The Salt Roads of Fenwick

I never believed in ghosts, not really. As a kid, I had my share of strange moments—a cold draft in a warm room, a flickering light—but I chalked them up to old pipes and an overactive imagination. It wasn’t until my junior year at Fenwick High that I started to question everything.

My friend Nadia was different. She carried a sort of quiet intensity, like she was always listening to something just beyond the audible range. She wore thin white threads around her wrists and ankles, which she said were blessed at her family’s temple. She spoke of hearing taps and scratches in the walls, of seeing figures in the periphery, of mists that coiled in the hallway like living breath. At first, I thought she was just dramatic, the type to embellish for attention. But then she started telling me about a presence that followed her specifically, a woman in a wet dress, always standing at the foot of her bed. Nadia said the woman never spoke, just pointed at something invisible.

I didn’t think much of it until the incident at the old Fenwick Salt Works. The place had been abandoned for decades, a rusted skeleton of a factory on the edge of town. We went there one night after a party, a dare from a classmate to prove Nadia wrong. The building was dark and smelled of brine and decay. We walked through the empty corridors, our flashlights cutting through the gloom. Nadia stopped suddenly, her head tilted. ‘She’s here,’ she whispered.

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. The air grew thick, and I could smell salt, not sea salt but something more mineral, like the dust from a dried-up lake. I heard a sound—a faint, rhythmic scraping, like sandpaper against wood. It came from behind a stack of corroded machinery. I shone my light but saw nothing. Nadia clutched my arm. ‘Don’t look,’ she said, but I did. For a split second, I saw a shape—tall, indistinct, with long fingers that twitched like spider legs. Then it was gone.

After that night, Nadia started wearing more of those white strings. She said the woman had followed her home, that she saw her in mirrors, in the reflection of windows. I tried to be supportive, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had latched onto me too. I began hearing the scratching at night—not in my room, but in my head, like a memory that wasn’t mine.

Then came the day of the accident. A group of us were hanging out near the train tracks just outside town, a local haunt for the brave and the bored. Nadia was quiet, her eyes distant. A train was approaching, its horn blaring in the distance. I swear I saw it—the same figure, but now it was solid, a woman in a soaking wet dress, her hair plastered to her face, her mouth open in a silent scream. She stood at the edge of the tracks, pointing at Nadia. Nadia looked at me, her face pale. ‘She wants me to join her,’ she said.

Before I could move, Nadia stepped forward, onto the tracks. The train was close, the ground vibrating. I lunged and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her back just as the train thundered past, the wind of its passing nearly knocking us down. We landed in a heap, shaking. Nadia was crying, saying, ‘She’s been waiting for me. She drowned in the salt marsh.’ I didn’t understand then, but later I learned from an old town history that a worker had died at the salt works years ago, her body never found.

Since that night, I see things I can’t explain. I see the woman at the edge of my vision, watching. I hear the scratch of salt against my window. I’ve started wearing a white string around my wrist, not because I believe, but because it’s the only thing that makes the scratching stop.

When I told Nadia, she just looked at me with sad eyes and said, ‘You see her now too. We’re both marked.’ And she tied another string around my ankle.