The Loom of the Other Side

My grandmother called it ‘the loom of the other side’ – a phrase that always made me picture some cosmic spinning wheel weaving the unseen threads of the world. I never understood it until I moved into the groundskeeper’s cottage on the grounds of the old Marrowbone Asylum, a derelict Victorian-era hospital that had been converted into low-income housing. The cottage was a squat brick building with a sunken roof and warped wooden door, set at the far end of a long, overgrown drive. It was 2003, and at age twenty, I needed cheap rent more than I needed sensible judgment.

My new neighbors were a motley crew of artists, troubled veterans, and elderly folks on fixed incomes. Among them was a reclusive woman named Elspeth who lived in the apartment directly above the old morgue. She was in her seventies, with silver hair braided into a crown and eyes the color of river stones. She rarely spoke, but when she did, her words felt like they were dragged from a deep well. On my first week, she pressed a bundle of dried sage into my palm and said, ‘The walls are thin here, but not between rooms. They’re thin between worlds. Burn this when it gets dark.’ I laughed it off, but I kept the sage.

The trouble started with the humming. It wasn’t a song, but a low, rhythmic drone that seemed to seep through the walls at night, like the building itself was breathing. I’d wake at 3 a.m. to the sound, my skin prickling with static, and I’d find myself walking towards the basement door before I could stop myself. The door was always locked, but the key hung on a hook in the hall. I never used it, but I started having vivid dreams of a long corridor lined with rusted gurneys, and a figure at the far end that never turned around.

One rainy evening, my brother called to say our father was in the hospital – a sudden heart attack. I was pacing the kitchen, sick with worry, when the humming grew loud enough to shake the windows. Without thinking, I grabbed the key and descended the basement stairs. The air smelled of wet earth and copper. The walls were dotted with black mold, and the floor was strewn with old patient files, their pages yellowed and brittle. At the far end, I saw a door ajar – one that Elspeth had warned me about. She’d said it led to the old electroshock therapy room, and that it was ‘best left closed’.

I pushed it open. Inside, a single chair sat in the center, its leather straps cracked and buckled. On the seat lay a photograph, face down. I picked it up. It was black and white, showing a young woman with hollow cheeks and haunted eyes. Written on the back in faded pencil was a date – October 31, 1918 – and a name: ‘Mary Bellweather, patient #44’. As I stared, the humming in the walls crescendoed into a chorus of whispers, and the photograph grew cold in my hand. I felt a presence behind me, and a voice whispered, ‘You see her, don’t you? You see me.’

I fled, but the whispers followed me to my cottage. They grew louder each night, and I began to see Mary in the corners of my vision – a flicker in the hallway, a reflection in the mirror that was not my own. I learned from Elspeth that Mary had died in that room in 1918, a victim of experimental treatments, and that her spirit was believed to be tied to the ground. Elspeth told me something else: ‘The loom is real. Everyone who sees her becomes a thread. You can either cut your thread or weave with it.’

I was skeptical, but then the visions became more real. I’d see Mary in my kitchen, sitting at the table, her lips moving in soundless words. One night, she pointed at the far wall, and there, inscribed in the peeling paint, was a message: ‘The key is in the floorboards.’ I found it – a brass key, ancient and tarnished – beneath a loose plank. It unlocked nothing I could find, but Mary’s agitation grew. She began to appear more solid, more desperate, and I realized she was trying to communicate not with words, but with memories.

I began to see flashes: Mary’s life in the asylum, the cruel treatments, the loneliness. And I saw the source of her rage – a doctor, still alive but ancient, who had used her as a subject for his sadistic experiments. His face, worn and sharp, was burned into my mind. The last flash showed Mary standing before that door, the key in her hand, but she couldn’t open it because it led to freedom – a back entrance to the asylum gate. She had died just feet from it.

I knew what I had to do. I waited until the next night, when the moon was full and the humming was a roar. I took the key and went to the basement room. Mary stood in the doorway, transparent but vivid. Without a word, I inserted the key into a small lock I’d never noticed before, hidden behind a loose panel. The lock turned with a click, and the wall behind the chair slid open, revealing a passage that led out to the old asylum grounds. As I stared into the darkness, Mary smiled, a genuine smile, and stepped forward. The moment she crossed the threshold, the whispers ceased, and the humming died to a breath.

The next morning, I walked outside to find the sun blazing and the air calm. I felt lighter, as if a weight had been lifted. I never saw Mary again, but sometimes, when I pass the old asylum gate, I catch a glimpse of a woman in a white gown, standing at the edge of the woods, waving. I wave back, grateful that I could finally cut her thread and let her weave onward.

Elspeth passed away a year later, and in her apartment, I found a journal. In it, she had written: ‘The threads we cut are never severed, only rewoven. You have done what many could not.’ I still have the sage she gave me, and I burn it on the anniversary of that night. The cottage is quiet now, but I always keep one window open for the breeze – and for the memory of Mary.