The House That Coughed

📜 The whole story (transcript)

Now this one — this one is true. I shall not even pretend otherwise. There stood, at the very end of Hollow Lane, a tall and crooked house that, every autumn at precisely a quarter past three in the morning, would cough. Cough! Like an old gentleman who has swallowed a moth. The shutters would tremble. The chimney would puff out a little grey breath. And from somewhere deep inside — between the wallpaper and the wood, you understand — a small, polite voice would say, 'Pardon me.' The neighbours, of course, pretended not to notice. That is what neighbours do. But one October, a curious little girl — about your size, I should think — left a glass of warm honey-water on the doorstep. With a note. The note read simply: 'For the cough.' In the morning, the glass was empty. And in its place sat a single brass key, no bigger than her thumbnail, and a folded paper that said, in the loveliest old handwriting: 'Thank you, kind one. The east wing is yours, whenever you should need a quiet place to disappear.' She kept that key all her life. And on the very hardest of days, she would close her eyes and feel, somewhere far away, an old wooden house take a long, comfortable breath… in… and out… just for her. Hah! Marvellous. Simply marvellous.