The Night the Faucet Dripped

I remember the summer the drought hit our county. The river behind our farmhouse shrank to a muddy trickle, and the well started pulling up rust-colored water. My parents, desperate for work, took jobs in the city, leaving me, my sister Mara, and four cousins in the charge of our grandmother, who was too old to do much more than sit by the window and hum. We were six kids in a house that creaked and groaned like an old ship, and the only source of water was the outdoor pump, because the indoor plumbing had been dead for years.

It was on the third night of that heat that my cousin Lena, the newest addition to our makeshift family, was given the chore of washing the dinner dishes under the sputtering outdoor faucet. Lena was quiet, with eyes that seemed to look through you, and we never quite got used to her. That night, as the cicadas screamed in the fields, we heard a crash from the yard. Then a scream that cut through the dusk. Lena burst through the back door, slammed it shut, and fled up the stairs. The rest of us, initially startled, thought it was a game. We chased after her, laughing, finding her huddled under the mosquito net in the room we all shared. Her face was pale, and she was shaking.

We crowded around her, asking what happened, but she just pointed at the door, which we had left open. The hallway beyond was dark, the only light from a dying bulb in the stairwell. Then we heard it: a slow, rhythmic sound, like wet footsteps on the wooden floor. And then a whisper, so faint it could have been the wind, calling my name. ‘Rhea…’

The sound grew closer. We pulled the net tight around us, a fragile barrier. The footsteps stopped right at the threshold, and a shadow fell across the doorway. It was a figure, tall and thin, with arms that hung too low. It didn’t have a face, just a smooth, pale expanse where features should be. Its head tilted, as if listening. Then it spoke, in a voice that sounded like water gurgling down a drain. ‘You let her in,’ it said, pointing a long finger at Lena. ‘She brought the thirst.’

Lena started to cry, a low, keening sound. ‘It’s been following me for days,’ she whispered. ‘It came from the city, it wants to drink the river dry.’

The figure took a step into the room, and the mosquito net began to vibrate, as if in a breeze. We huddled together, and I felt a cold hand grasp my ankle through the netting. I looked down, and saw a hand made of water, shimmering like a mirage, pulling me toward the edge. I screamed, and the thing let go.

The figure spoke again, ‘I am the drought. I am the thirst. You have water in you. I will have it.’ And then it vanished, leaving the room freezing cold.

We bolted from the room, down the stairs, and out the front door, not stopping until we reached the main road, where headlights of a passing truck illuminated our terrified faces. We never went back to that house. We later learned that Lena’s family had fled the city because of a mysterious drought that had killed their crops and livestock, and that she had brought something with her. Our farm, once green, turned to dust within a week. The river dried up completely. And when the authorities finally came to investigate, they found the back door open, and a trail of wet footprints leading from the outdoor faucet to the kitchen, and then up the stairs, and out the window. They never found the source of the water.

To this day, I sometimes hear that whisper, that calling of my name, especially on hot, dry nights when the wind blows through the empty fields. And I can’t help but wonder: was it a warning, or an invitation? The faucet in the yard still drips, even though there’s no water in the pipes. It drips in the shape of a hand, and I know that the thirst is still out there, waiting for me to come back.