The Yellow Receipt

After finishing university, I packed my few belongings and left the cramped studio where I’d spent four years of my life, and the strange presence that had lingered there, behind. I moved to the outskirts of a small, forgotten mining town called Ashbory, where my grandmother lived in a sprawling, decaying Victorian house that she had converted into a boarding house. It was a place that seemed to breathe with age, its timber groaning at night, its windows like cloudy eyes watching the street.

I was given ‘the nook,’ a small room on the first floor off the kitchen, barely big enough for a single bed, a dresser, and a nightstand. The walls were covered in a faded floral wallpaper, peeling in places, and the floorboards slanted slightly. The smell of dust and old wood was constant. As a child, I had visited, and I remembered whispers of deaths: old Mr. Henderson, who had passed in his sleep; a young couple who had lost their infant to what they called ‘a bad case of the croup,’ though my grandmother always referred to it as ‘a blessing.’ I hadn’t kept track of the more recent tenant’s fates.

One rainy afternoon, my friend Nina came over, bored and restless. She’d heard about the house’s history and suggested we try a Ouija board. I hesitated, recalling the unease I’d felt in my last apartment, but I agreed, thinking it would be harmless fun. We sat cross-legged on my bed, the board between us, the planchette cold under our fingertips. We asked simple questions: ‘Is anyone here?’ The planchette slid to ‘YES.’ We asked for a name, and it spelled out ‘ELIZA.’ Then, as if a sudden wind had blown through the room, the planchette began to move in a frantic, circular motion, then pointed to the corner of the room where a small, yellowed receipt was pinned to the wall. I had never noticed it before. It was dated from 1923, for a milliner’s shop, but the name on it was ‘Eliza Mayhew.’

After Nina left, the house felt different. I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was standing just behind me. That night, I woke to the sound of scratching, like fingernails on wood, coming from the wall beside my bed. I pressed my ear to the wallpaper and heard a faint, rhythmic tapping, like a code. I tapped back once, and the tapping stopped. Then it began again, more frantic. In the morning, I pulled back the edge of the wallpaper, peeling it away to reveal a hollow space. Inside, I found a bundle of yellowed receipts, all made out to ‘Eliza Mayhew,’ along with a small, tarnished locket. I opened the locket to find a photograph of a young woman with sad eyes, and on the back, the words: ‘For my darling, who never came back.’

I asked my grandmother about Eliza. She paused, her hands trembling as she set down her teacup. ‘Eliza was a tenant here,’ she said, ‘in the 1920s. She was a seamstress, and she rented this very room. She fell in love with a man who promised to marry her, but he left her for someone else. She died of a broken heart, they said. Some say she took her own life. She never left, you know. Her presence has been felt here for years, especially by women who are ‘between loves,’ if you know what I mean.’ My grandmother looked at me, her eyes grave. ‘Be careful, dear. She’s looking for someone to take her place.’

I tried to ignore it, but the taps grew louder each night. The receipts multiplied, appearing under my pillow, in my shoes, on my dresser. The locket was always cold to the touch, and I could swear the photograph’s eyes followed me. One night, I woke to see a shadowy silhouette at the foot of my bed. It was a woman in a flapper dress, her face obscured, but her hand extended as if offering something. I reached out, and she placed a yellowed receipt in my palm. It was dated with my own birth date, and it read: ‘Payment for a new tenant.’ I screamed, and the figure vanished.

Desperate, I called Nina, and she brought a medium she knew. The medium, a stern woman named Margaret, walked into my room and immediately froze. ‘There’s a bitterness here,’ she whispered. ‘She wants your youth, your vitality. She wants to drag you into the decay.’ Margaret pulled out a bundle of herbs and began to burn them, chanting in a language I didn’t recognize. The room grew cold, and I could hear a woman’s voice, wailing, echoing off the walls. Margaret shouted, ‘You are not welcome here! Pass to the light!’ But the voice only grew louder. Suddenly, all the receipts flew off the walls, swirling around the room, then burst into flames, turning to ash in mid-air. The wailing stopped, and the room was silent.

After that, the house felt peaceful. The tapping ceased, and the receipts never reappeared. But a few weeks later, I found a new receipt on my nightstand. It was for a milliner’s shop, dated from the present day, and it had my name on it. I turned it over, and in shaky handwriting were the words: ‘You can run, but I will always find my tenants.’ I packed my bags and left the house the next day, but as I drove away, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw, for just a moment, a woman in a flapper dress standing on the porch, waving goodbye. I never returned to Ashbory, but sometimes, late at night, I feel a cold tap on my shoulder, and I know that Eliza found a way to follow me, and that she will never let go.