The Rustling in the Cistern

For three years, a thing has trailed me through the dry hill country, where the only constant is the whisper of wind through scrub oak and the distant hum of irrigation pumps. It has never shown itself, but it mimics the sounds of a man—the scuff of boots on gravel, the rustle of denim, the crack of a twig—always just beyond the edge of sight, in the brush beside the old aqueduct, or at the periphery of the moonlight that spills across my porch. I’ve grown used to its pacing, but not to the weight it leaves in my chest, a constant pressure like the sky is about to fall.

My friends have heard it too. We’ve sat on the cracked concrete of the reservoir’s spillway, sharing beers, and it would answer our laughter with a low crinkle, like dry leaves being crumpled, from the olive grove twenty yards away. We’d freeze, and it would go silent. Once, it came right up to the fence of my yard, rattling the chain-link with a metallic shiver, and when we shone a flashlight, there was nothing—just the dust settling and the smell of sun-baked earth. We all agreed: no animal makes that sound, and no man could vanish so fast in that open ground.

I thought I had learned to live with it, until the night my ex, Mara, stayed over. She was sleeping in the back room, which is a converted toolshed accessed by a stone path through the garden. Lying in my own bed, I heard her scream—not a shriek of surprise, but a raw, panicked wail. I ran through the dark, my heart slamming, and found her huddled on the floor, knees to her chest, pointing at the small window that faced the cistern.

‘It was here,’ she gasped, her voice shaking. ‘I felt its breath on my neck, and then I saw its fingers—long, gray, like roots—curl over the sill. But when I screamed, it pulled back and I heard it drop into the cistern.’

I looked outside. The cistern’s concrete mouth was dark, a gaping hole that had been dry for years. I’d checked it a dozen times for rodents, and it was empty. But that night, as I stood there, a sound rose from within—a slow, rhythmic scraping, like something dragging a stone across the bottom. It was not an echo. It was deliberate, patient.

Neither of us slept that night. Mara left at dawn, and I haven’t seen her since. She called me a week later, her voice low and urgent, and told me that in her new apartment, a hundred miles away, she had heard the same scraping from her bathroom drain every night at 3 a.m., and that she felt a cold hand on her ankle each time she showered. She begged me to burn the place down, but I couldn’t bring myself to.

I’ve tried to rationalize it. I’ve filled the cistern with stones. I’ve poured bleach down every drain. But last night, I heard it again—not from outside, but from under my own bed, a slow, rhythmic drag, like a finger tracing the floorboards. I knelt, heart pounding, and peered into the gloom. There was nothing, just dust and the faint smell of wet earth.

And then, from the cistern, now blocked with rocks, I heard a voice—not a whisper, but a dry, crumbling rasp—say my name. It was Mara’s voice, but thicker, as if her throat were full of sand. ‘Come down,’ it said. ‘I’ve been waiting.’

I have not looked into a mirror since. I have not opened the closet. I have not walked past the window without keeping my eyes ahead. But the scraping follows me now, not just at night but in the harsh light of noon, when the sun bakes the hills and nothing should move. It is patient. It is always, always behind me, and I am running out of places to run.