The Still Warm Stove

The house was a squat, red-brick terrace on the edge of a town that had forgotten itself. My wife, Elara, and I moved there with our daughter, Mira, after the old flat became unbearable – not because of the walls, but because of what moved between them. We thought a fresh start, a new build, or at least something clean and modern, would be different. But the only places we could afford were old, and old places have long memories.

Our new home was a split-level conversion above a vacant hardware store. The landlord called it ‘characterful’; I called it ‘a draught with a postcode’. The stairs creaked in a rhythm that felt deliberate, and the radiators knocked like they were trying to speak. We didn’t unpack all the boxes at first. We kept our lives in suitcases, as if that would stop us from sinking roots into its musty carpet.

On the third night, I was heating up a pot of soup for Mira’s supper. Elara was in the living room, trying to coax her into eating. The kitchen was at the back of the flat, a narrow galley with a single window overlooking a brick wall. I stirred the soup, then set the wooden spoon down on the counter and went to check on them. I was gone no more than two minutes. When I returned, the stove was off, but the gas knob had been turned from the ‘high’ position to ‘low’. The soup was still boiling, but lazily, like it had been simmering for an hour. I hadn’t touched the knob. I hadn’t even thought about it. I dismissed it as a faulty mechanism, but the hair on my arms was standing up.

A week later, I was in the bedroom, folding laundry. Mira was playing in her cot, babbling to herself. I caught a movement by the bedroom door – a flicker of something dark, tall, and thin, as if someone had stepped aside quickly. I spun around, but the hallway was empty. Mira stopped babbling and stared at the door, her eyes wide. She then pointed and said, ‘Man there.’ My blood turned cold. I swept her up and didn’t look back. We ate dinner in the living room that night, all of us on the sofa, and I didn’t sleep until dawn.

The final incident came one winter evening. Elara had gone to visit her mother, leaving Mira and me alone. I put Mira to bed early, then went to the kitchen to make myself some tea. The flat was silent, too silent – I could hear the faint hum of the refrigerator, the ticking of the clock in the hall, and underneath all that, a low, steady breathing that wasn’t mine. I paused, holding my breath. The breathing continued, coming from the corner behind me, near the pantry. I turned slowly, expecting to see something, but there was nothing. Just the pantry door, slightly ajar. I didn’t remember leaving it open.

I walked over to close it, my hand trembling. As I reached for the handle, I saw a small, torn piece of paper on the floor. It looked like it had been ripped from a child’s drawing. I picked it up and read the words, written in shaky pencil: ‘HE IS STILL HERE.’ I don’t know how it got there. Mira can’t write yet. And I’ve never seen that paper before.

I grabbed Mira, who was still asleep, and I didn’t spend another night in that place. We moved out the next day, leaving most of our belongings behind. I never told Elara the full story, but she saw the look in my eyes and knew. We live in a new apartment now, with security cameras and deadbolts and nothing older than the paint on the walls. But sometimes, in the dead of night, I still hear the gas stove tick, and I swear I smell the ghost of soup warming.