The Memory of Oakwood House

It was the summer of 1994 when my family moved to the outskirts of a small town called Millbrook, and I was just nine. Our new home, a creaking Victorian house with a wrap-around porch, stood next to a sprawling field that led to a dense, foreboding woods. On the other side of that field lived my aunt’s friend, Mrs. Hargrove, and her four daughters—Lily, Rose, Ivy, and little Daisy. We quickly became inseparable, spending our days chasing fireflies and our nights telling stories under the ancient oak tree that stood between our houses.

One sweltering July afternoon, the girls burst through my door, their eyes gleaming with excitement. ‘You have to see this!’ Lily, the eldest, said, clutching a strange device. It was an electronic typewriter, but unlike any I’d seen—it had a glowing green screen and keys that clacked with a satisfying click. ‘It’s a word processor,’ Rose explained. ‘Dad got it from work. It’s magic.’ We gathered in their sunroom, the warm light streaming through the large windows, and placed the machine on a wrought-iron table. The girls insisted I try it first, and I hesitantly typed my name: ‘Tommy.’ The letters appeared on the screen, glowing like fireflies. It seemed harmless enough.

But as the days passed, our games took a strange turn. The typewriter, which we kept in the sunroom, began to display messages when no one was typing. At first, it was innocent: ‘Hello girls,’ or ‘What are you doing?’ We thought it was a prank, but every time we searched, the room was empty. Then the messages became more personal, referencing things only we knew—like the time we found a dead crow in the woods, or the secret spot where we buried a time capsule. A cold dread settled in my stomach.

One evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, Ivy—the middle child—touched the screen, and it flickered. Words formed: ‘I see you, Ivy. I see all of you.’ We screamed and ran to Mrs. Hargrove. She laughed, blaming a faulty machine, but I noticed her hands trembling as she unplugged it. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I stared at the window, half-expecting to see a face, but all I saw was the moon casting long shadows across the field.

The next day, the typewriter sat silent, but the girls were different. They spoke in hushed tones, glancing at the screen. Daisy, the youngest, began waking from nightmares, crying about a ‘green man’ in her room. Mrs. Hargrove dismissed it, but I saw the fear in her eyes. Then, one afternoon, while we were playing in the sunroom, the typewriter suddenly turned on by itself, its green light pulsing. Words scrolled across the screen: ‘You shouldn’t have come to Oakwood. Now you belong to me.’

The ground shook, and the walls seemed to close in. We scrambled out of the room, but the door slammed shut behind us, locking us out. Inside, we heard a low, guttural laugh, followed by the sound of keys clicking rapidly. Mrs. Hargrove called the police, but they found nothing. They chalked it up to a faulty machine and children’s overactive imaginations.

But that night, as I lay in bed, I heard a sound—a rhythmic tapping. I looked out the window and saw the typewriter glowing in the sunroom, its screen flashing. And standing before it, bathed in the green light, was a shadowy figure, its head tilted as if typing. It turned to look at me, and though I couldn’t see its face, I felt its cold smile. The next morning, the typewriter was gone. We searched everywhere, but it had vanished. The girls’ family moved away the following week, and we never spoke of it again.

Years later, when I was in my twenties, I came across an old newspaper article about Oakwood House, our old neighborhood. It mentioned that the house we had rented was originally built on the site of an old asylum, where a patient had been electrocuted by a faulty machine. The article called him ‘The Green Man’ because of the sickly glow of the device that killed him. I never touched a computer again without feeling a chill, and I never looked at a blank screen without seeing the faint outline of a green figure, waiting to type.