The Last Visitor at Merrow House

My earliest memory is not of a face or a voice, but of a cold draft that smelled of old books and dust. I was three, sitting in the attic of Merrow House, playing with a tin of buttons, when the air thickened and a woman materialized from the gloom. She wasn’t like the others—the flickering shapes that darted at the edge of my vision, the transparent figures that passed through walls. She was solid, as solid as my grandmother’s rocking chair, with a face like crumpled parchment and eyes the color of drowned river stones. She introduced herself as Greta. I didn’t know how I knew her name, but I did, like a secret whispered into my bones.

For thirteen years, Greta was my constant companion. She would sit with me on the moss-covered porch of Merrow House, humming tunes that seemed older than the hills. She helped me find the lost key to the gatehouse, and when I was sick with fever, she cooled my forehead with a damp cloth that left no stain. I told her everything—my fears about school, my dreams of the ocean, my resentment of my mother’s silence. Greta listened with a patience that was almost unnerving. She was my best friend, the only one who truly saw me.

But as I grew older, the world pressed in. Other children my age began to notice my strange habits—the pauses when I listened to empty air, the way I’d smile at nothing. They called me weird, and I began to fear the very presences that had once been as natural as breathing. One by one, the spirits faded. I’d see a translucent man in the hallway, and I’d whisper, ‘Please, leave me alone,’ and he’d dissolve like mist. The less I acknowledged them, the less they appeared. Until only Greta remained.

I was sixteen when I started to push Greta away too. I was tired of being different, tired of the pitying looks from neighbors. The week of my birthday, I screamed at her, ‘I don’t want you here anymore! Just leave me alone!’ Her face, which had always held a gentle kindness, froze into something ancient and sorrowful. She didn’t speak. She simply looked at me, then turned and walked through the wall, leaving a faint scent of mint that lingered for days.

The next morning, I woke to a silence that felt wrong. The house, which had always hummed with unseen presences, was empty. I rushed to the window, hoping to see Greta in the garden, but instead, a massive black crow perched on the sill, its head cocked, one eye fixed on me. It was the largest crow I’d ever seen, its feathers glossy as spilled oil. It tapped its beak against the glass three times, then flew off, leaving a single black feather behind.

I spent that day in a haze, realizing the magnitude of what I’d done. Greta was gone forever, and I hadn’t even thanked her for the years of friendship. That night, I sobbed into my pillow, begging the air, ‘Please, come back, just let me say goodbye.’ I didn’t sleep. In the gray light before dawn, I heard a faint tapping at my window. I rushed to the curtain, heart pounding, but it was just the crow again. It had a piece of paper in its beak. It dropped it on the sill and flew away.

I unfolded the paper, my hands trembling. Written in faded ink, in a handwriting I recognized from a decade of notes, were words that made my blood run cold: ‘I waited for you to choose. You chose wrong. Now I must leave this place, but I will not go alone.’ I didn’t understand what it meant. But as I looked up, I saw that the garden below was full of crows, hundreds of them, silent and still, all staring up at my window.