The Man in the Locket

Clara never remembered it herself. It was her mother, Edith, who told her the story over cups of tea, years later, with a tremor in her voice that Clara mistook for nostalgia. ‘You were about two and a half,’ Edith would begin, settling into the floral armchair that smelled of lavender and dust. ‘We lived in that brick terrace on Sycamore Lane, the one that sat on the ground where the old Mercy Hospital used to be, before they tore it down and built houses. You used to stand at the bottom of the stairs, not crying, not pointing, just staring up into the dark landing above, and you’d smile. I’d ask you what you were smiling at, and you’d turn to me with that innocent look, as if the answer was written on my face, and say, ‘He’s there.’ I’d look up, but there was nothing but the banister and the peeling wallpaper with its faded roses.’

Clara would laugh, shiver theatrically, and ask, ‘And who was he?’ Edith would always pause then, reach into the pocket of her cardigan, and pull out a small silver locket on a chain. She’d open it, revealing a faded sepia photograph of a stern-faced man with a thick mustache, his eyes looking off to the side. ‘That’s my grandfather, your great-grandfather. He passed away four years before you were born. I was his favorite, you know. He used to bounce me on his knee and tell me stories about the old country.’ Edith would click the locket shut and tuck it away. ‘The day your grandmother babysat you, you pointed at that photograph on her nightstand and said, ‘That’s him.’ She asked, ‘Who, love?’ You giggled and said, ‘The man at the top of the stairs.’ She told me later, and I said, ‘Oh, he’s probably just a guardian angel.’ But there was something in her eyes that said otherwise.’

The story always ended there, and Clara would file it away as another one of her family’s eccentric ghost tales. She grew up, moved to the city, became a graphic designer, and rarely thought about Sycamore Lane. But when her parents passed away within a year of each other, Clara inherited the brick terrace. She hadn’t visited in over a decade, and the house had been rented out to tenants who had moved on, leaving it empty and slightly damp. She drove down, expecting to find a dated interior, but instead discovered the walls freshly painted, the floors polished, and the staircase rebuilt with modern spindles. Yet as she stood in the living room, tracing the line where the old stairs had been, she felt a chill despite the summer heat. She tried to shake it off, but the memory of her mother’s story clung to her like cobwebs.

That night, Clara slept in the back bedroom, the one that had been her parents’. She had a dreamless sleep until, at 3:33 AM, she was woken by a faint sound, like a soft hum, coming from the landing. She sat up, heart thumping. The hallway light was off, but a sliver of moonlight seeped through the window at the top of the stairs. She tiptoed to the doorway and peered out. At the top of the stairs, in the dim light, she saw a shape, a tall, indistinct figure, too solid to be a shadow, too dark to be real. It didn’t move, but she felt it watching her. A voice, remarkably clear, said, ‘You’ve come back.’ Clara stumbled backwards, fumbled for the light switch, and flooded the hallway with harsh brightness. The figure was gone.

She should have left, but something kept her there. She rationalized: an old house, creaking pipes, vivid imagination. But the next night, she found the locket. She had been going through a box of her mother’s belongings in the attic, and there, nestled under old letters, was the silver locket. It was already open, and the photograph inside was not the stern-faced man she remembered. It was a picture of herself, as a toddler, laughing, and behind her, faintly, the outline of a man standing at the top of a staircase, his face obscured. A handwritten note was tucked behind the photo: ‘He says to tell you he’s still waiting.’ The handwriting was her mother’s.

Clara’s skin prickled. She called her grandmother, now in her nineties at a nursing home, to ask about the locket. Her grandmother’s voice was frail, but her words were chillingly lucid. ‘Your great-grandfather, Arthur, he died in that hospital, you know. The one they tore down. He was a patient there, for years, before you were born. He never left. When you were small, you used to play with him at the top of the stairs. You called him ‘the man with the kind eyes.’ but he wasn’t kind, Clara. He was waiting for someone to join him. I think he’s waiting for you now.’

Clara hung up, trembling. She wanted to believe it was senility, but the locket in her hand was warm. That evening, she gathered her things to leave, but as she reached the front door, she heard a child’s laughter from the top of the stairs. She turned, and standing there, half-hidden in the shadow of the banister, was a little girl in a white dress, with dark hair and a familiar smile. It took Clara a moment to realize the girl looked just like her childhood photographs. The girl pointed a tiny finger at Clara and said, ‘He’s been so alone. He wants you to come up and play.’ Clara backed away, but the front door was locked. The lights flickered. And from the landing above, a deep voice said, ‘You always did like to smile at me.’ The locket in her hand snapped shut on its own, and the last thing Clara saw was the man from the photograph stepping into the light, not as an apparition but as solid as she, reaching out a welcoming hand.

She never left that house. The neighbors would sometimes see her in the window, staring down at the street, a faint smile playing on her lips. The new tenants who moved in after she vanished reported a strange feeling on the stairs, and one of them, a young mother, said her toddler would point at nothing and coo, ‘The lady and the man are watching over us.’ Nobody believed her, of course. But if you pass by the brick terrace on Sycamore Lane, you might see a flicker of a curtain, and if you listen closely at night, you might hear a child’s giggle and an old man’s soothing murmur, and you’ll know, as Clara did, that some guardians are not meant to be kept in lockets.

Years later, the house was sold to a developer who planned to demolish it and build a shopping mall. The wrecking crew arrived on a gray Tuesday. As the first wall fell, they found a child’s shoe, impossibly preserved, wedged behind the baseboard. Inside the shoe was a tarnished silver locket, its clasp broken open. The photograph inside was blank. But one of the workers, a man named Jim, swore he saw a shadow move across the second floor window just before the beam collapsed. He quit that day, and refused to work on the site again. He told his wife he’d seen a man wearing an old-fashioned suit, holding a little girl’s hand, smiling at him. He never smiled the same way again. The shopping mall was built, but it never thrived. The central fountain, shaped like a floral arrangement, would sometimes stop working, and people walking by at dusk would feel an inexplicable urge to look up, expecting to see a staircase where there was only a second floor. Some would even claim to hear a faint humming, a lullaby, coming from the empty vents. And if you ever ask Clara’s family, they’ll show you the locket, now in possession of her cousin, and they’ll say, ‘He’s still there, waiting for the next one.’ And they’ll close the locket, and you’ll notice it’s warm to the touch, as if it just came from a living hand.

The last time I visited Sycamore Lane, I found a faded photograph on a bench near the closed shopping mall. It was a toddler laughing, her hand reaching up as if to grasp an invisible hand. On the back, in a child’s scrawled letters, it said, ‘Me and Papa.’ I turned the photo over, and in the corner, barely visible, was a tiny reflection in the toddler’s eye: the shadow of a man on a staircase. I keep that photograph now, though I don’t know why. Sometimes, at night, I feel a warm breath on my neck and a chuckle close to my ear, and I think, ‘He’s found me.’ And I wonder if my own smile is beginning to look like Clara’s.