The Gatekeeper’s Habit

The moment we pulled up to the house on Cypress Lane, I knew we’d made a mistake. The paint was peeling like sunburned skin, and the porch sagged under the weight of its own neglect. But the rent was half of what we’d paid in the city, and Maya’s son, Leo, needed room to run. The landlord, a nervous man named Mr. Hartley, handed us the keys with a trembling hand, avoiding our eyes. ‘The house is… quiet,’ he said. ‘You’ll have it all to yourselves.’

The neighbors smiled too much. When we introduced ourselves, they’d nod and wave, but their eyes would dart to the house behind us, and their smiles would tighten. Old Mrs. Gable next door pressed a plate of cookies into Maya’s hands and whispered, ‘If you see the nun, don’t answer her.’ But when we asked what she meant, she just shuffled back inside, muttering about the bishop’s visit forty years ago.

Our room was modest, but the rest of the house loomed around us like a living thing. The stairs groaned when we walked past, and sometimes I’d hear the patter of tiny feet racing down the hallway above us—but we were the only ones there. One night, Leo asked who the bald lady was that watched him from the garden. He pointed out the window, where the frost had etched a pattern that looked like a face. Maya’s skin went pale, but she told him it was just a shadow.

Then the real thing came. I was in the kitchen, boiling water for tea, when Maya rushed in, her face ashen. ‘I saw her,’ she gasped. ‘Just now, outside the window. A woman’s head, floating past the glass—’ The window was seven feet up, and our yard had no fence. I climbed onto the counter and peered out, but there was nothing but the neighbor’s cat and the wind bending the dead grass.

We started asking questions after that. The neighbors gathered behind the hedges one evening, speaking in hushed voices. They told us about the two women, sisters, who lived here in the ’70s. One of them, a nurse, had died mysteriously on the stairs. The other, a devout Catholic, refused to leave. She started wearing her sister’s habit and would stand at the gate at night, waiting, they said, for a fallen angel. ‘They found her body in the church pew,’ said a man with a scarred cheek. ‘But she’s still here. She don’t like renters.’

We tried to dismiss it as superstition, but the house grew colder. Doors swung open on their own. Leo woke up screaming about a lady in his closet who smelled like candles. I began hearing the stairs creak at 3 AM, a slow, deliberate footsteps, like someone testing each board. One night, I followed the sound to the attic door. It was locked, but as I pressed my ear to the wood, I heard a faint whisper: ‘Leave this place.’

The breaking point came when I found Maya in the bathroom, staring at the mirror. ‘She’s behind me,’ she whispered, tears streaming. When I turned, there was only the cracked reflection of the tub. I grabbed her and Leo, and we fled to the motel outside town. But as I looked back at the house, I saw a figure standing at the front gate—a nun in a black habit, her face hidden, her hands folded. She raised one hand and made the sign of the cross, then vanished.

We never went back. We forfeited our deposit, left our things. But the nightmares followed us. And every time we drive past a church, Leo asks, ‘Is her gate open too?’ I don’t know how to tell him that I still smell burning incense and hear that whisper in my sleep. That house on Cypress Lane isn’t just haunted—it’s waiting for its next tenants, and the nun always greets them at the gate.