The Dismantled Room

My childhood home sat on the edge of a town that had given up on itself, a Nebraska town where the grain elevator was the tallest thing for miles and the wind never stopped complaining. We moved there when I was seven, into a house that had been boarded up for a decade. My parents, both factory workers, had scraped together enough for the down payment, and the realtor had called it a ‘fixer-upper’ with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. The house was a Victorian, but not the charming kind. It was a bloated, sagging thing with peeling paint the color of dried blood and a porch that groaned under your weight. The rooms were massive and cold, and the floorboards were so uneven that a marble would roll from one end of the hallway to the other without stopping.

My mother had a thing for antiques, and she’d furnished the place with finds from estate sales. But the room that became my playroom was the one that made me feel like I was being watched. It was at the back of the house, long and narrow, with a single window that looked out onto the overgrown backyard. The previous owners had used it as a sewing room, and there was still a heavy ironing board in the corner that no one could move. I remember the first time I was in there alone, I was building a castle out of blocks, and I felt a pressure, like the air itself was pressing down on me. I turned around, and the door, which I’d left ajar, slammed shut with a force that rattled the frame. I screamed for my father, and he came running, his face pale. He looked at the door, then at me, and said, ‘It’s just a draft.’ But I saw his hands shaking.

After my siblings were born, the playroom was walled down the middle to make two tiny bedrooms. My brother, Liam, and my sister, Maya, were born a year apart, and they were both terrible sleepers. I, on the other hand, was the worst. I had nightmares that were so vivid I’d wake up screaming, drenched in sweat. I remember one night when I was nine, I heard someone calling my name from the hallway. The voice was low, like a man’s, but it was coming from the direction of the old playroom. I got out of bed and opened my door, and there was no one there. But the door to what used to be the playroom was wide open, and inside, I could see the ironing board, still in the corner, even though it had been moved to the garage months before. I walked in, and the feeling hit me like a physical blow. It was pure, unadulterated terror, the kind that makes your bowels clench and your mind go white. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Then I heard my father’s voice, but it was wrong, as if it was coming through water, and I felt myself being pulled toward the ironing board.

I woke up on the floor, my father kneeling over me, shaking me. He had dragged me out of the room, and his face was gray. ‘You were standing there, staring at the wall,’ he said. ‘You didn’t answer me.’ After that, we all moved our beds into the front room, the largest bedroom, and we slept together in a pile of blankets. But even there, I would see things out of the corner of my eye—tall, thin shapes that moved like they were underwater. My brother once whispered to me, his eyes wide, ‘I keep seeing the faces in the wallpaper.’ I told him he was lying, but I had seen them too.

Years later, I became an electrician, and I learned to channel my fear into focus. I moved away, got married, had kids of my own. But whenever I’d visit my parents, I’d feel a chill the moment I stepped through the door. My father passed away five years ago, and my mother a year after that, and the house sat empty. I inherited it, along with my siblings, and we decided to sell it. The realtor said it had a good bones, but the foundation was crumbling. We hired a demolition crew to raze the place, and I went there one last time to take a look around.

The house was even more decrepit than I remembered. The wallpaper was peeling in long ribbons, and the floorboards were rotted through in places. I walked to the back, to the room that had been the playroom. The wall that divided it was still there, but I could see the outline of the original room. The ironing board was gone, but in the corner, I noticed a discoloration on the floor, a dark stain that looked like it had seeped into the wood. I knelt down and touched it. It was cold, colder than the rest of the room, and as my fingers brushed the surface, I felt a faint static, like the air before a storm. I pulled my hand back, and that’s when I saw the writing on the wall, scratched into the plaster, barely visible beneath the layers of paint. It read, ‘LET ME OUT.’

I stood up, my heart pounding, and I realized that the fear I had felt as a child wasn’t just fear. It was a warning. The room had been a prison, and I had been the only one who could see it. But now, the prison was about to be demolished, and whatever was inside was about to be set free. I tried to call off the demolition, but the crew had already started. I watched from the street as the claw of the excavator punched through the roof, and for a moment, I thought I saw a shape in the window—a tall, thin figure, watching me. Then the wall collapsed, and the room was gone.

But that night, as I lay in my hotel bed, I heard a sound from the hallway. It was a low, rhythmic scratching, like something dragging across the floor. I got up and opened the door, and the hallway was empty. But when I turned back, the bathroom door was open, and I could see the light was on, even though I hadn’t turned it on. I walked in, and the mirror reflected not my face, but a dark, twisted version of it, with holes where the eyes should be. I blinked, and it was gone. But the scratching continued, coming from behind the bathroom wall.

I moved to a different hotel the next day, but it followed me. For weeks, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. I started seeing those thin figures again, in the corner of my vision, and I heard whispers in my ear, words I couldn’t quite make out. My brother and sister said they felt nothing, but they didn’t visit the house after the demolition. They didn’t know. The thing in the room was not a ghost. It was not a spirit. It was something else, something that had been trapped there for a century, and I had released it. I don’t know what it wants, but I know it’s not done with me. Sometimes, at night, I feel a cold hand on my shoulder, and I hear a voice that sounds like my own, saying, ‘You should have left me alone.’

And I know, with a certainty that chills me to the bone, that the room is not a place. It is a thing, and it is now a part of me. The demolition didn’t destroy it. It merely set it free, and it chose me as its next host. I don’t know how to get rid of it. I don’t know if I can. All I know is that every time I close my eyes, I see the ironing board, the stain on the floor, the words scratched into the wall. And I see the door to the room, opening on its own, waiting for me to step back inside.