The Room of Unfinished Things

My family moved into the old Harrow House when I was eleven, after my stepmother inherited it from her aunt. The house had been in her family since the 1880s, and it showed: peeling wallpaper, creaking floors, and a musty smell that clung to everything. My father, a contractor, saw it as a project. I saw it as a place that felt wrong, like it was watching us.

At first, the strangeness was small. Dad would leave his hammer on the workbench, and the next morning it would be in the toolbox. His measuring tape would unravel across the floor, as if something had played with it. He blamed my younger brothers, Tommy and Jake, but I knew they didn’t do it. They were too scared to go near the basement, where Dad was stripping the old wallpaper to reveal the logs beneath.

Then, about a month in, I heard footsteps on the stairs at night. Soft, shuffling steps, like someone wearing slippers. My room was at the top of the stairs, and I’d lie in bed, listening, heart pounding. The steps would stop at my door, and I’d feel a cold draft, even though the window was shut. I’d pull the covers over my head and wait, but nothing else happened. Mom thought it was the house settling, and Dad said it was just the wind whistling through the cracks.

The first real incident was at my twelfth birthday sleepover. My friends and I were on the living room floor, deep into a game of Truth or Dare, when my friend Lily suddenly screamed and pointed at the window. ‘There’s an old woman staring in!’ she shrieked. We all turned, but there was nothing there. I laughed it off, but Lily was pale, and she made her mom pick her up early. The other girls left soon after, and I sat alone in the dark living room, staring at the window, feeling a creeping sensation.

After that, the presence became more tangible. I’d see a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision, or hear a soft humming when the house was quiet. Dad’s work stalled because he kept finding his tools in the most inconvenient places, and one day he found the word ‘LEAVE’ scratched into the subfloor in the upstairs hallway. He thought it was a prank, but I knew it was a warning.

Then, one evening, I was in the attic, looking for a box of Christmas decorations. The attic was filled with old furniture and trunks, and I noticed a small door at the far end that I’d never seen before. It was painted shut, but the paint was cracked, and it creaked when I pushed on it. I squeezed through and found a tiny room, and in the middle of the floor was a wooden rocking chair. It was empty, but it was rocking slowly back and forth, all by itself. I froze, and then I saw her: an old woman in a faded dress, sitting in the chair, knitting. She looked up at me, her eyes hollow and black, and she said, ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

I ran. I stumbled down the attic stairs, slammed the door shut, and didn’t tell anyone what I’d seen. But after that, the house felt different. Every room seemed to have a presence, and I’d catch glimpses of the old woman in mirrors or out of the corner of my eye. Dad was determined to finish the renovation, but strange things kept happening: a chandelier crashed to the floor in the dining room, a toolbox emptied onto the floor while we were all outside, and the smell of rotting flowers filled the house.

One night, I was woken by the sound of knocking coming from inside the walls. I got up and followed the sound to my parents’ room, where Dad was sleeping. The knocking was coming from behind the plaster, and Dad woke up, startled. ‘It’s just the pipes,’ he said, but his voice was shaky. Suddenly, the door slammed shut, and the light flickered. I saw the old woman standing in the corner, her finger to her lips as if to say ‘shhh’. Dad couldn’t see her, but he felt the cold draft and grabbed my arm. ‘We’re getting out of here,’ he said.

We moved out the next week. But the house stayed in our lives. Dad tried to sell it, but every potential buyer would back out at the last minute, often with strange excuses like ‘it didn’t feel right.’ Years passed, and I grew up, but I never forgot the room with the rocking chair. When I was twenty-five, I inherited the house after my stepmother passed. I hadn’t set foot in it in a decade, but I felt a pull to return.

I drove back to the old house, now even more decrepit. The windows were boarded up, but I forced the front door open. Inside, the remnants of Dad’s renovations were still there: half-stripped wallpaper, bare floorboards. The air was thick with dust and decay. I went straight to the attic, my heart pounding. The small door was still there, but now it was wide open. I stepped inside, and the rocking chair was still there, but now it was still. And in the center of the seat, there was a knitted baby blanket, with a note pinned to it. The note read: ‘For the one who set me free.’

I had no idea what it meant. But then I heard the sound of a baby crying, coming from the walls. And the old woman’s voice echoed in my mind: ‘You shouldn’t have come back.’ I turned to run, but the door had vanished, and the walls were closing in, and I knew I would never leave that room, that I would become part of the house’s unfinished story, just like the woman who had been waiting for someone to take her place.