John poured himself more tea and went on. After she was alone, Mary began collecting and drying herbs. People in the area started saying she had become a kind of healer, making remedies and saying prayers over folks.
People came to her with bad backs and sleeplessness. Some said she helped. Others rolled their eyes. Lydia asked what happened next.
John said age caught up with Mary. She had a falling-out with her daughter, who stopped visiting. Left completely alone, Mary began saying she shared the house with someone she couldn’t see.
She told neighbors she heard footsteps at night and the voice of her drowned son. Lydia felt a chill run down her back. She asked if Mary truly believed Alex was there.
John said yes. Mary was convinced his spirit was wandering the house, trying to tell her something important. Everyone assumed grief and age had gotten the better of her.
But one day they found Mary dead on her kitchen floor. The doctor said heart failure, but her face had been frozen in terror. It looked as though she had died badly frightened.
And after the funeral, the real strange business began. Lights appeared in the windows at night, though the power lines had been disconnected. John admitted he had seen the glow himself.
Whenever he came closer, the door would be locked and no one would be inside. People heard shouting from the house, or crying. Lydia wrapped both hands around her mug to hide their shaking.
She looked at him and asked whether he believed in the supernatural. John gave a small shrug. At his age, he said, a person learns not to be too certain about what is and isn’t possible. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew something about that house was wrong.
Lydia asked, worn out and frustrated, what exactly she was supposed to do. John told her again to leave. Lydia repeated that the house was all she had.
He looked at her with real sympathy. Then he told her the one thing he thought mattered: don’t let fear get the upper hand. And if she needed help, she should call for him.
Thanking him, Lydia walked slowly back home. The pieces were beginning to fit together. A mother who could not let go of her dead son. A lonely death. A house with a history that seemed to cling to the walls.
It sounded like the plot of a late-night TV movie. But the voices, the footsteps, the open window—those had been real enough to her.
Maybe John was right and she should leave. But when she stepped into her yard and looked at the crooked old house, she felt a stubborn affection for it. She decided she would not give up so easily.
She was going to figure out what was happening and find a way to live there in peace. She simply didn’t have another option. She went inside, shut the door firmly, and prepared herself for nightfall.
That night dragged on forever. Lydia lay on top of the covers fully dressed, with her phone and flashlight close at hand. She slept only in short stretches, waking at every little sound…
