The Stillroom at Fjellvang

I never believed in ghosts, not really. I’d heard the old stories, of course—every kid in Fjellvang had—but they were just stories, told around the fire in the long winter nights. My family had lived in this valley for generations, in the same black-timbered farmhouse that creaked and groaned like an old sea captain. But it wasn’t until the autumn I turned twelve that I learned the truth: some houses hold more than memories. They hold the dead.

The house itself was my great-grandmother’s, passed down to my father, and it had a peculiar feature that fascinated me as a child: a stillroom. It was a small, dark room off the kitchen, where she had once preserved fruits and made herbal remedies. The walls were lined with shelves of dusty jars, their contents long since turned to unrecognizable sludge. The air was thick with the smell of dried herbs and something else—something sweet and rotten, like old apples left to spoil.

My grandmother, who lived in the neighboring farmhouse with my grandfather, often warned me away from that room. ‘It’s not a place for children,’ she’d say, her eyes clouded with something I couldn’t read. But curiosity is a stubborn thing, and one afternoon, while my father was out in the fields and my brother was at a friend’s house, I slipped inside.

The door was heavy, and it swung shut behind me with a soft click, plunging the room into near darkness. A single small window let in a sliver of weak light, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air. I ran my fingers along the shelves, reading the faded labels: ‘Wolf’s bane’, ‘Belladonna’, ‘Nightshade’. My grandmother had taught me some of the old names, but these were plants of poison, not remedy.

A strange chill ran down my spine, and I heard a faint sound—like a woman weeping, muffled, as if from behind a wall. I froze, heart pounding. The sound grew louder, more distinct, and I realized it was coming from beneath the floorboards. I knelt, pressing my ear to the cold wood, and heard a voice, thin and reedy, whispering my name: ‘Lena… Lena…’.

I scrambled to my feet and fled, slamming the door behind me. In the kitchen, the warmth of the stove was a relief, but the sound followed me, a persistent echo in my mind. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my bed, listening to the wind outside, and I could swear I heard the weeping again, now coming from the walls of my own room.

The next morning, I told my grandmother what I had experienced. Her face went pale, and she gripped my arm with surprising strength. ‘You must never go in there again,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘That room is not for the living.’ She then told me the story that had been whispered in our family for generations.

It began with my great-great-grandmother, Astrid, who was known as a healer. She used the stillroom to concoct her medicines, but also to brew poisons for those she deemed a threat. One winter, a young woman from the village came to her, desperate, for a potion to rid herself of an unwanted child. Astrid gave her something, but it went wrong, and the woman died in agony. In her grief and guilt, Astrid took her own life in that very room, hanging herself from a beam. Her ghost, they said, was bound to the stillroom, unable to leave her place of death.

I tried to dismiss the story, but that night, I saw her. A shadowy figure at the foot of my bed, a woman in a long dress, her face obscured by a veil of darkness. She pointed a thin, white finger toward the kitchen, toward the stillroom, and then she was gone.

From then on, the haunting grew in intensity. Objects would move on their own, doors would slam, and I would often hear weeping, sometimes sobbing, sometimes wailing. My father, usually a stoic man, began to look haunted himself. He confessed to me that he had never felt comfortable in that room, and that his own father had forbidden him from entering. But the ghost was growing restless.

One evening, I found my grandmother in the stillroom, tears streaming down her face. She was holding a tarnished locket that I had never seen before. She saw me and quickly hid it in her pocket. ‘Lena,’ she said, her voice fragile, ‘I have to tell you something. Astrid was not just my grandmother. She was more than that. And her ghost is not just a haunting. It’s a protection. This house is built on a sacred spring, and Astrid’s bound spirit keeps something else at bay.’ She wouldn’t explain further, and the next day, she took to her bed with a fever.

As my grandmother lay ill, the ghost became more aggressive. I would hear footsteps in the attic, and the smell of decay would waft through the house. One night, I was in the kitchen, and the door to the stillroom creaked open. I saw a glow from within, and something compelled me to approach. Inside, the jars were glowing with an eerie light, and the shelves were filled with thousands of tiny, writhing shapes. I realized, with horror, that they were maggots.

The ghost appeared before me, more solid than ever. For the first time, I saw her face—it was twisted in agony, and her eyes were hollow. She opened her mouth, and a black substance spilled out, like tar, falling to the floor and spreading toward me. I screamed and fell backward, but the substance halted at the threshold of the room, as if it couldn’t pass.

My grandmother’s voice came from behind me, weak but determined: ‘That is the true nature of the thing she holds back. Her guilt gave it form, and her spirit martyred itself to imprison it.’ She stumbled into the doorway, holding a small bronze bowl filled with burning herbs, and began to chant in the old tongue. The ghost let out a piercing shriek, and the light in the room died.

When the chanting stopped, the stillroom was quiet. My grandmother leaned against the doorframe, exhausted, and looked at me with tired eyes. ‘She is at peace now,’ she said. ‘But the debt is transferred. You must take up her vigil, Lena. You are the last of the bloodline who can see.’

The next morning, my grandmother died peacefully in her sleep. We buried her in the small family plot behind the house, beside the stillroom’s outer wall. And from that day on, I have kept the stillroom clean, my jars filled with fresh herbs, my own bowls of burning herbs ready. I am the keeper now, the guardian of that hidden, ghastly threshold. And every night, I listen for the weeping beneath the floorboards, knowing that it is not a ghost but a guardian’s song, keeping the blackness at bay. This is my home, my burden, and my truth.