The Face in the Hall

I never believed in ghosts until the summer of ’92, when we moved into the old farmhouse on Redemption Road. The place had been abandoned for years, its clapboard siding gray and warped, its windows like empty sockets. My dad got it cheap because the owner died and the family wanted it gone. We were desperate, so we took it, ignoring the nagging warnings from the neighbors who said the place was cursed. They claimed a farmer had gone mad there, slitting his wife’s throat and then his own in the upstairs bedroom, but I figured it was just small-town gossip.

I was eleven, and my little brother Sammie was nine. We shared a room at the end of the upstairs hall, a narrow corridor that smelled of mothballs and dust. The walls were covered in faded floral wallpaper, peeling in places, and there was a single window at the far end that looked out onto the overgrown field. The house settled a lot, creaking and groaning, and I often woke to the sound of mice skittering in the walls. But one night, about a month in, I woke to a different sound: a soft, rhythmic scraping, like someone dragging a heavy sack across the floor overhead. I sat up, squinting into the dark. Sammie was snoring softly in the other bed. The scraping stopped.

I lay back down, my heart thudding, and tried to convince myself it was just the house settling. But then I heard footsteps in the hall, slow and deliberate, coming toward our door. The floorboards whined under the weight. The door was slightly ajar, and a sliver of pale light from the moon cut across the floor. The footsteps halted right outside. I held my breath, staring at the dark shape that now filled the crack. It was tall, impossibly tall, its head brushing the doorframe. I reached for the lamp, but my hand knocked the clock off the nightstand, and it clattered to the floor. The shape vanished. For a long time, I lay shaking, convinced I had imagined it.

The next morning, I told my parents, but they shrugged it off, blaming an old house and my active imagination. Sammie said he didn’t hear anything. I tried to forget it, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was waiting. A few nights later, I got up to use the bathroom. The hall was dark, lit only by a dim nightlight at the top of the stairs. As I padded barefoot toward the bathroom, I saw a figure standing at the end of the hall, near the window. It was a woman in a long, dark dress, her back to me. I froze. She slowly turned, and where her face should have been, there was only a smooth, blank void, like a mask of skin stretched over nothing. I screamed, and she was gone.

I told my father, and he finally called the previous owner’s son, who lived in town. The son, a weathered man named Ezra, reluctantly came by. He confirmed that the house had been the site of a double murder-suicide in 1947. He also told us that the wife had been a seamstress, and in her final moments, she had been sewing a quilt. The authorities found her body, but the quilt was never recovered. Ezra thought it might be hidden somewhere in the house. He warned us to leave, saying the spirits were restless, but my dad was stubborn.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the face—or lack of one. I felt a chill, and for some reason, I thought of the attic. We had never been up there. In the morning, I convinced Sammie to explore with me. We found a trapdoor in the ceiling of the hall closet. I climbed up first, into a dusty, cobwebbed space. There was a single window, the light slanting through it, illuminating a trunk in the corner. The trunk was locked, but the latch was rusted, and it gave way with a snap. Inside, wrapped in moth-eaten cloth, was a quilt. It was intricately stitched, but the design was wrong: a face, screaming in agony, its mouth open in a silent howl, the eyes hollow. And in the center, a patch of dark brown fabric, stiff with what could only be dried blood.

I screamed and dropped it. As I clambered back down, I heard a sound above us: a dragging, scraping noise, as if someone was pulling the quilt across the attic floor. We slammed the trapdoor and fled to our room. That night, the face appeared again, but this time it was pressed against our window, staring in with that blank void. I heard a whisper, not in words, but in a rustle like dead leaves: ‘You found it.’ The next morning, I told my parents, and for the first time, my dad looked scared. He finally agreed to leave.

We packed what we could and drove away that afternoon. As we reached the end of the driveway, I looked back. The house stood silent, but in the upstairs window, I saw the figure again, its blank face turned toward us. I knew we were bringing something with us. The quilt had been in the trunk, and I had touched it. For weeks, I had nightmares. And then, one night, I woke up and found my dresser mirror had been turned to face the bed, and on the glass, written in what looked like a child’s scratch, was one word: ‘Smile.’ I never told anyone, but some nights, I still feel a cold breath on the back of my neck, and I know the face is waiting, somewhere, for me to look in a mirror when I least expect it.