The Face at the Window

Three months after my grandfather passed, I still found myself reaching for the phone to call him with some trivial question about the garden or the old clock he’d left me. It was a Tuesday when I had the dream, a week after the funeral, and I was back in the kitchen of the house I’d grown up in, the one that smelled of pine and old wood. In the dream, I was making a sandwich, and the late afternoon light slanted through the window above the sink, casting a golden rectangle on the floor. I felt a pull, an inexplicable urge to look up, and when I did, there he was—not my grandfather, but a young man, maybe thirty, with the same deep-set eyes and the same crooked smile, pressed against the glass from outside. He was wearing a flannel shirt, and I knew instantly it was him, even though he was the age he’d been in the old photographs from the 1970s.

I remember the sound of the shower running upstairs, and the distant murmur of my mother and grandmother bathing my two little nephews. I instinctively crouched behind the highchair, peering over the tray. He didn’t seem to mind. He just smiled and waved, his voice clear as a bell through the pane, which I later realized was impossible. ‘Hey, kiddo,’ he said, and his voice was exactly as I remembered it, warm and gravelly. I gave a weak smile and stood, my heart hammering. He looked past me, into the house. ‘Is your grandmother around? I need to talk to her.’ I nodded, and I ran into the hallway, calling for her. I could hear the water stop, and my mother’s voice asking what was wrong. But as I rounded the corner into the hall by the stairs, I saw something that made me stop dead. The hallway was longer than it should have been, stretching on into darkness, and the walls were covered in a thick black mold that pulsed as if alive. The air grew cold, and I heard a whisper that wasn’t my grandfather’s, a sound like dry leaves skittering on pavement. I turned back toward the kitchen, but the door was gone, replaced by a wall of that same mold, and the whisper grew louder, a thousand voices all at once. I woke up drenched in sweat, the echo of that whisper still in my ears.

A week later, I went back to the house to help my mother sort through my grandfather’s things. The house had been empty since he died, and it felt smaller, darker. As I stood at the kitchen sink, washing a cup, I found myself staring out the window. The backyard was overgrown, and I saw a child’s toy half-buried in the weeds, a red plastic shovel. I remembered playing with it as a kid, but I also remembered my grandfather telling me it had been my uncle’s, who had died before I was born. That’s when I saw it: a faint outline of a face on the glass, like a smudge, but it was in the shape of a man, and it was smiling. I wiped at it with my sleeve, but it stayed, and for a moment, I could have sworn I saw it blink. I stepped back, my heart racing, and I heard the whisper again, that dry skittering, and I turned to the hallway, expecting to see that darkness, but it was just the ordinary hall. My mother called from the living room, asking if I was okay, and I said I was fine, but I wasn’t. I haven’t slept with the lights off since.

The next night, I had the dream again. I was back in the kitchen, and the young man was there, but this time, he wasn’t outside. He was inside, leaning against the counter, and he looked tired. ‘I don’t have much time,’ he said. ‘There’s something I need you to know. When I was your age, I did something terrible. I buried it in the back garden, and I’ve never forgiven myself. I need you to dig it up and make it right.’ He pointed through the window to a spot near the old oak tree. ‘Please, before it’s too late.’ The dream shattered, and I woke with a name ringing in my ears: Ervin, my grandfather’s name. I didn’t know what he meant, but I felt a compulsion to go to the house the next day.

I went alone, and I found a shovel in the shed, rusted but serviceable. The garden was muddy from a recent rain, and I dug where he’d pointed, my hands shaking. It didn’t take long to hit something hard—a metal lockbox, corroded. I pried it open, and inside was a bundle of letters, yellowed with age. They were love letters, signed by a woman named Marlene, and they were not from my grandfather. They were from a man named Jonas, who was not in any family photo I’d ever seen. The letters spoke of a plan to run away together, but they ended abruptly, the last one dated the day my grandfather’s brother had died in a car accident. I read them in the fading light, and I heard the whisper again, but this time it was clearer, and it said, ‘You were never supposed to find those.’ I dropped the letters as if they were hot.

I drove home, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. That night, I didn’t dream of the kitchen. I dreamed of the hallway, but this time, the mold was gone, and the hallway was bright, and at the end was my grandfather, but he was old, and he was crying. He opened his mouth, and a dry, skittering sound came out, and he began to dissolve into a cloud of black specks that flew toward me. I woke, gasping, and I found myself standing in my own kitchen, barefoot on the cold tile, the window above the sink open despite the chill. I closed it, and, in the reflection, I saw a young man standing behind me, his smile too wide, his eyes too dark. But when I spun around, there was no one.

Now, I can see him sometimes, in the corner of my vision, always smiling. And I hear the skittering, like the sound of something crawling in the walls. Last week, I dug up the rest of the garden, and I found a child’s toy, a red plastic shovel, and beneath it, a small, rusty key. I don’t know what it opens, but I’m afraid to find out. I haven’t told my mother, or my grandmother. Because in the letters, I found a photograph, and it was of a young woman who looked just like my mother, and she was holding a baby, and on the back, in my grandfather’s handwriting, were the words: ‘My sister’s child.’ My grandfather had no sister.

I’m writing this in my car, in the driveway, because I can’t stand to be inside the house. The kitchen light is on, and I can see the reflection of the window, and there’s a face there, but it’s not my grandfather. It’s a face I’ve seen in the letters, a face that has been buried for sixty years, and it’s smiling at me. The skittering is getting louder. I think I’m going to have to go back in, but I don’t know what I’ll find. I just hope that if you’re reading this, you’ll believe me. Because I think I’m about to join the family history.