The Stairwell Lullaby

My name is Elian, and for the past three years, I’ve worked the graveyard shift as a data analyst. The upside is that I’m fully alert at 2 a.m., while the rest of the world is snoring. This year, for the Holy Week, we rented a cramped but cozy apartment on the fourth floor of a pre-war building in the old town of Vigan. The paint was peeling, the floors creaked, and the entire place smelled of mothballs and old wood.

We were there for six days: my mother, my sister, and I. My sister, Lila, had the only bedroom with a proper bed. I slept on a futon in the living room, which was fine because I’d be awake most of the night anyway. My mother, ever the pragmatist, proclaimed the balcony too lovely to ignore. She set up a folding cot there, claiming the cool night breeze was therapeutic. In reality, I think she just wanted to escape Lila’s snoring.

Every night, the routine was the same. I’d curl up on the futon with a dog-eared copy of a forgotten sci-fi novel, reading by the dim light of a flickering floor lamp. Around 1:30 a.m., mother would shuffle past me in her flowered robe, her slippers whispering against the wooden floor. She’d sit on the arm of the sofa, ask if I’d checked the water, then walk to the bathroom to turn the tap and listen for the gurgle that meant the cistern was filling. Water was precious in this old building, and we had to monitor it carefully. After a minute, she’d retreat to her cot, and the cycle would repeat.

For two nights, it was peaceful. The building was silent except for the occasional groan of settling timbers. But on the third night, something shifted.

I had set my alarm for 2 a.m., as usual, and padded to the kitchen for a glass of water. As I passed the door to the stairwell, a sound reached me—a faint, lilting hum. It was a melody, simple and childlike, like a lullaby from a forgotten music box. I froze. The stairwell was a dark, concrete shaft that spiraled down to the lobby. No one else was awake at this hour, and the sound seemed to float up from the floors below.

Curious and slightly uneasy, I put my ear against the door. The humming grew clearer. It was a woman’s voice, soft and sweet, but there was a slight tremble to it, as if she were singing through tears. I’d never heard it before. The only other tenant on our floor was an old man, Mr. Cruz, who was deaf in one ear.

I brushed it off as my imagination—maybe the pipes were making a weird noise. I went back to the living room and tried to read, but the tune kept replaying in my head. Finally, unable to resist, I opened the stairwell door. The hum was louder now, coming from somewhere below. The dim emergency light cast everything in a sickly orange. I took a step onto the landing, and the hum suddenly stopped.

A heavy silence fell. I waited, my heart pounding, but there was nothing. I chided myself for being spooked and returned to my book. But then, at exactly 3 a.m., I heard footsteps on the stairs. Slow, deliberate, each one accompanied by a soft scrape. They climbed until they reached our floor, then stopped. I held my breath, but no knock came. The silence stretched for an eternity.

I told myself it was Mr. Cruz going to the bathroom, but the footsteps had been too light, too steady. I decided not to mention it to mother; she’d only worry.

A while later, mother woke for her routine. She shuffled to the bathroom, turned on the tap, and waited. The sound of the water echoed in the tiled room. Then she came back to me, her face pale under the lamp.

“Did you hear that?” she whispered, looking towards the stairwell.

“The humming?” I asked.

She nodded, gripping her robe. “It sounded like a child crying,” she said. “But there are no children in this building, not since the Santos family moved out last month.”

I told her I’d heard it too, and that it stopped when I checked. She looked at me strangely, then said, “It reminded me of a song my grandmother used to sing. But I haven’t heard it in years. And it was coming from the stairs.”

She insisted that we pray together, right there in the living room, for protection. We recited the Our Father, and I felt a chill run down my spine as I realized the humming had resumed—faint, but unmistakably real, now coming from behind the stairwell door. Mother went pale, but we finished the prayer. As we said ‘Amen,’ the humming stopped.

We agreed not to tell Lila, to avoid scaring her. But after that night, things escalated.

The fourth night, I was determined to uncover the source. I set up a small recorder at the base of the stairwell door, hoping to capture the sound. At 2 a.m., the humming started as usual. I crept to the door, ready to open it, when I heard something else: a child’s voice, laughing. It was high and playful, and it seemed to be moving up the stairs. I felt a cold draft, and the light in the stairwell flickered.

I pressed my ear to the door. The laughter grew louder, manic. Then abruptly, it ceased. A moment later, from the floor below, I heard a thud, followed by a gurgling sound. I flung the door open, but the stairwell was empty, the light steady. However, the air smelled faintly of rust and old pennies.

I retrieved the recorder, but when I played it back, I only heard static. Not the humming, not the laughter. Just a hiss of white noise.

That evening, mother mentioned that she had seen a little girl in the hallway earlier, wearing an old-fashioned dress with a red bow. She thought it was one of the neighbor’s kids, but she hadn’t seen anyone come in or out.

‘There are no children here,’ I reminded her. She shivered.

On the fifth night, I was beginning to lose my sanity. The lullaby haunted my waking hours. I looked up the tune online and found a reference to an old Spanish lullaby, ‘Duérmete mi niña.’ The lyrics were about a mother asking the moon to watch over her child. I read that the melody was used in some folk exorcism rituals.

I began to research the building’s history. Our floor was originally a private residence, and the stairwell had once been a service entrance. According to a local forum, a mother and her young daughter died here in the 1950s. The daughter fell down the stairwell, and the mother, in grief, hung herself from the banister. Their spirits were said to linger, the mother humming that lullaby to the child.

The story felt too close to what we were experiencing. I told mother, and she grew visibly uneasy. She said she had been feeling watched, and that her sleep had been disturbed by a low, mournful humming right in her ear.

That night, I decided to confront whatever it was. Armed with a flashlight and a heavy crucifrix I had found in a drawer, I opened the stairwell door and descended. The air became colder with each step. The humming grew louder, and I could hear a child’s sobbing. At the second floor, I saw her—a little girl in a white dress, her hair obscuring her face. She stood on the landing, facing the wall, rocking back and forth.

I whispered, ‘Hello?’ She turned slowly, and her face was a blur, featureless, like a porcelain doll left in the rain. She pointed upward, and then she was gone.

I scrambled back to our apartment, heart racing. When I got inside, I found mother kneeling by the bathroom door, sobbing. She said the water had been running, and when she tried to turn it off, it wouldn’t stop. The floor was flooded, and floating in the water was a small, braided hair ribbon—the same red one she had seen on the girl.

We spent the rest of the night in Lila’s room, huddled together, reciting prayers. The humming continued, but it was softer, almost apologetic. Then, at dawn, it stopped completely.

The following morning, we packed and left early. We didn’t tell Lila everything, but she said she had dreamed of a woman singing and a girl laughing, and that her dreams felt real.

We never returned to Vigan. But sometimes, in the dead of night, when my apartment is quiet and I can’t sleep, I hear it again—a faint, lilting hum, coming from my own bathroom. And I know it’s her, asking if I’ve checked the water, waiting for a mother’s answer that will never come.