Clara’s Rug

Clara had lived alone since Ron died. He’d left her a stately Victorian home with polished floors and long velvet curtains on a tree-lined street in a good part of town. It wasn’t the best house in the neighbourhood, but it was close and that mattered to Clara. Now in her fifties, Clara lived comfortably off the house and modest fortune her much-older husband left behind. For the first time in her life, she could truly please herself. Finally.

For months now, Clara had been hunting for the perfect rug to elevate her living room, where it would be on show to all her friends. It was a task more complicated than expected. The curved wall beneath her bay window made sizing difficult, and anything off-the-shelf looked awkward. She had been quietly coveting a Valetti rug, those impossibly plush, hand-knotted wool pieces known for their dreamy cornflower blues and tasteful splashes of gold. At over fifty thousand dollars, it screamed luxury, but the price was a stretch, even for her.

Clara was walking through her neighbourhood one crisp Saturday morning, her Burberry scarf pulled snug around her neck, when she passed a garage sale. The three-story house was devoid of any colour, the paint cracked and peeled off long ago. The slate on the steeply pitched roof was missing in places, the ornate trim crumbled and broken. But what was most disturbing was the ivy that covered the house, snaking its way over the decorative brickwork like long, bony fingers, the colour of the stems so dark they were almost black.

The front lawn was scattered with furniture, bric-a-brac, and slumping cardboard boxes. Beneath a sagging table and a mismatched set of cane chairs, was a rug. Clara froze. It was unmistakably a Valetti—the pattern, the texture, the colors. She stepped closer, her breath catching. This was too good to be true. She crouched down and ran her hand over the rug. The density and softness of the weave against her fingers felt wonderful. The only way to tell a genuine Valetti was the gold thread weaved on the underside of the rug. She held her breath as she lifted a corner and saw the intricately threaded gold. Clara pursed her lips and tried to hide her excitement.

An old man sat beside the spread on a folding chair, unmoving. As she approached, he turned to her with a tired kind of patience. One of his eyes was blue, the other brown. Clara wrinkled her nose. There was a faint smell of mould and dust.

‘How much for the rug?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘It’s not for sale. Not worth it.’

Clara was taken aback. What did he mean? Perhaps he didn’t know it was a Valetti. If he didn’t know the true value of this rug maybe she could get it cheaply. This was too good to be true. She had to have it.

‘Well, I would really like this rug. How much do you want for it?’

The man eyed her.

‘It belongs in the junkyard. My wife never liked what it did to the house,’ he said.

Impossible, thought Clara, this rug would look good anywhere.

‘I can take it off your hands,’ Clara said quickly. ‘I’ll give you $1000.’ Clara thought this was a good sum. If he didn’t know this was a Valetti, which it appeared he didn’t, this amount of money would seem quite attractive to a man like him.

Clara’s boldness was rewarded when the man’s blue and brown eyes widened. Clara knew she’d won.

After a long silence, the man nodded. ‘Alright then.’

Back home, Clara unfurled the rug in her living room. It was perfect. The pattern was bold but not brash, the cornflower blue echoed the tones in her curtains, and the golden threads matched the lemon velvet of her sofa. She ran her fingers through the pile. It was thick and soft.

But then she noticed a faint mark near one corner. A black smudge. She knelt and peered closer. It was hard to tell if it was part of the pattern or something darker. Still, it would need cleaning. She made a mental note to book someone.

The next day, she invited friends over—under the guise of catching up, but really, to show off the rug. Predictably, one of them gasped.

‘Is that a Valetti?’

Clara smiled, careful not to seem too smug. ‘Yes, yes, of course. I got it at an auction. Bit of a splurge, but worth it.’

‘Oh,’ said another, pointing. ‘What’s that? A stain?’

Clara opened her mouth to explain—but stopped. The stain had grown. It was now the size of a man’s hand. She blinked, uncertain.

‘Yes,’ she said lightly. ‘Just a little spot. Still need to have it cleaned.’

The women pursed their lips and made sympathetic noises. One of them muttered something about ‘maybe that’s why it was such a bargain.’

After they left, Clara found herself on her hands and knees, scrubbing at the mark with a cloth and warm water. It didn’t budge. She called a rug cleaning service, but the earliest appointment was in a week.

That night, Clara woke suddenly. She padded downstairs in the dark to get a glass of water and flicked on the kitchen light.

From the doorway, she glanced toward the living room.

And froze.

The stain had spread—now spanning nearly the full length of the rug, black and shapeless, like a shadow left behind by something long gone. Her heart pounded and her throat tightened. A wave of nausea crept through her.

Without stepping closer, she backed into the kitchen, turned off the light, and went upstairs.

She closed her bedroom door quietly behind her.

And locked it.

The next morning, her head pounding from a terrible night’s sleep, Clara gingerly descended the wooden staircase, each step creaking beneath her bare feet. She paused at the bottom, peering cautiously around the corner into the living room.

Relief swept over her. The stain had shrunk. It was now no larger than a man’s fist. Still bigger than yesterday but not the size it had been in the middle of the night. Had she imagined it? Dreamed it? Surely a stain couldn’t grow and shrink like that.

She tried to shake it off and go about her day, but as she dusted, vacuumed, and rearranged ornaments that didn’t need rearranging, her eyes kept drifting back to the rug. It was as though the stain was watching her. She imagined another dark patch beside it—like two eyes watching

By mid-afternoon, the weight of it became too much. She needed answers. She slipped on her coat and walked briskly to the house where she had bought the rug, determined to speak again to the old man.

But when she arrived, her breath caught.

The house was empty.

The furniture was gone. The porch was boarded up. A weathered notice was nailed to the door, flapping in the breeze. The black ivy that once curled and snaked over the house had disappeared, not a trace remained. The wind blew coolly against her cheeks, and the sky pressed low, heavy with cloud.

Clara shivered and turned back home, a knot that felt like the size of a fist in the pit of her stomach.

That night, exhausted, she slipped into bed without dinner and fell asleep quickly. But sometime in the early hours, she was woken by a sound—the wind, rattling hard against her windowpanes.

The pale light of the moon cast shadows on the polished floorboards.

Clara shifted beneath her covers, drifting back toward sleep—until something caught her eye.

The door was closed. But beneath it, a blackness was spreading.

Thick, slow, and unnatural. It seeped under the door like inky tendrils oozing across the wooden floor toward her bed.

Clara sat bolt upright, threw back the sheets and sprung from her bed. Without thinking she ran towards her bedroom door and flung it open. She stood motionless with her feet firmly planted on the cool timber floorboards.

The stairwell was crawling with ivy. Dark and thick, the stems of the vines moved slowly, purposely, like snakes, dripping black liquid the consistency of blood. It reached for the chandelier, weaved through the wooden banisters. She heard a sharp crack as a piece of timber snapped like bone.

Clara opened her mouth and screamed.