The Cold Window

The house on Tana Road was a patchwork of mismatched additions, tacked onto a government-issue box like a child’s drawing of a house. We lived there, my partner Lindiwe and I, with her father and her five siblings. The original structure was just a single room, a bathroom, and a cramped lounge, but they had built three more rooms onto the back, creating a maze of narrow hallways and doors that never quite fit their frames. Lindiwe and I had our own room, a small space with a window that looked out onto the neighbor’s fence. Her father and the two youngest slept in the main room, the middle brother claimed the lounge, and the two older sisters shared the room next to ours.

It was just past midnight on the fifteenth of September, the start of the dry season. We had been watching a movie on my phone, huddled under the thin blanket, and had just turned off the screen. The house was quiet, save for the occasional creak of the tin roof contracting in the cool night air. I lay there, listening to Lindiwe’s breathing even out, but sleep didn’t come easily for me. My bladder was full.

I slipped out of bed, careful not to wake her, and padded down the short hall to the bathroom. The door was a flimsy wood panel with a latch that often stuck. I flicked the switch, and the bare bulb above the mirror buzzed to life, casting a harsh yellow light. The bathroom was small: a toilet, a cracked basin, and a shower head that dripped constantly. Above the toilet, there was a small window, frosted glass, that faced the side yard. It was closed, with a thin film of dust on the sill.

I sat down, the seat cold against my skin. The house was silent. I closed my eyes, letting the moment stretch. And then, as I stood up, the air changed. It was like stepping into a freezer. The warmth vanished in an instant, replaced by a bone-deep chill that made my teeth ache. A weight pressed down on me, and I felt a presence, something vast and malevolent, filling the room behind me. I tried to turn, but my body was frozen, as if my limbs had turned to stone.

I could feel arms, not physical arms, but something like them, reaching towards me from behind. They were cold, so cold they burned. The window above the toilet, which had been closed, now began to fog up, as if someone was breathing on it from the other side. But there was no one there. The room was wrong. The shadows in the corners seemed to deepen, and I could hear a faint, wet rasping, like something being dragged across the floor.

I wanted to scream, but my throat was locked tight. The presence pressed closer, and I felt a pressure on my shoulders, as if hands were gripping me, pulling me backwards. My knees trembled, and I was about to collapse when, as suddenly as it had come, the cold vanished. The air warmed back to its normal, stuffy warmth. The window was clear again. I was left gasping, my heart pounding, standing in the middle of the bathroom, alone.

I fled. I didn’t turn on the lights; I just stumbled back to our room, my legs weak. Lindiwe stirred as I climbed into bed, mumbling something, but I told her it was nothing, just a chill. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, afraid to close my eyes. The feeling of those arms lingered, like a phantom limb.

The next morning, I tried to rationalize. It was just a draft, a weird moment. But I couldn’t shake it. I told Lindiwe about it over our instant coffee, and she laughed, saying I was getting too many horror movies. Her father, old Sipho, who was usually quiet, overheard us. He looked at me with a strange intensity, his eyes narrowing.

‘That window,’ he said, his voice low. ‘We had to seal it last year. My first wife… she used to pray there. She said she saw things. We painted it over, but it always comes back.’ He shook his head. ‘Be careful. Some things don’t like being seen.’

I didn’t know what to make of that. But from that night, I couldn’t look at that window without a shiver. The bathroom became a place of dread. I would hold my bladder until it ached, but eventually, I had to go. Every time, I felt that cold presence lurking, waiting. I started leaving the door ajar, a sliver of light from the hallway, but it didn’t help. The cold was always there, just behind me.

Then, one night, I was in the bathroom again, and this time, I didn’t try to fight. I let the cold wash over me, and I turned, slowly, my body prickling with goosebumps. The window wasn’t fogged this time. It was clear. And I saw, in the frosted glass, a face. It was pressed against the pane from the outside, but I knew, somehow, it was watching me. It was a woman, pale, with hollow cheeks and eyes that were black pits. Her mouth was open in a silent scream that seemed to go on forever.

I didn’t scream. I couldn’t. I just stared, and the face stared back. And then, the face smiled. It was a horrible, knowing smile, and it spoke, not with sound, but with a vibration that went through me, a voice in my head. ‘You see me,’ it said. ‘You finally see me.’

