The Night Visitor at Number 12

The summer I turned eleven, my mother and father decided to live apart. My younger brother, Jonah, and I stayed with our mother in the quiet suburb of Oakhaven, while our father rented a small flat above a row of shops on the other side of town. We would visit him every other weekend, and those visits were always the same: we’d climb the creaky stairs to his second-floor flat, he’d make us toast with too much butter, and we’d play in the patch of grass behind the building while he watched from the window. Below our father lived an elderly woman named Mrs. Hargrove. She was a plump, rosy-cheeked lady with silver hair and a kind smile. She’d often sit on a bench near the grass, knitting or reading, and she always had a kind word and sometimes a piece of hard candy for us. Jonah and I adored her.

That particular Saturday was unremarkable. The sun was warm, and we spent the afternoon building a fort out of cardboard boxes and old blankets. Mrs. Hargrove shuffled over with two butterscotch sweets wrapped in crinkly paper. ‘You boys are so good,’ she said, patting our heads. ‘You keep playing safe and happy, you hear?’ We thanked her and popped the candies into our mouths, savoring the sweetness. She smiled at us for a moment longer than felt comfortable, then turned and walked back to her door. As she went inside, I noticed she didn’t look back.

That night, I couldn’t fall asleep. The flat was stuffy, and my mind kept replaying the day’s events. I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew, the room was bathed in a pale gray light. I checked the digital alarm clock on the nightstand: 5:15 AM. My bladder was full, so I slipped out of bed and padded to the bathroom. On my way back, I paused. The hallway was dim, but I could clearly see Mrs. Hargrove standing at the end of it, right outside my door. She was wearing the same floral dress she’d worn earlier, and she was staring at me. Not menacingly, just… staring. Her lips curled into a smile, and she nodded very slowly. Then she turned and walked away, fading into the darker part of the hall. I heard no footsteps, no door opening or closing. Just silence. I scrambled back into bed, pulled the covers over my head, and lay there shaking until dawn. I didn’t sleep a wink.

At breakfast, I couldn’t keep it to myself. I told my father what I’d seen. His face went white. He dropped his fork with a clatter on his plate. ‘You saw her? In the hallway?’ he whispered. I nodded, and he looked at Jonah, who was spooning cereal, oblivious. ‘Stay here,’ Dad said, rising. He walked to the window and peered down at Mrs. Hargrove’s flat. Then he walked to the door and looked through the peephole, something I’d never seen him do before. He turned back to us, his eyes wide. ‘I need to make a call,’ he said, his voice shaking. He went to the kitchen and spoke in hushed tones on the phone. I could hear fragments: ‘old lady… my sons… they saw her… I thought she…’ When he came back, he sat down heavily and told us we were going home early. ‘But we just got here,’ Jonah protested. Dad shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, boys. We have to go.’

We drove back to Oakhaven in silence. Dad didn’t explain, and my brother was too young to be scared; he just wanted to play. I, however, was a nervous wreck. All day, I kept seeing her face in my mind. That smile. That nod. It wasn’t scary at the time, but now it felt sinister. I tried to forget, but the memory clung to me like a web.

A week later, Dad called. I was in the kitchen when Mom answered, and I could hear him through the phone. ‘I spoke to the landlord,’ he said. ‘He told me Mrs. Hargrove died two months ago. I saw her funeral notice in the paper. But the tenants below me said they’ve been hearing footsteps at night. And the landlord said the flat is empty.’ My blood ran cold. I dropped the glass I was holding. It shattered on the floor, but I barely noticed. Mom turned to look at me, her face pale. ‘What is it?’ she asked. I couldn’t speak. I just stared at the broken glass, but all I could see was Mrs. Hargrove standing in that hallway, smiling at me as if I were a piece of candy she wanted to unwrap.

I never went back to that flat. Dad moved out of that building within a month, but even after we moved, I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was still watching me. For years, I’d occasionally see an old woman in a crowd with that same silver hair and floral dress, and my heart would stop. But she was always gone when I blinked. Sometimes, in the dead of night, I’d wake up at 5:15 and feel a presence in the room. I’d hold my breath, listening, but there was never any sound. And yet, I knew. I just knew she was there, waiting, still smiling, still patient, because the dead have all the time in the world.