The Winter of the Pine

My earliest memories of Thornfield Farm are not of the sun-drenched wheat fields or the cool shade of the giant oak by the dam, but of the house itself. We moved in when I was six, Lila was four, and baby Tom was barely a year old. Dad had bought the place at auction, a hundred and twenty acres of good red earth in the Free State, and with it, the old farmhouse that had stood since before the Boer War.

The house was a squat, sandstone structure with a corrugated iron roof that creaked and groaned in the heat. The windows were small, set deep into the thick walls, with wooden frames that slid up and down on ropes and weights. Inside, the floors were worn slate, cool even in the height of summer, and the ceilings were of Oregon pine, dark with age and stained by decades of smoke from the old coal stove in the kitchen. There was a long, straight hallway running from the front door to the back, and it was always cold. Not the kind of cold you feel in winter, but a damp, heavy chill that seemed to seep from the walls themselves. I used to run down that hallway, my bare feet slapping on the slate, just to get to the other side before the cold could touch me.

Our bedrooms were at the end of the hall, mine on the left, Lila’s next to mine, and our parents’ at the very end. Tom slept in a cot in their room. I remember lying on my bed, staring up at the ceiling, and hearing a low, humming sound. It wasn’t a noise you could hear with your ears, but more like a vibration you felt in your bones. And the paint on the ceiling, a faded cream color, seemed to move. Not a lot, just a subtle shifting, like ripples on water, as if the ceiling was breathing. I told my mother, and she said it was just my imagination, that the heat was playing tricks on my eyes. But I knew what I saw, and I knew what I felt.

Lila, being only four, didn’t have the words to describe her unease. She would sit in the corner of her room, hugging her rag doll, and stare at the wall. When I asked what she was doing, she said, ‘She’s watching me.’ I looked at the wall, but there was nothing there, just the old wallpaper with its faded pattern of roses. ‘Who’s watching you?’ I asked. She just pointed at a spot on the wall, near the corner, and said, ‘The lady in the wall.’ I remember feeling a cold dread at those words, but I didn’t see anything. I tried to tell my parents, but they dismissed it as a child’s fantasy.

One afternoon, when Dad was out in the fields and Mom was in the kitchen preparing dinner, I was playing in the hallway with my wooden soldiers. The house was quiet, save for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the sitting room. There was a door under the stairs that led to a small cellar, where Dad stored his tools and some old crates. It was always locked, but that day, I noticed the door was ajar. I pushed it open and peered down the dark stairs. I could smell damp earth and something else, something sweet and rotten. I took a step down, and the door swung shut behind me with a click. I was plunged into darkness.

I should have been scared, but I felt a strange calm. I felt my way down the stairs, my hand on the rough stone wall. At the bottom, the air was even colder, and the humming was louder. In the dim light filtering through a small, grimy window, I saw a shape in the corner. It was a small, wooden box, covered in dust. I knelt down and opened it. Inside was a child’s doll, but its face was not painted. It was blank, just a wooden head with no features. And there was a small, leather-bound diary. I opened it, and the pages were yellowed and brittle. The handwriting was in an old-fashioned script, and I could barely make out the words. It belonged to a woman named Elsie. She wrote about her life on the farm, about her husband, and about the hardships of the war. But the last entries were more frantic. She wrote about ‘the small one’ who came to her in the attic, and how it wanted to play. She wrote about the cold in the hallway, and how it was ‘not natural’.

I heard a sound behind me, a soft rustling, like fabric moving. I turned, and in the corner, I saw a figure. It was a woman in a long, dark dress, but her face was obscured in shadow. She took a step toward me, and the cold intensified. I stumbled back, dropping the diary, and scrambled up the stairs. The door at the top was heavy, but I pushed with all my strength, and it gave way. I burst into the hallway, gasping, and the door slammed shut behind me. I never went into the cellar again.

After that, the weird occurrences intensified. We would find our toys moved in the night. Lila would wake up screaming, saying the lady in the wall was singing to her. Even Tom, who was just a baby, would stare at the ceiling and coo, as if responding to something. Mom grew thin and pale, always feeling a chill. Dad, ever the pragmatist, tried to rationalize it, but even he was uneasy. He claimed the house was ‘settling’ and the cold spots were just drafts.

One night, I woke up to a sound. It was a scraping, like something dragging across the slate floor. I lay still, listening. It was coming from the hallway. I slipped out of bed and crept to my door, opening it a crack. In the dim glow of the nightlight, I saw a dark shape moving down the hall. It was the woman in the black dress. She was dragging something behind her, something that made the scraping sound. I couldn’t see what it was, but it left a dark trail on the floor. She stopped at Tom’s room, the door was slightly ajar, and she stood there, looking in. I wanted to scream, but my throat was tight. She turned her head, and despite the darkness, I could see her eyes, hollow and black. She saw me. And then she was gone, as if she had never been.

I rushed to Tom’s room. Tom was asleep, but his face was pale, and he was breathing rapidly. Mom came in and picked him up, and he woke with a start, crying. She comforted him, saying it was just a nightmare. But I knew better.

The next day, I went to the library in town. I asked about the history of the farm. An old man, Mr. Van Wyk, remembered the place. He told me that in the days of the war, the house was occupied by a family. The wife, Elsie, lost her mind after the death of her young son. She couldn’t cope, and one winter, she hanged herself in the attic. The husband left, and the house was abandoned for many years. The body was found, but they never found the child’s grave. They said she buried him on the property, somewhere, but no one knew where.

I walked home in a daze. The story coincided with the diary I had found. The ‘small one’ she wrote about, that was her son. She wanted to play with him, but he was dead. And now, she was trying to take Tom.

That night, I took a flashlight and went up to the attic. We had never been there, but I knew the pull-down ladder from the ceiling in the hallway. I pulled it down and climbed up. The attic was dusty and filled with old trunks and forgotten furniture. And there, in the corner, I saw a small chest. I opened it. Inside, wrapped in a moth-eaten blanket, were the bones of a child. They were tiny, and the skull had a crack. I felt a wave of sorrow and pity. This was her son.

I took the bones and went outside, to the big oak tree by the dam. I dug a small grave under the branches, and I placed the bones in, and covered them with earth. I said a simple prayer, even though I wasn’t religious. ‘Rest in peace, little one.’

That night, for the first time in months, the house felt quiet. The humming had stopped. The cold was gone. Tom slept peacefully. Lila didn’t wake up screaming. And the lady in the wall never appeared again. But sometimes, on cold winter nights, when the wind blows through the pines, I think I can hear a faint, mournful lullaby, and I know that Elsie is still there, in her own way, watching over her son. And I wonder if she will ever truly leave us alone. But I think, perhaps, she has found some peace. And as long as we remember, so will she.