The Coal Chute Lullaby

The house was a brick monster with a sagging porch and a coal chute that had been bricked over decades ago, but the iron door remained, a rusted scar on the foundation. I was twenty-three, with a six-month-old named Jamie, and my mother and I had moved into my great-aunt’s place after she passed. It was 1994, and the only thing I believed in was exhaustion. My husband was gone, faded over the phone lines, and I was running on fumes and formula.

Jamie had reflux, which meant nights were a blur of crying and burping and pacing the creaking floorboards. The living room was our domain, a pull-out couch that smelled of dust and camphor, directly beneath what was once my great-aunt’s sewing room. The stairs to that room were narrow and lurching, and the room itself always exhaled a cold breath, even in August. I never went up there if I could help it, not even to collect the boxes my mother wanted for the attic.

The kitchen was at the back of the house, past the dining room and through a swinging door that always seemed to move on its own. I would shuffle there in the dark, the floorboards sighing under my bare feet, Jamie’s wail fading to a gurgle as I filled a bottle. The night was moonless, the hallway pitch black, and I knew the exact number of steps to the fridge by memory. But that night, as I returned, the bottle warm in my hand, I heard it: a thump from above, heavy and deliberate, like a body being dropped on the floor. I froze, listening. Then another thump, and the sound of furniture being dragged across the ceiling.

I told myself it was the house settling, or maybe raccoons in the walls. But my hands were shaking as I fed Jamie, and I didn’t dare look up. The dragging stopped. A silence so thick it felt like a blanket over my ears. And then, from the stairway, came a sound that made my blood run cold: a lullaby, hummed in a dry, crackling voice, as if the notes themselves were being swallowed by dust.

The humming was familiar, a tune my mother used to sing when I was a child. But there was a wrongness to it, like a music box wound too tight. I clutched Jamie to my chest, his tiny mouth still fixed on the bottle. The humming grew louder, and I realized it was coming down the stairs. I could hear the creak of each step, slow and deliberate, as if whoever was humming was taking their time. I wanted to scream, but my throat was a knot. I clamped my hand over Jamie’s mouth, praying he wouldn’t cry. The creaking stopped just at the bottom of the stairs, where the hallway turned toward the bathroom.

I held my breath. The humming continued, but it was muffled now, like the singer was facing the bathroom door. Then I heard another sound: the clink of a bottle, the fizz of a drop of milk hitting glass. My rational mind said it was my mother, up late, but she was a heavy sleeper and snored like a log. The humming began to fade, moving back up the stairs, but as it did, I heard a whisper, so faint I might have imagined it: ‘The drain is full.’

The rest of the night was a blur of shallow sleep and racing heart. In the morning, I told my mother about the sounds. She laughed it off, said the house was old, full of drafts and falling plaster. But when I looked at her, I saw a flicker of something in her eyes, something she quickly hid. Later that day, I went past the stairway, and I noticed the bathroom door was ajar. I had a sudden impulse to check the sink, the tub. There was a rusted drain in the bathroom floor, a relic of an old shower. It was clogged with a wad of dark hair, and the sink had a pinkish stain around the drain, like dried blood.

That night, at 3 AM, Jamie woke again. I fed him in the kitchen, my eyes on the hallway. The house was silent, but I felt a weight in the air, like something was waiting. As I carried Jamie back to the couch, I heard a soft creak above me, then a rhythmic scraping, like a rocking chair. The lullaby started again, but this time it was clearer, and I recognized the words: ‘Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.’ But the voice was wrong, too low, too guttural, and it dragged on the last note as if the singer was struggling for breath.

I stood in the dark, Jamie’s head lolling against my shoulder, and I felt a draft from the stairway, cold as a grave. I took a step toward the stairs, not knowing why, and the humming stopped. In the silence, I heard a wet sound, like something being pulled from a drain. And then the front door, which I had locked with a deadbolt, slowly swung open, letting in the damp night air.

My mother came running down the hall, her face pale in the moonlight. She grabbed me and pulled me back to the couch, her voice trembling as she said, ‘Don’t listen to it. It’s just the old pipes.’ But she was shaking, and I knew she was lying. The door swung shut on its own, the lock clicking into place. Jamie started to cry, and the lullaby began again, louder this time, coming from the bathroom.

I didn’t sleep after that. I sat on the couch, watching the bathroom door, waiting for whatever it was to show itself. The sun rose, pale and weak, and the sounds faded. But that evening, when I finally dared to open the bathroom door, the sink was full of black water, and the drain was clogged with something that looked like a coiled umbilical cord. I didn’t tell my mother. I just took Jamie and left, driving to a motel in the next town, my hands white on the wheel.

I never went back to that house. My mother stayed, and when I called her a week later, she said the sounds had stopped, but she had found a baby bottle in the coal chute, half full of curdled milk. She never mentioned the lullaby again, and I never asked. To this day, I hate the sound of humming, and I can’t sleep with a door ajar. Sometimes, when I’m half asleep, I hear a faint creak of stairs, and a dry voice humming a lullaby, and I wonder if it’s still waiting, in that house, for another mother and child to listen at 3 AM.