The Glass-Windowed Patio

I was five when we lived in that sprawling house in the hills outside San Vicente. My mother, my older sister, and I shared the master bedroom at the end of a long, tiled hallway. The house was old, with thick adobe walls and high ceilings that swallowed sound. Our bedroom had a wide window that looked out onto a covered patio, but the glass was old and wavy, distorting everything beyond it. I remember the heavy wooden shutters we closed every night, but even through them, the patio light from the neighbor’s house cast strange, shifting patterns on our ceiling.

We always slept together, the three of us, in my mother’s large bed. My mother said it was because the house was too big, and the rooms too far apart. My room, which I rarely used, was at the front of the house, facing the main entrance and the metal-grated windows that opened onto the street. My sister’s room faced a small courtyard with a dead lemon tree. But we preferred to huddle together, listening to the wind scrape palm fronds against the roof.

It started with the tapping. A rhythmic knock on the glass of the patio door, right at the foot of our bed. At first, my mother dismissed it as a branch. But the tree nearest the patio was a jacaranda, and its branches were too high. The tapping came every night, always at the same time, just after the streetlights flickered on. I would wake to find my mother sitting up, staring at the door, her hand on my sister’s back to keep her still. ‘It’s nothing,’ she would whisper, but her eyes never left the glass.

One night, the tapping was louder, more insistent. I sat up, my heart pounding. Through the wavy glass, I saw a figure—a tall, thin shape with no discernible features, just a darker silhouette against the dim light of the patio. It was pressing its hand against the glass, and I could see the outline of a long, thin palm. My mother saw it too. She grabbed my sister and me, pulling us close, and began to pray in a low, rapid voice. The figure withdrew its hand, and the tapping stopped. The next day, my mother found three long scratches on the outside of the glass, as if something had dragged its nails down the surface.

We tried to ignore it. We stopped looking at the patio at night. But the presence grew bolder. It began to knock on the shutters themselves, rattling them in their frames. It would moan—a low, guttural sound that seemed to vibrate through the walls. My sister started having nightmares, waking up screaming about a woman with no face who stood at the foot of the bed, calling her name. My mother called a priest, but he only blessed the house and left, looking uneasy.

Then, one night, my mother woke me with a sharp shake. The room was cold, and the moon was hidden behind clouds. She pointed at the patio door. It was slightly ajar. A sliver of darkness showed at the edge. ‘Stay here,’ she said, but I grabbed her arm. I couldn’t let her go alone. She took my hand, and we crept to the door. My mother pulled it open, and the night air rushed in, smelling of wet earth and decay. The patio was empty. But on the floor, just outside the threshold, lay a small, crumpled photograph. It was of a woman in an old-fashioned dress, her face scratched out. Under the photo was a name written in faded ink: ‘Marta.’

My mother gasped and dropped the photo as if it were poisoned. She dragged us back to bed and for the first time, she cried. She told us that Marta was the woman who had lived in this house before us. She had died here, alone, and her spirit had never left. She had been a kind woman, but her death had twisted her. She was now a lonely specter, desperate for company, and she had chosen us. My mother said we had to leave. We packed what we could and stayed with relatives for a week. When we came back to gather the rest, the house felt different, emptier. But on the last night, as we slept in the front room with the metal-grated windows, I heard it again—the tapping, but this time on the iron bars. And a voice, thin and quavery, whispering, ‘Don’t leave me.’

We moved to the United States shortly after. My mother never spoke of El Salvador again. But sometimes, in my new room in Los Angeles, I still hear that tapping on my window. And when I look out, I see the glass-windowed patio, and the face of Marta, pressed against the glass, waiting for me to come home.