The Lamp by the Bed

My first true brush with the unknown happened when I was seven, in the autumn of that year, at my aunt’s cottage in the far northwest of Ireland, near the windswept cliffs of Ballycullane. The cottage was old, with thick stone walls that held the cold and the damp, and a peat fire that never seemed to fully warm the sitting room. I was there with my cousin, Maeve, who was three years older, and we shared the small back bedroom with its single iron-framed bed. My aunt slept on a narrow cot by the window, her breathing a steady rhythm against the sigh of the sea beyond.

I awoke that night not with a start, but with a creeping awareness, as if something had nudged my consciousness from a deep sleep. The room was dark except for a sliver of moonlight that slipped through a gap in the curtains, casting a pale stripe across the floor. My eyes adjusted slowly, and I felt a strange pressure in the air, like the stillness before a storm. I turned my head on the pillow, and there, by the old oak wardrobe that loomed in the corner, stood a figure—a woman, I thought, though she was little more than a smudge of grey light, translucent as mist. She was there, and then she was moving, gliding toward the bed with a motion that was both slow and inexorable.

I wanted to scream, but my throat clenched, and all I could do was watch from the corner of my eye, my body rigid with fear. She came to the side of the bed where Maeve lay, and she hovered over her, her head inclined as if she were studying my cousin’s sleeping face. I could see the faint outline of a hand, long-fingered, reaching out to brush a strand of hair from Maeve’s forehead. The touch was tender, almost maternal, but the cold that radiated from her was palpable, seeping through the blanket and making my bones ache. She stayed there for what felt like an eternity, and then she turned her head, and though she had no discernible features, I felt her gaze settle on me. A silent communication passed between us—an unspoken plea, or maybe a warning. And then, as quickly as she had come, she faded, dissolving into the shadows beside the wardrobe.

I lay there, shaking, my heart pounding so loud I was sure it would wake the house. I didn’t dare close my eyes, and I didn’t move until the grey light of dawn crept under the curtains. When I finally spoke, late that morning over a bowl of porridge, my aunt’s face went pale. She set down her spoon and stared at me, her eyes wide. ‘You saw her, then,’ she whispered. ‘The woman in the grey dress. That was your great-grandmother, Colleen. She died in this room, in that very bed, the night before her wedding. They say she walks, waiting for a groom who never came. She’s been here as long as I can remember, but she’s never shown herself to a child before. Until you.’ She looked at me with a mixture of awe and fear. ‘What did she do?’ I told her, and she nodded slowly, as if confirming something she had long suspected. ‘She’s searching,’ she said. ‘For something she lost. And now she knows you can see her. She’ll come again, you mark my words.’

That night, I insisted on sleeping in the sitting room, in front of the fire, with every lamp in the cottage lit. But as I lay there, watching the flames dance, I felt a familiar chill. A whisper of air, a shift in the shadows. And from the hallway, a soft, barely audible hum—a lullaby my great-grandmother used to sing, my aunt later told me. I pulled the blanket over my head and squeezed my eyes shut, but the humming grew closer, until it seemed to come from the chair beside me. When I peeked out, the chair was empty, but on the cushion was a single white rose, fresh as if it had just been picked, its petals still cool with dew. I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.

I never went back to that cottage after that summer. But the rose, pressed between the pages of my grandmother’s Bible, still sits on my nightstand. Sometimes, in the dead of night, I wake to find its petals wet with water, as if it had just been caught in a sea mist. And I know, with a certainty that chills me to the bone, that Colleen is still waiting—and that she’s found a new way to watch over the living. The lamp by my bed never flickers, but I can feel her there, standing in the corner, humming that old lullaby, waiting for me to acknowledge her again.