The Last Drop of Water

It was a Tuesday, and I was watching my six-year-old niece, Lily, while my sister Jenna ran to the city for a job interview. The list she left on the kitchen counter was typical: feed Lily dinner, brush her teeth, read her a bedtime story, and give her a bath. That last one was always a battle.

Jenna’s bathroom had a deep, claw-foot tub, and when I filled it, I kept the water low, just enough to cover Lily’s knees. She stood at the edge, clutching a rubber duck, and said, ‘Shut the door, Auntie Mia. I’m not a baby.’ The tub had a heavy, frosted glass panel that slid along a track, but no curtain. I obliged, sealing her in with a soft clink.

The phone rang from the kitchen. It was Jenna, her voice crackling through the speaker. ‘Just checking in. Everything okay?’ I glanced at the hallway, the bathroom door ajar. ‘Fine. Lily’s in the bath. We’re good.’ She said she’d be stuck in traffic for another hour. I hung up, and a nagging feeling twisted in my gut. I’d left her alone too long.

I hurried back, my footsteps echoing on the hardwood. At the doorway, I froze. The bathroom was steamy, the air thick with the smell of soap and something else—something metallic, like copper pennies. Lily was in the tub, but she wasn’t alone. A woman sat behind her, submerged to the shoulders, her hair a tangled mat of dark seaweed. She was cradling Lily, and Lily was giggling, splashing water at her face.

I screamed, ‘Lily!’ The woman’s head turned, and her eyes—they were white, like boiled eggs—met mine. She smiled, revealing rows of needle teeth. ‘The water is ours,’ she said, her voice like grinding stones. I grabbed the metal handle of the glass door and yanked, but it wouldn’t budge. The woman raised a dripping hand and pointed at me, and the water in the tub began to churn, rising up the glass like a living thing.

I slammed my shoulder against the door, but the glass was cold, impossibly solid. Lily was giggling still, oblivious. The woman eased Lily under the surface, just a little, and Lily’s laugh turned into a gurgle. The water lapped at the edge of the tub, and a single drop of condensation slid down the glass, tracing a path like a tear. The phone rang in the kitchen, distant. I grabbed it from the hallway table, but I couldn’t speak. The line was dead, yet I heard my sister’s voice: ‘I’m almost home.’ The bathroom light flickered.

I turned back, and the tub was empty. The glass door was open, swinging. Lily stood on the bathmat, dripping, holding her duck. ‘The lady said I could go now,’ she said, her eyes too wide. She pointed at the tub. ‘She’s waiting for the next one.’ The water in the tub was perfectly still, black, and level with the rim, as if about to overflow.

I never saw the woman again, but that night, I dreamed of her. And when I woke, I was soaked to the bone, my sheets cold and wet with water that smelled of moss and rust. Lily wouldn’t take a bath for weeks, and when she finally did, she insisted the water be ice cold, and she never looked at the drain.

There’s a mark on the bathroom floor now, a dark stain that won’t come out no matter how hard I scrub. Sometimes, late at night, I hear a faint giggle from behind that glass door, and the sound of water swirling, as if someone is playing. I’ve moved, but it doesn’t matter. The water is always waiting. And now, when I fill a tub, any tub, I always check for a shadow beneath the surface. But she’s patient. She knows the last drop of water always returns to her.