The Hollow Stairwell

My name is Elias, and for most of my life, I’ve kept what I’ve seen locked away. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust anyone; it was that I didn’t know how to explain the things that happened in our house. My mother, bless her, only recently began to believe that my childhood wasn’t just an overactive imagination. After reading countless accounts online, I finally feel ready to share my own truth. And trust me, there were far more incidents than the ones I’m about to recount.

I must have been around seven or eight when the first clear memory formed. It was late, and I had woken with a full bladder, the kind that forces you out of bed even though you know the dark hallway is waiting. I shuffled down the corridor of our Victorian flat, the floorboards creaking under my small weight. After finishing in the bathroom, I was heading back to my room when I noticed her. At the far end of the hall, near the tall window that faced the dead garden, stood a woman in a long, grey dress. She was pale, and her hair flat against her head. I remember thinking she was one of my mother’s friends, though it was odd she was just standing there. I said, ‘Hello, miss,’ and she simply turned and walked straight into the wall, dissolving like mist. My heart froze. I sprinted back to my bed, pulled the covers over my head, and didn’t come out until the sun was high the next day.

The second occurrence was less startling but more persistent. My parents often found me staring fixedly at the fourth-floor landing, a spot just beyond the staircase where a small, dark alcove formed. They’d ask what I was looking at, but I could never bring myself to say: ‘There’s a girl up there.’ She was small, with dark hair that hid her face, and she would stand perfectly still, watching me. I would turn and walk away whenever my parents caught me, but I felt her gaze follow me back down the steps.

Then came the day my sister, Clara, and I were playing up in the attic rooms of the fourth floor. We were old enough to explore, but I always hated going up there because of that girl. The rooms were filled with old trunks and dusty furniture, and Clara was chasing me around a broken wardrobe. I felt a cold draft, and that familiar prickle on the back of my neck. Clara was laughing, but I saw the girl standing near the window in the corner, her head tilted. I told Clara I was going downstairs, and I practically tumbled down the narrow staircases, my heart pounding. When I reached the third-floor landing, I stopped, breathing hard. Clara’s voice drifted down from above, calling out, ‘Elias, come back! The little girl wants you to play with us!’ I didn’t turn around. I just walked back to our flat, opened the door, and sat on the floor with my back to the wall, refusing to look at the stairwell ever again.

That was just the beginning. Over the years, I saw her more times, always at the edges of my vision, always near the stairwells of our building. She never spoke, never moved closer, but her presence was a constant weight. It wasn’t until my mother, after years of my cryptic comments and my avoidance of the upper floors, confessed that she, too, had seen a woman in grey once, that I felt a sliver of relief. She said she had thought it was a shadow or a trick of the light, but now she believed. Our building was old, and we later learned that a woman and her daughter had died in a fire on the fourth floor decades ago. They never found the girl’s body, and they say her spirit still waits in the hollow of the stairwell, hoping for someone to come and play. I still live in that flat, because I can’t seem to leave. Sometimes, late at night, I hear a faint call from the fourth-floor landing: ‘Elias, come out to play.’ I pretend not to hear, but I know she’s there. And I know that one day, when I’m too tired to resist, I might just walk up those stairs for good.