The Glasshouse’s Last Bloom

In the autumn of 2019, I arrived at the Selvåg Folk High School, nestled in the fog-laden hills of western Norway. The main building, a sprawling Victorian manor, was surrounded by outbuildings, each with its own character. The students had named them: the A-frame, the Boathouse, the Stone Lodge, the Crows’ Perch, the Lavender Wing, the Cellar (which was actually an underground corridor), and two attic rooms above the music hall. The stories about these places were shared half-jokingly during orientation, but I soon learned that some were more than tales.

The A-frame, where I was assigned, sat at the edge of the birch forest. It was a triangular structure with large windows on the front, resembling a greenhouse from a distance. The first night, I heard the sound of wind chimes, though there was no breeze. The next morning, a resident said, ‘Oh, that’s just the ghost of the old gardener. He used to hang glass bottles from the trees to scare away crows. Now he does it to let us know he’s around.’ I laughed, but the feeling of being watched persisted.

A week later, I was walking back from the Boathouse at dusk. The path skirted the forest, and I noticed a faint glow among the trees. Curious, I stepped off the path. In a small clearing, I saw a woman in a long white dress, her back to me. She was tending to a patch of white flowers, whispering something I couldn’t catch. I called out, but she disappeared. I looked at the flowers – they were night-blooming cereus, but their petals were a strange shade of blue, and they seemed to pulse with a soft light. I plucked one and hurried back.

When I asked about the woman, I was told that no one had seen her, but that the old gardener’s wife had died in the Boathouse years ago. She was said to protect the gardens, but the white flowers were not hers. The only flowers she cared for were bluebells. I decided to investigate further. The next day, I returned to the clearing, but the flowers were gone. Instead, there was a small wooden marker, weathered and almost illegible. It read: ‘Hanna – June 12, 1987.’

That night, I had a dream. I was standing in the A-frame, and the windows reflected a room that wasn’t there – a nursery filled with cradles, each containing a baby made of bark. The woman from the clearing stood in the corner, her face obscured, holding a single blue flower. She spoke in a hollow whisper: ‘You must not take the fruit of my labor.’ I woke with a start, the flower on my nightstand had withered, its petals turning black and brittle.

Over the following weeks, I noticed inexplicable changes. The clock in the Cellar would stop at 2:22 AM, and the smell of soil and moss would drift through the corridors. The Lavender Wing, which was always too warm, was suddenly cold. Then came the incident in the music hall, where I practiced piano late at night. I heard a child’s laughter echoing from the attic rooms above. When I went to check, the door was locked, but from behind it came the sound of scratching, like claws on wood, and a soft hum of a lullaby. I pressed my ear to the door and heard a voice, old and cracked: ‘She’s not yours to keep.’

I confided in my friend, Ida, whose grandmother had attended the school in the 1980s. She told me of a student, Hanna, who had died in 1987 after giving birth in the Boathouse. The baby was stillborn, and Hanna threw herself into the fjord. Her spirit, some said, returned to tend to the gardens, but the white flowers she planted were meant to represent unborn souls. My flower had been a token of her grief, and by taking it, I had stolen a piece of her child’s spirit.

Determined to make things right, I returned to the clearing under the full moon. I placed the withered flower back, apologizing aloud. As I did, the air grew heavy, and I felt a cold hand on my shoulder. I turned – the woman stood, her face now clear, tears of sap streaming down her cheeks. ‘You brought him back,’ she said, but her voice was not angry. ‘Now he can sleep.’ She faded, and the flower bloomed again, a deep blue, and then slowly sank into the earth.

The haunting did not cease, but it changed. The laughter in the attic became softer, more distant. The clocks no longer stopped. And when I left at the end of the year, I took no mementos, but I learned that the stories we tell are not always lies – they are just the last witnesses to a truth that wants to be remembered. The glasshouse of the A-frame no longer holds my room, but I know that in its bloom, a soul found peace.

Years later, I returned to Selvåg, and the clearing was overgrown. The marker was gone. But in the middle, a single blue rose, not of this world, grew. I left it undisturbed. Some gardens are not for us to tend; they are for the ones we owe a debt to.