The light bulb flickered and went out. I was plunged into darkness, and I felt those arms again, wrapping around me, icy, possessive. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. I felt myself being pulled towards the window, my feet sliding on the tiles. The window began to open on its own, the catch turning, the frame swinging outward. The night air rushed in, cold and smelled of dust.

And then, Lindiwe was there. She burst through the door, the hall light spilling in, and she grabbed me, shaking me. ‘Sthandwa! What are you doing?’ she shouted. I was at the window, my hands on the sill, about to climb out. I didn’t remember moving. I looked at her, and then at the window. The garden beyond was empty. The face was gone.

I broke down. I told her everything about the cold, the presence, the face. She held me, and this time, she didn’t laugh. She went to the window and examined it. ‘There’s something here,’ she said, her voice trembling. She pulled a bottle of holy water from her dresser, left by her grandmother, and she sprinkled it around the bathroom. I didn’t believe in such things, but I wanted to.

The next week, we lived in quiet terror. The cold never left the bathroom entirely; it was always a few degrees cooler there. The tap would sometimes turn on by itself, a thin stream of water trickling down the drain. I stopped going in there at night, used a bucket in our room. But the presence wasn’t confined. I would feel it in the hallways, brushing against me as I passed. Lindiwe’s siblings started complaining of nightmares. The youngest, Thabo, woke up screaming, saying a lady was standing at the foot of his bed, pointing at the window.

Her father finally did something. He called a sangoma from the township. A frail old man with a weathered face and a walk that was more of a shuffle. He walked through the house, his eyes closed, humming. When he reached the bathroom, he stopped. He opened his eyes and looked at the window with a look of deep recognition. ‘She is restless,’ he said. ‘She drowned herself in the river, many years ago, when this house was just a field. She seeks an anchor, someone to share her loneliness. The window is her passage.’

He performed a ritual that night, burning herbs, drawing symbols on the walls. He spoke words I didn’t understand, and he asked us to leave the bathroom door open, but to stay away. We huddled in the lounge, listening to the sounds of his chanting and the occasional, chilling response that came from the bathroom, a low moan that vibrated through the floor.

When he was done, he came out, looking tired. ‘She is gone,’ he said. ‘But the window is a gateway. Seal it forever. Never open it again.’ He took his payment, a chicken and some beads, and left. Immediately, we did as he said. We bought thick wood and nails, and we boarded it up from the outside, then painted over it inside, layer upon layer of white paint. We even moved a large cabinet against the wall.

And for a while, there was peace. The cold lifted. The nightmares stopped. We could use the bathroom without fear. I began to relax, thinking it was over. But on the night of the new moon, a month later, I woke up to a whisper in my ear. ‘You can’t close me out forever, Sam.’

I sat up in bed, the sheets soaked with sweat. The room was dark. Lindiwe was sleeping beside me. I looked at the corner where I knew the window was, hidden behind the cabinet. And I saw, in the faint moonlight, a faint glow seeping from the edges of the boarded-up frame. A white, ghostly light. And I heard, from behind the wall, a slow, rhythmic knocking. Three times. Then silence.

I knew then that the sangoma had only delayed it. The window was locked, but not sealed. And as I lay there, listening, I felt the cold creep back into the room, starting at my feet, spreading up my legs, until it reached my chest, and my throat, and then my eyes. And the face appeared, not on the window, but against the wall itself, pressing through the paint, her features distorted, her black eyes boring into mine.

‘Let me in,’ she said. ‘It’s so cold out here.’

And I realized, in that terrible moment, that I had never truly been the one looking at her that first night. From the beginning, she had been looking in, and she had chosen me. The window wasn’t her only way in now. I had let her in that first time, and she had been inside me ever since, planting the fear, the visions, the obsession. I was her anchor.

I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, the sun was rising. Lindiwe was shaking me awake, telling me breakfast was ready. I looked at her, refreshed, smiling, and I thought, maybe it was all a dream. But then I went to the bathroom, and I saw that the cabinet had been moved aside, and the boarding was on the floor, and the window was open, its glass cracked. On the sill, there was a wet handprint, small, like a woman’s.

And in the mirror, for just a second, I saw her face, behind mine. The face I now wore. She had finally come in, and she would never leave. I closed the window and latched it, but I knew, with a sickening certainty, that one day, I would open it again. And this time, I would be the one stepping out.