The Mud Man of Ashgrove House

When I was nine, we moved into my great-grandparents’ old house in the countryside, far from the city’s noise. The house, named Ashgrove after the ancient trees that lined the drive, had been empty for years, but it was the only place we could afford after Dad lost his job. I remember the first night I lay in my narrow bed under the sloped eaves of my new room, the wallpaper peeling in strips, and the floorboards creaking with the settling of the house. I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching me from the window, even though the glass was black with the night. I’d pull the covers over my head and whisper to myself that it was just my imagination, but the feeling never went away.

A few weeks later, I woke up with a full bladder, my heart pounding from a dream I couldn’t recall. The moonlight cast a silver glow across the floor, and I sat up, about to swing my legs out of bed, when I saw it. At the window, a wet, reddish-brown shape oozed over the sill, like a creature made of muddy clay. It had no face, no features, just a lumpy, dripping form that seemed to pulse as it oozed into the room. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. It crawled along the ceiling, leaving a trail of thick, dark liquid, and I finally found my voice, screaming for my parents. When they burst in, the thing was gone, but the window was smeared with a brownish residue that smelled like damp earth. My mom held me, her face pale, and she said she’d seen something similar when she was my age, in this very house, but hers was blue, and it came from her window too. She said it looked like it was made of clay, just like I described.

Dad, the skeptic, snorted and said it was probably condensation or a trick of the light. He refused to believe it, and we didn’t talk about it after that night. But a few months later, Dad was sleeping on the couch downstairs because he’d been working late and didn’t want to disturb Mom. In the morning, he asked her why she’d been standing over him in the middle of the night, just staring. Mom insisted she was fast asleep in their bedroom the whole time. Dad’s face went stony, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of doubt in his eyes. But he just shook his head and said he must have been dreaming.

For me, the worst part was bath time. The bathroom was at the end of the hall, opposite my parents’ bedroom, and it had an old clawfoot tub with rusted taps. Every time I took a bath, I’d hear voices—muffled, indistinct, like people talking in another room, but I knew my parents were downstairs or in the kitchen. The voices seemed to come from the walls, and sometimes they’d get louder, almost urgent, and then fade. One evening, I was soaking in the tub, the water warm and cloudy, when the voices started. It sounded like a man and a woman arguing, words I couldn’t quite make out. The water turned cold, and a ripple ran across the surface, as if something had moved underneath. I scrambled out, wrapped a towel around me, and ran to my parents, shaking. They found the bathroom empty, but the mirror was fogged with a shape—a handprint, like a child’s, on the glass.

I never slept with my window open after that, and I kept a nightlight, but it didn’t help. The feeling of being watched only grew, and sometimes I’d see the red clay thing from the corner of my eye, always near the window, as if waiting. One night, I woke to find it hovering over my bed, its form looming above me like a dripping, grotesque statue. I screamed, and it retreated back to the window, dissolving into the frame. The next morning, I told my parents I couldn’t sleep there anymore. Dad, finally convinced, said we’d move, and within a month, we rented a small apartment in town, leaving Ashgrove behind.

But even now, years later, I sometimes wake up in the dead of night, and for a moment, I see that reddish shape in my window, a reminder of the thing that lived in that old house. And I wonder if it’s still there, waiting for the next child who sleeps in that room, its clay body oozing through the glass to claim another dream.