Room Nine

Lettuce Head
Sep 12, 2025
4 min read

By Patrick Okoi

When no one moved, the house sighed. When no one listened, it shifted its weight, timbers settling as though something deep in the walls had rolled over. Its stillness had teeth.

The Fergusons moved in during the kind of spring that still smelled faintly of snow.

The Crowhurst house stood at the edge of Maple Hollow, tilted forward like it was eavesdropping on the road. Its narrow windows squinted against the light, the glass smudged as if pressed by too many hands. The porch boards flexed and groaned, each step a complaint. The shutters shed paint in curling strips, drifting to the earth like withered petals.

Benny Ferguson noticed before anyone else. At nine, he had a way of listening that made adults uncomfortable. His hair curled in stubborn question marks.

“There’s someone in the house,” he said over dinner.

Miriam, fourteen, sat in the dim glow of her phone. “Probably your stomach.”

“No. I heard a voice.”

Their father didn’t look up from his plate. He scraped his fork slowly, stubble shadowing one cheek more than the other. “It’s an old house, Ben.”

“This one knows my name.”

Nobody spoke after that.

That night, the voice returned, soft, dry, threading itself through the upstairs hallway. It always came from the same spot: the linen closet.

Benny crept to it, the carpet cold under his feet. Towels hung limp inside, smelling faintly of cedar, but behind them was a door, narrow, gray, its brass knob freckled with green. He touched it; the metal was cold enough to sting. It didn’t turn.

Then— Benny, Benny, Benny.

The sound slid between his ribs. He turned and ran.

In the morning, Miriam combed her hair and didn’t look at him. “There’s no door there. I unpacked the towels myself.”

But that night, the door was still there. The whisper pressed closer.

The house began to answer them back. The kitchen light flickered whenever Benny stepped inside, a faint stammer in its glow. His alarm clock went blank in the middle of the night, its red numbers vanishing. Scout, their old retriever, planted himself at the foot of the stairs, tail rigid, eyes following something no one else could see.

Objects shifted when no one was watching. The chair in the hallway drifted inches from its place. The kitchen calendar jumped ahead two days overnight. Once, the teaspoon Benny had been stirring into his cocoa was already back in the drawer when he reached for it again.

The lavender came next, barely there at first, hiding in corners, then swelling into the air until it clung to their hair and clothes.

Miriam began to change. She left her music silent. She painted her nails, then stripped the color by evening. Her phone stayed lit, her thumb hovering without touching the screen. Sometimes she smiled faintly at nothing, then startled as if someone had spoken too close.

One night she knocked on Benny’s door. “I heard it.”

“The whisper?”

Her eyes were half-lidded, as though sleep had been missing for days. She nodded.

By then, Harold had stopped humming in the mornings. The fridge hummed instead, an unfamiliar note, almost a tune. The linen closet door was sometimes ajar, though no one remembered opening it.

Benny pressed his ear to the narrow gray door behind the towels.

Find me.

“Who are you?” His breath fogged against the wood.

The house said nothing.

Rain soaked the windows the next night. Fog curled against the glass. Benny slid from bed, flashlight in hand, and padded to the closet. The narrow door swung open without effort.

Dust turned slowly in the still air. A child’s bed sagged in one corner, the pink blanket torn at the edges. A dollhouse leaned to one side, its roof caved in. Across from it stood a tall mirror in a cracked silver frame.

In the mirror was a girl.

She was older than Benny, her skin pale as candle wax, her black hair a twisted rope down her back. A plain white dress clung to her as if it were wet. She was only in the glass, not in the room.

“You came back,” she said.

Benny’s fingers tightened around the flashlight. “Who are you?”

She touched the inside of the glass, and the surface trembled like disturbed water. “You used to play here. Before they made you forget.”

“This is my first time.”

Her eyes didn’t move from his. “Not in this life.”

The door slammed behind him.

Miriam’s footsteps pounded up the stairs. The linen closet gaped, towels spilled across the floor.

The girl in the mirror turned toward her.

Miriam’s face blanched. “I know you… but I don’t know why.”

“You called me Rosie once.”

Miriam shook her head, almost smiling. “Rosie was a dream. A nightmare.”

“That’s what she told you.”

Benny’s voice was small. “Who is she?”

Miriam’s answer was thinner than breath. “Our sister.”

The air grew heavy enough to bend the light.

“She was born before you,” Miriam said.

Benny’s lips trembled. “I remember… shoes too small for me. A music box. A fall. I was four.”

Rosie’s dark eyes stayed on him. “This is where I stayed.”

Her shape unraveled like smoke. The mirror tipped and fell, shattering into shards that showed nothing at all.

After that night, the lavender faded. The lights no longer blinked. Scout wandered upstairs again. Miriam slept with her door open. Harold laughed once at breakfast—brief, startled, but real.

They did not speak of Rosie.

One rainy afternoon, Benny found a crate in the basement marked SPRING 2003. Inside were cards, books, photographs.

One photo stopped him: a girl in the Crowhurst yard, white dress, pale skin, black hair, a doll in her hand.

On the back, in their mother’s writing: Benny – 3rd Birthday.

It wasn’t his birthday.

He turned it over again. The handwriting had changed.

Bring her back.

The basement light flickered.

Benny…