The Sulfur Room

My friend Diego used to say that the ranch smelled like a struck match before anything went wrong. By the time I understood what he meant, the smell was already in my nostrils, thick and mineral, like the air after lightning. That was how it started: the scent of sulfur bleeding through the vents of the old farmhouse that Diego’s family had rented on the outskirts of Marfa, Texas.

Diego had been my best friend since childhood, but we’d drifted when he got into things I didn’t want to touch. He had a hunger for the dark—ouija boards, séance apps, even an old grimoire he’d found in a thrift store. I’d told him it was dangerous, but he just laughed. Then he met Elena, a quiet artist who saw the same shadows he did. They got engaged, and for a while, Diego seemed to settle. But when they moved into the ranch, about eight months ago, I started getting late-night calls from Elena instead of Diego. She’d whisper, ‘The house is watching us,’ and then hang up.

I decided to visit, partly out of concern, partly because I missed my old friend. The ranch was a sprawling, dilapidated structure with peeling white paint and a sagging porch. The day I arrived was unseasonably hot, the air heavy with dust and the buzz of cicadas. Diego greeted me with a grin, but his eyes were hollow. Elena stood behind him, wrapped in a cardigan despite the heat, her gaze fixed on something beyond my shoulder.

That first night, I slept in a bedroom that had once been a pantry. The walls were lined with shelves, now empty, and the room had a single small window that faced a field of dead sunflowers. I woke at 3:33 AM to the sound of footsteps in the hallway. They were slow, deliberate, like someone dragging their feet. I lay still, listening, and then the footsteps stopped outside my door. The door knob turned, but I had locked it. A whisper, sharp as static, seeped through the crack: ‘Come out, come out.’

I didn’t sleep after that. At breakfast, I asked Diego about the footsteps. He exchanged a look with Elena, then said, ‘It’s been happening since we moved in. We think it’s tied to the land. The previous owner, old Manuela, she buried her children out back in the 1930s. They say she still watches over them.’ I asked why he didn’t leave. He shrugged. ‘Where would we go? At least here, we know the enemy.’

Over the next few days, I noticed patterns. The sulfur smell would intensify right before anything strange happened. Once, I was standing in the kitchen, and the scent hit me so hard I gagged. Then the cabinet doors began to rattle, and a plate flew off the counter, shattering against the wall. Elena was in the corner, her hands shaking, muttering, ‘He’s angry today.’ Diego just watched, as if this were routine.

Elena started telling me stories. She said that Diego had summoned something when he was a teenager, using a ouija board in the old garage that had been converted into a bedroom. He’d let it in, she claimed, and it had followed him from place to place. The ranch was the fifth house she’d lived in with him. ‘The land doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘He brought it with him.’ I asked her why she stayed. She looked at me with a haunted expression and said, ‘Because I love him, and because if I leave, it will follow me anyway.’

One evening, I decided to search the property. I found an old well at the edge of the field, its wooden cover rotted and collapsing. The smell of sulfur was overwhelming there, and the air was cold despite the heat. I peered inside, expecting darkness, but instead I saw a faint shimmer, like heat rising off asphalt. A voice, thin and reedy, called up from the depths: ‘Let me in.’ I stumbled backward, heart racing. I ran back to the house, and as I burst through the back door, the sulfur smell vanished, replaced by the heavy silence of a house holding its breath.

That night, Diego confessed everything. He said that when he was seventeen, he’d used a ouija board in that garage to contact his dead grandmother. But something else answered. It gave him a gift—a kind of sight, he said—but it demanded payment. ‘It wants a soul,’ he whispered. ‘And it’s been patient.’ I looked at him, at his gaunt face, and said, ‘We can leave. We can exorcise it.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s been a part of me for too long. I don’t know who I am without it.’

In the early hours, I couldn’t sleep. I went to the kitchen for water, and there she was: Elena, standing by the window, staring out at the field. A thin trail of smoke curled from her lips, but she wasn’t breathing. The air reeked of sulfur. I called her name, and she turned slowly. Her eyes were not her own—they were black, like voids, and for a moment I saw something behind them, something feline and ancient. Then she blinked, and the eyes were just tired blue again. ‘Don’t trust the shadows,’ she said, and her voice was wrong, layered, like two voices speaking at once.

By the time I reached my room, I knew what I had to do. I packed my bag, intending to leave at first light. But as I reached for the door, the floorboards under me gave way, and I crashed through into a dark, damp space beneath the house. I landed hard, and when I looked up, I saw the foundation—but it wasn’t concrete. It was packed earth, and on the walls were crude drawings, like children’s pictographs, of stick figures and animals with horns. The sulfur smell was so strong I nearly passed out.

A voice echoed around me, not from the room but from inside my skull. ‘You are a witness now,’ it said. ‘You cannot leave.’ I scrambled to the surface, but when I got back to my room, the door was locked from the outside. Through the keyhole, I could see the hallway, and at the far end, a figure stood—tall, thin, with long arms that hung past its knees. Its skin was gray, like ash, and its eyes were small, red pinpricks. It walked toward my door, and as it came closer, the footsteps matched the ones I’d heard the first night.

I pressed my back against the far wall, and the door burst open with a sound like a gunshot. But nothing entered. The sulfur smell faded, and the house was silent. I crept into the hallway, and I saw Diego standing at the end, his head tilted at an unnatural angle. He spoke, but his mouth didn’t move. ‘It wants you to stay, so you’ll be the one to feed it instead of her.’ I saw Elena behind him, her face streaked with tears, shaking her head frantically, mouthing the word ‘run.’

I didn’t run. I ran toward them. As I passed Diego, the smell of sulfur was strongest, and I caught a glimpse of his chest—there, over his heart, was a black, pulsing mass, like a bruise, breathing. I grabbed Elena’s arm and pulled her toward the front door. We stumbled out into the dawn, and as we reached the road, we looked back. The house stood silent, but the windows were like eyes, watching us. The sulfur smell was a faint memory.

We drove away, and Elena kept her eyes on the rearview mirror until the house vanished. I asked her what was in the well. She said, ‘A door. You were lucky it didn’t open.’ We never spoke of it again.

But sometimes, in the dead of night, I wake up to the smell of sulfur, and I know that whatever I saw that day is not done with me. It found a way out of that house, and now it’s looking for a new home. And I’m afraid I’ll be the next host.