The Ribbon’s Return

When I was thirteen, I spent most weekends at my friend Colin’s place, a sprawling old farmhouse on the edge of the county. His sister, Mara, was a year older and had claimed the basement as her sanctuary. The walls were lined with horse trophies and ribbons, all carefully arranged. But one Saturday, as we were watching her organize them, a strange thing happened. She’d just straightened a row of blue ribbons when one flipped upside down. She laughed, set it right, and turned to us. ‘It keeps doing that,’ she said, waving a blanket at it to prove it wasn’t a draft. The ribbon didn’t move. We all stared, and then we heard it—footsteps from the kitchen directly above us. We froze. I was about to ask if their mom was home, but the footsteps stopped. Then came a scraping sound, like a chair being dragged across the wooden floor. It moved across the living room, growing louder, and then we heard a crash as it tumbled down the basement stairs behind us. We spun around, but the staircase was empty. The chair lay at the bottom, one leg broken. We couldn’t move.

That incident was just the beginning. A few weeks later, we were doing homework in the same basement when we heard heavy footsteps on the roof. Colin and I exchanged glances, and just as we did, the dryer in the corner started spinning. It was unplugged. The roar filled the room, and we watched as the plug dangled uselessly, the drum rotating wildly. Then it stopped as abruptly as it had started. We didn’t need to say anything; we both ran upstairs.

The strange occurrences mounted. Dishes would shift in the cupboards, doors would slam on their own, and once, all the clocks in the house chimed at 3:33 a.m. while we were watching TV, even the broken ones. Colin’s parents started whispering in the kitchen, and Mara refused to sleep alone. It wasn’t long before they packed up and moved out.

On the day they were leaving, the landlord stopped by to collect the keys. He was an old man with a weathered face and a knowing look. As he stepped inside, he glanced at the basement door and asked, ‘Moving because of the ghost, huh?’ Colin’s mother went pale. She stammered, ‘How… how did you know?’ The landlord sighed and told them what he’d never told any tenants before. ‘I grew up in this house,’ he said. ‘My little sister, Emily, she loved horses. She died in that basement. A fall down those same stairs, back in ’58. She was twelve. Ever since, things happen. The ribbons she used to collect—they never stay put. She always tries to fix them, but she can never quite manage it. The dryer, that was her favorite place to hide. She’d spin it like a merry-go-round.’ He paused and looked toward the basement door. ‘She’s been waiting for someone to see her, to know she’s here. But no one ever stayed long enough to hear her.’

We were all silent. I felt a chill run down my spine as I realized the ribbons, the footsteps, the dryer—they weren’t random. They were the frantic attempts of a little girl trying to get our attention, to tell her story. But we never heard her. And as we drove away, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Emily was still down there, turning her ribbons, waiting for someone to finally set them right.