The Window at the End of the Hall

When I was six, my mother and I would drive out to my grandmother’s farmhouse in the hills, a place that smelled of old wood and dried lavender. The house had a long hallway on the second floor, and at its end was a window that faced the orchard. I never liked that hallway, because the boards creaked even when no one walked, and the light from the window always seemed to be a pale, sickly yellow, even at noon.

That summer, my mother and I stayed for two weeks while my father was away. I slept in a small room next to the hallway, with a bed that had a quilt stitched from my grandmother’s old dresses. On the third night, I woke to a sound like a child humming, the tune familiar but wrong, as if sung underwater. I sat up, and the humming stopped. Then I heard it again, coming from the hallway, from the window at the end.

I got out of bed and padded to the window, my bare feet leaving prints in the dust on the floor. The window was open, and the orchard outside was dark, but among the apple trees, I saw a figure. It was tall and thin, with arms too long, and it was waving at me with a slow, deliberate motion, as if it had all the time in the world. I waved back, and it stopped, then pointed at me, then at the ground beneath the window.

I heard my mother’s voice calling from downstairs, asking if I was all right. I didn’t answer. I was watching the figure, which had started to walk toward the house, its legs moving like a spider’s, but upright. I felt a cold wind blow through the window, and the figure vanished. Then I heard a tapping on the glass, but the window was already open. The tapping came from inside the room.

I turned around, and there was a man standing in the corner, dressed in a black coat and a wide-brimmed hat, his face hidden in shadow. He whispered, ‘Don’t be afraid, little one. I’ve come to show you the way.’ But his voice was like the hum of flies, and his hand reached out, and it was not a hand but a cluster of twigs.

My mother found me standing on the bed, pointing at the corner, talking to someone who wasn’t there. She turned on the light, and the man was gone, but I could still feel his presence, like a cold hand on the back of my neck. She held me until I was calm, and she locked the window, and she made me promise not to open it again. But that night, I saw him again, this time outside the window, pressed against the glass like a moth, his face a blur of features that didn’t quite fit together.

In the morning, I told my grandmother about the man in the hat. She went pale, and she said, ‘That’s Old Thistle. He comes for children who talk too much.’ She gave me a charm made of twisted roots to keep under my pillow. I didn’t sleep much that week, but each night, I heard the humming, and I saw the man at the window, and I refused to look.

On the last night before we left, I woke to find the window wide open, the curtain billowing like a ghost. The orchard was filled with a mist, and in the middle stood the man, his hat held over his heart, and he was singing a lullaby. I felt my feet move on their own, and I walked to the window, and I leaned out. He reached up, his twig fingers brushing my cheek, and he said, ‘You don’t need to be afraid of the dark. There’s a place where all the lost things go, and you could come with me.’

But my mother’s hand clamped on my wrist, and she pulled me back. She screamed, and the man’s smile turned to a snarl, and he dissolved into the mist. My mother never spoke of it, but she wouldn’t let me sleep in that room again. Years later, my grandmother admitted that Old Thistle was a family curse, a bargain that a great-grandfather made to save his crops, and every few generations, a child is called.

I am forty now, and I have a daughter of my own. She is six. Last night, she talked in her sleep, humming that same underwater tune. When I went to her room, she was standing on her bed, pointing at the window. The window was closed, but I could see out into the yard, and there, under the oak tree, stood a man in a black coat and a wide-brimmed hat. He tipped his hat to me, and then he was gone. I pulled my daughter close, and I wondered if I had broken the curse, or if I had simply passed it on. The humming stopped, but the window stayed cold, and the shadow under the oak tree didn’t move. I knew, then, that the window was never truly closed, and that some doors are better left unopened.