The Balcony Door

It was the summer I turned twelve, and my mother was finally well enough to take me on holiday. After months of hospital visits and hushed conversations with doctors, she surprised me with two weeks in a sun-scorched village on the coast of Crete. My grandparents owned a small apartment at the very top of a whitewashed building, and I’d spent the whole journey pressing my nose to the window, dreaming of the sea.

We settled into a routine quickly. The apartment had two bedrooms, a lounge that smelled of dust and old wood, a tiny kitchen, two bathrooms, and a wraparound balcony that stretched along three sides. Every night, my grandparents would sit on the balcony with their glasses of retsina, and my mother and I would stay up talking until the stars came out. But on the second-to-last night, I felt a sudden heaviness in my bones. I begged my mother to let us go to bed early, and she agreed, her face crumpled with worry that I might be coming down with something.

We went to bed around ten, much earlier than usual. I lay in the big double bed beside her, listening to the distant waves and the occasional clink of glasses on the balcony. After a while, I felt the need to use the bathroom. My mother had already drifted off, so I slipped out of bed and padded to the door. On my way back, I paused to check on my grandparents, just as I would at home with my mother. The door to the second bedroom was slightly ajar, and I could see my grandmother reading under a lamp, my grandfather already snoring. A small, comforting sight.

Then I saw the balcony door. The sliding glass door leading to the terrace was open, just a crack. The curtain moved gently in the night breeze. I thought it odd, because my mother hated drafts, but I assumed one of my grandparents had opened it to cool the apartment. I closed it softly, making sure the latch caught, and went back to bed. I fell asleep almost instantly.

I woke to a sensation of something cold on my cheek. The room was dark, but through the sheer curtains I could see the moon had shifted. My mother’s breathing was steady beside me, but I felt a strange pressure, as if someone were standing at the foot of the bed. I turned over slowly and saw a silhouette by the balcony door. It was tall, too tall to be my grandfather. It stood perfectly still, its head tilted as if watching me. I tried to speak, to call out, but my voice was trapped. I blinked, and the figure was gone.

I convinced myself it was a dream. When morning came, I didn’t mention it. But my mother commented on how cold it was in the room, and she asked why the balcony door was wide open. I looked at it, and indeed, the door was fully open, the curtain billowing. I hadn’t opened it. My grandparents swore they hadn’t been in our room. We shrugged it off and went about our day.

The next night, I went to bed with a sense of unease. I made sure the balcony door was locked before I lay down. Somewhere around midnight, I felt a presence again, heavier this time. I kept my eyes shut, listening. There was a soft creak, like someone shifting weight on the wooden floor. Then I felt a cold breath on my ear, and a whisper, not in any language I recognized, but I understood: ‘You forgot me outside.’ I opened my eyes, and the shadow was at the foot of the bed, closer now, its form wavering. I screamed, and my mother jolted awake, but when she turned on the light, the room was empty, and the balcony door was open again.

My mother, thinking I’d had a nightmare, closed the door and held me. But I saw her hands trembling. She knew something was wrong. The next day, we asked my grandparents if there was any history of the apartment being haunted. They laughed, but my grandmother’s smile faltered. She told me there had been a guest several years ago, an old woman who had died on the balcony, her body not found until the next morning. She had apparently fallen asleep out there and succumbed to the cold. The family assumed she’d been locked out by accident.

That night, I refused to sleep in the bedroom. I asked to sleep on the couch in the lounge, which was far from the balcony. My mother, worried but skeptical, agreed. I lay on the couch, watching the closed balcony door that led from the lounge. The apartment was silent. Then I heard a click. The lock on the door turned by itself. The door slid open an inch. I pulled the blanket over my head, praying it would stop. From under the blanket, I heard footsteps—shuffling, dragging—approach the couch. A hand, cold and dry, touched my ankle through the blanket. I recoiled, kicking out, and the touch withdrew. I heard a mournful sigh, and then the sound of receding footsteps. I peeked out. The door was closed again, but on the floor near it, there was a single white hair, long and brittle, that hadn’t been there before.

In the morning, I told my mother I wanted to go home. She saw the terror in my eyes and, without question, made arrangements to leave a day early. As we packed, I noticed the balcony door in our bedroom was open yet again. This time, I saw something on the railing: a small, hand-carved wooden bird, the kind my mother used to collect. I picked it up, and it was cold, even in the sun. I had never seen it before. I put it in my pocket on impulse.

On the flight back, my mother slept, but I stayed awake, clutching the wooden bird. I could still feel that cold touch on my ankle, and I knew, somehow, that the apartment wasn’t finished with us. When we landed, I took the bird out of my pocket. It was warm now, but carved into its base, in letters so small I had to squint, were the words: ‘She always comes back.’ I looked out the window at the vanishing coastline, and I felt a cold draft, as if a door had opened somewhere inside me. I never told my mother. But every time I close a door now, I check the lock three times—and I always listen for the sound of a sliding glass door, opening on its own.