The Drain’s Lullaby

In the summer of 1987, I was twelve, living with my parents in a squat, timber-framed house on the outskirts of a small town in the Pacific Northwest. The house was old, with creaking floors and a smell of damp earth that no amount of airing could dispel. My grandmother, who had suffered from a creeping confusion that stole her memories, had spent her final years in the back bedroom, the one with the window that looked onto the overgrown garden. She died in the hospital after a long, quiet decline, and her funeral was set for the following week.

Because the house was small, I was given that room, and I slept in the same narrow bed where she had lain. I remember the first night, lying there, the pillow still carrying a faint scent of lavender and something acrid, like old medicine. I tried not to think about it. But that night, and for several nights after, I would wake from a doze to a specific sound: the toilet flushing in the bathroom down the hall. It was a distinct, rattling flush, followed by the soft click of the bathroom door swinging shut. Then footsteps, slow and shuffling, would pass my door, pause, and continue to the kitchen, where they would end with the creak of the back door.

I told my father about it, but he shrugged it off as pipes or the wind. My mother, her face pale, insisted I was dreaming. But I wasn’t. I would lie in the dark, my heart thumping, listening to those footsteps. They never approached my door, but they always stopped right outside, as if someone were listening, before moving on.

On the night before the funeral, I decided to stay awake. I propped myself against the headboard, my eyes fixed on the crack of light under the door. The house settled into its usual groans. Then, at the same time as always, the toilet flushed. I held my breath. The bathroom door clicked shut. The footsteps shuffled down the hall, slow and deliberate. They stopped at my door. I could hear breathing, a thin, wet rasp. The door handle turned slightly, then released. The footsteps continued to the kitchen, and I heard the back door unlatch, but no slam.

I crept out of bed and followed. The back door stood ajar, letting in a cold draft. Beyond, the garden was drenched in moonlight, the tall grass swaying. I saw a figure, a hunched shape, moving toward the old well that had been capped years ago. It was my grandmother, I knew, from the stoop of her shoulders and the way she dragged her left foot. She reached the stone rim and stopped. Then she turned, and for a moment, I saw her face—not the vacant face of her dementia, but a look of deep, urgent fear. She raised a hand, as if to warn me, and then she sank into the ground, as if the earth had opened to swallow her.

I ran back inside and slammed the door. The next day, at the funeral, I told my mother what I had seen. She went white and clutched a handkerchief. After the service, she took me aside and told me that my grandmother had always been afraid of water, especially the sounds of it in pipes. She had once told my mother that she was terrified that one day she would be pulled down a drain, sucked into the dark. She had nightmares about it.

That night, after the funeral, I lay in that room again. I didn’t sleep. I just listened. The toilet flushed at the same hour. The footsteps shuffled. But this time, they didn’t stop at my door. They went straight to the bathroom. I heard the door close, then the sound of water running, and then a low, gurgling moan. The running water continued for a long time. When it finally stopped, the house was silent. I never heard those sounds again.

But sometimes, late at night, I still lie awake in my own bed, far from that house, and I listen to the pipes. And I remember the look on my grandmother’s face, how she warned me away. I always wonder: what did she see down there, in the dark of the drain, that made her so afraid? And I’m grateful that I will never know.