The Salt-Glass Window

I was nine when the state took me from my mother’s trailer, and eleven when I landed at the Severn Crossings Home for Children, a converted Victorian orphanage perched on a cliff above the gray Atlantic. The main building had been a sanatorium for ‘nervous women’ in the 1920s, and the locals still called it the Sighing House, though the children were forbidden to use that name. The off-campus child unit was a separate brick annex built in the 1970s, all linoleum and fluorescent lights, but it still carried the old smell of bleach and boiled cabbage and something else, something sweet and wrong, like rotting orchids.

We had eleven children, all of us wards of the state, all of us with files thick as Bibles. The routine was ironclad. Each afternoon, after lunch, we were herded to our rooms for Quiet Time, while the staff tallied our ‘privilege points’ in the common room. We were to sit on our beds, read or draw, and not make a sound. The door to each room had a small window of reinforced glass, and the staff would pass by every few minutes, their shoes squeaking on the waxed floors.

I was in Room 7, on the second floor, overlooking the gravel courtyard and the skeletal rose bushes that never bloomed. My roommate was a girl named Delia, but she’d been sent to the infirmary that morning with a fever, so I had the room to myself. I sat cross-legged on my thin mattress, reading a dog-eared copy of ‘The Secret Garden’ that I’d found in the library. The light through the window was weak, the sky the color of old dishwater, and the wind made a low, mournful sound against the glass.

Then I heard it. Not the wind. A cat’s meow. Just one, short, plaintive ‘meow’ from somewhere in the room. I looked up, startled. Cats weren’t allowed in the home. There had been a stray tabby that we’d all secretly fed, but the head of the unit, Mrs. Pemberton, had found out and had the animal taken away in a white van. I hadn’t seen it since.

I scanned the room. Bare white walls, two beds, a dresser, a closet with a louvered door. The meow hadn’t come from outside; it was too close, almost inside my ear. I put down my book and whispered, ‘Here, kitty?’ But there was no answering sound. I shrugged, thinking I’d imagined it, and returned to my reading.

But then I saw the closet door was slightly ajar. I hadn’t opened it all day. A cold draft seeped from the crack, and I felt a prickle on my neck. I got up and walked to the closet, my bare feet cold on the linoleum. I pulled the door open. Inside, on the floor, was a small, gray-and-white kitten, its eyes huge and dark. It meowed again, a thin, forlorn sound, and then it darted past my legs and under Delia’s bed.

I knelt down, calling to it. ‘Here, kitty, kitty.’ I lifted the faded bedspread and peered underneath. The kitten was crouched in the shadows, but it wasn’t looking at me. It was staring at the wall behind the bed, its fur bristled, a low growl rising from its throat. I followed its gaze. The wall was bare, but there was a small, almost invisible seam in the plaster, like a door that had been painted over. I’d never noticed it before.

The kitten crept closer to the seam, sniffing, then let out a hiss and scrambled out from under the bed, streaking out of the room. I chased after it, but it was gone, as if it had vanished into the corridor. I stood in the hallway, but the lights flickered, and the far end of the corridor seemed darker than it should have been. Then I heard a sound, a muffled, rhythmic thumping, coming from the wall beside me. I pressed my ear to the cold plaster, and I could hear it, a faint, wet slapping, like something being beaten against concrete, and a low, gurgling moan.

I stumbled back to my room, my heart hammering. I locked the door, which was against the rules, and crawled under my covers. I didn’t come out until the staff banged on my door for the afternoon activity.

That night, after lights out, the kitten appeared again. It was sitting on my chest, its weight surprising, a heavy warmth. In the dim light from the window, I could see its eyes were not green or blue, but a milky white, like cataracts. It opened its mouth to meow, but instead of a cry, a thin line of black liquid dripped from its lips, staining the sheet. The liquid spread, forming a pattern that looked like a face, a woman’s face, with hollow eyes and a gaping mouth. The kitten’s meow became a low, rumbling purr that vibrated through my bones, and then it leaned forward and whispered, ‘She’s in the wall, she’s in the wall, she never left.’

