The Man in the Rain

The first time I saw him, I was eleven, standing at the window of our third-floor apartment, watching the rain streak the glass. He stood under the streetlamp across the road, head tilted up, as if he could see me through the gray sheets of water. His hair was black as oil, and his coat hung heavy, dripping, but he didn’t seem to notice. I waved, half out of childish curiosity, half because I thought I knew him. He didn’t wave back. He just stared until my mother pulled me from the window, her voice sharp, ‘Don’t look at him.’

Ten years later, I am twenty-one, and he is still there—not the same streetlamp, but behind my eyelids, in the raw hours before sleep, in the corner of my vision where the light doesn’t quite reach. I’ve named him in my notebooks, not that he has a name, but I call him Valerius. It feels right, like the whisper of silk. In my journals, I’ve recorded every detail: the exact shade of blue in his eyes, the way his fingers splay when he reaches for me, the precise moment when the dream cuts out, always when he’s a heartbeat away from touching me. It’s been three years of this, and I’m exhausted, but I can’t stop.

The dreams have evolved. They started as simple observations—him standing at a distance, watching. Then they became intimate, charged with a heat that left me gasping awake, my skin tight and flushed. Lately, they’ve turned desperate. He’s always trying to bring me somewhere, always extending his hand, his mouth forming words I can’t hear. He looks pained, like he’s drowning, and I’m his only lifeline. But I always wake up before our fingers touch.

When I see him awake, it’s never for long. The first time was a rainy Tuesday at the downtown library. I was hunting for an old psychology text, one that mentioned the persistence of ghost-like figures in dreams. I felt a prickle at the back of my neck, and I turned—there he was, three aisles over, hand outstretched, his face pleading. The book in my hand dropped to the floor. When I bent to pick it up, he was gone. The librarian asked if I was okay; I told her I thought I saw a mouse.

The second time was on campus, late afternoon, the sun casting long shadows across the quad. I was walking to my car, a little too slow, and I caught him by the old oak tree near the art building. He was motionless, his hand raised, his eyes locked on mine. A couple of students passed through him—through him—and he didn’t flinch. I shook my head, told myself I was dehydrated, and kept walking. But the image stayed burned into my retinas.

I stopped telling people. I stopped googling. I stopped going to the library. I stayed inside, pulled my curtains, and started working from home. But he knows where I live. Last night, I woke at 3:17 AM to a tapping on my bedroom window. I live on the fourth floor. The tapping was rhythmic, like a fingernail against glass. I couldn’t move. I lay there, heart hammering, as the silhouette of his head appeared outside, blotting out the moonlight. His palm pressed flat against the window, and I saw his lips move. I didn’t need to hear him to understand.

‘Let me in.’

I didn’t sleep after that. I sat in the corner of my room, the lamp on, not looking at the window. I reasoned with myself: it was a nightmare, or a sleep paralysis. I’ve read about it. The fight-or-flight response. The imagination creating a face to fill the void. But the rational part of my brain is a thin thread, and it snapped this morning when I went to the kitchen for coffee and found a single black hair on the counter. It’s long and silk-like, and it wasn’t there before.

I called my sister, Lena, and she told me to see a doctor, that I was overthinking, that maybe I’d had a mini-stroke. I hung up. She doesn’t know because I never told her everything. She doesn’t know that when I was eleven, I found my mother’s journal, and on one page, dated six months before my birth, my mother had written a name. ‘Valerius.’ Underneath, in shaky script: ‘He waits for her.’ My mother never spoke of it, and she died when I was sixteen, so the mystery went with her.

Today, I did something I’ve never done. I looked up the etymology of the name. It’s Latin, meaning ‘strong,’ but also ‘the one who is hidden.’ And I saw a folktale, from my grandmother’s village, told by the old women. It spoke of a man who was neither alive nor dead, a ‘seen one’ who crossed the veil too early, who was promised a bride but was torn away before he could claim her. He was said to appear to the one he loved, first in dreams, then in waking, always reaching out, and if he ever touched her, he would take her place in the land of the living, and she would become the new unseen one, doomed to wait in shadows.

I threw the phone across the room. I know it’s real. I know because right now, sitting at my kitchen table, I hear a faint, wet sound, like rain on glass. But it’s not raining. It’s not raining because the sky is clear and the sun is out. I lift my head. On the window, a handprint has formed, etched in condensation, as if a hot palm pressed against the cold surface. It lingers for a moment, then fades.

I don’t know how this started, and I think I’ll never know. But I do know he’s getting closer. The space between us, in the in-between, is shrinking. In my latest dream, I was in a forest, bare trees, mist crawling over the roots. He was ahead of me, and for the first time, I walked toward him. Not because I wanted to, but because my legs moved on their own. When I reached him, he didn’t speak. He just smiled, and it was a sad, knowing smile. Then he lifted his hand, and I saw that it was no longer pale but gray, and the nails were black. I woke up screaming.

Tonight, I won’t go to sleep. I’ve bolted the windows, turned on every light, and I’m sipping cold coffee. But I feel him now, a shift in the air, a pressure at the back of my mind. The light is starting to flicker. And through the buzzing hum, I hear a voice, soft, like a echo from the bottom of a well: ‘Almost there.’

I realize now that he isn’t reaching for love. He’s reaching for release. And I am the only one who can give it to him. The question is: if I let him take my hand, what will he leave behind?

There’s a knock at the door. Three quick taps. I know it’s him.

The lights die.

In the blackness, I see his eyes.

I’m reaching for the doorknob, even though I swore I wouldn’t. My hand is moving, and I’m not the one guiding it.

I’m almost there.