The Great, Empty Rooms

The house in Mercer, a town that boasted exactly one blinking traffic light and a grain elevator that smelled of old dust, had been my husband’s bachelor project. He’d bought it cheap after the previous owner, an old bachelor himself, had been carted off to a nursing home, leaving behind stacks of newspapers and a faint smell of tobacco and neglect. When we married, I’d found the place charming in a drafty, stubborn sort of way, though I’d heard his story about the flipping light switches and the radio that would crackle to life at 3 a.m., only to fall silent when he’d storm downstairs and yell into the empty air, ‘This is my house, and you can get the hell out!’ He’d been so proud of that, how the weirdness had stopped after his outburst. I’d never seen anything, and I assumed he’d imagined it, or maybe it was just the old wiring.

We were in the middle of packing for a move to another state, closer to my parents, and my three-year-old, Toby, and I had been staying with them while my husband finished up his job. But everything went sideways when my mother-in-law, Sylvia, passed after a long fight with cancer. We drove back to Mercer for the funeral and the house clearance.

The moment we pulled into the gravel driveway, Toby, who was normally a chatterbox, went silent. He pressed his nose against the car window, staring at the house. We had to play in the overgrown backyard for over an hour before he would even go near the front steps. When we finally got inside, he clung to my leg, his eyes wide, and he refused to go anywhere except his room and our bedroom. Any mention of the kitchen, the living room, or the hallway bathroom sent him into a fit of crying. I thought it was just the stress of the move, the upheaval, the funeral. I hugged him and told him it was okay, that Grandma was in heaven now. But he would shake his head, his little face pale, and whisper, ‘No, Mommy. There’s a lady, and she’s everywhere.’

I tried to reason with him. ‘A lady? Is she a nice lady?’ But he’d just bury his face in my shoulder and refuse to talk about it. I chalked it up to a child’s imagination, especially since we’d been talking about death and Grandma and heaven.

That night, after the funeral, which had been a blur of black clothes and hushed condolences, I put Toby to bed in his room. He had his nightlight on, the one shaped like a rocket ship, and a soft glow emanated from the hallway. I kissed his forehead and closed the door, but before I could take two steps, I heard a click. I turned to see his door open a crack, his small face peeking out.

‘Am I in time-out?’ he asked.

‘No, honey, it’s bedtime.’

But he kept looking behind me, down the hallway. ‘She’s there,’ he said.

I looked. The hallway was empty, lit by the small sconce at the end. ‘There’s nobody there, sweetie.’

‘She’s in the shadow,’ he insisted. ‘She’s always in the shadow.’

I returned to the room, sat on his bed, and held him until he fell asleep. Then I went to the kitchen to make tea, feeling a cold spot near the pantry. I shrugged it off as a draft.

The next morning, I was in the kitchen making breakfast when I realized we were out of creamer. I was about to go to the store when I noticed the cabinet door above the sink was open. Inside, where we kept our glasses, I saw a single drinking glass, perfectly clean, standing upright on the shelf. The others were stacked. I remember closing that cabinet the night before. I felt a prickle at the back of my neck.

I went to grab the glass, and as I reached for it, I noticed a faint humming sound. It was low, almost below the threshold of hearing, but it filled the room. I pulled back my hand, and the humming stopped. I tried again. The humming returned. I thought of my husband’s story, of the lights turning on and off. I spoke aloud, my voice quivering, ‘If you’re here, please stop. We’re just getting through a hard time.’ The room went quiet. I left the cabinet open and went to the store.

When I came back, the cabinet was closed, but the glass was now on the counter, filled with water, sitting as if waiting for someone. Toby, who had been coloring at the kitchen table, looked up at me. ‘She poured it,’ he said. ‘She wanted to make sure you were hydrated.’

I nearly dropped the grocery bag. ‘Who, Toby? Who is she?’

He looked toward the pantry, its door slightly ajar. ‘The lady who lives behind the walls. She’s sad because she lost her little boy. She’s looking for him.’

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. That afternoon, I called my husband at work and told him we needed to talk. He came home early, and I relayed everything, expecting him to laugh it off. Instead, his face went pale. He told me that before he bought the house, the old owner’s wife had died there, a long time ago. He’d found out from a neighbor. The wife had lost a child, a little boy, to a fever years ago. She’d never gotten over it. She’d wander the house, talking to him as if he were still there. The old owner had become a shell of a man, and eventually, he just gave up and went to a home.

My husband said, ‘I thought my little speech chased her away. I guess she wasn’t scared of me. She was waiting for him to come back.’

I looked at Toby, who was sitting on the floor in the hallway, talking softly to the air, his small hands gesturing. ‘Mommy,’ he said, ‘she says the little boy’s name is Thomas, and he has a red ball. Can I play with it?’

I knelt down next to him, my heart pounding. ‘Toby, there’s no ball here.’

‘She says he left it under the stairs a long time ago. She wants to know if you can find it for her.’

We didn’t find any red ball. But that night, as I tucked Toby into bed, he said, ‘She’s happy now. She said thank you for being nice. She won’t bother us anymore.’

I didn’t sleep well. I kept thinking about that glass of water, about the humming, about the lady who had been waiting for her lost boy. The next morning, we started packing the car for the final move. Before we left, I felt an urge to open the closet under the stairs. I don’t know why. Inside, buried behind some old boxes, I found a child’s red rubber ball, dusty and deflated. I picked it up, and I swear I felt a warmth in my palm.

I brought it to Toby. He smiled and took it gently. ‘She said thank you. We can keep it.’ He hugged the ball to his chest.

We left Mercer that afternoon. As we drove away, I looked back at the house. In the upstairs window, I thought I saw a woman’s figure, a flicker of a shadow, but when I blinked, she was gone. Toby waved at the house. ‘Bye, lady,’ he said.

We moved to the new city, and the house went up for sale. Toby never mentioned the lady again. But sometimes, when I’m in our new home, I hear a faint humming from the walls, especially when I’m in the kitchen. And once, when I was drinking a glass of water, I noticed it tasted slightly sweet, as if someone had added just a hint of something. I set the glass down, and I swear the cabinets rattled a little, as if in a gentle laugh.

I don’t tell anyone about it. I don’t want to scare them. But some nights, when Toby is sleeping, I listen for that hum, and I wonder if the lady found her way with us, or if she’s still there in Mercer, waiting. I think she’s still there. But I hope she’s at peace now. I hope she found her boy. I hope we gave her that much.