I screamed, but no sound came out. The kitten’s form rippled and dissolved, leaving only the dark stain, which slowly faded. I sobbed into my pillow, and when morning came, I told Mrs. Pemberton that I’d seen a cat, but she just narrowed her eyes and said, ‘There are no cats here, child. You were dreaming.’ She marked a demerit against my privilege points.

The next day, during Quiet Time, I felt compelled to look under Delia’s bed again. The seam in the wall was now wider, large enough to slip a hand through. My curiosity, or something else, drove me to my feet. I knelt and touched the crack. The plaster crumbled at my touch, and a foul, earthy smell wafted out. I pried at it, and a section of the wall swung inward, revealing a dark, narrow space. I could see a flight of stone steps descending into blackness.

I called out, ‘Hello?’ No answer but a faint echo. I took a few steps down, the darkness swallowing me. The air grew cold and damp. The stairs went down for what felt like a long time, and then opened into a small, cylindrical room with a dirt floor. It was empty, but on the wall was a child’s drawing, done in crayon, of a stick figure with long hair and a red smile, and next to it, the words ‘SHE SLEEPS BENEATH THE SALT.’

Suddenly, the kitten appeared at my feet, its white eyes glowing in the dark. It trotted to the far wall and began scratching at the dirt. As it scratched, the floor began to tremble, and a low hum filled the air. The kitten turned to me, and its mouth opened impossibly wide, and I heard a woman’s voice, soft and tender, say, ‘Come, child, I have been waiting so long.’

I turned and fled, scrambling up the stairs, but the opening was shrinking. I squeezed through just as it sealed shut behind me, and I found myself on the bedroom floor, gasping. The seam in the wall was gone, as if it had never been.

That night, I lay awake, listening to the sounds of the house. From the wall, I heard a child’s hum, a lullaby I didn’t recognize. I covered my ears, but the melody seeped through. The kitten appeared again, sitting on the windowsill, silhouetted against the moonlit sea. It meowed, and this time I understood it. ‘You must open the window,’ it said. ‘She breathes the salt air; she will wake.’

I looked at the window. It had a special lock, reinforced with a bolt, to keep us from climbing out. Something in me, a will not my own, made me get up. My hands moved on their own, sliding the bolt, turning the latch. The window swung open, and the salty wind rushed in, whipping my hair. And from far below, where the waves crashed against the rocks, I heard a sound, a low, guttural moan, growing louder, closer.

The kitten arched its back and hissed, and then it vanished. I looked down at the courtyard, and in the moonlight, I saw a figure, a woman with long, dark hair, standing perfectly still, looking up at me. Except she had no face, only a smooth expanse of skin where her features should have been. And in her arms, she cradled a bundle of white cloth.

The figure raised a hand, and pointed at me. And the walls of the room began to sweat, a thick, black ooze that trickled from the ceiling, the corners, the window frame. I screamed, and the nightmare finally broke. I slammed the window shut and locked it, and the ooze stopped, receding like a tide. I was left shaking, the taste of salt in my mouth.

No one believed me. The staff thought I was having a psychotic episode, and I was moved to a different room, but it didn’t help. The kitten followed me, only visible to me, always whispering, always pointing to walls, to floors, to windows. I began to dread the sea, to flinch at the smell of salt. My privilege points plummeted.

In the end, it was the salt that saved me. I stole a box of table salt from the kitchen, and I poured it in a line across my windowsill and around my bed. That night, the kitten sat just outside the circle, its white eyes mournful, and it said, ‘She loves you. She was a child like you, forgotten. Now she’s part of the house, and she wants playmates.’

I stayed within the salt circle until morning. When the sun rose, the kitten was gone. That day, I found a small cloth bundle in my drawer, tied with a ribbon. Inside was a lock of white hair and a note in childish handwriting: ‘For the new sister. Play with me.’ I burned it in the trash can in the yard, and for the first time, the air felt clear.

I never saw the kitten again, but I still feel her presence, sometimes, when the wind blows in from the sea. In the Sighing House, there are many rooms, many walls, and within them, many forgotten children. I was lucky; I escaped. But the house is hungry, and the salt only holds it back. I know, one day, I’ll return, and the wall will open again.