.

I flicked on the lamp. The yard was empty. But on the windowsill, there was a small handprint, pressed into the dust. It was too broad and too fat to be a child’s—like a clay hand had been flattened there.

We didn’t sleep that night. In the morning, Rosa refused to go to school. I found her in the kitchen, staring at a shelf of Aunt Cecily’s mugs. One of them, a grotesque face, had a fresh smear of red clay on its lips.

Over the following weeks, the occurrences escalated. Doors opened on their own. Our cat refused to enter the house, yowling at the workshop door. My father dismissed it all as old-house creaks. But then, the sculptures started moving. I swear the clay farmer in the corner tilted his head when I walked past. Rosa said she heard chanting from the workshop at night, low and rhythmic, like a buried heartbeat.

One afternoon, I confronted the nearest neighbor, an ancient farmer named Mr. Hess.

‘The Clay Girl,’ he said, spitting tobacco. ‘Cecily’s daughter. She died as a child. Cecily tried to preserve her memory by making her likeness. But the girl never stayed in the clay.’

He pointed to a lump in his field—a crude, misshapen form, like a failed statue. ‘She’s been trying to climb out of the ground for years. Your great-aunt trapped her in that workshop. But now you’re here.’

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The scraping returned, but this time it came from inside the wall. It sounded like something was being molded, squeezed, pushed through the plaster. I heard Rosa scream.

I ran to her. She was pointing at the window. The handprint was back, and this time, it was accompanied by a face. A face made of wet, dripping clay, with deep, empty eye sockets. It pressed against the glass, smearing brown strands across it. Then, it spoke, in a voice that sounded like mud swirling.

‘Let me in. I want to go home.’

I grabbed Rosa, and we ran. But the house seemed to twist. The hallway stretched. The doors were sealed. We ended up in the workshop, surrounded by the silent figures. They were all facing us now. Each one had a fresh coating of moisture, as if they had just been drenched.

‘She needs a host,’ I realized. ‘She wants to be in a real body.’

Rosa was trembling. ‘Elena, your hands.’

I looked down. My skin was turning gray and damp, hardening into clay. I tried to scream, but my mouth sealed shut.

I remember falling into a pit of cold, wet earth. When I woke, I was in the clay room—a hidden cellar I had never seen. There was a single candle. And across from me, Aunt Cecily’s daughter, now fully formed, sat on a stool, smiling at me with her eternal, hollow smile.

‘You’ll do,’ she said.

I’ve been here for three days. No one has come. The house sits silent above, and Rosa… I can hear her footsteps on the floorboards, but whenever I scream, the clay in my throat solidifies. I see myself in a cracked mirror. My face is lumpy, my eyes like pits. I am becoming one of her creations.

And in my ear, she keeps whispering: ‘You’re clay now. You’ll never be hard or cold enough to escape.’