The Pulsing Lamp

The Alpujarras in November are a study in silence. Olive terraces stair-step down to a river you could hear but never see, and the village, a cluster of white cubes high on the mountain, seemed to hold its breath. I’d come for a weaving workshop, to escape the drizzle of Manchester, and found myself in a house of ochre and wood, perched two hundred yards above the main cortijo. The isolation was the point. The internet only reached the big house, where our hostesses, Margery and Phyllis, held court. My casita, El Nido, was a serene retreat, except for the nights.

Monday, after a day of carding wool and listening to Margery’s stories of the Moors, I walked up the rough track in the pitch dark, guided by my phone’s torch. The air was sharp with thyme. I locked the heavy wooden door, bolted it, and went to bed. The room was a void. The shutters were sealed; no chink of moonlight. I slept.

At two in the morning, I woke. The bedside lamp was on. Not the soft glow of a normal bulb, but a lurid, burning white that pulsed in a slow, irregular rhythm. Bright. Dim. Bright. Dim. Like a heart. I sat up, disoriented. My hand hovered over the switch; the moment I touched it, the light went out. Complete blackness. I lay back, heart thudding, telling myself it was a faulty switch, an electrical surge. But I didn’t sleep again, and when I finally drifted off, the light was off, and I dreamed of a woman’s face pressed against the window, her mouth open in a silent scream.

The next day, I mentioned the light to Margery over their thick, dark coffee. Her hands, yellow with nicotine, paused over her own cup. ‘Oh, the wiring here is ancient,’ she said, her Lancashire accent thick. ‘We’ve had fuses blow when you run a kettle and a toaster together.’ Phyllis, who’d been silently peeling an orange, looked up sharply, her eyes meeting mine for a moment before she turned away. She said nothing.

Tuesday night, I left my laptop charging in the main house, a feeble excuse to stay later. I wanted to check my email, but mostly I wanted to be around people. The night was moonless, and the mountains were an immense weight. Back in my room, the stillness was oppressive. I read a book, the lamplight pooling on the page. At two a.m., the same thing: the light flared, pulsing, filling the room. This time, I was watching. I didn’t touch the switch. I stared at the bulb, and I felt it. Not the electricity, but something else. A pressure in the air, a change in the light’s quality—as if it were breathing. An image flashed in my mind: a woman in a nightdress, her face contorted, her hands pressed to the glass of the window, but from inside. She was trying to get out. I blinked, and the light went out.

I stayed awake, clutching the duvet. Just before dawn, I heard a soft scraping against the shutters. A branch, I told myself. There was no wind. Then a whisper, so faint, almost under the sound of the river: ‘Let me in.’ My name. I said it aloud, to break the silence: ‘No.’ The scraping stopped.

Wednesday, I decided to leave. I packed my bag, walked down to the main house. Margery was in the garden, snipping lavender. When I told her I had to go—family emergency, a lie—she just nodded, her eyes not meeting mine. Phyllis came to the door, her face pale. ‘Did you see her?’ she asked. ‘Who?’ I said. But she just turned and walked back inside.

The next morning, I drove down the mountain, the village shrinking in my rearview mirror. I didn’t look back. The workshop was over. I never returned to The Alpujarras.

But that night, in my flat in Manchester, I woke at exactly two a.m. The bedside light was pulsing again. And this time, the window wasn’t shuttered. And in the reflection of the glass, I saw a woman in a nightdress, her face pressed against it, her mouth moving, silently, over and over: ‘Let me in.’ I live in the city now, but the light still pulses. Every night at two. And every night, I don’t look. I don’t sleep. I just pull the covers over my head, and I whisper back, ‘No.’