The Hollow Between the Cots

The summer I turned twelve, my family moved to a converted lighthouse on the craggy coast of Maine. My father, a marine biologist, had taken a position at the local research station, and my mother, a history teacher, was thrilled by the building’s storied past. The lighthouse had been decommissioned in the 1930s, its lamp replaced by an automated beacon, and the keeper’s quarters had been renovated into a quirky home. I shared the top floor with my best friend, Mira, who had come to stay for two weeks before school started. The house was a labyrinth of spiral staircases and circular rooms, but our bedroom was a cozy round space with a window that looked out over the churning Atlantic. Below us, the ground floor was a sprawling open area with a fireplace, a kitchen, and a glass door that led to a narrow beach. Directly beneath our bedroom was a basement—a damp, concrete storage room filled with lobster traps, rusted chains, and the detritus of a century of sea. That’s where we set up our sleeping bags, against the advice of my parents, who warned us it would be cold and musty. But Mira and I were drawn to the secrecy of it, the thrill of being away from the adults, surrounded by the smell of salt and old rope. We brought down a portable lantern, a box of crackers, and the two cats, Whiskers and Tuna, who curled up on a frayed rug in the corner.

That night, we stayed up late, trading ghost stories and telling secrets, while the wind howled around the lighthouse like a dying animal. The lantern cast long shadows that danced on the walls, and the cats purred, their eyes glowing amber in the dim light. Around midnight, my mother called down that it was time for bed. We grudgingly blew out the lantern, plunging the room into almost total darkness. The only light came from a tiny slit of a window, high up on the wall, where the pale moon flickered behind jet-black clouds. We lay in our sleeping bags, still talking in whispers, when the noise started. It was a heavy, rhythmic thumping, like a giant’s footsteps, coming from directly above us. My father’s study was on the floor above, but he walked with a light, quick step. This was slow, ponderous, weighty. We froze, listening. ‘Just Dad moving furniture,’ Mira whispered. I didn’t believe it. The thumping went on for several minutes, pacing back and forth across the ceiling, then stopped. We exhaled, but the silence was thick. Then the footsteps began again, softer, but descending. They seemed to come down the spiral staircase that connected the floors, but the stairwell was on the opposite side of the house. We would have heard the squeaky door that led from the main hall to the basement steps. That door had never been properly oiled, and its hinge shrieked like a gull in pain. Sure enough, we heard no such sound. The footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs, but they did not open the basement door—we would have seen the faint rectangle of light from the hall appear. No, the footsteps seemed to be in the basement with us, moving around the perimeter of the room, circling our sleeping bags. The cats, which had been sleeping, suddenly raised their heads, their ears swiveling like radars. Tuna let out a low, unearthly growl. Whiskers fled, scrambling up a stack of crates and disappearing into the rafters.

Mira gripped my arm. ‘What is that?’ she squeaked. I didn’t answer. The footsteps ceased. The room fell silent, the only sound our ragged breathing. Then, from the narrow space between our two sleeping bags—a gap of about a foot, where the floorboards were exposed—a voice emerged. It was a woman’s voice, whispering, but not in a conspiratorial way. It was sing-song, almost melodic, like a lullaby twisted into something wrong. It said, ‘I’m sorry, so sorry.’ The words were slow, deliberate, and they seemed to come from directly between us, as if the source were crouched there, invisible. I could feel a cold draft emanating from that space, and my skin prickled. We both scrambled backward, pressing against the cold stone walls. The voice repeated, slightly louder, ‘I’m sorry, so sorry.’ Then the footsteps started again, but this time they were ascending, going up the basement stairs, across the main floor, up the second flight, and onto the second story, where my parents’ bedroom was. We heard the thumping fade away, then stop. For a long moment, neither of us moved. Then we bolted up the stairs, not caring about the squeaking door, and burst into my parents’ bedroom. They were sleeping peacefully, undisturbed.

We told them what we heard, but they dismissed it as mice, or the old building settling, or our overactive imaginations. But we knew what we heard. The next night, we insisted on sleeping in the living room, and we kept the lights on. The cats refused to go near the basement ever again. We never spoke of it again, but I could see the memory in Mira’s eyes, and I felt it in my own. Years later, when we were adults, Mira and I reconnected over a video call, and the conversation turned to that night. She admitted that she had nightmares for months. I confessed I had done research on the lighthouse’s history. We discovered something that chilled us to the bone: in the 1920s, the keeper’s wife had gone mad in that very lighthouse, and she had drowned her infant daughter in the well that used to stand where the basement now was. The only thing she would say, over and over, was ‘I’m sorry, so sorry.’ We had heard the echo of a mother’s guilt, trapped in the hollow between our cots, forever seeking forgiveness from a child who would never return. That night, I didn’t sleep. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, listening for footsteps that I knew would never come—until, just before dawn, I heard them again, faint and far away, and the whisper began once more, ‘I’m sorry, so sorry,’ and I knew that some apologies are never enough, and some echoes never fade.