The Room Across the Hall

My daughter, Lily, has been talking to someone in her room at night. I can hear her through the baby monitor, her soft, lisping voice murmuring in a language I don’t recognize. She’s only three, and her grasp of English is still shaky, so I chalked it up to her practicing words or inventing imaginary friends. But the tone unsettles me—it’s not the playful babble of a child; it’s a low, rhythmic chant, almost like a prayer.

We moved to this small, damp cottage in the Yorkshire moors shortly after my husband, Daniel, returned from his brother’s funeral in the States. Our son, or rather, our daughter now, was born in Chicago, and three weeks later, his brother, Marcus, died in a car crash. I couldn’t get Lily a passport in time, so Daniel went alone. When he came back, he was hollow-eyed, restless, and insisted we leave America immediately. He bought this house across the moors, a place he said had ‘good bones’ but which feels more like a mausoleum to me.

The room across the hall from ours is massive, with high ceilings and a single, rattling window that overlooks the gray, endless heath. It was Marcus’s room when he stayed here as a boy, and now it’s Lily’s. We put her to bed at seven, and by eight, the monitor crackles with her voice. Sometimes she says ‘Uncle Marcus,’ and I feel a chill, because he died just after she was born, and she’s never seen a photo of him—we avoid them. But then she’ll say other names, names I’ve never heard, and her voice deepens, becomes scratchy, as if she’s not alone.

Daniel refuses to talk about the funeral. He says Marcus’s death was sudden, but he won’t elaborate. One night, I crept upstairs to listen at her door. Through the wood, I heard not only Lily’s voice but another—a woman’s, low and soothing, answering her. I pushed the door open, but the room was dark, and Lily was sitting up in her crib, staring at the far corner where the shadows lay thick. ‘Who were you talking to?’ I asked. She turned her head, her eyes too bright, and said, ‘The lady who was already here.’

I tried to convince myself it was the wind or the old pipes, but the voice was distinct. The next day, I asked the village shopkeeper about the house. He went pale, said, ‘Ah, you’ve bought the old Ashworth place. They say a woman died there long ago—a governess, lost her mind, drowned herself in the marsh. Ever since, folk claim they hear her whispering to children, luring them to the window.’ I laughed it off, but that night, I stood in the doorway of Lily’s room, and I saw the window was open—a window we always kept locked. Lily was asleep, but the curtains moved as if someone had just stepped back. The monitor picked up a sigh, and then a faint, wet laugh.

Daniel was in the study, nursing a whisky. I confronted him. ‘This house, Marcus, his room—what are you not telling me?’ He set down the glass, his hands trembling. ‘At the funeral, I saw Marcus. Not in the coffin—no, that was closed. But in my hotel room, that night, he came to me. His lips were stitched shut, but he pointed at me, and a voice came from nowhere: ‘The child belongs to the house.’ I thought it was grief, but then he started appearing every night, until I agreed to move here. He said this house is a threshold, and the lady who lives here—he called her the Keeper—she wants a new child to feed the roots.’

I wanted to scream, to call him mad, but I remembered the way Lily chanted, the flutter of the curtains, the cold draft. I grabbed a crucifix from my jewelry box and rushed to her room. The door was locked from the inside—the key was on our ring, but the bolt was thrown. I pounded, and when Daniel finally broke it down, Lily was gone. The window was wide open, and the moors swallowed the moonlight. We ran out into the knee-high grass, calling her name, but the only answer was a distant, rhythmic humming, like a lullaby, coming from the direction of the marsh.

We found her at the water’s edge, sitting on a mossy stone, talking to her reflection. When she saw us, she smiled, and her voice was clear, too clear for her age, as she said, ‘The lady said I can visit Uncle Marcus now. He’s been waiting.’ Her eyes were the color of the marsh water, deep and opaque. We carried her back, but that night, the baby monitor crackled to life, and we heard Lily’s voice, but also a woman’s, singing a song I knew from my own childhood—a tune my grandmother used to hum. And in the static, I heard my own name.

The next morning, Lily was feverish, her lips dry, her skin cold to the touch. The doctor said it was a chill, nothing more. But as I tucked her in, she whispered, ‘The lady wants you to come too, Mama. She’s got plenty of room in the marsh.’ I looked at Daniel, and for the first time, I saw fear in his eyes—the same fear he’d carried back from America. I realized then: this house, this room, this entire place is not a home—it’s a waiting ground. The Keeper collects children, and the dead speak through them, and we are just the shepherds leading them to the water.

Now, as I write this, the monitor is on. Lily is in her bed, supposedly asleep, but I can hear her whispering in that other language, and I swear I hear Marcus’s voice, and the woman’s, and they are saying my name over and over, like a prayer, like a summons. I don’t know if I can resist much longer. The window is open again, and the night air is cold, but there’s a warmth in it, like a hand reaching for mine. I think I know why Daniel moved us here, why he chose this house. And I think I know why the Keeper chose my child. Because the door was always open, and the room across the hall was never empty.