The Hanging Tapestry

In the autumn of my fourth year, my family lived in a sprawling, drafty farmhouse on the edge of the Nebraska plains. The house had a long history, with a sunken parlor and a stairwell that creaked like something was climbing it when nobody was there. My room was at the end of the upstairs hall, a small room with a single window that looked out onto a field of dead sunflowers. The walls were covered in a faded floral wallpaper, and in the corner hung a heavy, old tapestry depicting a dark forest with two figures barely visible between the trees.

I don’t remember the events myself, but my mother, Helen, has told me the story countless times. She was the one who found me one morning, sitting cross-legged on my bed, staring at the tapestry with a serene expression. I told her that the two women from the forest had come to visit me. One had hair like fire, and the other had hair like a raven’s wing. I said I liked the red-haired one, but the black-haired one made me uncomfortable. Helen dismissed it as a child’s imagination, a product of the flickering light on the tapestry’s threads.

But the visits continued. Every night, shortly after I was put to bed, the women would appear. They materialized in the corners of my room, their long dresses brushing the floorboards. The red-haired woman always stood to my left, a gentle smile on her lips, and she would whisper to me in a language I couldn’t understand, but her voice was like a lullaby. The black-haired woman stood to my right, her eyes hollow, her expression unreadable. I felt a chill whenever she was near. I told my mother that the black-haired woman never spoke, just stared.

After two weeks, the women began to move. One night, the black-haired woman walked slowly to the foot of my bed and sat down. The red-haired woman followed and sat on the edge of my mattress, close enough that I could feel the cold radiating from her. I remember telling my mother that the red-haired woman was whispering, ‘Don’t worry, little one. She cannot hurt you.’ But the black-haired woman’s lips twitched, and she lunged at me. Her fingers stretched into claws, her mouth opened into a silent scream. Just as she was about to touch me, she vanished, and the red-haired woman faded with her, leaving me alone in the dark.

This became a nightly ritual. The black-haired woman would always lunge, and always disappear before making contact. But I began to fear it. I would scream in my sleep, and Helen would rush in to find me trembling under the covers. She tried everything: moving my bed to the other side of the room, taking down the tapestry, burning sage. But the manifestations continued unabated. The only constant was that my room was the epicenter; the rest of the house remained still and quiet.

Helen, a practical woman, decided to investigate. She spent nights sitting in the hallway, watching the door. She saw nothing, but she felt a presence, a weight pressing on her chest as she approached my door. She even borrowed a voice recorder from a friend, hoping to catch an EVP. On tape, she heard a woman’s voice, rough as gravel, saying, ‘She is mine.’ And then, a softer voice, almost a whisper, ‘Not yours. Never yours.’

After two months, the visits stopped as abruptly as they began. I simply told my mother one morning, ‘They’re gone, Momma. The red-haired lady said goodbye. The black-haired lady looked angry, but she left too.’ Helen was relieved, but she never forgot. For years, she kept the voice recorder in a drawer, only listening to it once more, twenty years later, when I asked her about it. On that tape, after my childish voice had gone silent, there was a final, faint sound: a rustling, like fabric, and a low, mournful hum.

Now, as an adult, I’ve returned to that farmhouse, which has been in the family ever since. I stand in the doorway of my old room, which has been converted into a study. The tapestry is gone, but the wallpaper remains, and in the corner, I see a faint outline, a darker patch in the shape of a woman with long hair. I bring the voice recorder with me, the old one, and I press play. I hear my mother’s old voice, my childish voice, and the women’s voices. But then, there is a new voice, a third one, a child’s voice that says, ‘She’s coming back.’ I look up, and in the mirror across the room, I see a woman with red hair standing behind me, smiling. And in the corner, the black-haired woman begins to take form.