The Crayon Door

The house on Maplewood Lane had been sitting for six months, a white colonial skeleton with peeling paint and a sagging porch. My wife, Ellen, and I had been hunting for months, and when our realtor, Rick, mentioned a fixer-upper in Millington, we jumped. The town was sleepy, just a few dozen miles from the city but a world away.

On the day of the tour, we walked through the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen, each coated in a uniform, builder’s beige. It was clean, sterile, and soulless, the smell of latex paint still clinging to the air. But when we climbed the creaking stairs to the second floor, we found a room that broke the pattern. The door was ajar, and inside, the walls were a faded lavender, but the most striking feature was the door itself, which was covered in childish crayon drawings: a sun with a zigzag smile, a lopsided house, and a family of stick figures holding hands. My mother-in-law, Margaret, laughed, ‘Guess they forgot to paint over this one.’ Ellen ran her finger over the waxy lines, ‘Maybe they wanted to leave something behind.’ I was last to leave, and as I stepped out, I heard a soft thud behind me, like a child’s barefoot landing on wood. I turned, but the room was empty.

We bought the house. The demolition of the second floor was planned for two months later, after we’d settled and removed the existing structure. But the night we moved in, I found Ellen in that lavender room, sitting on the floor, tracing the stick figures with her finger. She looked up, ‘Mia, the daughter of the previous owners. She was four, she loved to draw.’ I frowned, ‘You didn’t tell me you talked to them.’ She shook her head, ‘I found a journal in the attic. It’s Mia’s mother’s. She wrote about the house, about the ‘quiet’ and how Mia drew to cope with the ‘silence’ that came after her father left. There’s a section that says, ‘Mia says she has a friend who likes her drawings. I never see anyone, but sometimes I hear footsteps in the hall when she’s in her room.’ I shrugged, ‘Kids have imaginary friends. Let’s get some sleep.’

But that night, we both woke to the sound of footsteps padding down the hallway outside our bedroom. Ellen grabbed my arm, ‘Did you leave the TV on?’ I listened to the sound, rhythmic and light, like a child’s step. I walked to the door and opened it, but the hallway was empty. The next day, we began stripping the wallpaper in the bedroom. I peeled back a corner, revealing a child’s name written in pencil: ‘Mia.’ I remembered the journal. I went up to the attic, found the journal, and read more. It said, ‘Mia cries at night, says her friend wants to be in her drawings. She’s scared. I tell her it’s just her imagination, but I’ve heard it too, a soft humming when I’m alone.’

We decided to demolish the second floor ahead of schedule. The contractor arrived, and as they began tearing down the drywall, they found a hidden space behind the closet. Inside, there was a small cardboard box. In it, a child’s drawing of the house with a black window, and underneath, ‘Mia, 1998.’ My blood ran cold. We moved out temporarily, and before the demolition, I went back one last time. I stood in the lavender room, which was now bare, the drywall stripped. On the subfloor, I noticed a faint outline of a door, painted over. I looked at the crayon drawings on the door, which had been removed and propped against the wall. I noticed the stick figure family only had three figures: a man, a woman, and a child. But in the corner, there was a fourth stick figure, drawn in a different color, wearing a smile. Ellen came up behind me, ‘What is it?’ I pointed, ‘That one isn’t in the same hand.’ She looked closer, ‘It’s like a friend.’ I turned to her, ‘The journal said Mia had a friend who liked her drawings. What if that friend is still here? And what if we just demolished his home?’

We halted the demolition. We stayed in a hotel for a week, and when we returned, we found a fresh crayon drawing on the front door: a picture of our car, with two stick figures inside, and a third stick figure with a smiling face outside. I called the previous owner’s realtor to get contact info, and when I finally spoke to Mia’s mother, she was silent for a long time. She finally said, ‘We moved because Mia kept talking about her friend, Thomas. She said Thomas loved the house, but he was lonely. One day, Mia got very sick. She was in the hospital for weeks. She recovered, but she said Thomas didn’t come back. We found out later that the previous previous owner’s son, Tommy, had died in that house in 1987. He was five, and he had a crayon drawing of his family with him and an imaginary friend. He always wanted a sibling, and he used to say his friend was his twin. Mia must have been drawing his friend for him.’

I felt a chill as I looked at our house, which we were about to tear apart. Ellen looked at me, ‘We can’t demolish it. We can’t disturb Thomas.’ We ended up keeping the second floor, but we painted over the lavender, and we kept that door, framed in the attic as a memorial. But every night, we still hear footsteps in the hallway, and sometimes we find new crayon drawings, always of a family with an extra smiling figure, standing in front of a house with a red door. We’ve learned to smile back. We’ve learned to accept our new roommates.