The Night Nurse

The wallpaper in the nursery was a pattern of small birds. When she looked closely, every bird had its head turned toward the window, as if something outside had called them.

She did not sleep in the east bedroom again. The east bedroom did not seem to mind. It simply waited.

Nora found the second staircase on her fourth night, behind a door she was sure had been a wall. It went down farther than the house had any right to go.

---

In the morning, the dust on the hall table showed a single handprint, small, like a child’s, pressed flat as if to hold something down.

Downstairs, the grandfather clock struck thirteen, paused, and then, almost apologetically, struck one.

The letters had been stuffed into the flue and forgotten, the paper brittle as moth wings. The first one began: If you are reading this, the house has chosen you too.