The Pallid Guest

Every spring, our school shipped us off to the old Morrison House for a four-day service retreat. By day, we scraped paint off abandoned buildings or sorted donations in the sweltering heat. By night, we played stupid games in the creaking, drafty mansion the church had rented for a steal. The place was a monument to neglect: peeling floral wallpaper, radiators that clanked like bones, and a portrait of some dead benefactor that seemed to follow you with its eyes.

It was during ‘Ghost in the Graveyard’ on the first night that I first saw her. We had the whole house dark, flashlights off, trying to spot the hidden player. I was creeping down the second-floor hallway when a pale shape flickered at the far end near the linen closet. It was there for a second—a thin, white figure like a curtain moved by a draft—then gone. I blinked, blamed the exhaustion and the weird shadows, and kept going. But she appeared again, in the corner of my eye, every time we played. A gown? A person in a sheet? I never got a clear look. I convinced myself it was a prank, or my mind playing tricks.

On the second night, we played ‘Midnight Runner,’ where the hider had to reach the old bell tower without being tagged. My friend Marcus and I were searching the main staircase, our steps muffled by a threadbare carpet. Marcus grabbed my arm and whispered, ‘I swear I just saw someone on the upper balcony, by the stained glass.’ We sprinted up, but when we got there, the landing was empty. A window was open, its white curtain billowing. We looked at each other, and I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air.

Later, after everyone had gone to bed, I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing that whiteness. I decided to go to the kitchen for a glass of water. The stairs groaned under my feet, each creak amplifying in the silence. On the ground floor, I passed the old parlor, and there she was—clear as anything now. A tall woman in a thin white nightgown, her hair lank and stringy, her face too pale, too smooth. She stood by the window, not looking at me, but I could feel her awareness, like a pressure on my skull. She raised a hand and pointed toward the back garden, toward the stone well we had been warned not to approach.

I didn’t run. I couldn’t move. She mouthed something—’stay’ or ‘play’—I couldn’t tell. Then the kitchen’s motion-sensor light flickered on, and she was gone. I stood there, heart hammering, until Marcus found me a few minutes later. ‘Thought I heard you get up. You okay?’ I told him what I saw, expecting him to laugh. Instead, his face went pale. ‘I saw her too. In the balcony window. She was there when we were playing. I didn’t say anything because I thought I was seeing things.’

On the third day, we were cleaning out the attic, and I found a diary hidden behind a loose board. It was from the 1920s, written by a girl named Eleanor who had lived here. She spoke of a ‘guest’ who visited her in dreams—a woman in white who wanted to play games at night. The last entry was dated a week before the entire family moved away suddenly, leaving everything behind. It read: ‘She says she is lonely. She says we must never stop playing. She is always watching from the shadows.’

That night, we decided to confront her. We set up a flashlight in the parlor, and we waited. At midnight, the air turned icy. The woman appeared in the doorway, more solid than ever. Her mouth opened, and a sound like dry leaves skittering across pavement filled the room. ‘You came,’ she said, or maybe she didn’t—the words just formed in our heads. ‘One more game. Hide and seek. If I find you all, you stay with me.’ We didn’t have time to run. The lights went out.

We hid throughout the house: in closets, under beds, behind curtains. But she found us one by one, her hand touching our shoulders as she whispered, ‘Found you.’ When it was just Marcus and me left, huddled in the dumbwaiter shaft, I heard her voice right outside the door: ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are.’ I held my breath. The door creaked open. A sliver of white appeared. And then the shaft slid closed, and we were plunged into darkness. We never found out what happened after that.

The next morning, the retreat leaders found us asleep in the attic, huddled together. They said we had come down with something, that we had been sleepwalking. But Marcus and I knew better. We never spoke of it, but sometimes, when the power flickers, I see her again—pale and waiting. And I know one thing: the game is never over.