The Landing Light

The house on Hemlock Lane was my grandmother’s, and it came with a peculiar history of nighttime visitors. My sister’s friend, Maya, was the first to encounter her. She slept in the back bedroom that faced the garden, the one with the creaky floorboard by the door. It was a summer night, hot and still, when she woke with a full bladder. As she stepped onto the landing, a figure stood at the far end, near the staircase. A small girl, maybe seven, with hair the color of weak tea, wearing a nightgown so white it seemed to glow in the dim light from the bathroom. Maya froze, her heart hammering, but the girl just stood there, hands clasped in front of her. Maya managed to ask, ‘Are you okay?’ The girl nodded slowly, her eyes unblinking, and then turned and vanished into the wall. Maya sprinted to the toilet and back, not daring to look left or right.

Four years later, my sister had moved out, and I took that same bedroom. My friend, Jenna, was staying over, and due to the narrowness of my room, she opted to sleep upstairs. She woke around 2 a.m., parched and needing the toilet. The landing was pitch black; she had to feel her way along the wall. As she passed the bedroom door, she heard a voice from upstairs—my mother’s voice, she assumed—asking, ‘Are you okay?’ Jenna replied, ‘Yes, just going to the toilet, then I’ll come up to bed.’ The voice said, ‘Good.’ She relieved herself, washed her hands, and started up the stairs. The landing at the top was lit by a dim nightlight. She saw my mother’s door open, and my mother stepped out, rubbing her eyes. ‘Jenna? What are you doing up?’ my mother said. Jenna repeated her answer, and my mother frowned. ‘I didn’t just call out,’ she said. ‘I was asleep.’ Jenna’s blood ran cold. She looked down the dark stairwell, expecting to see the ghostly girl, but there was nothing.

A few months ago, I was still living in that room. My mother woke me for school, and I rolled over groggily. The curtains were still drawn, but a sliver of light from the hallway spilled in. Standing at the foot of my bed, half in shadow, was the girl. Her hair was now damp, as if she’d just come in from rain, and her white dress was stained with dark patches that looked like mud. She was closer than ever before, close enough for me to see the detail in her face, the deep hollows under her eyes, the faint blue cast to her skin. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but only a soft exhale came out, like wind through a crack. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She raised a small, pale hand and pointed at the door. I knew she wanted me to follow.

But I didn’t. I squeezed my eyes shut and counted to ten, forcing myself to believe it was a dream. When I opened them, she was gone. I told my mother, and she said it was just a night terror. But then my grandmother, who had been silent on the matter, finally spoke. She told me about Elsie, a girl who had died in the house over fifty years ago. She had been left with a fever, and her mother, a maid, had locked her in the bathroom to keep her away from the other servants. The girl had climbed onto the windowsill and fallen to the garden below. Her mother, consumed with guilt, hanged herself in the attic. The house had always had a presence, but it had never been this active before.

I started sleeping with the light on. But the presence grew bolder. A week later, I woke to find the girl standing by my bed, her hand reaching out to touch my face. This time, I spoke. ‘What do you want?’ I asked, my voice trembling. She tilted her head, and I swear she smiled, a too-wide smile that showed too many teeth. She whispered, ‘The landing light. You turned it off.’

I realized then: the bathroom light was on the same switch as the landing light. Every night, I turned it off when I went to bed, unknowingly plunging the house into darkness. The girl was the one who had been asking if people were okay, guiding them safely to the toilet and back. She was trying to warn us, to protect us from something else, something worse. But by turning off the light, I had cut off her power.

That night, I left the landing light on. I went to the toilet with a racing heart, and when I came out, the girl was standing at the end of the hall, bathed in the soft yellow glow. She looked less ghostly, more real. She nodded, and then pointed toward the attic. I heard a sound above, a rhythmic creaking, as if someone was slowly rocking back and forth. The girl shook her head, her eyes wide with fear. I knew then that her mother was still up there, and that the light was the only thing keeping her at bay.

I never turned off the landing light again. I moved out a month later, but I still think about her—the little girl in the white dress, a guardian against a greater darkness. And I wonder, if I ever pass by that house at night, will I see her in the window, waiting for someone to leave the light on?