The Linen Hall

Marta had always found comfort in the quiet afternoons of her new apartment, nestled above a closed-in linen shop in the old district. The town of Varnley was a place of slow decay, where the cobblestones held the heat of summer long after sunset, and the air smelled of dust and lavender. She was reading a worn paperback, her cat, Fig, curled at her feet, when a flicker of white glided past the open doorway of her living room. She looked up, expecting Fig, but the cat was still there, eyes half-closed.

She rose, her heart quickening, and peered into the hallway. Empty. ‘Hello?’ she called, her voice softer than she intended. She stepped to the top of the stairs and saw the faint buzz of the television below, her mother and brother watching a rerun. They hadn’t moved. She descended slowly, the wooden steps groaning, and asked, ‘Did you come up just now?’ Her mother glanced up, puzzled. ‘No, we’ve been here the whole time.’ Marta felt a chill that had nothing to do with the draft. She returned to her room, but the sense of being watched lingered.

That night, she dreamt of her great-aunt Hilda, a woman she’d only met once as a child. In the dream, Hilda stood in the doorway of a sunlit room, holding a sprig of dried lavender, and smiled. She seemed to be waiting for something. When Marta woke, the image remained, sharp and unsettling. She brushed it off, but the next day, while tidying, she found an old photograph tucked behind the radiator: her aunt, younger, standing in front of a shop with a sign reading ‘The Linen Hall.’ The very same building she now lived in.

She mentioned it to her mother, who hesitated, then told her a story. Decades ago, Hilda had lived here, above the shop her family owned. She had been a kind woman, known for her love of children; she would often let the neighborhood kids play among the bolts of cloth. But there was a darker tale: one winter, a pair of twins from the building across the street had gone missing for a day, and Hilda had been distraught, searching frantically. They were found safe, but Hilda never fully recovered from the fear. ‘Some say she still watches over children,’ her mother said. ‘But others say she never left this place.’

Marta shrugged it off, but that evening, as she was making tea, she heard a child’s giggle from the empty shop below. She froze, the kettle hissing. She tiptoed to the service hatch and peered down. The shop was dark, but she could make out the shapes of covered furniture. Nothing. Then she saw it: a small hand, pale as bleached cotton, briefly pressed against the glass of the street door before vanishing. She called the landlord, but he shrugged. ‘Old building. Settles. You’ll hear all sorts.’

A week passed. Marta grew used to the creaks, but not to the occasional whiff of lavender that would drift through the rooms with no source. Then one afternoon, while reading, the same white figure passed the doorway again, this time slower, more deliberate. This time she was certain it wasn’t a trick of light. She jumped up and chased it to the storage closet at the end of the hall. She threw the door open. Inside, amid boxes of mothballed linens, stood a dusty, full-length mirror that she’d never noticed. Reflected in it, she saw not herself, but an old woman in a white nightgown, smiling warmly, and beside her, two small boys holding her hands.

Marta stumbled back. The image held for a moment, then faded. She stood there, trembling, until Fig brushed against her leg and mewed. She closed the door and leaned against the wall. Her aunt, she thought, had loved children. Perhaps she was still looking out for them. But then came a new sound: a faint, rhythmic tapping, like a child’s feet running across the floor above her, though the attic was empty. It grew louder, faster, then stopped abruptly. She felt a presence behind her, and turned to see a pale, young girl standing in the hallway, no older than eight, wearing a white dress, her hair in pigtails. ‘Is she still here?’ the girl asked.

‘Who?’ Marta managed.

The girl smiled, a wide, unnatural grin. ‘The lady who plays hide and seek. She always finds me.’ And then she vanished.

A cold realization crept over Marta. The twins, the girl—they were not the aunt’s visitation she’d hoped for. They were something else, something that had been drawn to the aunt’s lingering affection and twisted it. The gentle smile in the mirror, the brief touches, they were not farewells. They were lures. She remembered the girl’s words, and suddenly the tapping upstairs was moving down the stairs, descending, approaching her. She backed into the closet, pulling the door shut, but through the keyhole she saw a white shape gliding toward her, and a child’s giggle echoed from all around. The door rattled, and a sweet, cloying scent of lavender filled the tiny space. Marta pressed her eyes shut, whispering her aunt’s name, but when she opened them, she found herself in the attic, surrounded by broken dolls, and the old woman in white was standing in the corner, extending a hand. ‘Come play with us,’ she said, and behind her, the twins and the girl grinned in unison.

Marta screamed, but no sound came out. The last thing she saw was the mirror from the closet, now in front of her, reflecting her own face, pale and wide-eyed, as the cold hands of children closed around her arms.

When her mother came to visit a month later, the apartment was empty. Marta’s cat was gone, but her book lay open on the floor, as if she’d just stepped away. The landlord said she’d moved, but all her things were still there. The mother found the photograph of Hilda, now crinkled as if soaked, and in the gloom of the hallway, she thought she saw a flash of white vanish around the corner, and heard a faint, receding chorus of childlike laughter. She left the building, and never looked back. The linen shop remains closed to this day, but the neighbors say that if you pass by at dusk, you can see a woman in white in the upstairs window, and small hands pressed against the glass, as if waiting for someone to come and join them in their endless game.