The Second Visitor

I remember the day the girl vanished from Lily’s life as clearly as I remember the day she arrived. Lily was four, sitting on the living room floor with a set of colorful plastic cups, stacking them into a wobbly tower. She was chattering away in that rapid, half-intelligible way of toddlers, and I was folding laundry on the couch. For weeks, she had been talking to ‘the girl’—a name she used with casual familiarity, as if we were all supposed to know who she meant. ‘The girl likes my hair,’ she’d say, or ‘The girl says it’s going to rain.’ I’d asked her where the girl was, what she looked like, but Lily would just point to a corner of the room with a look of ‘Can’t you see her?’ and go back to playing.

But that afternoon, Lily stopped mid-sentence, her hand frozen over a purple cup. She looked toward the hallway, her eyes tracking something I couldn’t see, and then, with a small smile, she said, ‘She’s gone now.’ And just like that, the girl was never mentioned again. I chalked it up to a vivid imaginary friend that had run her course. I was wrong.

Three years later, we moved to a small house on the outskirts of a town called Marrow. It was a fixer-upper, with creaky floorboards and a drafty attic, but it was cheap and we needed space. Our son, Owen, had just turned two, and Lily was seven, starting to develop the sullen independence of a big sister. The house had a strange history—the realtor had been oddly evasive about the previous owners, saying only that they’d moved out ‘under circumstances too sad to mention.’ I should have pushed further, but I was exhausted from work and moving boxes, and the house seemed perfect for us.

It was on a rainy Tuesday that I first noticed Owen talking to the wardrobe in his room. I was unpacking kitchen items, and through the baby monitor I heard him laughing and babbling in that sweet, sing-song voice. When I peeked in, he was sitting on the floor with his toy cars, but he was turned away from them, facing the old oak wardrobe that came with the room. He was saying, ‘No, you push the red one, like this,’ as if instructing someone. I called his name, and he turned, his face bright, and said, ‘She says the red car is my favorite.’

My blood ran cold. ‘Who, sweetheart?’ I asked, keeping my voice steady. He pointed at the wardrobe. ‘The girl over there.’ I tried to smile, to dismiss it. ‘That’s just your imagination, honey. There’s no girl.’ He frowned, genuinely puzzled. ‘But she’s right there, Mama. She’s wearing a yellow dress.’ I didn’t sleep well that night, remembering Lily’s imaginary friend, the one I’d never seen, and the way she’d said ‘she’s gone.’ I told myself it was a coincidence, a phase. But over the next few days, Owen’s conversations with the girl became more detailed. He told me she had brown hair and a scratch on her knee. He said she liked to play hide-and-seek, and she always hid in the wardrobe.

One evening, I walked past Owen’s room and heard him laughing. I cracked the door open and saw him standing in front of the open wardrobe, his back to me. A cold draft seemed to radiate from the closet, and I saw his little arms reaching for something inside. I rushed in and slammed the wardrobe shut, making him jump. ‘Don’t close it, Mama! She’s in there!’ I turned to him, my heart pounding. ‘Owen, there is no one in there. It’s just clothes.’ But as I spoke, I felt a sudden chill, and I could swear I saw a flicker of movement in the gap between the wardrobe doors. I yanked them open, revealing only a few moth-bitten coats and a musty smell. But something felt wrong.

That night, after the kids were asleep, I sat in the living room, googling the history of the house on my phone. The screen glowed in the dark, and I found it: a news article from 1987, about a family who had lived here. They had a daughter named Emily, who had disappeared from her bedroom. Her mother reported hearing her playing, but when she checked, Emily was gone. The window was open, and the wardrobe was found empty despite its size. Police assumed she had snuck out and gotten lost in the nearby woods, but her body was never found. The article had a grainy photo of Emily: a girl of about five, with brown hair and a scratch on her knee.

I felt a wave of nausea. I wanted to tell myself it was a coincidence, but the details matched Owen’s description too perfectly. I went to his room, my hands shaking, and opened the wardrobe wide, shining my phone’s flashlight inside. There was nothing but old clothes, but as I moved the light across the back wall, I noticed a small, faint discoloration in the wood—a shape, almost like a child’s handprint. I touched it, and the wood was icy cold. I pulled back, my breath hitching. I heard a whisper, so faint I might have imagined it: ‘She’s gone now.’ But it wasn’t Lily’s voice. It was a child’s voice, older, and it came from inside the wardrobe.

I slammed the doors and ran out, but I couldn’t leave the house—my kids were sleeping. I sat guard in the hallway, propped against Owen’s door, determined to stay awake all night. But exhaustion won, and I drifted off.

I woke to a scream. It was Owen. I burst into his room and found him standing on his bed, his face white, pointing at the wardrobe. ‘She’s not playing fair, Mama. She says I have to go in the wardrobe with her.’ I looked at the wardrobe, and for the first time, I saw her—a translucent girl in a yellow dress, her hair matted, her eyes hollow, her mouth open in a silent wail. She was reaching out, her fingers inches from Owen’s wrist. Without thinking, I lunged forward, grabbing Owen and pulling him to me. The girl’s gaze snapped to me, and her mouth twisted into a snarl. ‘You’re not her,’ she hissed. ‘She left me. She said she’d play, but she left.’

I realized then: Lily’s imaginary friend had been real, and she had bound herself to my daughter, feeding on her attention. When Lily stopped seeing her, she didn’t disappear—she just moved on, searching for the next child, and she had found Owen. I stumbled backward, clutching Owen, and yelled, ‘Go away! She’s not coming back!’ The girl’s form flickered, and the wardrobe doors slammed open, as if caught by a wind. The room turned icy, and I could see my breath in the air. The girl said, ‘Then you take her place.’ She lunged.

But at that moment, Lily appeared in the doorway, holding a teddy bear. She looked at the girl, her eyes wide, and said, ‘You’re not supposed to be here. You were supposed to play with me, but you scared Will, so I stopped.’ I realized then that Lily had known all along—she had seen her, but she had been protecting her younger brother Will, not herself. The girl turned, and her face softened. ‘You were my only friend,’ she said, her voice breaking. Lily stepped forward, holding out the teddy bear. ‘I’m still here,’ she said. ‘But you have to be kind. You have to go where there’s no one else.’

The girl stared at her, and then, slowly, she nodded. She reached out, but not toward Owen—toward the bear. As her fingers brushed it, she began to fade, her form dissolving like mist in a stiff breeze. The wardrobe doors creaked closed, and the temperature rose. We stood there, the three of us, trembling. I grabbed both kids and held them tight, and I knew we would never speak of this again.

The house hasn’t felt the same since. Sometimes, at night, I hear a faint giggle from Owen’s room, but when I check, he’s asleep, and the wardrobe is closed. I’ve tried to have it removed, but every time I call, something stops me—a power outage, a cancellation, a bad feeling. I think she’s still there, but she’s not hungry anymore. She’s just waiting, remembering the girl who called her friend. And I’m terrified that one day, Lily will decide to answer her call again.