004 The Handprints

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

There is a condo in Edgewater that is new red-brick construction with balconies and fireplaces and granite kitchens with stainless steel appliances. One unit has never been sold, and although it has been rented by the management company from time to time the residents always break their lease by the second month. The smell of smoke fills the unit some evenings, accompanied by raucous banging and thumping, especially coming from the closet of the smallest bedroom. That bedroom has a white-painted closet which is very ordinary looking save for the small, brownish, smudged, handprints that circle the wall about three feet off the floor. No amount of scrubbing can remove them; when the closet is painted, the handprints soon reappear. They are faint at first, but within three days they are as dark as they ever were.

If a woman who has been unable to bear a child walks into the closet and closes the door, kneeling down, and touching each of the handprints in turn, she will find herself pregnant within a month. The child will be a boy with solemn eyes. When he is five, a fire will start in their home, and somebody who lives there will die.

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