The Fourth Visitor

October 6, 2011

by Aida

My name is Elias, and I’m nineteen. Since the autumn of 2016, when my grandmother on my mother’s side passed away from a long illness, I’ve been seeing things. It started about ten days after her funeral. She and I were extremely close; she was the one who taught me how to garden, how to bake bread, how to tell a lie from a truth by looking into a person’s eyes. Her death left a hollow in my chest that I thought would never fill.

One rainy evening, while I was hunched over my philosophy textbook, trying to decipher Kant, a flicker of movement at the edge of my vision made me look up from my desk. In the dim corner of my attic apartment, a shape seemed to coalesce and then vanish. I shook my head, blaming the shadows from the single lamp swaying in the draft. But then it happened again, a formless grey, skirting along the wall. It was always there, just on the edge of seeing, gone when I turned my head directly.

That night, I woke to a strange pressure in the room, like the air itself had thickened. I sat up, and there, at the foot of my bed, stood my grandmother. She looked as she did in her final years: thin, with wispy white hair, and her favourite floral housecoat. My heart thumped against my ribs, but a strange calm washed over me. It must be her spirit, come to watch over me. I whispered, ‘I miss you, Greta.’ She didn’t respond, just stared with an unreadable expression, then faded like mist.

I tried to return to sleep, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. Her visits, though, became regular. She’d appear while I was eating, reading, or just sitting. But she never spoke, never moved closer. She was a silent sentinel.

A few weeks later, I came home from work to find my door ajar. Inside, the air was cold, and I saw two figures in the middle of the living room: my grandmother, and next to her, a man I recognized from old photographs as my grandfather on my father’s side, who had died before I was born. They looked solid, almost corporeal. I stared, breath held. My grandmother met my eyes, and for the first time, her lips moved, but no sound escaped. My grandfather lifted a hand, pointing towards the window. Then they both dissolved.

I stood there, heart racing, a sense of dread creeping up my spine. They weren’t here to protect me. Something was wrong. Their faces, now that I replayed the moment, weren’t peaceful; they were pleading, fearful. They were trying to warn me.

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