The Loom’s Lament

The air in the weaving room hung thick with the ghosts of a century of cotton dust. At 11 PM it was still, the enormous looms standing like silent, rusted titans in the gloom. I’d taken the night watchman job at the Verona Textile Works because it paid well and required nothing but a pulse and a willingness to sit in the dark. My task was simple: babysit a leaking valve in the main water line that snaked under the old building. The leak was slow, a monotonous drip that echoed off the stone walls like a heartbeat.

By 11:30, I had done my circuit. The place was empty. The main shift had left, and the last security guard, a man named Calloway, had waved me goodbye from the loading dock. ‘You’re all alone out here, kid,’ he’d said, his breath forming a small cloud in the chill. ‘Except for the pipes. They’re always talking.’ I’d laughed, but he hadn’t. Now, sitting in the small, windowless office off the main weaving floor, I found his words less funny. The drip was my only companion, a metronome ticking away the minutes.

I pulled a battered paperback from my pack—a detective novel. I was two chapters in, the detective already regretting his decision to take a case in a fog-shrouded town, when I heard it. A low, muffled conversation. Two distinct voices, maybe a man and a woman, but the words were impossible to make out. They came from the direction of the weaving floor. I put the book down and listened. Silence. The drip. A creak from the old timbers settling. I chalked it up to the wind or the old building’s groaning, but a knot tightened in my stomach.

I stepped out of the office and flicked on my flashlight. The beam carved a pale tunnel through the darkness. The looms were hulking shapes, their metal arms frozen mid-motion. I called out, ‘Hello?’ My voice echoed, swallowed by the vastness. No answer. I walked the length of the floor, checking between the machines. Nothing. I pushed open the heavy metal door to the next section—the dye room. It was cold, the air sharp with the smell of old chemicals. Empty. I returned to my office, my heart beating slightly faster.

Back in the chair, I tried to read, but the words blurred. The drip. The drip. And then, again—the voices. This time they were closer, urgent, as if they were just on the other side of the thin wall. I could almost make out a phrase—’the loom runs’—but it dissolved into a hiss. I jumped up, threw open the door, and stood in the dark. The voices stopped as if cut by a knife. I walked the floor again, more slowly this time, checking behind every loom, every rack of spools. Nothing.

I began to doubt myself. Perhaps it was the old steam pipes. Perhaps the building was playing tricks on me. But as I stood there, a new sound emerged—the sound of weaving. A rhythmic clack, clack, clack, like a shuttle being pulled through a warp. It came from the far corner of the weaving floor, where a single loom stood covered in a tarp, a relic from the 1920s that they’d never moved. The tarp was dust-covered, sagging.

I walked toward it, the sound growing clearer. Clack, clack, clack. I felt a chill run down my spine. The tarp seemed to shift slightly, as if something underneath were alive. I reached out and grabbed the edge of the tarp, hesitated. My breath fogged in the cold. I pulled. The tarp slid off with a hiss of dust. Underneath was the old loom, its wooden beams black with age. Its shuttle was moving—back and forth, back and forth—weaving a cloth that was not cloth but a pattern of shadow and dust. And on the cloth, there were words. Not written, but woven, in thick black threads: ‘THEY NEVER LEFT.’

I stumbled back, my flashlight flickering. The voices rose again, louder now, a chorus of whispers. ‘The loom runs,’ they said. ‘The loom runs.’ I turned to run, but the doors to the weaving floor had slammed shut. The lights flickered on, stark and white, revealing the room empty. But the loom continued to weave, faster and faster, and the cloth it produced grew longer, spilling onto the floor, forming a pattern that looked like the faces of the workers who had died here, their mouths open in silent screams.

And then I saw them—the ghosts. They stood between the looms, dozens of them, translucent, their fingers working at empty air. They were weaving the same pattern, over and over, their eyes fixed on me. The water leak had done something. It had brought them forth, a breach in the barrier between worlds. The voices rose to a deafening crescendo as the loom wove my name into the cloth: ‘WILLIAM READ.’

I ran through them, my body passing through their chill forms, feeling a thousand fingers brush my skin. I reached the office, slammed the door, and locked it. But the door began to rattle in its frame. The voices were in the room with me now. The drip from the pipe had changed—it was no longer water, but a thick, black liquid that pooled on the floor and began to form letters. ‘YOU ARE THE LAST THREAD.’

I grabbed the book, as if it could protect me, but the pages were blank. The images I’d seen were gone. The drips began to form a pattern, and I realized with horror that they were weaving a pattern on the floor—a pattern that matched the cloth. And in the center of the pattern was a loom. My body began to move on its own, as if strings were attached to my limbs, pulling me toward the loom. I fought, but it was useless. I was being woven into the cloth, my body becoming part of the pattern, my mouth opening to scream but no sound coming out.

The last thing I saw was my own face, stitched into the endless web, as the loom continued its lament, clacking and weaving into the endless dark. And in the morning, when the workers arrived, there was no trace of me. Only a new pattern on the cloth—a young man with a book in his hand, forever frozen in the weft and warp. The drip had stopped. But if you listen closely in the weaving room, you can still hear the voices, murmuring, ‘The loom runs.’