The Table’s Guests

Growing up in my grandparents’ old farmhouse, I spent many nights on the lumpy pull-out couch in the parlor whenever a fever gripped me. The house was a maze of creaking floors and drafty corners, and from that couch, I could see straight through the wide doorway into the formal dining room, which we only used for holidays and funerals. I remember one night, when I was about eight, I woke to a sound like dry leaves skittering across the floor. It was a murmur, not quite words, rising and falling like the wind through the eaves. I sat up, my throat raw and my head pounding, and I squinted into the darkness. The moonlight filtered through the dusty curtains, casting long shadows across the polished floor. That’s when I saw them—dozens of small, hunched forms crouched beneath the heavy oak table, their shapes barely distinct in the gloom. I thought it must be a fever dream, but then one of them shifted, and I could swear it turned its head and looked straight at me. Its eyes were too wide, and its mouth was a lipless slit. I pulled the blanket over my head and squeezed my eyes shut, praying for sleep. I never told anyone about that night, not even my parents, because I figured they’d just say I imagined it. But I knew what I saw.

Years later, I was back at the farmhouse to help my mother clear out the attic after my grandmother passed. I was digging through boxes of moth-eaten quilts and rusty tools when I found an old photograph tucked inside a leather-bound journal. It was a picture of my great-grandmother, a stern-looking woman with a bun, standing beside that same oak table. The photo was dated 1912, and beneath it, in pencil, was a note: ‘Our visitors come when the fever burns low. They sit under the table, biding their time.’ I felt a chill crawl down my spine, and I remembered the story my grandmother used to tell about my great-grandfather, who had died of a mysterious illness in this very house. The journal listed names and dates, all of them ending with ‘fever’ and then a strange symbol—a small circle with a line through it.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The farmhouse felt different, heavier, as if the walls were breathing. I went downstairs to the dining room, and I saw the old table still sitting there, covered in a layer of dust. I knelt down and peered beneath it, half-expecting to see something. The floor was bare, just the same scuffed wood I remembered. But then I heard it—that same dry, skittering sound, coming from inside the walls. I pressed my ear to the floor, and I could hear faint whispers, like they were calling out in a language I almost understood. I pulled back, my heart hammering.

I wandered into the kitchen and opened the old cellar door, thinking maybe I’d find some explanation. The cellar was damp and smelled of earth, and in the far corner, I noticed a loose brick. I pried it away, and behind it was a small wooden box. Inside, I found a child’s doll, its porcelain face cracked, and a piece of paper with a list of instructions in that same pencil handwriting: ‘To see them, you must leave a gift beneath the table—a strand of hair, a drop of blood. Then lie down where you sleep when the fever comes, and wait.’ I recognized the doll as one my mother had played with, and I remembered how she’d always been afraid of it.

I don’t know what came over me, but I took a few strands of my hair, tied them around the doll’s arm, and placed it under the table. That night, I lay down on the old pull-out couch, which was still there, and I waited. The house grew quiet, and then the whispers began again, soft and hungry. I felt something cold brush against my ankle, and when I looked under the couch, I saw a pale hand withdraw into the shadows. Then the table began to creak, and I could hear them under it, shifting and chattering. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, they were there—the same hunched figures, their heads turned toward me, their eyes glinting. This time, they didn’t look away.

The next morning, I told my mother I was leaving early. She asked why, and I couldn’t bring myself to say that I had made a pact with the things under the table. I just said I had work. As I drove away, I saw her in the rearview mirror, standing on the porch, waving. But in the dining room window, just behind her, I could have sworn I saw a small silhouette duck out of sight.

Now I’m writing this in my apartment in the city, but I can’t shake the feeling that they followed me. Sometimes, late at night, I hear a rustling in the corners of my kitchen, and when I turn on the light, the shadow under the table in my own dining room seems a little too deep. I found a child’s doll in my closet the other day, one I didn’t own, and it was twisted with a strand of hair around its neck. I don’t know what they want, but I know this: when the fever comes to me again, I will have to go back. And I’ll have to bring them something more than a few strands of hair—maybe something that can’t be replaced.