The Rain Girl

The first time I saw her, I thought she was a trick of the light. I was walking home from the late shift at the fish cannery, cutting through the old railway path that runs behind the processing plant. It’s a narrow, gravelly strip between rusted fences, with a single flickering sodium lamp halfway down. My boots crunched on the loose stones, and the air smelled of salt and diesel. I was tired, my eyes stinging from the brine, and when I saw the girl standing at the far end, I figured she was just a shadow thrown by the lamp. But she didn’t move. She just stood there, still as a heron, and I could feel her gaze on me even though her face was in darkness.

I did what anyone would do. I stopped, squinted, and called out, ‘You alright there?’ No answer. The wind picked up, carrying a faint smell of wet earth and something else, something sweet and rotten. I took a step forward, and that’s when I noticed the details. She wore a black dress, short and sleeveless, the kind you might wear to a party you never get to attend. It clung to her as if she’d just been pulled from the water, and her hair was plastered to her skull like seaweed. Her skin was pale, almost blue in the lamplight, and her eyes were pools of ink. She didn’t blink. She didn’t breathe. She just stood there, and I felt a cold that had nothing to do with the November air.

I turned away, quick, my heart hammering. I told myself she was a prank, some teenager playing a game. I walked faster, my footsteps crunching louder, and when I glanced back, she was gone. I let out a shaky laugh, but it caught in my throat when I saw her again, now on my left, standing between the fence and a pile of rusted drums. She had moved without a sound. I broke into a jog, and the rhythm of my steps seemed to sync with the thudding in my chest. When I reached the corner where the path meets Main Street, I looked back one last time. She was gone, swallowed by the darkness, and the streetlights of the town welcomed me with their friendly hum.

I thought that was the end of it. But the next night, she was there again, same spot, same dress, same stillness. And the night after that. Every night for two weeks, I took that path, and every night she was waiting. I tried different routes, but she always found me. I tried walking with a friend, but she would appear just beyond the edge of our flashlight beam, and my friend would swear he saw nothing. I tried ignoring her, but I could feel her eyes boring into my back, and when I turned, she was always just a little closer than before. I started having nightmares: I dreamed of her standing at the foot of my bed, dripping black water onto the floor, her mouth opening to reveal a hollow, black interior, and no sound coming out.

I’m a practical man. I’ve worked at the cannery for fifteen years. I don’t believe in ghosts, not really. But I started to wonder if she was a warning, maybe of an accident, or something to do with the sea. The cannery sits on the edge of the harbor, and we’ve had our share of drownings. Maybe she was one of them, lost and angry, trying to tell me something. So one night, I decided to confront her. I stopped in the middle of the path, turned to face her, and said, ‘What do you want?’

She didn’t move. Her eyes, those black eyes, seemed to narrow just a fraction, as if she was sizing me up. The wind blew her dress against her legs, revealing that they, too, were slick with moisture, as if she had just stepped out of the harbor. I took a step toward her, then another, my fists clenched. ‘I’m not afraid of you,’ I said, though my voice cracked. She tilted her head, a slow, mechanical movement, and for the first time, I noticed a faint smile playing on her lips. It was not a friendly smile. It was the smile of a cat watching a mouse.

Then I made a mistake. I reached out to touch her. My hand went through her as if she were made of fog, but the cold was so intense that I yelped and pulled back. She flickered, like a bad signal, and when she solid again, she was standing right in front of me, so close I could see the individual water droplets clinging to her lashes. I stumbled back, tripping over my own feet, and landed hard on the gravel. She looked down at me, and I swear I saw pity in those black eyes. Then she opened her mouth, and a single clear drop of water fell from her lips onto the ground. It made a tiny splash, and in that sound, I heard a voice, faint and distant, like a memory: ‘Why did you leave me?’

I froze. The words echoed in my head, and I scrambled backwards until my back hit the fence. ‘I never left anyone!’ I shouted. But the girl just shook her head, slowly, and began to dissipate, like mist rising from the sea. By the time I got to my feet, she was gone, and the path was empty. I ran the rest of the way, not stopping until I slammed my front door behind me and checked every lock.

The next night, I didn’t take the path. I walked the long way, through the town, past the closed shops and the boarded-up arcade. I felt safe under the glare of the streetlights. But when I rounded the corner onto my own street, she was standing a few houses down, under a flickering lamp, her black dress now looking even wetter, her hair dripping onto the pavement as if she had just risen from the deep. She stared at me, and I noticed that her eyes were not just black; they were bottomless, and in them I saw a fury that made my blood run cold. She took a step forward, and I heard her voice again, not from her mouth but inside my head, a cold whisper that made my temples throb: ‘You can’t run. You never left me. You let me drown.’

I don’t know what she meant. I’ve never drowned anyone. But as I stood there, paralyzed, I felt a presence behind me, and I knew without turning that there were more of them, a dozen, a hundred, all wet, all staring, all angry. The streetlights began to flicker and die one by one, plunging the street into darkness. In the last glimmer, I saw the girl’s face contort into a mask of anguish, and she screamed, a silent scream that shook my bones. And then the darkness swallowed everything, and I felt cold hands on my shoulders, and I realized that the girl was not a warning, not a ghost, but a reminder: there are things in this world that do not let go, that wait for you at the bend in the path, that watch you from the edge of your vision, and that will follow you home no matter how far you run. I haven’t seen her since that night, but I still walk with a chill, and whenever it rains, I catch a glimpse of a black dress in the corner of my eye. And I know she’s still waiting, waiting for me to remember what I did, and to finally understand that you cannot outrun the ones you’ve left behind in the deep.