The Gable Room

I never considered myself a superstitious person, but the events that unfolded over the thirteen months we spent in the Hollis House have left me questioning the nature of reality. The house was a sprawling Victorian revival, nestled in the foothills of the Drakensberg, with a modern addition that gleamed like a glass tumor on its aged brick flank. My partner, Elena, and her daughter, Mira, fell in love with it the moment we saw it. The rent was steep, but the space was intoxicating, and the idea of starting fresh in that mountain air was irresistible.

The addition was a marvel of contemporary design, accessible only by a narrow, spiral staircase that twisted up from the main hallway. At the top, a vast, open-plan loft served as a study and sitting area, with floor-to-ceiling windows that offered sweeping views of the valley. Two solid oak double doors led into the master suite, which boasted a walk-in closet and a bathroom with a claw-foot tub and a rain shower. The lower floor held the living room, kitchen, dining room, Mira’s bedroom, a guest room, a game room with a billiards table, and a home theater. It was a haven of luxury and light.

At first, the house felt alive in a wonderful way. The creaks and groans of the old structure blended with the hum of modern appliances, and the wind outside sang through the pines. But within a month, a subtle wrongness began to seep into our routine. It started with Mira. She complained of a ‘sticky’ feeling in her room, a pressure in her ears, and a persistent, yet unidentifiable, smell. We dismissed it as a child’s imagination, but then Elena began to feel it too—a heaviness that settled in the loft, making it difficult to breathe, as if the air itself were congealed.

It was the smell that first alarmed me. Not the faint mustiness of old wood, but something organic and sharp, like rotting vegetation mixed with ozone. It would come and go, often strongest near the spiral staircase. I inspected the walls and floors, searching for a dead animal or a mold issue, but found nothing. The smell seemed to be coming from nowhere and everywhere at once, and it always lingered longest at the threshold of the master suite.

Our sleep was the first casualty. Elena and I began to wake at odd hours, drenched in sweat, our hearts racing. We would lie in the dark, listening to the house settle, but the sounds were not the usual creaks. They were rhythmic, almost percussive, like a heartbeat emanating from the walls. And then there were the dreams—everyone in the house dreamed of the same thing: a dark, damp passage leading down from the loft, and at its end, a door with a brass knob that we could never reach. The dreams were so vivid that we began to fear falling asleep.

I rationalized it as stress, the adjustment to a new place, but the morning of the first full moon, Mira came down to breakfast with a bruise on her arm shaped like a handprint. She couldn’t explain it, and her eyes were wide with terror. We called a doctor, but he found nothing wrong. We tried to ignore it, to convince ourselves it was a coincidence, but we all knew better.

The turning point came when I decided to investigate the addition more thoroughly. I pulled up the floorboards in the loft closet, revealing a crawl space I hadn’t noticed. It was a shallow, coffin-like gap filled with a black, loamy soil that smelled of decay. Digging with my bare hands, I uncovered a small, hinged iron door set into the brick of the original house. It was rusted shut, but as I touched it, the door swung open with a groan, revealing a stone stairway that plunged into darkness.

I descended, my heart pounding, my flashlight cutting through the black. The stairs led to a small, windowless chamber. In the center stood a child’s cot, draped in a moth-eaten blanket. On the wall, scratched into the plaster, were tally marks—hundreds of them—and a single name: ‘Ada.’ The air was thick and cold, and the smell of ozone was overwhelming. I heard a faint, high-pitched humming, like a lullaby, and I felt a cold hand brush my cheek. I scrambled back up, but when I reached the loft, I saw that the iron door had closed behind me, and the crawl space was as pristine as before.

I tried to convince myself I imagined it, but the evidence was undeniable. The next week, I discovered in the local library’s archives that the original house had belonged to a family named Hollis, and that their young daughter, Ada, had died in 1902 of a mysterious fever. The addition had been built by a later owner, who had no knowledge of the house’s history. The room I found was Ada’s nursery, sealed off and forgotten. But that was only the beginning.

As the seasons turned, the presence grew stronger. We would find objects moved, doors unlocked, and Mira began to speak of a ‘girl in the loft who wanted to play.’ She would stand at the top of the spiral staircase, talking to someone invisible. When we asked her about it, she would say, ‘Ada says the door is open now, and she can come out.’ The bruises on Mira multiplied, and she grew pale and listless. We decided to move, but it was too late.

The final week, the house seemed to contract. The walls bulged and rippled in our peripheral vision, and the smell of ozone was constant. Elena and I found ourselves drawn to the loft, our feet moving without our consent, our hands reaching for the double doors. We would snap out of it just in time, but we knew we were losing the battle.

On the last night, Mira went missing. We found her in the loft, standing before the master suite doors, which were wide open. Beyond them, in the darkness, we could see a faint, glowing figure of a little girl. She was reaching out to Mira, and Mira was walking toward her. I screamed, and Elena grabbed Mira, pulling her back. The figure’s face contorted into a silent scream, and the doors slammed shut with a force that shook the house.

We fled that night, leaving everything behind. We drove until dawn, not stopping until we reached a motel in the next province. We never spoke of it again, but the scars remain. Mira still has the handprint bruise, faded but never fully gone. And sometimes, in the quiet moments, I can smell ozone, and I feel a faint humming in my ears, as if the house has found a way to follow us.

I’m writing this not to convince anyone, but to give myself some closure. If you ever visit the foothills, and you see a house with a modern glass addition, don’t be tempted by the beauty. The door in the loft is open, and Ada is waiting.