The Fevered Visitor

Every June, my parents shipped me off to my grandmother’s farm in the dusty Texas panhandle while they took their annual trip to the Bahamas. The farm was a lonely place, miles from the nearest town, with a windmill that groaned in the breeze and a dried-up creek bed that I pretended was a river. That summer, when I was nine, I came down with a fever that turned the world into a wobbling, watercolor mess. My grandmother, a practical woman with a face like a wrinkled apple, did her best with cool cloths and broth, but the fever only worsened, and soon I was shaking with chills even under three quilts.

On the third day, we ran out of the cherry-flavored aspirin I could actually keep down. My grandmother, who never left the house except for church on Sundays, had no choice but to drive the thirty miles to the nearest pharmacy. She stood at the foot of my bed, her thin lips pressed into a worried line, and said, ‘I’ll be back before you know it, child. You stay in bed, you hear?’ I nodded, too weak to argue, and watched her figure disappear out the screen door, the old pickup truck coughing to life and rumbling down the gravel path.

The silence that followed was thick, broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway and the occasional creak of the old farmhouse settling. My fever was a living thing, breathing hot air against my skin, and my mind drifted in and out of a fog. I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, I was standing in the middle of a vast, empty field, the sky a bruised purple, and a wind was whispering through the tall grass. In front of me stood a girl, maybe a year younger than me, with hair the color of straw and eyes like chips of ice. She wore an old-fashioned white dress, stained with something dark at the hem. She didn’t speak, just pointed towards a distant, skeletal tree. When I looked, I saw a rope swinging from a branch, a noose at the end. I tried to run, but my feet were rooted to the earth.

I woke with a gasp, my heart hammering in my chest. The room was dim, the curtains drawn, and the air felt close and heavy. I could still feel the ghost of the dream’s chill, and I shivered. Then I heard it: a faint, rhythmic creaking, like the sound of a swinging rope. It came from somewhere outside my window. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to think of something else, but the sound grew louder, and with it came a new smell, a sickly-sweet odor like rotting flowers. I forced myself to open my eyes and look towards the window. There, pressed against the pane, was a face. It was the girl from my dream, her pale skin stretched tight over her skull, her ice-blue eyes staring directly at me. She smiled, a slow, wide grin that seemed too big for her face, and then she tapped on the glass with a long, bony finger.

I screamed, but only a hoarse croak came out. The tapping continued, and I could hear a voice, thin and high, like a wind through a crack, saying, ‘Let me in. It’s cold out here. Let me in.’ I pulled the covers over my head, my whole body shaking. The tapping stopped, and for a long moment, there was only silence. Then the floorboards in the hallway creaked, and I could hear slow, dragging footsteps coming towards my door. The doorknob turned, and the door creaked open. Through the thin fabric of the quilt, I saw a shadowy figure slip into the room.

I felt a cold draft, even though the window was shut. The presence paused at the foot of my bed, and I could hear a wet, ragged breathing. Then, a small, cold hand patted my ankle through the covers. ‘I know you can hear me,’ the voice said, now right next to my ear. ‘I know you saw me in your dream. I’ve been waiting so long for someone to see me. You’re going to play with me now.’ I felt the quilt being pulled away, and I opened my eyes to see the girl’s face inches from mine. Her smile had widened, splitting her cheeks open, revealing row upon row of needle-sharp teeth.

I tried to scream again, but all that came out was a rattling cough. The girl giggled, a sound like breaking glass, and then she began to crawl onto the bed. I kicked out at her, but my legs were like lead. She crawled until she was straddling my chest, her weight impossibly heavy, and she leaned down, pressing her cold forehead against mine. ‘Your fever is so warm,’ she whispered. ‘I can feel it. I like it. It makes me feel alive again.’ And then I felt a terrible, icy cold spreading from where she touched me, seeping into my bones, and the fever seemed to be sucked out of me, leaving me freezing and weak.

She stayed there for what felt like hours, draining my warmth, my energy, my very life. Just as I thought I would die, the sound of a truck engine rumbled in the distance, and the girl snapped her head up, her eyes wide with hunger and something like fear. ‘She’s coming back,’ she hissed. ‘But I’ll see you again, when you sleep.’ She dissolved like smoke, leaving me gasping in a cold sweat on the mattress.

When my grandmother finally burst through the front door, her arms full of medicine and groceries, she found me shivering under a pile of quilts, my fever broken. She put a cool hand on my forehead and frowned. ‘You feel cold as ice,’ she said. But I couldn’t tell her what had happened. I couldn’t tell her about the girl in the white dress, or the dream, or the sound of a swinging rope. I just lied and said the fever must have broken on its own.

I never slept alone in that house again without the lights on, and I never felt truly warm in that room. But the worst part was the nightmares. Every night, I dreamt of the field, and the tree, and the girl. But in the dreams, she was older, taller, and her smile was even wider. And she always said the same thing: ‘You’re my new friend, and I’m so glad you’re here. Because I was so alone.’ I woke each morning exhausted and drained, and I knew, in my gut, that the girl had left her mark on me, a splinter of ice in my heart that would never fully thaw. And sometimes, in the corner of my eye, I’d catch a glimpse of a pale figure standing at the edge of my vision, watching me, waiting for the night to come again.