The Sixth Floor Light

When I was in graduate school, my father took a new job in the coastal town of Portharrow, and they decided to buy an apartment in a converted Victorian asylum that had been turned into lofts. The building was called Marlowe House, and it stood on a cliff overlooking the sea, its red brick façade streaked with salt andage. The apartment itself was spacious, with tall windows that let in the gray Atlantic light, but the moment I stepped inside, I felt a wrongness – a cold spot in the hallway that had nothing to do with the draft, and a faint smell of formaldehyde that came and went.

We moved in on a damp September afternoon. Our neighbors were a mix of artists and retirees, and they were friendly enough. One of them, an old fisherman named Elias, took a liking to me. He told me about the building’s history, how it had been a sanatorium for ‘nervous women’ in the 1920s, and how the sixth floor had been sealed off for decades. ‘People used to say you could hear them crying at night,’ he said, ‘but it’s quiet now. Most folks don’t even talk about it.’

I was curious, so I started staying up late, listening. For weeks, nothing. I chalked it up to old tales and got back to my studies. But one night, I jolted awake to the sound of a single, sharp cry – like a seagull, but not quite. I went to the window and saw a faint white figure standing on the cliff path, gazing up at our window. I blinked, and it was gone.

I told my father, but he just laughed. ‘Probably a fog patch,’ he said. I tried to convince myself he was right, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. Then the lights on the sixth floor began to flicker at odd hours, and I noticed that the outline of a woman was sometimes visible behind the frosted glass of a window that had been boarded up for years.

Driven by a mix of dread and fascination, I found the key to the sixth floor in the maintenance closet. It was a heavy iron key, cold to the touch. I waited until my parents were asleep, then climbed the narrow staircase. The door was stuck, but it gave way with a groan. The air inside was stale and metallic. The corridor was lined with old hospital beds, stripped of their mattresses, and the paint was peeling in long strips.

At the far end, there was a room that was still intact. Inside, I found a single bed with rusted springs, a nightstand, and a diary. The diary belonged to a woman named Clara, who had been a patient there. Her entries started hopeful, then grew frantic. She wrote about a doctor who came to her at night, who made her feel ‘light as air’ and ’empty as a shell.’ The last entry was dated the night before the asylum closed. It read: ‘They are leaving me, but I will wait. I will always be here.’

I heard a soft footstep behind me. I spun around, but the room was empty. The diary fell from my hands, and as I bent to pick it up, I saw a pair of bare feet at the edge of my vision. I looked up. There was a woman standing there, in a tattered white gown, her face featureless, a smooth oval of pale skin. She tilted her head, and I felt a cold hand touch my cheek.

I screamed and ran. I stumbled down the stairs, not daring to look back. When I reached our apartment, I locked the door and leaned against it, shaking. My parents were asleep, unaware. I didn’t sleep that night. I sat by the window, watching the sea, and I saw the woman again, standing on the cliff. She pointed at me, and then she slowly faded into the mist.

The next morning, I told my parents we had to move. They thought I was being dramatic, but they agreed to start looking. As we packed, I saw that the sixth-floor window was open, and for a brief second, I thought I saw a figure waving. I never went back to Marlowe House. I still dream of that smooth, featureless face, and I know that someday, she will finish what she started.