The Photograph in the Drawer

I’ve been sorting through my late aunt’s belongings for weeks now, ever since I inherited her old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, Vermont. The house was a rambling, two-story Victorian with peeling paint and a wraparound porch that groaned in the wind. I’d spent summers here as a kid, but after Aunt Margie passed, the place felt different—heavier, like it was holding its breath.

I was in the upstairs study, going through a desk that hadn’t been touched in decades, when I found a drawer that was stuck. I had to jiggle it and pull hard, and when it finally gave, a cloud of dust burst out. Inside, nestled among yellowed receipts and old fountain pens, was a photograph. It was a faded color picture of a young girl with brown hair and a red dress, standing in front of the same house, but the porch looked newly painted, and the trees were smaller. On the back, in Aunt Margie’s shaky handwriting, were the words: ‘Elsie, 1968.’

I’d never heard of an Elsie in the family. I asked my mother about it, and she said, ‘Oh, Elsie was Aunt Margie’s daughter. She died when she was eight. They said it was a fever, but Margie never talked about it. We weren’t allowed to mention her.’ That sent a chill down my spine. Because as a kid, I remembered playing in the attic and finding a small rocking chair, but I’d always been told it was just old furniture.

The first night after finding that photo, I was in bed, reading, when I heard a faint humming coming from downstairs. It was a child’s tune, something like ‘Ring Around the Rosie,’ but slower and off-key. I put down my book and listened. The humming stopped, then started again, coming from the hallway. I got up and cracked the door open. The hallway was dark, but at the far end, near the attic stairs, I saw a small silhouette. A girl in a red dress. She was standing still, facing the wall, and I could hear her breathing.

I called out, ‘Hello?’ She didn’t turn. She just started humming again, and then she slowly walked up the attic stairs, out of sight. I stood there for a long time, my heart pounding. I didn’t want to follow, but the next day, I went up to the attic. The rocking chair was gone. In its place, on the dusty floor, was a child’s drawing. It was a crude crayon drawing of a house with a red door, and a stick figure girl with a big smile. Underneath, in smudged pencil, it said: ‘Mommy and Elsie, happy.’

I started asking around the small town, and finally, a elderly neighbor named Mr. Holloway told me the truth. Aunt Margie had been a single mother, and Elsie had been a quiet, imaginative child. One summer, when Elsie was eight, she had supposedly run away from home. They found her three days later in the woods behind the house, but she was never the same. She stopped speaking, and a few months later, she died of pneumonia. But Mr. Holloway’s voice dropped when he said, ‘But some folks said it wasn’t pneumonia. They said the child was so terrified of something in that house, she just willed herself to die.’

That night, I went back to the study and pulled out the photograph again. As I stared at it, I noticed something I hadn’t before: the girl in the red dress was standing in front of the porch, but if I looked closely at the window behind her, I could see the faint reflection of another face. A gaunt, grinning face with hollow eyes, peering out from inside the house. I dropped the photo, and when I picked it up, the face was gone. But on the back, in fresh handwriting that wasn’t there before, it said: ‘She’s here now.’

I tried to leave the next morning, but my car wouldn’t start. The battery was dead—odd, since I’d driven it just the day before. I called a tow truck, but the line went dead the moment I said ‘Elsie.’ I was trapped. That night, I was sitting in the living room, trying to stay awake, when I heard the humming again. This time it was right in my ear, like a child was sitting on the arm of my chair. I spun around, and there she was, standing in the middle of the room, looking at me with eyes that were too black. She smiled and said, ‘You found my picture. Now you have to play with me.’

I screamed and backed away, but she just tilted her head. ‘Don’t you want to be my mommy? The other one didn’t. She tried to leave, but she can’t. The darkness won’t let her.’ I realized then that the other one was Aunt Margie, and that she had been trapped here for years, keeping Elsie company. And now I was the new replacement.

The next morning, I woke up in the attic, lying on the floor where the drawing had been. The drawing was gone, but there was a new one: a picture of me, with the same smile as the stick figure, and a caption: ‘My new mommy.’ I tried to scream, but no sound came out. I could hear Elsie’s humming echoing from the walls, and I knew I’d never leave this house again.