The Last Light in Room 217

I wasn’t supposed to notice the light in Room 217.

The hallway of the old boarding house was usually a tunnel of darkness after midnight, lit only by a dying bulb that buzzed like an insect trapped behind glass. I’d lived there for eight months—long enough to memorize the limits of its shadows, the way the wallpaper peeled in places like tired skin, and the sighs the wooden floorboards made under my steps.

Room 217 had always been the darkest spot of all.

Mrs. Karson, the landlady, never rented it out.

Not because it was broken.

Not because it needed repairs.

Just unavailable.

That was the only word she used, said in a tone that allowed no follow-up questions. If someone asked, she’d smile politely and redirect the conversation as smoothly as someone switching off a lamp.

So when I turned the corner that night and saw a warm, golden glow spilling from under the door of 217, I stopped so suddenly that my grocery bags swung forward and bruised my shins.

At first I thought it was a trick of the hallway lights.

But they were off.

All of them.

Only the thin beam beneath 217 shimmered against the wooden floor, humming faintly like a candle in a breathless room.

My pulse quickened.

No one was supposed to be inside.

But the light said otherwise.

I placed my bags down quietly. Something in me—fear, curiosity, grief—drew me closer, as if invisible fingers were tugging at my sleeve.

I knocked.

No answer.

The light flickered once, as if acknowledging me.

“Hello?” I whispered, though I didn’t expect a response.

No shadow moved under the door. No footsteps. The air was still.

I should have walked away. I should have gone back to my room and pretended I’d never seen anything.

But curiosity has always been my most dangerous flaw.

And grief, I’ve learned, makes you do things you’d swear you’d never do when your heart was whole.

My hand hovered over the doorknob. I hesitated just long enough for caution to whisper, “Don’t,” but curiosity—that reckless, hungry creature—pushed me forward.

The door opened with the softest sigh.

Inside

Room 217 smelled like dust and old winters.

Cold, quiet, untouched.

Exactly the same as the day I’d first seen it when I moved in and Mrs. Karson had accidentally left the door unlatched. A forgotten room with a sagging bed, faded wallpaper, and a single wooden table pushed against the far wall.

Except now, the table wasn’t empty.

A small lamp glowed atop it, casting a warm circle of light across the wood. Next to it sat a chair, pulled back slightly, as though someone had been sitting in it just moments before.

No one was there now.

“Hello?” I repeated, louder this time.

Silence.

But the air shifted—the kind of shift you feel in your bones, not on your skin. Like the room itself had inhaled.

That’s when I saw the notebook.

Small. Weathered.

A deep brown cover with worn edges.

Open to a blank page under the lamp’s steady glow.

My breath stopped when I recognized the handwriting at the top of the page:

Elena.

The room swayed slightly, or maybe it was just me.

No one wrote my name like that except my mother.

My mother, who died eleven months ago in a stark hospital room with too much white and too little hope.

My knees felt weak. I forced myself closer, step by careful step, until I could touch the notebook. My fingertips brushed the paper—soft, fragile.

The lamp flickered.

Words began appearing on the page—slowly, as if written by an unseen hand, letter by trembling letter.

You are not lost.

I am still with you.

Keep going.

My vision blurred instantly. Hot tears spilled before I could stop them. My mother used to say those exact words when I called her late at night, overwhelmed by life, by choices, by the heaviness that seemed to find me no matter how fast I ran.

You are not lost, sweetheart.

I am with you.

Keep going.

But seeing them here—in this forgotten room, in her handwriting—was like being cracked open and stitched together all at once.

I sank into the chair.

The lamp’s glow surrounded me like a warm embrace. For a moment, the world outside 217 didn’t exist. There was only light, and memory, and the aching sweetness of a presence I had begged the universe to return to me.

“Mom?” My voice broke on the second syllable. “Are you…?”

But the question dissolved the moment it left my lips.

The ink on the page began to fade—slowly, like a sunset sinking into the horizon. The golden letters dissolved into untouched white, leaving not even a shadow behind.

The lamp’s glow dimmed with the fading words. Once, twice—then settled into darkness.

The room released me.

I felt it.

Like a quiet exhale.

I scrambled for my phone, shining the flashlight on the notebook.

Blank.

Completely blank.

No message.

No name.

No proof.

Just an old notebook on a dusty table.

In the Hallway

When I stepped back into the hallway, my face still wet with tears, Mrs. Karson was waiting.

She wasn’t startled.

She wasn’t angry.

She wasn’t even surprised.

“You shouldn’t go in there,” she said gently.

I swallowed. “Why is the room locked, then? What is it?”

She looked past me, into the darkness of 217, her expression softening with something like sorrow.

“Some rooms,” she said quietly, “hold grief so deep that they only open for the person who needs them.” She paused, studying my face. “And only once.”

I felt cold.

And warm.

And hollow.

And full.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered.

“You will,” she said. “Not today. But you will.”

She closed the door.

It latched with a sound far heavier than a simple lock.

After

The next morning, I tried the doorknob.

It wouldn’t budge.

Not even a millimeter.

The warm light beneath the door was gone. The room was dark again—darker than the hallway, darker than before.

A place sealed by something older than locks.

But that didn’t matter.

The message wasn’t in the notebook anymore.

It was in me.

I wasn’t lost.

She was still with me.

And I would keep going.

For the first time in months, the words didn’t feel like a memory.

They felt like a direction.