The Imprint of Cedar Falls

I was twelve when we moved to Cedar Falls, a town so small the main street had a single blinking yellow light. Our house was a two-story Victorian that had been converted into a duplex, the paint peeling like sunburned skin. My parents thought the cheap rent was a steal. I thought the place smelled like wet ashes and old medicine.

My room was at the top of the stairs, under the eaves. The ceiling slanted so low I could touch it if I stood on my toes. The first night, I couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t the usual insomnia from a new place. It was a pressure, a weight on my chest, as if someone had draped a wet blanket over me. I turned on the lamp, but the light seemed to shrink away from the corners. I spent that night with my back to the wall, staring at the dark shape of the wardrobe.

The dreams started the second week. In the dream, I was in a field of tall grass, the kind that scratches your ankles. A man stood at the far edge, his face obscured by a wide-brimmed hat. He didn’t run. He just stood there. But I knew I had to run. I’d sprint through the grass, my heart pounding, and when I looked back, he was closer. Not walking. Just closer. Then I’d feel his hand on my arm, cold and impossibly strong, and I’d wake up gasping.

The first time I woke, my arm was numb. I tried to move it, but it wouldn’t obey. It lay pinned to the mattress beside me, as if an invisible hand held it down. I stared at my hand, willing it to move, but it stayed frozen. After what felt like minutes, the pressure released, and my arm shot upward. The skin was red, and there were white finger-shaped imprints, like someone had pressed too hard and left a negative of their grip.

I told my mother at breakfast. She didn’t look surprised. She just said, ‘It’s the house. It’s always been like this.’ She showed me the scars on her own wrists, thin white lines like thread. ‘I was your age when we moved in,’ she said. ‘It stopped after I had you.’ She wouldn’t say more.

But the dreams didn’t stop. They came every night for a week. Each time, the man got closer. Each time, I felt his grip on my arm, and each time, I woke with new marks. One morning, I found five distinct bruises on my forearm, arranged like fingers. I showed my mother. She turned pale and said, ‘We’re leaving. Pack your things.’

We moved out that same week, leaving most of our furniture behind. I never told her what I saw in the last dream, the night before we left. The man had stepped out of the grass, and his face was no longer obscured. It was my face. Older, hollow-eyed, and grim. He reached out and touched my arm, but this time his touch was gentle, almost pleading, and he whispered, ‘Don’t forget me.’

That was twenty years ago. I haven’t been back to Cedar Falls since. But last week, my father died, and I had to clean out the old house. The new tenants had moved out in a hurry, leaving behind a mattress in my old room. I was alone, sweeping dust into a pile, when I saw it in the mirror: a figure standing behind me, wearing a wide-brimmed hat. I turned, and there was nothing. But the air grew cold, and I felt a familiar pressure on my arm, firm but not painful. I looked down. There were no marks. Instead, there was a smear of dirt, shaped like a handprint, on my sleeve. And I heard a whisper, clear as day, in my own voice: ‘I’m still here.’