The Woman in the Red Top

I never believed in ghosts. Not until that autumn when my father’s illness had brought me back to the old house on the edge of the marsh. The house had been in our family for generations, a rambling Victorian with peeling paint and a porch that groaned underfoot. I had returned to care for my father, whose mind was fading faster than his body. My mother, a nurse, worked the early shift at the county hospital, and I was left to tend to him through the long, misty nights.

That particular morning, I woke with a start. The clock on the nightstand glowed 5:30 AM. The house was silent, save for the distant hum of the refrigerator and the rhythmic rasp of my father’s breathing from down the hall. I lay still, trying to understand why my body had snapped awake. Then I heard it—a soft padding of footsteps above me, as if someone walked the second floor. But I was on the second floor, in the guest room across from the bathroom. The sound came from the attic stairs. I had never been up there; the door was always locked.

The footsteps stopped. I sat up, my heart hammering. The hallway outside my door was dark, lit only by the pale glow of a nightlight near the stairwell. I blinked, and then I saw her. A woman emerged from the doorway of my old bedroom at the end of the hall. She wore a crimson blouse and black shorts, her hair hanging in long strands over her face. She moved with a fluid grace, her bare feet making no sound on the creaking floorboards. I froze, unable to even breathe. She walked past my door without turning her head, and disappeared into the bathroom. The door clicked shut with a soft, deliberate finality.

My first instinct was to think I was dreaming. I pinched my arm, and the pain was sharp. I swung my legs out of bed and crept to the bathroom door. I raised my hand to knock, but something stayed me. Instead, I pressed my ear to the wood. Inside, I heard a faint splashing, as if someone were washing their hands. Then a low, gurgling sound—like laughter underwater. I backed away, my mind racing. I had no memory of a woman in the house. My mother had left hours ago. There was no one else.

I returned to my room and sat on the bed, staring at the bathroom door until the first rays of dawn bled through the window. When my mother came home, I told her what I had seen. She paled, her hand trembling as she set down her bag. ‘You saw her,’ she whispered. ‘I prayed you wouldn’t.’

She told me the story then. Years before I was born, my father’s younger sister, Elizabeth, had lived in that room. She had been engaged to a man who worked the rail lines, but one night he didn’t come home. She wore a red blouse and black shorts—the outfit she had bought for a secret elopement. She waited on the porch until dawn, then walked into the marsh and never returned. Her body was found a week later, tangled in the reeds. My father never spoke of her, but my mother said the house mourned her. Every few years, someone would see her walking the hallway, always heading to the bathroom, never looking at anyone.

I tried to rationalize it. Grief, stress, lack of sleep. But the vision lingered. And as the weeks passed, I noticed my father growing more restless at night. He would murmur in his sleep, calling out ‘Lizzie, don’t go.’ Then, one night, he rose from his bed, his eyes vacant, and shuffled to the bathroom. I followed, fearing for his safety. He stood at the sink, staring into the mirror, and began to speak in a voice that was not his own—a higher pitch, a cadence that chilled my blood. ‘He left me, Ethan. He left me for the rails.’

I grabbed his shoulders, trying to shake him awake. He turned, and for a moment, his eyes cleared, but then they glazed over, and he whispered, ‘She wants me to join her.’ That night, he died in his sleep. The doctor said it was heart failure, a mercy given his condition. But I knew better. I had seen the faint outline of a woman standing behind him in the mirror, her hand on his shoulder.

I moved out the following week. I couldn’t bear to stay. But the image of her—the red top, the black shorts—never left me. I started having dreams, not of the house, but of the marsh. I would walk through the reeds, the water cold around my ankles, and hear her call to me. I always woke before reaching the point where the water deepened.

Last night, I received a letter from my mother. She had sold the house, but the new owners reported disturbances: a woman in a red top appearing in their hallway, opening doors, leaving wet footprints. They asked if we had any history of a troubled spirit. My mother enclosed a photograph she had found in the attic—a faded picture of my father and a young woman in a red blouse and black shorts, smiling on the porch. On the back, in my father’s handwriting: ‘Elizabeth, the day before she left. My only regret.’

I am writing this from a small apartment across the country, but tonight, as I close my eyes, I hear footsteps in the hallway outside my door. I am afraid to look. I am afraid that she has followed me, that she is not bound to the house but to something else—to the bloodline, to the memory of a promise broken. And I am afraid that when I do look, she will be standing there, her hand raised as if to knock, her face lifting to meet mine. I never believed in ghosts. I do now.