The Hollow Light of Meadowbrook

I was eight when my cousin Delia convinced me that the old farmhouse on Meadowbrook Lane was haunted. She and her sister, Marnie, had just moved there with their father, and they loved to tease me with tales of a murdered man in the cellar. We were almost the same age, so calling them my aunts felt odd, but that’s what they were in family terms.

It was a sweltering July afternoon, and the three of us were sprawled on the floral-print couches in the front room, which the girls had turned into their bedroom. The room was a jumble of stuffed animals, hair ribbons, and a dusty upright piano that hadn’t been tuned in decades. The wallpaper peeled in long strips, revealing a pattern of faded roses beneath, and the windows were so old they rattled in their frames when the wind picked up.

Delia was the ringleader, her eyes glittering with mischief. She’d been telling us about the ghost of a farmer who supposedly hung himself from the rafters in the barn, but Marnie kept interrupting with her own version. ‘No, it was the lady who drowns people in the well out back,’ she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. ‘She only comes out on nights when the moon is full.’

I knew they were trying to scare me, and it was working. My heart was a frantic drum against my ribs. But I didn’t want to seem like a baby, so I stayed quiet, picking at a loose thread on my sock.

Then Delia produced a stubby candle from her dresser drawer. ‘Let’s do a séance,’ she said, her voice taking on a theatrical thrill. ‘We can talk to the ghost for real.’ Marnie clapped her hands together, but I shook my head, backing toward the doorway. ‘No way, I’m not doing that,’ I said, my voice high and tight.

‘Scaredy-cat,’ Delia taunted, but she and Marnie sat cross-legged on the braided rug, placing the candle between them. They lit it with a match from the kitchen, and the flame cast dancing shadows across the peeling walls.

I watched from the threshold, one foot in the hallway, ready to run. Delia closed her eyes and began humming a tuneless melody, while Marnie giggled nervously. The air in the room grew thick, heavy with dust and something else—something that made the hair on my arms stand up.

The candle flame flickered, then stretched tall and still, as if holding its breath. Delia’s humming faltered, and she opened her eyes, looking at Marnie with a frown. ‘Did you do that?’ she whispered. Marnie shook her head.

I wanted to leave, but my feet felt nailed to the floor. The temperature in the room dropped suddenly, so sharp that I could see my breath puff in the candlelight. Then, from somewhere in the house, came a sound—a slow, dragging scrape, like a heavy piece of furniture being pulled across a wooden floor.

The sound was coming from directly above us.

The attic. We’d never been up there; the door was always locked, and the key was missing. The scrape stopped, replaced by a rhythmic tapping, like knuckles on dry timber, counting out a pattern: three taps, pause, three taps, pause.

Delia’s face went pale. ‘That’s the code we used in our old games,’ she breathed. ‘One tap for yes, two for no, three for… help.’

Marnie started whimpering, but Delia didn’t move. She leaned closer to the candle, her voice trembling. ‘Is someone there?’ she asked.

The candle flame guttered, nearly extinguishing, then flared back to life with a blue tint. A low, guttural voice, so faint it was barely a whisper, seemed to slip through the crack under the door: ‘Yesss.’

I screamed. I turned and ran down the hallway, through the kitchen, and out the back door into the blinding sunlight. I didn’t stop until I was in the middle of the overgrown field, gasping for air, my heart pounding.

When I finally looked back, Delia and Marnie were leaning out the back door, laughing. ‘Gotcha!’ Delia shouted. ‘Did you think a ghost was gonna get you? It was Marnie stepping on the floorboards to make the squeak, and I did the voice.’

My face burned with embarrassment. I trudged back to the house, my knees shaky. ‘It wasn’t funny,’ I said, but they just rolled their eyes.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I was in a small room down the hall from theirs, under a too-thin blanket. The wind moaned outside, and the house creaked and settled like it was alive. I kept thinking about that moment, before Delia laughed, when the air had felt so cold, and the voice had seemed so real.

I must have drifted off, because I woke to a strange light filtering under my door—a soft, sickly green glow, like a firefly trapped in the floorboards. I sat up, my heart lurching. The light pulsed, steady and rhythmic, like breathing.

I crept to the door and pressed my ear against it. From the front room, I heard Delia and Marnie’s quiet, even breathing. The green light spilled from under the door, weird and unnatural.

Then I heard a whisper, directly in my ear, as if someone had leaned close to the other side of the door. ‘You see it too,’ it said. ‘You’re the one who will help me rest.’

I yanked the door open, but the hallway was dark, empty. The green light was gone. The only sound was the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway—a clock that I knew had been broken for years.

I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. I sat with my back against the headboard, knees tucked to my chin, watching the crack under my door. In the morning, Delia and Marnie were subdued, their jokes forgotten. They said they’d had nightmares about a woman in a long dress standing at the foot of their bed, pointing at the wall.

We never played with the séance again, and I never went back to that house. Over the years, I convinced myself it was all my imagination, fueled by their ghost stories. But sometimes, on quiet nights, I still see that green light pulsing in the dark, and I hear that whisper, patient and waiting. ‘You’re the one who will help me rest.’ And I pray that it’s still just my imagination, because I know, somehow, that it’s not.