The Dresser’s Low Light

In the late autumn of 1987, my family lived in a rented farmhouse on the outskirts of a small town in Iowa. The place was old, with drafty windows and a coal furnace that clanked like a dying engine. My room was on the second floor, at the end of a narrow hallway. The previous tenants had left a massive oak dresser against the wall opposite my bed. I was three, and I remember that dresser more than anything else from that house.

My mother, Eleanor, was a practical woman who didn’t believe in ghosts or goblins. But she often told the story of the first month we lived there. I had just begun speaking in full sentences, earlier than most kids, and I would often complain that my toys had moved. ‘My truck was on the floor, now it’s on the shelf,’ I’d say. She’d chalk it up to my imagination, or maybe the wind, but it happened almost daily.

One night, she heard me talking in my room, a low, one-sided conversation. Concerned, she crept down the hall and pushed the door open a crack. I was standing in my crib, gripping the rail, staring intently at the dresser. ‘What are you doing, sweetie?’ she asked. I didn’t turn. ‘The little man comes out of the bottom drawer when the light is on,’ I said, pointing without looking. ‘He wants my blocks.’ Eleanor felt a chill run down her spine. She flicked on the overhead light, and the room was empty. The dresser stood stolid, its carved edges casting long shadows. She sat with me until I fell asleep, and she never mentioned it again.

But I did. Over the next few weeks, I would wake in the middle of the night, and my mother would find me staring at the dresser, whispering about ‘the little man’. She tried everything: closing the drawer, putting a chair in front of it, even removing the toys. Nothing helped. One night, she decided to stay in my room, sitting in the rocker by the window, pretending to sleep. In the dim glow of the nightlight, she saw the bottom drawer of the dresser slowly slide open, just a few inches, and the faint outline of a small, hunched figure emerge. It glided across the floor, barely rustling the rug, and stopped at my crib. It stood there, head tilted, as if examining me. My mother shot up, flicked on the light, and the figure vanished, the drawer slamming shut on its own. She screamed, and I woke, crying. She held me tight, her heart pounding.

The next day, she called a priest, who came and blessed the house. But the drawer never opened again, and I never spoke of the little man anymore. Yet, even now, I remember the faint sound of that drawer sliding, the smell of old wood and dust, and the way my mother’s hands trembled when she told me we were leaving. She sold that dresser at a yard sale, and I never saw it again. But sometimes, when I’m in a dark room and there’s a piece of furniture against the wall, I feel a pull to look at the bottom drawer, and I have to whisper to myself, ‘The little man is gone.’