The Night the Air Turned Solid

I was eight, not five, but that doesn’t change what I saw. It was the summer before the big move, and my parents had rented an old farmhouse on the edge of a town called Morrow. The place smelled of dust and dry rot, and my room was at the end of a long, crooked hallway. There was a single window that looked out onto a field of dead sunflowers, their heads bowed like mourners.

I woke up that night with a start, my heart hammering. The clock on my nightstand glowed 3:03 AM. I hadn’t dreamed, at least not that I could recall. It was just a sudden, ugly alertness, as if someone had whispered my name directly into my ear. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to place the feeling. Then, without thinking, I turned my head to the floor.

She was there. A little girl, curled up like a comma, lying on the worn wooden planks. She wore a white nightgown stained with something dark at the hem, and her hair was in two tight braids tied with red ribbons. But it was the faint glow around her that made my skin crawl. It was a sickly, greenish light, like the glow of a firefly that had drowned. I squeezed my eyes shut. I counted to ten. When I opened them, she was gone.

I thought maybe I had imagined it. But then I heard a sound, a dry, rustling noise, like something dragging across the floor. I dared to peek again. She was now standing by my closet door, her back to me. She began to turn her head, slowly, as if her neck was made of creaking hinges. Her grin was too wide, showing too many teeth for a child. Then she vanished again.

I wanted to scream for my mother, but my throat felt like it was packed with cotton. I tried to move, but my limbs were heavy, as if someone had poured cement into my bones. The room grew colder. The air felt thick, almost solid, and the moonlight coming through the window seemed to bend around her shape, which I could now see in the corner, watching me from behind a dusty rocking chair. She lifted a small, pale hand and waved.

I pulled the covers over my head. I prayed. I begged for dawn. Under the blanket, I could hear faint, childish humming, a nursery rhyme I almost knew but not quite. It was off-key, wrong, the notes sliding into each other like wet stones. The humming stopped. Then I felt a slight pressure on the foot of my bed, as if someone had sat down.

I stayed frozen, my breath held, until gray light seeped through the fabric. When I finally dared to lower the covers, the room was empty. But on the floor, where she had lain, there was a small patch of dampness, shaped like a child’s body, and the smell of old well water and decay.

I never told my parents. We moved a week later. But even now, as I write this at my desk in my new apartment, I sometimes feel the air grow heavy, and I hear that humming from the hallway. Just now, I glanced at the floor by my filing cabinet. There’s a faint, greenish glow. And I can feel her breath on the back of my neck, leaning in to read what I’ve written.