The Man in the Gables

I’ve been a member of this forum for a few months now, but I’ve read the stories here for years. It’s comforting to know I’m not alone in experiencing things that defy explanation. This is one of my earliest memories, and it still haunts me to this day.

It was the autumn of 1984, and I was eleven years old. I was staying at my cousin’s house, a sprawling Victorian mansion on the outskirts of a small town, surrounded by overgrown gardens and a crumbling stone wall. My cousin, Sarah, and I had spent the day exploring the attic, where we’d found a locked trunk that we couldn’t open. That night, her parents had a dinner party, and Sarah and I were sent to bed early. We were allowed to sleep in the guest room, a huge corner room with tall windows that overlooked the old apple orchard.

We were both tired from our adventures, but we lay in the double bed, whispering about the trunk and what might be inside. The house was quiet except for the faint clink of glasses and murmur of voices from downstairs. But then, as the party wound down and the house fell silent, I heard it: a rhythmic tapping, like a fingernail on glass, coming from the window above the headboard. I froze, listening. Sarah had fallen asleep, her breathing even. I turned over and looked up at the window, but the moonlight was bright enough to see nothing but the dark sky and the bare branches of the apple trees.

The tapping stopped, and I chided myself for being silly. But then I heard a voice, low and raspy, right next to my ear: ‘Don’t you want to see?’ The voice seemed to come from inside the wall. I squeezed my eyes shut, my heart pounding. I felt a cold draft on my face, and then the covers were pulled off me, not roughly, but as if someone was tugging at them. I yelped and sat up, but the room was empty. The window was open a crack, and the curtain fluttered.

I shook Sarah awake, but she just mumbled and rolled over. I got up and went to the window, my legs shaking. I closed it and looked down at the orchard. Among the gnarled trees, I saw a figure: a tall man in a long coat, his face obscured by a wide-brimmed hat. He was just standing there, looking up at me. He raised a hand and beckoned. I stumbled back, tripping over the rug, and ran to the door, locking it. I spent the rest of the night huddled in a chair, listening to the tapping that started again, but this time from the window, and then from the closet door, and then from under the bed.

At dawn, the sounds ceased. I told my aunt and uncle about the man in the orchard, but they laughed and said it was just the gardener’s scarecrow. But I knew what I saw. And when I went back to the guest room to gather my things, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before: carved into the wooden headboard was a tiny figure, a man in a hat, with his arm raised as if pointing. I ran from that house and never slept there again. The last time I visited, years later, the house had been demolished, but I still can’t look at a window at night without expecting to see that man standing there, beckoning.