The Loom That Wept

I’ve often wondered if the things that happened in that cramped flat on Marrow Lane were real or just the fevered imaginings of a lonely child. But now, at thirty-four, with a family of my own, I still catch myself listening for the rhythmic clack of a loom that hasn’t existed in decades.

We moved into the top-floor flat when I was seven, my younger sister Lena and I sharing a room that overlooked a graveyard. The previous tenant, an old woman named Mrs. Kettle, had died there, and the landlord was keen to rent it out quickly. The place smelled of mothballs and dust, but my parents were desperate after my father’s job transfer to the coastal town of Greywick.

Our room was small, with peeling floral wallpaper and a single window that stuck halfway open. But the strangest thing was the loom—an enormous, dark wooden frame that dominated the corner, draped in a half-finished tapestry of muted greens and browns. My mother said it was too heavy to move, so it stayed, a silent sentinel watching our every move. Lena and I hated it, but we were told to leave it alone.

The first incident happened a week after we moved in. I woke to the sound of the loom’s shuttle sliding back and forth, the rhythmic clack of the weft being beaten into place. I sat up, expecting to see my mother, but the room was empty, the loom still and silent. The next night, it happened again, and this time I saw a faint, translucent figure—an old woman with gnarled hands—sitting at the loom, her eyes fixed on the pattern she was weaving. She didn’t look at me, but I felt her awareness, and then she faded as I blinked.

I told my parents, but they dismissed it as a dream. Lena, though, believed me. She started sleeping with the covers over her head, and I’d hear her crying softly. The loom seemed to grow bolder. I’d find threads of different colors on the floor—crimson, gold, a sickly yellow—that matched nothing in the house. One morning, I found a strand of my own hair woven into the tapestry, right in the middle of a dark patch that had appeared overnight.

Then came the night I saw what the old woman was weaving. I’d snuck out of bed to get a glass of water, and as I passed the loom, I saw the tapestry had changed. It now showed a scene: a child with auburn hair, not unlike Lena, lying in a bed, and above her, a shadowy figure with its hands on her throat. I froze, and the old woman turned her head, her milky eyes meeting mine. She smiled, a lipless grimace, and whispered, ‘She’ll be the last.’

The next day, Lena fell ill with a fever that wouldn’t break. The doctors were baffled. And the loom—it clacked day and night, the sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. My mother, in desperation, tried to tear the tapestry from the frame, but the threads bit into her hands like wires, drawing blood. My father tried to chop the loom apart, but the axe bounced off the wood, and he fell, shaking, saying he felt a cold hand push him.

In my desperation, I searched the flat for some clue. In Mrs. Kettle’s old room, now a storage closet, I found a diary. It was full of ramblings about a curse: the loom was a portal, a bridge for the dead to finish their unfinished work. Mrs. Kettle had been a weaver, and she had died before completing a tapestry that was meant to trap a vengeful spirit—the spirit of her own mother, who had been a witch. But the curse was that the spirit would feed on the lives of the young to complete the loom’s work. The last entry said: ‘The loom must be fed until the final thread is placed, but the final thread must be a soul.’

I realized that Lena was the final thread. Desperate, I decided to confront the spirit. That night, as the clacking reached a fever pitch, I approached the loom, my heart pounding. The old woman was there, more solid than ever, her hands moving with lightning speed. The tapestry now showed Lena in her sickbed, surrounded by black threads that seemed to pulse.

‘Stop!’ I shouted. The old woman looked up, her eyes burning with cold fire. ‘It’s my fate to finish this,’ she hissed. ‘Your sister is the last stitch.’ I grabbed a pair of shears from the drawer, thinking to cut the threads, but as I lunged forward, the room spun. I saw visions: Mrs. Kettle, young, at the loom, her mother’s ghost bearing down on her; a chain of children, each one fading as the tapestry grew.

When I came to, it was morning. The loom was silent, and the tapestry was gone. Lena was sleeping peacefully, her fever broken. The loom itself had splintered, as if it had aged a hundred years overnight. We moved out a week later, and the landlord had the loom burned. But I know what I saw. And sometimes, in the quiet of the night, I hear a faint clack, clack, clack, and I wonder if the old woman found another weaver, another family, another child to finish her work.