The Forgotten Room

The house always sighed at night, settling into the soil like an old woman easing herself into a rocking chair. Mara had learned to ignore most of its noises, but not the soft, rhythmic tap she heard now.

It came from the east wing—the part of the house no one used.

The part with the door.

No one had stepped into that room in seventeen years.

Her grandmother had forbidden it, and even after the old woman died, the rule hung in the air like a scent. It wasn’t locked. It wasn’t barricaded. It was simply… avoided. The door sat at the end of a long hallway with wallpaper that peeled in curling strips, as if recoiling from what lay beyond.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

It sounded like knuckles on glass.

Mara told herself she was too old for ghost stories, too old to imagine shadows crawling or whispering through the walls. Still, the hairs on her arms rose when she approached the east wing. She carried only a flashlight, though it suddenly felt far too small in her hand.

The tapping stopped when she reached the door.

The air tasted stale, as if untouched by breath for years. She pressed her palm against the knob. Cold. Much colder than it should have been. She turned it slowly, waiting for resistance—but the door yielded instantly, swinging open without so much as a groan.

The room inside was preserved.

Preserved perfectly.

Dust lay on the floor like fine powdered sugar, but nothing had disturbed it—not a footprint, not a scuff. The furniture was arranged neatly, a writing desk by the window, an armchair angled toward the empty fireplace. And on the desk, beneath a glass dome, sat a music box.

The glass had fogged slightly from the inside.

Mara stepped forward, feeling as though she were walking into someone else’s held breath. She lifted the dome. The faint scent of lavender drifted out, impossibly fresh after all these years.

The tapping began again.

From the music box.

Her hands trembled as she nudged the lid open. It didn’t sing. It clicked—a stuttering, uneven rhythm, as though something inside struggled to move. She leaned closer.

Inside the box lay a folded note.

The clicking stopped.

She unfolded the paper with fingers that no longer felt like her own.

Mara,

If you are reading this, then the room found you. It only calls to family when it wants something returned. Do not stay in here after sunset. Leave the music box where you found it. And whatever you hear from the window, whatever knocks… do not look outside.

— Grandmother

A soft knock came from the glass behind her.

Not from the hallway window.

From the inside.

Mara spun. The windowpane was clouded with frost, though the air in the room remained warm. A shadow shifted behind the fog—too tall, too thin, its shape bending in ways that made her stomach twist.

A second knock.

A long, slow scrape.

Then a whisper, muffled through the ice:

“Mara… you left me waiting.”

She slammed the music box shut. The lights flickered. The frost retreated from the window as if inhaled. The room exhaled a long, shuddering breath.

And the house—

the whole house—

fell silent.

Mara didn’t remember running, only the sound of her footsteps skidding down the hallway and the slam of the east wing door behind her. She didn’t stop until she reached the front steps, heart pounding like fists on glass.

She never went back. But sometimes, late at night, when the house sighs and settles, she hears the faintest tapping from the east wing.

As if something in the sealed room remembers her name.