The Hollow Nursery

When Dahlia was an infant, her older brother Asher and sister Wren were just old enough to understand that the house they’d moved into wasn’t like the others on Elmwood Lane. It was a sprawling Victorian with peeling wallpaper and a staircase that creaked even when no one was on it. Their parents, Margaret and Roland, had bought the place cheap after the previous owner, a reclusive widow, had been taken away. They didn’t ask questions. They were young, optimistic, and desperate for space.

Their first night was sleepless. Around 2 a.m., Dahlia began to wail, but it was no ordinary cry. It was a thin, reedy sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once, wrapping around the walls like frost. Asher and Wren lay in their shared bedroom, clutching each other, listening to the floorboards groan as if the house itself was breathing. Then they heard it: a woman’s voice, muffled, as if from behind a wall, humming a lullaby that wasn’t one they recognized. It made their skin crawl. Margaret rushed to Dahlia’s room, but the baby was pointing at the far wall, her tiny finger trembling, her eyes wide and unfocused.

The next morning, things were worse. The dog, a loyal golden retriever named Gus, refused to go near Dahlia’s nursery. He whined and skittered backward whenever the door was open. Asher and Wren, who had never had imaginary friends before, began talking to the air. They said the names ‘Poppy’ and ‘Elliot’ with a fondness that made Margaret’s blood run cold. When she asked who they were speaking to, Asher shrugged and said, ‘They live in the walls. They play with us at night.’ Wren added, ‘And they like Dahlia. They say she’s the key.’ The children laughed, but their eyes were dull, and they often stopped mid-sentence as if listening to something only they could hear.

Roland, a practical man, dismissed it as children’s fancy. That was until the pushchair incident. Margaret had left Dahlia in the hallway at the top of the stairs, turning away for just a moment to fetch a coat. When she returned, the pushchair was rolling toward the landing, picking up speed, heading straight for the staircase. She screamed and lunged, catching the handle just in time. But the strange part was the pushchair was facing the wall, not the stairs, when she grabbed it. As if something had spun it around. Gus barked furiously, hackles raised, directed at the empty nursery door.

Then the slapping. Asher came down to breakfast with a bright red handprint on his cheek. He claimed the imaginary friends had struck him because he wouldn’t share his toy soldiers. Wren had scratches on her arm. Margaret grew desperate. She drove to the local library and dug through old newspaper clippings. Eventually, she found a small article from forty years prior: a woman named Clara had been institutionalized after smothering her two children, Poppy and Elliot, with a pillow. The children had been removed from her care, then returned, and she killed them on the second attempt. The house on Elmwood Lane was where they had lived.

Margaret confronted the house. She stood in the nursery, where Dahlia was sleeping, and spoke to the air. ‘I know you’re here. I know what happened. But these children are innocent. We are your guests. Please.’ The room was silent. Then, one by one, the toy blocks stacked themselves into a tower, each block landing with a soft click. A child’s giggle echoed, not from the children downstairs, but from the ceiling above. Asher and Wren appeared in the doorway, their faces pale, their eyes fixed on something behind Margaret. ‘They say it’s time,’ Asher whispered. ‘Time for Dahlia to join them.’ Margaret whirled around. The pillow from the crib was floating in mid-air, a foot above Dahlia’s face. Dahlia was laughing, reaching for it with tiny fingers.

Roland burst in, breaking the spell. The pillow dropped, and the room went cold. That night, they barricaded the nursery door, but they couldn’t stop the sounds. The house groaned, and crying began, a duet of two children weeping in the walls. Dahlia cried too, but it wasn’t her usual cry. It was the same thin, reedy wail they’d heard on the first night. And in the morning, they found all the stuffed animals arranged in a circle around the crib, facing outward, like guards. But on the wall above the crib, in a childish scrawl, was a message in crayon: ‘She’ll be ours soon.’

Margaret decided they had to leave. She couldn’t find the words to explain the terror to Roland, but he agreed without argument. They packed hastily, but as they were carrying boxes to the car, Asher and Wren refused to leave. They sat cross-legged in the nursery, holding hands, humming the same lullaby from the first night. Margaret tried to drag them out, but they resisted, their strength unnatural. Dahlia, in her carrier, began to cry harder, her little arms reaching out toward the room. A window shattered upstairs. Roland flew up the stairs, and there was a crash. When he came back down, his face was white. He held a torn piece of wallpaper in his hand. On it, in the same crayon scrawl: ‘We’ll take her when you sleep.’

They managed to get the children out, but as they drove away, Asher looked back and said, ‘They’re angry. They say we broke the promise.’ Wren nodded, tears in her eyes. ‘Who made a promise?’ Margaret asked. ‘You did,’ Asher said. ‘You promised them a playmate. When you moved in.’ Margaret remembered the first night, when she’d been half-asleep and heard a voice in her ear, a soft woman’s voice, saying, ‘Let her play with them. Just for a night.’ She had dismissed it as a dream.

Now, years later, Dahlia is a teenager. She has never spoken about the house, but she has a habit of standing in front of windows at night, staring at the glass, sometimes humming that lullaby. And sometimes, when the phone rings, no one is there, but there’s static, and underneath it, a child’s cry. Asher and Wren refuse to talk about it. They haven’t spoken of the imaginary friends since they moved. But last week, Dahlia came down to breakfast with a red handprint on her cheek. And there’s a new message scrawled on her mirror in lipstick: ‘We’re still waiting.’