The Coolie Hat on the Jetty

The ferry cut through the grey morning mist, carrying our small group toward the abandoned leper colony on Poveglia’s forgotten sister island. Our guide, a thin man named Callum with a voice like dry leaves, told us the colony had been ‘operational since 1847, but the island has a much older history.’ I clutched my coat, feeling the chill seep through the bones of the old asylum buildings as they loomed closer.

We docked at a crumbling stone jetty, the wood groaning under our feet. Callum led us up a weed-choked path to the main hospital, a vast brick structure with blackened windows. Inside, the air was thick with dust and the smell of decay. We wandered through empty wards, our footsteps echoing. As I paused to peer into a rusted iron bed frame, a sudden, sharp pain shot through my right calf, like a needle piercing deep into muscle. I gasped, stumbled, and nearly fell. Callum looked back. ‘You alright?’ he asked. ‘Something pricked me,’ I said, rubbing my leg. He gave a thin smile. ‘Probably a nail. This place is full of them.’ But the pain was too precise, too deep. I pulled up my trouser leg later, and there was a single red dot, no bruise, as if I’d been vaccinated.

We moved on to the lower level, where the sick used to be brought ashore. The tide lapped against black rocks. Callum was explaining the quarantine process, his voice droning, when I felt a persistent tap on my shoulder. I turned, expecting to see a fellow tourist, but there was no one. The tapping continued, rapid, impatient, right at my ear. I spun around again, and it stopped. My heart hammered. I scanned the group; no one was near me. I quickly stepped closer to the others, but the tapping followed, now from my other shoulder, then my back, like invisible fingers beckoning.

Callum noticed my distress. ‘You look pale,’ he said. ‘Ghosts?’ he chuckled. ‘In all my years, never seen one. But some say the Chinese laborers who built the railway here still linger.’ He gestured toward a derelict hut at the far end of the jetty. ‘They say a man in a coolie hat and long gown appears on rare nights, waiting for a ship that never comes.’

As he spoke, I felt a cold presence behind me. I turned slowly, and there he was. A man, small and hunched, wearing a wide-brimmed straw coolie hat and a long, dark blue Chinese gown. His face was shadowed beneath the hat, but I saw his eyes, black and empty. He stood perfectly still, just a few feet away, staring at me. The tapping began again, from his direction, a frantic staccato like a telegraph. I wanted to scream, but I was frozen. Then, as if satisfied, he nodded once and faded like mist.

I said nothing. I couldn’t. The rest of the tour passed in a blur. When we finally boarded the ferry to leave, I looked back at the island. For a moment, I thought I saw the man again, standing on the jetty, his coolie hat tilted as if watching us go. But then the mist swallowed him.

That night, in my hotel room, I rolled up my trouser leg. The red dot had become a small, dark bruise, the shape of a Chinese character, but I couldn’t read it. I’ve since learned the character means ‘return.’ And sometimes, in the quiet of my room, I feel a faint tap on my shoulder, and I know he’s still waiting for me to come back.