The Pattern in the Rain

I never believed in the old stories. My grandmother’s tales of rolling calves and duppies were just that—stories to frighten children into behaving. I was a practical woman, a nurse, grounded in science and reason. But that was before the summer of the endless rains in the hills of Morant Bay, where I had come to stay with my aunt after my mother’s passing.

Auntie Mabel’s house was a relic of another time, whitewashed and wooden, perched on stilts above the damp ground. The constant drizzle painted everything in shades of grey, and the air smelled of wet earth and mildew. My room faced the back of the house, overlooking a narrow veranda that was enclosed by a rusted iron grate. The only way onto that veranda was through a locked door from the house, and the key was kept on a hook in the kitchen. No one ever used it.

That night, the heat was unbearable. The rain had stopped, but the humidity clung to my skin like a damp shroud. I stripped to my nightgown and lay on top of the sheets, leaving the window wide open to catch any breeze. The grate let in the night air, but also the sounds of the jungle—the chirping of crickets, the distant call of a night bird, the rustle of leaves. I eventually drifted into a restless sleep.

I woke with a start, my heart pounding for no reason. The room was bathed in a pale moonlight that filtered through the clouds. I lay still, listening. The crickets had stopped. The jungle was silent, as if holding its breath. I turned my head toward the window and froze.

There was a man standing on the veranda, just beyond the grate. He was tall, wearing a dark suit that seemed to swallow the light. His face was in shadow, but I could feel his gaze on me. I blinked, thinking it was a trick of the light, but he remained. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. I scrambled to sit up, my hand fumbling for the lamp on the nightstand. When the light clicked on, the veranda was empty.

I told myself it was a dream, a shadow cast by a passing cloud. But I didn’t sleep again that night. The next morning, I mentioned it to Auntie Mabel over breakfast. She paused, her spoon hovering over her bowl of porridge. ‘You seen him?’ she asked, her voice low. ‘Him come only at night, when the rain holds its breath. They say he was a man who loved a woman in this house long ago. She died, and he walked into the bush, never to be found. But him come back, looking for her.’

I laughed, though it was hollow. ‘Auntie, I told you, I don’t believe in such things.’ Auntie Mabel just shook her head and went back to her porridge.

But the next night, I saw him again. This time, I managed to scream. He was closer, pressing his face against the grate, his features distorted, his eyes black as coal. I fled to my aunt’s room, but she was already awake, sitting on her bed, staring at the wall. ‘He’s here,’ she said calmly. ‘He’s always here when the rain stops. He’s looking for her.’

I spent the rest of the night in her room, the door locked. Her windows were tightly shut, the curtains drawn. But I could feel him outside, waiting.

The rain returned the next day with a vengeance, and I convinced myself that the man was a figment of my imagination, a symptom of grief and exhaustion. I even managed to laugh with my aunt and help her in the garden. But as dusk fell, so did my courage. I pleaded with her to let me sleep on the couch in the front room, away from the grate. She nodded, her eyes filled with pity.

The couch was old and lumpy, but I didn’t care. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, listening to the rain drumming against the roof. The sound was soothing, and I finally drifted off. That’s when I started to notice the pattern.

In my dream, I was standing on a beach, but the water was black and still. The man was there, his back to me. He was drawing a pattern in the sand, over and over again. I couldn’t make out what it was, but it looked like a spiral, or a maze. He turned and looked at me, and his mouth moved, but no sound came out. Then he pointed toward the water. I woke with a gasp, my face wet with tears.

The next morning, I had to go to the market in town. As I walked along the muddy path, I noticed something in the red clay of the road. A pattern. A spiral, or a maze, just like in my dream. I knelt and touched it, and it crumbled. But it was unmistakable.

I returned home with a sense of dread. The rain had stopped. The air was still. That night, I refused to be alone. I begged my aunt to let me sleep with her, but she refused, saying it was my time to see. I locked myself in the bathroom, but the mirror in there seemed to feel like a window. I could see his reflection behind me, even though she was standing behind me. I turned, and she was gone. I looked back at the mirror, and he was there, his face a mask of sorrow.

I ran out of the house, into the rain, which had started again but was soft, like a mist. I slipped on the wet steps and fell into the mud. As I looked up, I saw him standing at the edge of the property, under a mango tree. He pointed at the ground. I crawled toward him, my hands sinking into the muck. When I reached the spot, I found something hard beneath the mud. I dug with my fingers, my nails breaking, until I unearthed a small metal box.

The box was rusted, but it opened with a creak. Inside was a photograph of a woman, her face scratched and faded. It was my mother. I stared at the photo, my breath caught in my throat. When I looked up, the man was gone. But the pattern in the mud was gone too, replaced by a single word, written as if by a fingertip: ‘HER.’

I stood there, the rain soaking me, the box in my hands. My mother had come to Morant Bay when she was young, just before she met my father. Auntie Mabel had never spoken of why. I knew then that the man was not a ghost in the Jamaican sense—he was a guardian, a remnant of my mother’s past, waiting for someone to finish his story.

The rain finally stopped the next day. I left Auntie Mabel’s house and returned to Kingston, but I took the box with me. I opened it again, and behind the photograph was a dried flower, and a note written in my mother’s handwriting: ‘I will come back for you, when you’re gone, I’ll find you. I promise.’

The pattern in the rain faded, but I see it now in every puddle, every grain of sand. And I know now, the dead do not rest. They wait, and they remember. And sometimes, they reach out to the living, to finish what they started. I am still a skeptic, but I am a skeptic who keeps a light on at night, and who flinches when I see a pattern in the rain.