The Garden of the Unseen

I was seven, not six, when I first saw it. The year my family gathered for Eid in the old house—the one with the creaking stairs and the painting of a woman who watched you from every angle. It was afternoon, the sun low and golden, and the living room buzzed with aunts and uncles and cousins I barely knew. I sat cross-legged on the carpet, pressing my forehead to the cool floor, trying to escape the heat and the noise. That’s when I noticed the thing by the door.

It was white, but not like cloth or sheet—more like the light that comes off a soap bubble, thin and shimmering. It had a shape, a human shape, but hunched over, as if it were carrying something heavy on its back. I watched it drift, not walking but flowing, like smoke pulled by a draft. It moved past the sofa, past the legs of my uncle who was laughing at something on his phone, and stopped at the bathroom door. Without pausing, it passed through the wood like the door wasn’t there. I scrambled to my feet and ran to the bathroom, my heart thumping. I grabbed the handle and yanked it open. Nothing. Just the sink and the mirror and the smell of soap. I looked back at my family. No one was looking at me. I asked my mother if she had seen it. She patted my head and said, ‘Drink some water, you’re hot.’ But I wasn’t hot. I was cold.

The years passed, and I told myself it was a trick of the light, a child’s imagination. But I never forgot the hunched white shape. When I was ten, we still lived in that house, and my grandmother was in the hospital, dying. It was the night before she passed. My grandfather was in his room, dozing in his armchair, and our maid, Mina, was in the kitchen washing dishes. I was in the living room, doing my homework on the floor, the TV off, the house heavy with quiet. The clock on the wall said nine. Then, without warning, the air filled with the smell of jasmine. Not perfume—it was the scent of the flowers my grandmother used to tie in her hair during celebrations. The attic, which had always been sealed and empty, began to scratch. Not like rats. It was rhythmic, like nails dragging across wood, slow and deliberate. I froze, the pencil slipping from my fingers. The scratching continued, and with it came a faint, clicking sound, like fingernails tapping on glass.

I called for Mina. She came in, wiping her hands on her apron, and I asked, ‘Did you spray anything? A candle?’ She shook her head. ‘No, child. I use nothing. Why?’ I pointed to the ceiling. ‘That sound. Up there.’ She looked up, her face turning pale. ‘There is no attic,’ she said, her voice thin. ‘It’s just the roof.’ But I knew there was an attic. I had seen the door in the hallway, always locked, the key lost. I walked to the hallway with Mina behind me. The scratching grew louder as I approached the attic door. I put my hand on the wood. It was cold, colder than the rest of the house. Then, the scent of jasmine intensified until I could taste it. And a voice, soft and old, not human, whispered through the door: ‘You see me. One day, you will join me.’ I yanked my hand back and ran to my grandfather’s room. He was awake, staring at the ceiling, his eyes wide. He said, ‘I smelled her. I heard her. She is here.’ That night, my grandmother died. I never went back to that house. I moved away, but every night before sleep, I check under my bed, and sometimes, when the air smells of jasmine, I hear the scratching in my walls, and I know she is still waiting. She chose me, and I have been running ever since, but you cannot outrun the unseen.