The Color of the Room

In 2012, I signed the papers for a dilapidated bungalow on the outskirts of a small town in upstate New York. The house had a sad history, many owners, each leaving a layer of decay. The previous tenants had been renters who treated the place with contempt, leaving behind a haze of cigarette smoke, stained carpet, and walls covered in a bizarre, glossy black paint in the main bedroom. The rest of the house was a sickly yellow, like old nicotine. As I walked through, I already planned the renovation: I would strip everything, repaint, and make it mine.

Before the work began, I took the obligatory ‘before’ photos. In the main bedroom, the one with the black walls, a strange, faint luminosity appeared on the camera screen. It was a soft, grayish shimmer, like heat haze, hovering near the corner. I assumed it was a lens flare, so I adjusted the settings and snapped another. The shimmer remained, almost pulsing. I laughed nervously, saying to myself, ‘Probably a smudge on the lens. I’ll clean it later.’ But I never cleaned it, and I soon forgot about it.

After weeks of priming and painting, I covered the black with a calming sage green and the yellow with a warm ivory. The smell of fresh paint and sawdust masked any lingering odors. I moved in with my aging border collie, Max. Max was a good dog, but in that house, he was always on edge. He would stare at the corner in the bedroom, his ears flat, a low growl rumbling in his chest. I chalked it up to the new surroundings, but it was more than that. He refused to enter that room alone, and at night, he’d whine until I let him sleep on my bed.

The first few nights were uneventful. But one evening, as I sat reading in the living room, I heard a faint, rhythmic tapping coming from the bedroom. It was soft, like fingernails on wood. I entered to find Max standing rigid, facing the corner. The tapping stopped when I walked in. I felt a chill, but I convinced myself it was just the house settling.

Night after night, the tapping returned, always from that same corner, always just at the edge of hearing. I would march in, and the sound would cease. The silence felt heavier. The room always seemed colder, even in summer. I bought a thermometer; it was always five degrees cooler in that corner.

One night, I woke to Max barking frantically. He was in the corner, barking at something I couldn’t see. The room was pitch black except for the dim light from the hallway. I fumbled for the light switch, and when the light flooded in, Max was trembling, his eyes fixed on a spot on the wall. And there, on the fresh sage green paint, was a faint, black smudge. It looked like a handprint, but the fingers were too long, the palm too wide. I wiped at it, but it wouldn’t come off. I took a damp cloth and scrubbed, but the smudge remained, as if it were under the paint.

The next day, I repainted that wall. As I rolled the paint, the smudge seemed to move, just a fraction, as if it was shifting to avoid the brush. I told myself I was imagining it. But Max watched me, and his growl was low and constant.

A week later, I woke to find Max lying in the exact spot of the corner, not moving. His eyes were open, but vacant, and his body was ice cold. I buried him in the backyard, crying. That night, I couldn’t bear to sleep in that room, so I slept on the couch. But even there, I felt watched.

The next morning, I walked into the bedroom to get dressed. On the wall in the corner, the black handprint had returned, but now it was larger, darker, and it seemed to have fingers that were curling, as if gesturing for me to come closer. I backed away, but my foot caught, and I fell. As I scrambled up, I saw something that made my blood run cold: the handprint was moving. It was slowly sliding down the wall, leaving a trail of black goo.

I grabbed my keys and ran out of the house. I drove to a motel and stayed for three days, trying to decide what to do. When I finally returned, the house was quiet. The handprint was gone. I thought maybe I had overreacted. I cautiously entered the bedroom. The room was normal. I breathed a sigh of relief.

But that night, as I lay in bed, I heard the tapping again. It was coming from under the bed this time. I didn’t want to look, but I had to. I swung my legs over the edge and peered into the darkness beneath the bed. And there, in the shadows, was a face—pale, gaunt, with eyes too wide, and a mouth open in a silent scream. It reached out with a black, elongated hand, and smeared the underside of the bed frame with a sticky, black substance.

I screamed and ran out, and I never spent another night in that house. I put it on the market, and a young couple bought it, desperate for an affordable starter home. I never told them what I saw. But a few months later, I got an anonymous email with a subject line: ‘The Color of the Room.’ Inside was a photo: the same bedroom, the same corner, but now the entire wall was black, and there was a figure standing in the center, and it was pointing at the camera. I deleted the email, but the image stays burned in my mind. And sometimes, in the still of the night, I still hear the tapping, right outside my window.