The Ledge Sitters

I must have been three, maybe four, the summer we moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of the moor. My mother, my grandmother, and my baby sister, Lily, were all there, but my father was away, working on the oil rigs. The house was vast and drafty, with high ceilings and windows that rattled in the wind. My room was at the end of a long, dark hallway, and I hated it from the first night.

I remember lying in my cot, a wooden thing my grandfather had made, with bars I could just peer through. The window was opposite, framed by heavy velvet curtains that seemed to move even when there was no breeze. I never felt alone in that room. Something about the way the moonlight crept across the floor, or the way the shadows pooled in the corners, made my skin prickle. I would pull the blankets over my head and hum to myself until I fell asleep, but that night, I couldn’t.

A sound woke me—a soft, rhythmic scraping, like claws on glass. I lay still, my heart thumping, listening. It came again, from the window. I was terrified, but curiosity got the better of me. I climbed out of my cot, my bare feet cold on the wooden floor, and crept to the window. I grabbed the thick curtain and pulled it back.

Two figures sat on the narrow stone ledge outside, one on each side of the pane. They were small, child-sized, but their limbs were horribly thin and long, like twigs bent at odd angles. Their skin was pale, almost translucent, and their eyes were too large, black and unblinking. They clutched their knees with long, spindly fingers, and each had a tail that curled and twitched behind them, ending in a sharp, pointed tip. They didn’t move, just stared at me, and I felt a cold dread seep into my bones.

I wanted to scream, but my voice was frozen. One of them tilted its head, a slow, unnatural motion, and its mouth stretched into a wide, thin smile. The other one raised a hand and pressed it against the glass, leaving a faint smear. I stumbled back, tripping over the rug, and landed hard on my bottom. When I looked up, they were still there, watching.

I scrambled to my feet and ran to the door, yanking it open and fleeing down the hall to my mother’s room. I burst in, sobbing, and she sat up, alarmed. ‘What’s wrong, love?’ she asked, pulling me into her arms. I tried to tell her about the creatures on the ledge, but the words came out as gibberish. She shushed me, stroking my hair. ‘It was just a dream,’ she said. ‘Go back to bed.’ But I refused, and she let me sleep in her bed that night.

The next morning, I tried to show her the marks on the window, but there was nothing there. My grandmother, a stern woman with sharp eyes, looked at me strangely but said nothing. As the days passed, I began to wonder if I had imagined it. But then, the scraping returned. Every night, around the same time, I would hear it. I would lie awake, staring at the curtains, afraid to move. Sometimes, I caught glimpses of them—a shadow shifting, a tail disappearing behind the frame.

One night, I decided to be brave. I crept to the window again, my heart pounding. I pulled back the curtain, and there they were, closer this time, their faces pressed against the glass. One of them opened its mouth, and I saw rows of needle-thin teeth. It made a sound, a low chittering, like a cricket but deeper. The other one tapped the glass with a pointed finger, over and over, as if counting. I felt a pull, a strange compulsion to open the window, to let them in. My hand moved on its own, reaching for the latch.

A sharp cry from Lily’s room broke the spell. The creatures flinched, and in that instant, I yanked the curtains shut and backed away. I ran to Lily’s room, where she was wailing in her crib. My grandmother was already there, rocking her. She looked at me, her face pale. ‘You saw them too, didn’t you?’ she whispered. I nodded, tears streaming down my face. She sighed, a deep, weary sound. ‘They’ve been coming for years,’ she said. ‘This house sits on an old boundary. They wait for a child to invite them in. You must never open that window, do you understand?’

I nodded, and from that night on, I never went near the window again. We moved a few months later, and I tried to put it out of my mind. But sometimes, when I’m alone in the dark, I still hear that scraping, and I see them sitting on the ledge, waiting. And I wonder how many other children have seen them, and what happens to the ones who open the window.