The Dry Season

When I was twenty-three, I moved to the high desert town of Pinal, Arizona, to take a job as a night custodian at the county courthouse. The town was a scattering of sun-bleached houses and a single main street, flanked by mountains that burned orange at sunset. My apartment was a converted motel room, and the air smelled of creosote and dust. The job was simple: mop floors, empty trash, lock up. But the courthouse had a basement that no one talked about, and the janitor before me, a man named Earl, had left a notebook in the supply closet. The last entry read: ‘The dry season is coming. Do not open the vault door, no matter what you hear.’ I thought it was a joke.

The first week was uneventful. But on the eighth night, as I was cleaning the hallway on the second floor, I heard a woman’s voice humming a melody I didn’t recognize. It was low and throaty, and it seemed to come from the vents. I followed it to a door at the end of the corridor marked ‘STORAGE.’ I had never noticed it before, but the key on my ring fit. Inside, the room was small, and in the center was a metal vault door, about three feet wide, with a wheel handle. The air was cold, and the humming grew louder. I put my hand on the wheel, and the humming stopped. A soft, urgent whisper came through the seam: ‘Don’t leave me in here, honey. I’m so cold.’ I pulled my hand back and slammed the door shut, heart pounding.

That night, I dreamt of a woman with skin the color of dried blood and hair like black silk. She had no face, but I could feel her smile. She said, ‘You’ll let me out, won’t you? All the others did.’ I woke up with a gasp, my sheets soaked through, and there were deep scratches on my back, as if I had been raked by claws. The scars were fresh, and they stung. I went to the bathroom and saw that the scratches formed a pattern, a spiral around my spine. I tried to remember if I had been scratching myself, but I knew I hadn’t.

I went to the library the next day and found a book on local folklore. There was a chapter about a creature called the ‘Sand Wife,’ a demon that haunted the desert before the town was built. It lured men with promises of warmth and comfort, then fed on their life force until they were hollow husks. The book said it was trapped in a vault by a priest in the 1880s, but the lock was weakening, and every few decades, a ‘dry season’ would come, and the vault would call out. The only way to re-seal it was to give it something it desired more than a soul: a memory of true love. I didn’t have one.

I returned to work that night with a plan. The notebook said not to open the vault, but I had to see what I was dealing with. I brought a hammer and a bag of salt. I stood before the vault, and the humming began again. This time, the voice was seductive, coiling around my mind. ‘Let me out, and I’ll give you pleasure like you’ve never known.’ My hand trembled on the wheel. I felt a warmth spreading through my chest, and my vision blurred. I shook my head and sprinkled a line of salt across the threshold. The humming turned to a hiss, and the temperature dropped. I backed away and vowed not to come back.

But the dreams grew more intense. Every night, the faceless woman was there, her invisible fingers tracing my skin. I’d wake up with new scratches, deeper each time, and a growing numbness in my limbs. I couldn’t concentrate at work. The courthouse felt suffocating, and the vault was always whispering, even when I wasn’t in the basement. I knew I had to do something drastic. I read more, and the book mentioned that the Sand Wife could be driven away by a symbol of selfless love, like a wedding ring worn by a widow. But I had no such token. The only person I cared about was my mother, who had passed away when I was seventeen. Her locket was in my drawer, and it held a picture of her and my father, who left before I was born. That locket was the only thing I had left of her.

I decided to place the locket on the vault door as an offering. When I went down there, the voice was different, softer, almost pleading. ‘Please, I just want to feel warmth again.’ I held the locket in my hand, and I felt a tear slide down my cheek. I placed it on the wheel, and I stepped back. The vault shuddered, and the humming stopped. There was a long silence. Then the vault door creaked open, just a crack. I saw a darkness that seemed to drink the light. A hand emerged, pale and thin, and it reached out, not for me, but for the locket. It grabbed it and pulled it inside. The door slammed shut, and the lock clicked. The vault was sealed again, but I felt something change. I no longer heard the whispers, and my scratches began to heal.

I finished my shift and walked outside. The desert was silent, and the sky was clear. I took a deep breath, and I knew I had given the Sand Wife something it craved more than me: the memory of a love that was never fulfilled. But as I walked away, I felt a weight in my chest, and I realized that the locket had been the last piece of my mother’s love. I had given it up, and now I was truly alone. And in the emptiness, I heard a faint, satisfied sigh from the courthouse behind me. The dry season was over, but I knew the vault would open again, and next time, I would have nothing left to give.