The Weeping Mahogany

My grandmother left us a house in her will, a Victorian relic with a tower that leaned like a tired old man. We moved from a cramped apartment in the city to this creaking monument of a bygone era. I hated it. The walls were covered in a dark, peeling wallpaper that seemed to breathe, and the stairs groaned under every step as if they were lamenting my presence.

My room was on the second floor, directly across from a narrow staircase that led to the attic. The attic door, a heavy oak slab with a brass knob, was always slightly ajar, even when we closed it. The first week, I dismissed it as a defective hinge. But then I started hearing it at night—a soft click, followed by a slow, deliberate creak. It was the sound of the door swinging shut on its own, though it was already closed. I would lie in bed, staring at the sliver of darkness beneath my door, and feel a chill crawl up my spine.

One Saturday, desperate for a distraction, I decided to explore the attic. I had avoided it, but my curiosity got the better of me. The stairs were narrow and dusty, and the air was thick with the smell of mothballs and decay. The attic was a cavernous space, filled with old trunks, broken furniture, and a forgotten upright piano. In the corner, half-hidden under a tarp, was a mahogany dresser with a cracked mirror. My grandmother’s diary, bound in worn leather, was on its top shelf. I opened it and found a page with a dried flower and a lock of hair. The entry read: ‘The mahogany weeps for her. I must burn it, but I cannot bear to destroy her memory.’

The next night, I couldn’t sleep. The wind howled outside, rattling the windows. I heard a faint, mournful sound, like someone crying, coming from the attic. It was a woman’s voice, low and trembling, but distorted, as if it were being filtered through a warped speaker. I grabbed my flashlight and crept up the stairs. The door was shut tight, but the knob turned smoothly under my hand. The room was freezing, and the tarp that covered the piano had been pulled back, revealing a tangle of wires and circuits inside. It was an old record player, but its needle was moving on its own, scraping across a vinyl disc that wasn’t there. The crying grew louder, and I saw a shadow flicker in the mirror on the mahogany dresser. I turned to see a woman with hollow eyes and a mouth stretched into a grin too wide, her reflection had no corresponding body.

I stumbled backward, tripping over the tarp, and fell down the stairs, bruising my back. I told my mom, but she said it was just the wind and an old house settling. She had been doing laundry all afternoon, and she complained that the towels kept going missing from the dryer. That night, I heard scratching coming from the vent in my room, as if something were trying to claw its way in from the wall. I shined my flashlight into the grate and saw a pair of eyes, tiny and black, blinking at me before disappearing.

I started to research the house’s history. The records at the county library revealed that a woman named Margaret had lived here in the 1920s. She had been a seamstress who went mad after her daughter died in the tower room—the same tower that leaned over our living room. The cause of death was listed as ‘misadventure,’ but a local newspaper article mentioned a broken music box and a shattered mirror. The tower room had been sealed off, but I found a keyhole in the attic floorboards that opened a hidden compartment. Inside was a music box with a bent spindle and a mirror fragment with a single word scratched into the back: ‘Remain.’

Every night now, I hear the attic door open and shut. Sometimes I catch the scent of lavender perfume, and the mirrors in my house fog up as if someone were breathing on them. The scratching has intensified, and last night, I woke to find the tarp pulled back from the piano and the record player spinning a record that lay on the floor, its grooves filled with dust. The crying has become a lullaby, a sweet, haunting tune that drifts down the stairs like a ghost. I tried to leave, but my keys are missing, and the front door will not open. The walls seem to be closing in, and I feel her presence behind me, in every shadow, in every reflection. I wrote this in the diary with a pen I found in the attic—the last page was blank, but the one before had a sentence in faded ink: ‘When the mahogany weeps, you will know I have joined her.’ The weeping has started. I hope it is not too late for me.