The Photograph in the Drawer

My hesitation in writing this down has nothing to do with fear of disbelief. It’s the weight of the truth, pressing like a thumb on a bruise. This happened in 1997, when my daughter Elara was six, in a house we’d rented on the outskirts of a town that time seemed to have forgotten. The house was a 1960s split-level with a sunken living room and a fireplace that smoked no matter which way the wind blew. We moved in on a gray October day, and by evening, I knew I was pregnant with our second child. My husband, Marcus, spent that first night walking the rooms, touching the walls. When I asked him what he was doing, he said, ‘I feel like we’re not alone.’ But I, the one who’d always had a sixth sense for the other side, felt nothing. I chalked it up to his nerves and the baby hormones clouding my intuition.

For the first few months, nothing out of the ordinary happened. Then Elara started talking to someone in her room. I’d hear her giggling, carrying on long conversations, and when I’d ask who she was talking to, she’d say, ‘The lady in the window.’ I assumed it was an imaginary friend, a common thing for a lonely only child. But one afternoon in early spring, I called for Elara to come set the table. She appeared in the kitchen doorway, her face puzzled. ‘Did you call me, Mom?’ she asked. I said, ‘Yes, I just did.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I mean a second ago. You called my name, but it sounded like it came from upstairs.’ I told her she must have imagined it. I called her ‘sweet pea’ or ‘little bird,’ never ‘Elara,’ so her confusion was understandable. This happened more and more. Elara would come downstairs, look at me with those big, serious eyes, and ask, ‘Mom, what do you want? You called me.’ And I’d say, ‘I didn’t, baby.’ She’d insist, ‘But I heard my name, just now, in my room.’

Marcus began to notice things too. He’d find his keys in the freezer, his wallet on the roof. One night, he woke up gasping, saying he saw a woman standing at the foot of the bed, her hand reaching out as if to touch my pregnant belly. I didn’t see anything, but I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the draft. Then I started finding photographs. They were old, sepia-toned, tucked in drawers, under the mattress, even inside a book I’d never read. The photos showed a young woman in a white dress, standing in front of the same house, but the yard was different, and the windows were boarded up. She looked sad, her eyes hollow. In one photo, she was holding a baby, but the baby’s face was scratched out.

I asked around town, and an old man at the general store told me the house had been built for his daughter, Margaret, who had lost her infant in a fire and went mad, locking herself in the attic until she died. He said her name was Margaret. I tried to ignore it, but Elara kept talking to ‘the lady in the window.’ One evening, I saw her standing by the window in her room, talking to her own reflection. I called her name, ‘Elara!’ She turned, and for a second, her face wasn’t hers. It was pale, gaunt, and aged, with hollow eyes. But then it was Elara, and she said, ‘Mom, why did you call me? I was just looking at the sky.’

I knew I had to leave. We packed our bags that night, planning to go to my mother’s. As I ran upstairs to grab a few things, I heard Elara laughing in the attic. The attic door, which was always locked, was ajar. I climbed up, and there was Elara, sitting on a dusty trunk, holding a photograph. It was the same woman, but this time she was holding hands with a little girl who looked exactly like Elara. The girl in the photo wore a red dress, but her face was scratched out. I grabbed Elara and ran. As we descended, I heard a voice, soft and laced with static, whisper, ‘Don’t leave me.’ I didn’t look back. We never returned. Even now, thirteen years later, I still find those photographs in my belongings, no matter how many times I burn them. And every time I call my daughter’s name, I wonder if I’m the only one who hears it.