The Lamp by the Door

It was the autumn of 2007, and I was back home for a few weeks, staying in the guest room of my parents’ old Victorian house in western Massachusetts. The house had that particular creakiness of old homes, with drafts that made the curtains sway even on still nights. My father, a heavy sleeper, was going through a phase of snoring like a chainsaw, and my mother, a light sleeper, had taken to crashing on the twin bed in my room to get some rest. She’d drag a thin blanket and a pillow, and she’d curl up like a cat, always ending up with her back against mine by morning.

On this particular night, I was in that half-awake haze, drifting in and out of a dream about walking through a cornfield. My mother’s voice cut through: ‘Alex, can you turn on the lamp? I need to go to the bathroom.’ I grumbled, rolled over, and reached for the lamp on the nightstand, but I missed it, fumbling in the dark. I must have dozed off again, because the next thing I knew, I felt the familiar weight of my mother climbing up from the foot of the bed, her knees pressing the mattress, and then she settled, her back against mine, a warm, solid presence.

I reached over and flicked the lamp off, but as the room went dark, I noticed a sliver of light coming from under the door, from the hallway bathroom. I sighed, still facing away, and said, ‘Mom, you left the bathroom light on.’

To my horror, her voice came from the other side of the house, distant and muffled: ‘What? I’m in the bathroom right now!’

I froze. The warm body behind me was suddenly gone, replaced by a cold that seeped through the mattress. I didn’t dare turn around. I heard the bathroom door creak open down the hall, and my mother’s footsteps approaching, and her voice, closer now: ‘Alex, why did you turn the lamp off? I can’t see. And who’s in there with you?’

I felt a long, cold finger trace down my spine, and a whisper, not my mother’s, in my ear: ‘She’s not the only one who needs a light.’ I screamed, and my mother burst in, flicking the overhead switch. The room was empty. But on the nightstand, the lamp was on, and the bulb was flickering, casting a rhythm that seemed to spell out a name I didn’t recognize. And the bathroom light down the hall was off, the door ajar, revealing a dark silhouette that stood there only for a moment before vanishing. I never slept in that room again, and to this day, I never turn off a lamp without checking what’s behind me first.