The Stained Glass Nursery

The first thing I remember is the smell of formaldehyde mixed with the faint sweetness of flowers. I was born in the back room of the old Mayhew Funeral Home, a Victorian mansion that sat like a brooding beast on a hill overlooking the rustbelt town of Derryfield. My mother, Claire, was just nineteen when she had me, and her parents, Grammy and Gramps Mayhew, ran the place with a kind of grim cheerfulness. They weren’t like other funeral directors; they treated the dead as guests who had overstayed their welcome but still deserved respect.

My earliest memories are of the chapel, with its stained glass windows depicting saints and angels, and the heavy oak caskets that lined the walls like wardrobes. I played hide and seek among the caskets, and my crib was set up in what used to be the sewing room, just off the embalming suite. The walls were thin, and I grew up with the low hum of the embalming machine as a lullaby. My mother never liked it, but Grammy said it was fine, that the dead were harmless. But I knew better. There was a presence in that house, something that felt like being watched by a thousand eyes pressed against the wallpaper.

When I was four, we moved to a small apartment across town, and I thought I’d left that place behind. But the thing that followed me wasn’t the building; it was the echo of it. I started seeing a woman in a yellow dress, standing in the corner of my new room, her face obscured by shadow as if she were standing in a dark doorway. She never spoke, but she pointed to the door, always the door, as if urging me to leave. And every time I looked away, she was closer.

My mother thought it was just childhood imagination, but Grammy knew. On her deathbed, she told me the story of the Mayhew house. It was built in 1887 by a man named Ezra Mayhew, my great-great-grandfather, who was said to have made a pact with something to ensure the family’s prosperity. The price was that a Mayhew child would never truly leave the house, even after death. Grammy was the last one to live there and actually feel it, but my sister, Lena, and I were the first to be born there, making us both bound until we died. Grammy said that the woman in yellow was the first Mayhew bride, who died in childbirth, and that she now served as the house’s keeper, guiding the dead and the living who were lost.

I didn’t want to believe it, but I couldn’t ignore the pattern. Every time I visited the old house after Grammy passed, the woman in yellow was more visible. On the day of Grammy’s funeral, I felt a cold hand on my shoulder as I watched them lower the casket, and I knew it wasn’t Grammy’s. It was her, the woman in yellow, and she whispered in my ear, ‘You are the keeper now.’ I looked around, but no one else heard.

From that day on, I could see the ghosts that lingered in the funeral home. They were not just the dead from recent funerals, but residents of the house, their imprints on the walls like old photographs. The woman in yellow became my guide, teaching me how to comfort the restless spirits by speaking their names and giving them a moment of peace. But every time I interacted with them, a part of me felt as if I were staying in the house, too, and the walls of my apartment began to feel like the walls of that old funeral home.

Last month, I returned to Derryfield to sort through Grammy’s things. The house was up for sale, and I had to decide what to do with it. I walked through the rooms, and in the nursery, where my crib had been, I found a hidden door behind the wallpaper, a door I never knew existed. Behind it was a small stairway leading down to a basement I’d never seen. The basement was filled with old jars, each containing a lock of hair or a bone fragment, labeled with names and dates. And in the corner, there was a cradle, and in the cradle, a baby’s nightgown, stained with something dark.

I felt a pull in my chest, and the woman in yellow appeared at the foot of the stairs. ‘You were born here,’ she said, ‘and you will die here, but first you must choose whether to continue the cycle or end it.’ I knew what she meant. If I sold the house, the Mayhew line would finally be free, but I would have to sever the connection, and I’d never see the ghosts again, including Grammy. But if I stayed, I would become the new keeper, bound to the house forever, watching over the dead, unable to leave, just like the woman in yellow.

I thought of my mother, who had escaped this place, and my sister, who refuses to speak of it. I thought of the comfort I had found in comforting the ghosts, the sense of purpose in helping them find peace. And I thought of the woman in yellow, who had been waiting for over a century for someone to take her place, to let her move on. But I also knew that if I stayed, I would be safe from the outside world, a world that had always seemed too loud and too bright. I held the nightgown, and I let the decision settle into my bones.

I closed the door to the basement, and I walked back into the nursery. The woman in yellow was gone, but I could feel her presence all around me, a silent pressure in the air. I picked up the phone, and I called my mother. I told her I was coming home for good. That I was going to renovate the funeral home and reopen it. That I had found a new purpose. She started to cry, but whether it was from grief or relief, I couldn’t tell. And as I hung up, I looked out the window, down the hill, to the town, and I saw a woman in a yellow dress, standing at the gate, waving at me. I waved back, and I knew that my story was just beginning, and that I would never leave this place, not even after death.