Prologue
I hate when it rains. I’m not suppose to play inside, it's been a rule since mama and I moved into Uncle Reed's house, but the endless rain has made it so the grass is a muddy mess and despite my hopes of going outside, the rain keeps falling and the sky keeps cracking open in furious roars.
I tiptoe into the library where the air is always filled with the scent of old wood, leather, and the faint smell of musty paper.
After picking out a book along a shelf I could reach, I slide my favorite blanket onto the thick, braided rug and try to sit as quietly as I can.
I know better, though. Staying quiet and trying to be good are things I’ve never been good at, it only seems to create a delay in being discovered.
I set the book on my lap, Bewick’s History of British Birds. It's not that I understand much of what is written inside but it is filled with a large amount of pictures that tell their own stories about the birds and landscapes I see on the pages.
The sound of thunder cracks suddenly while the following lightning illuminates the room.
It causes me to stand so quickly that my elbow bangs the oak side table.
A cup wobbles, teeters, then shatters in a spray of fragments across the rug.
The noise is a knife in the quiet, sharp and final. I freeze mid-breath.
Miss Turner, my uncle’s housekeeper, is the first to arrive, her heels click on the hardwood. She looks around the room and sees the broken glass without meeting my eyes. “You were told not to play in here,” she says, voice cool as ice.
“I didn’t mean to,” I gasp. “It was raining and I just wanted to read inside the library."
She narrows her lips. “That doesn’t excuse making a mess and breaking things.”
My uncle appears behind her. Like Miss Turner, he surveys the mess on the floor. “I’m expecting company soon,” he says to her. “Get this mess cleaned up and take her to the Red Room.”
Miss Turner’s fingers press into my shoulder. “Come with me.”
I don’t cry. Not yet. Crying is for later, when you fully understand the trouble you’re in. For now, I stare at the tiny shards, glinting like broken promises.
I nod.
I always nod since they never listen.
Miss Turner takes me upstairs, bypasses my bedroom, and walks directly to the room in front of us. At the hall’s end the Red Room awaits. A musty scent of closed windows and unused furniture drifts out into the corridor. Heavy curtains are drawn against the fading rainy day.
“Sit,” Miss Turner says.
I lower myself onto the faded carpet, the fibers rough beneath my palms. She steps back through the door without another word and presses the door shut. Then I hear the lock’s final click, metal biting into wood. I jump up and twist the handle. It won’t budge.
“Miss Turner?” I call out. “I’ll clean up the broken cup, I’m sorry.”
“It’s already dealt with,” she says through the door. “Your uncle doesn’t want any more disturbances tonight.” I just stand there, listening to her footsteps fade away.
The Red Room has never been used since we moved in a few months ago.
I never understood why since it is one of the largest rooms that I’ve seen.
I once asked mama why everyone kept calling it the Red Room when we moved in and she opened the door to show me how all the linens, curtains and carpet had been decorated in a deep crimson color.
“My grandmother’s favorite color was red so when she was alive she had her bedroom decorated entirely of red accents,” she told me. She then went on to describe her grandmother as a vibrant and adventurous individual, stating, "Her favorite activity was keeping grandad on his toes."
I don’t know how much time has gone by but slowly I hear noise coming from downstairs: laughter, music, and every so often the clink of glasses. I walk over to the bed and sit on the edge, listening to my own breath.
That’s when I notice the mirror. It stands uncovered against the far wall, its glass shadowed, swallowing what little light filters through. I look at myself. My reflection blurred at the edges, like a slow photograph developing in the dark.
I tell myself it’s just the rain, just the dimness of the room.
Then I see the shape. Behind me. Tall, pale, not quite flesh, an outline wavering as though glimpsed through rippling water. My throat clenches.
I whirl around. Nothing.
When I face the glass again, the figure is closer, its form drifting at the mirror’s edge.
The room tilts, my fingers tingle, my ears hum.
I think of stories about restless spirits lingering where they shouldn’t.
I realize maybe this room remembers more than people do.
I lay down on the bed and curl into myself, forehead pressed to my knees, squeezing my eyes shut.
If I don’t look, it can’t see me.
Heat and cold war under my skin. My head throbs, my stomach knots, and I grow weightless and leaden all at once. I don’t remember when I fell asleep.
When the door opens later, a shaft of bright hall light stabs my eyelids. Warm hands touch my forehead and I faintly hear Miss Turner’s gasp. “She’s burning up.”
Distant voices overlap and I vaguely hear Mama’s voice as she questions Miss Turner on what happened and why was I in there.
She lifts me gently from the Red Room. For days I drift between fever dreams and waking.
The incident in the Red Room slowly recedes, but the terror it held stays vivid, the certainty that something watched me from the shadows.
No one asks what I saw. No one explains why they locked me away.
They say I frightened myself and should know better.
I learn something then, though I lack the words: some rooms are never meant for children. Some doors close on their own and once fear takes root, it does not easily let you go.