The Red Glow of the Digital Clock

In the autumn of 2018, my husband and I were staying at his grandparents’ dilapidated farmhouse in rural Nebraska while they vacationed in the Canary Islands. Our six-month-old son, Leo, slept in a bassinet beside our bed. The only illumination was the faint red glow of the digital clock on the nightstand.

I woke to a strange sensation, a weight pressing on the air. In the gloom, I saw a shape—a torso and head without legs—hovering above Leo, as if inspecting every inch of his tiny face. I thought it was a trick of the light, but it moved, straightening up when it sensed my gaze. It turned to me, and in a heartbeat, it was at my face, its eyes—if they were eyes—boring into mine. I felt a cold breath, like frost, on my cheeks. Then it vanished, leaving only a faint lingering chill.

Gasping, I shook my husband awake. ‘There’s something in the room,’ I whispered. He bolted upright, but saw nothing. He dismissed it as a nightmare, but the unease clung to me. The next night, I refused to sleep in that room, so we moved to the living room, closing the door to the bedroom. Leo, however, grew restless, crying as if frightened. At 3 AM, I heard a soft thud from the bedroom. I cracked the door open and saw the same figure, now crouched over the empty bassinet, its head tilting as if confused. It whipped around, and I slammed the door shut.

Something was drawn to the room, to the spot where Leo slept. We tried everything—burning sage, placing iron under the bed, even playing church music—but the encounters escalated. One morning, I found deep scratches on the inside of the bedroom door, and a child-sized handprint in the dust on the window sill. Leo began to stare at the ceiling and coo at nothing, which terrified me more.

In desperation, we called a local pastor. He examined the room and found an old, hidden panel behind the wardrobe. Inside, we discovered a diary belonging to the grandfather’s first wife, who had died in the 1950s under mysterious circumstances. The last entry read: ‘The child must not sleep here. I buried my baby in the root cellar, but she still cries at night. She wants a playmate.’

We dug up the root cellar and found a tiny, rusted tin box containing a lock of hair and a child’s shoe. We gave them a proper burial, and the presence left. But sometimes, when the house is quiet and the clock glows red, I still see a small silhouette in the corner of my eye, watching. And Leo, now three, occasionally waves at the empty air and says, ‘The girl says sorry.’ I don’t know what she’s sorry for. But I’m glad we dug her up before we left. That house holds too many secrets, and the digital clock seems to pulse with a red heartbeat when the moon is full.