The Lace-Curtained Window

I never trusted the back bedroom, the one with the lace curtains that never seemed to hang straight. It wasn’t the room itself that unsettled me—it was the way the light fell through those curtains at certain hours, casting patterns that looked like faces pressed against the glass from outside. But the house was old, and I told myself it was just my imagination, a trick of the mind after the move. Still, I avoided that room, preferring the cramped guest room at the end of the hall, even though it smelled of mothballs and old paper.

It was on a Tuesday, during a thunderstorm, that I finally had to confront it. The power had flickered out, plunging the house into a deep, oppressive darkness, and I had to use the bathroom that adjoined the back bedroom. I cursed myself for not having a flashlight handy, but I knew the layout well enough. I pushed the door open, and the scent of dust and lavender hit me. I fumbled for the vanity mirror, the china basin, the claw-foot tub that sat like a dormant beast in the corner. As I reached for the porcelain handle of the toilet, I froze.

The lace curtain, the one I had always seen hanging by the window, was now draped over the bathtub, as if someone had laid it there to dry. The pattern of the lace, when backlit by the lightning, formed a twisted face—not human, but with eyes deep enough to fall into. I blinked, and the vision was gone. The curtain was back at the window, swaying slightly though the glass was closed. I felt a cold dread settle in my stomach, but I forced myself to finish my business, my eyes fixed on the floor.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in the guest bed, listening to the rain lash against the roof, and I heard a sound—a soft, rhythmic scrape, like nails on wood, coming from the back bedroom. I told myself it was the tree branch against the window, but I knew the tree was on the other side of the house. The scraping continued for hours, and when I finally mustered the courage to check, I crept down the hall, my heart pounding. The door to the back bedroom was ajar, and a faint light, not of this world, seeped out from under it.

I pushed the door open slowly. The room was bathed in a sickly green glow, emanating from the lace curtain. The fabric was glowing, and through the holes of the lace, I could see something pressing against the glass—a face, gaunt and hollow-eyed, with a mouth open in a silent scream. But it wasn’t looking at me. It was looking at the bathtub. And in the tub, there was a figure—a woman, her hair floating around her like seaweed in black water, her body limp and still. She was not alive, but she was not quite dead either. I saw her lips move, forming words I couldn’t hear, but I read them on her pale lips: ‘You have to see.’

I don’t remember deciding to move, but I found myself walking towards the tub. My hand reached out to touch the water, and the moment my fingers broke the surface, the world flipped. I was submerged, drowning, the cold water closing over my head, and I was not in the tub—I was in a river, black and swift, churning around me. I saw the house from the water’s surface, the back bedroom window glowing, the lace curtain like a spider’s web, and on the bank stood the same woman, her face now clear, her eyes pleading. She pointed at the house, and I saw another figure at the window—a man, his hands pressed against the glass, his face twisted in despair. He was mouthing ‘Let me in,’ over and over, and I knew he was not a ghost, but something worse—something that had been trapped in that room for decades, feeding on the loneliness of the house.

I woke up on the bathroom floor, my clothes soaked, the lace curtain around my neck like a noose. I tore it off, but the image of the woman and the man stayed with me. I later learned from a neighbor that the previous owner, a widow named Elara, had drowned in the river near the house, and her husband had died in that very bedroom of a heart attack, never forgiving himself for not being there. But that was a hundred years ago. Now, I cannot enter that bathroom without feeling the water rising around me, and I hear the scraping at night, closer each time. The lace curtain hangs straight now, but I know it’s just biding its time. And sometimes, when I catch my reflection in the mirror, I see not my face, but the pale, hollow eyes of the woman, and I wonder if she’s trying to show me something I have not yet seen.