The Pencil Scratch

When I was nine, my family moved into a rambling old farmhouse on the edge of a town that was more dirt road than pavement. The house had been empty for years, and the previous owner, a reclusive woman named Mrs. Gable, had died there. Everyone said she was a miser who hoarded junk, and the house was crammed with her belongings when we moved in. We spent weeks clearing out the rooms, and I got stuck sorting through a study that smelled of mothballs and dusty paper.

My bedroom was down a long hallway from the rest of the house, and the bathroom was right next to it, its light left on at night because my little brother was terrified of the dark. One night, about a year after we settled in, I couldn’t sleep. The wind rattled the windowpanes, and the house creaked like an old ship. I finally decided to turn on the bedside lamp, only to find a mess behind it: crumpled papers, an old fountain pen, and a child’s drawing of a house that looked exactly like ours, but with all the windows blacked out. I threw it on the floor next to the bed and lay back down, leaving the lamp off because the bulb flickered.

About ten minutes later, I heard a soft, rhythmic scratching, like a pencil moving across paper, coming from the hallway. It stopped when I held my breath, then started again when I exhaled. I told myself it was the house settling, but a knot tightened in my stomach. The bathroom light cast a pale rectangle on the hallway floor, and my door was ajar just a few inches.

Then I heard footsteps—slow, shuffling, like someone dragging their feet. They came closer, and I saw a shadow pass by the door. I squeezed my eyes shut, pretending to sleep. The scratching continued, now right outside my door. I cracked an eye open and saw a thin, bony hand, gray as ash, reaching through the gap, holding a broken pencil. It started writing on the floor, and I could make out the words: ‘GET OUT.’

I wanted to scream, but my throat was frozen. The hand withdrew, and the footsteps shuffled back down the hall, fading into the darkness. When I finally found my voice, I called out for my parents, but when they came, there was nothing there—except for a small piece of paper on the floor. It was the same child’s drawing I had thrown away, but now it had my name written on the door of the house, and a new sentence in the same shaky handwriting: ‘YOU STAYED.’

We moved out a month later, but I still have that piece of paper. And sometimes, when I’m alone at night, I hear a scratching at my bedroom door, and I know she’s still writing.