The Visitor in the Parlor

The house we rented on Hemlock Lane had a certain weight to it, as if the walls themselves remembered every conversation ever held within them. My mother, a pragmatic woman who dismissed most things as coincidence, rarely spoke of the summer I turned three. But when she did, her voice would drop to a whisper, and she’d glance toward the empty parlor as if expecting someone to be listening.

It started after my father took the night shift at the cannery. The house was old, with radiators that clanked and settled like restless bones, and the parlor—a room we never used—held a single armchair draped in a yellowed sheet. My mother would find me there, small and solemn, standing by the chair, chattering away to the empty air. I’d nod, laugh, and sometimes run to fetch a toy or a book, placing it on the seat as if presenting it to an invisible guest.

At first, my mother thought it was an imaginary friend. But when she asked me who I was talking to, I would turn with wide eyes and say, ‘The man in the chair.’ He was old, I told her, with a long beard and glasses that perched on his nose. He wore a vest and a watch on a chain, and he liked to tell me stories about the sea. My mother would smile, though unease prickled her skin. She asked me what he said, and I would repeat things—fragments of tales about storms and ships, about a lighthouse that no longer stood, about a girl named Margaret who had once lived in this very house.

Margaret, my mother later learned from a neighbor, had been the previous owner’s daughter. She’d drowned in the lake behind the house in the 1940s, the same summer her father had built that armchair. The neighbor, an old woman named Mrs. Hale, said the father had never recovered, and he’d sit in that chair every evening, staring out the window, until he passed away. My mother tried to hide her shock, but I saw her face go pale. She started avoiding the parlor, and she would call me away whenever I drifted toward it.

But the man didn’t stay in the parlor. He began to follow me through the house. I’d be playing in the kitchen, and I’d suddenly stop, listening, then laugh and say, ‘He says you make good pie.’ In the hallway, I’d wave at the corner. In my room at night, I’d murmur to whoever was beside my crib, and my mother would find me peaceful, not frightened, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. She tried to rationalize it—children have vivid imaginations, she told herself—but the way I spoke of him was too consistent, too detailed.

One evening, my mother decided to test it. She set up a tape recorder on the parlor table, hoping to catch something. The next morning, she played the tape. For the first hour, there was only silence and the occasional creak of the house. Then, my voice, small and clear: ‘Do you like this one?’ A pause. ‘I’ll get it for you.’ Then the sound of my footsteps running to my room and back. On the tape, she could hear my laughter, but beneath it, there was a low, rumbling hum, like a voice too deep to properly register. She replayed it several times, but the hum never became words, only a vibration that made her stomach clench.

That afternoon, my mother finally decided to confront the presence. She walked into the parlor, the air heavy with dust, and addressed the empty chair. ‘Show yourself,’ she said, her voice steady. ‘If you’re here, let me see you.’ For a long moment, nothing happened. Then, the sheet on the chair shifted, as if someone had adjusted it. A cold draft swept through the room, and from the corner of her eye, she saw a flicker of movement. She turned, but there was nothing. Yet her skin crawled.

I came into the room then, holding a small locket I had found in the garden. It was tarnished, with a faded photograph inside—a young woman with dark hair, smiling. ‘He says this was Margaret’s,’ I said. My mother took it, her hands trembling. She opened the clasp, and inside was a tiny inscription: ‘To my daughter, forever.’ She looked at me, then at the chair. ‘He’s still here, isn’t he?’ she asked. I nodded. ‘He’s always here.’

From that night on, the presence became more tangible. My mother would find the curtains drawn closed when she had left them open. The chair’s sheet would be folded neatly on the seat. And I would sometimes wake up crying, saying the man was sad, that he missed his daughter, that he was sorry. My mother began to feel a weight pressing on her when she entered the parlor, and she could almost see a shape in the corner of her vision—a tall, thin figure with a beard and glasses.

We moved out at the end of the summer. My father got a day job, and we left Hemlock Lane. I don’t remember much of that time now, only fragments. But sometimes, late at night, I see a flicker in the shadows, and I hear a faint hum, like a voice trying to form words. I never see him clearly, but I know he’s there. And I wonder if he followed us, or if he still waits in that house, in his chair, telling his stories to the empty air, hoping one day someone will listen again.