The Paper Kite

We moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of Millbrook in late autumn, when the fields were already stubble and the trees stood skeletal against a bruised sky. My roommate, Elena, and I had been searching for months, and the place was cheap—so cheap that a suspicious person might have wondered why. But we were desperate, and the house itself, though drafty and smelling of dust, had a certain charm. It was a two-story structure, built in 1924 according to the deed, with peeling white paint and a wraparound porch that groaned underfoot. My daughter, Lily, was seven and loved the idea of a ‘real farmhouse,’ so we signed the lease without a second thought.

The layout was odd: the kitchen and living room were on the left side, and a narrow hallway on the right led to two bedrooms and a bathroom, with a small study at the back that faced the overgrown garden. Lily took the room at the end of the hall, Elena took the one closest to the living room, and I settled into the other, which had a window overlooking the porch. We unpacked boxes, painted the kitchen a cheerful yellow, and tried to make the place our own. For the first few weeks, nothing seemed out of the ordinary except for the strange, persistent smell of damp earth that no amount of airing out could dispel.

One night, after Lily had gone to bed at her father’s for the weekend, Elena and I were in the living room, watching a documentary about unsolved mysteries. The segment was about a family who claimed to have been terrorized by a poltergeist in their Victorian home. As the narrator described a door slowly closing on its own, Elena turned to me and said, ‘Can you imagine living with a ghost? I’d be scared out of my mind.’ She had barely finished the sentence when the door to my bedroom—the one at the end of the hall—began to swing shut. It moved with a slow, deliberate creak, then stopped about a foot from the frame, as if someone had pressed their hand against it. We froze, staring at the gap. The air in the room seemed to drop a few degrees. I whispered, ‘It’s just a draft.’ But there was no draft. The windows were closed, the front door shut. Elena shook her head, her eyes wide. ‘I didn’t do that.’

We laughed it off nervously, chalked it up to old house settling, but from that night on, things began to change. Small things at first: a cup left on the counter would be found on the floor, a picture frame would tilt askew, and sometimes I’d hear a faint humming coming from the study at night—a melody I didn’t recognize, but which felt oddly familiar, like a lullaby I’d heard in a dream. I tried to ignore it, but Lily, with the uncanny perception of a child, started asking about the ‘lady in the garden.’ She described a woman with long dark hair, wearing an old-fashioned floral dress, who stood among the tangled weeds and waved at her. I told her it was her imagination, but a cold knot tightened in my stomach.

Then the kites began to appear. The first one I found on the porch one morning: a paper kite, the kind you’d make from a brown grocery bag and string, decorated with crayon drawings of suns and birds. It was wet, as if it had been left in the rain, though the night had been dry. I threw it away, but a week later, another one appeared, this time taped to my bedroom door. On it, the word ‘LILY’ was written in shaky, childish handwriting. I felt a chill crawl up my spine. I showed it to Elena, who suggested it was a prank by the neighbor kids. But the nearest neighbors were half a mile down a dirt road, and the handwriting wasn’t like any child I knew.

One night, I couldn’t sleep. I got up for water and noticed a light in the study. I crept down the hall, my heart thumping, and pushed the door open. There, in the center of the room, stood a figure—a woman in a long dress, her back to me. She was holding a paper kite, and she was humming that same lullaby. I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out. The woman slowly turned her head, and I caught a glimpse of her face: pale, gaunt, with eyes that were dark hollows. She raised the kite, and it began to glow with a sickly yellow light. Then she vanished, leaving only a faint smell of earth and rain.

After that, the house grew colder. Elena began to sleep with the lights on. Lily refused to go into the garden. And the kites kept coming—each one taped or nailed to the front door, bearing messages: ‘LET ME IN,’ ‘PLAY WITH ME,’ ‘COME OUTSIDE.’ The crayon drawings became darker: stick figures with slashes for mouths, houses with crosses over windows. I tried to research the house’s history. Old records showed that a family had lived here in the 1930s: a farmer, his wife, and their daughter, who had died of pneumonia at age six. The girl’s name was Lily. Her mother had made kites for her to play with in the fields. After the girl’s death, the mother went mad; she would wander the property at night, calling her daughter’s name, and she eventually hanged herself from the Chinaberry tree in the garden—a tree that no longer stood, but I could swear I saw its shadow sometimes, swaying even when the air was still.

I tried to take Lily and leave, but every time we attempted to pack, something would happen: the car wouldn’t start, or our suitcases would be emptied, or a kite would be taped to the steering wheel. It was as if the house wouldn’t let us go. Elena grew withdrawn, speaking rarely, and I caught her talking to the air in the study one afternoon, her voice low and apologetic. ‘Who are you talking to?’ I asked. She turned, her face blank, and said, ‘She says she misses her daughter. She wants Lily to stay.’ I felt a rage build in me, but also a deep, primal terror.

On the last night, I woke to find Lily’s bed empty. The window was open, and a cold wind blew the curtains. I screamed her name and ran through the house, into the garden, which was overgrown with brambles and dead sunflowers. There, under the bare branches of an old tree that I’d never noticed before, stood Lily, staring up at a paper kite that hovered in the air, seemingly suspended by invisible hands. The kite was large, made of brown paper, and on it was drawn a family of three—a man, a woman, and a little girl—holding hands. The woman in the drawing had no eyes. I grabbed Lily and pulled her toward the house, but she fought me, crying, ‘But the lady says I have to stay! She says I’m her Lily now!’

I carried her inside, slammed the window shut, and held her all night as she sobbed. When dawn broke, I decided we were leaving, regardless. I called a friend to pick us up, and as we loaded the car, I saw one last kite taped to the front door. It was folded, and when I opened it, I found a drawing of our family, but with a fourth figure—a tall woman with long dark hair—standing behind Lily, her hands on my daughter’s shoulders. Underneath, written in red crayon, were the words: ‘I’ll always be with her.’ I tore it to pieces, but as we drove away, I looked back at the house, and I could swear I saw a woman in the upstairs window, holding a small paper kite, watching us leave.

We never went back. We moved to a different state, changed our names, and tried to forget. But sometimes, at night, I hear that humming—soft and lullaby-like—from Lily’s room. And when I go in to check on her, she’s never there. She’s always at the window, staring out into the darkness, her hand pressed against the glass, as if she’s waiting for someone to come and take her out to play. And on her nightstand, every morning, I find a small paper kite, freshly made, with the word ‘MAMA’ written on it in a hand that is not mine.