The Salt-Stained Window

I never believed in ghosts, not really. My grandmother used to tell me stories about the old country, about spirits that lingered in the walls of ancient homes, but our holiday cottage was new. Built by my partner’s father and his uncle just over two decades ago, it stood on a stretch of coast that had, until recently, been empty. The beach was a sickle of black sand, the sea a constant, restless presence. We came here to escape the city, to breathe in the salt air and forget our exams.

On our first morning, I woke to find the bed beside me empty. Rohan had left a note: ‘Gone fishing. Back soon. There’s coffee in the pot.’ I pulled on a jumper and walked to the window. The tide was out, revealing a wide flat expanse of wet sand, and I could see him, a distant figure casting his line into the gray water. The house was still, but not silent. There was a hum, a low vibration that seemed to come from the walls themselves, and I thought I heard a sound like distant footsteps, faint and rhythmic, moving across the floorboards above me. I brushed it off as the house settling, the wood expanding as the morning sun warmed the roof.

The day passed lazily. We swam, we read, we made love in the afternoon heat. But as the evening drew in, and the sky turned a bruised purple, I began to feel uneasy. It was a subtle shift, a prickle at the back of my neck, a sense that we were not alone. I put it down to the isolation, the unfamiliar creaks and groans of a house I didn’t know well. After dinner, we sat on the porch, listening to the waves. Rohan was reading a novel, his face lit by the warm glow of the lamp. I found myself staring at the darkness beyond the light, at the black shape of the dunes, and I felt a sudden, irrational fear that something was watching us from the shadows.

Later that night, I couldn’t sleep. The wind had picked up, and the windows rattled in their frames. I lay in the dark, listening to Rohan’s steady breathing, and I heard it again: footsteps. Not the creaky, random sounds of a house settling, but the measured, deliberate tread of someone walking down the hallway. I sat up, my heart pounding. The door to our bedroom was ajar, and through the gap I could see the darkness of the corridor. The footsteps stopped, and then I heard a soft, wet sound, like something being dragged across the wooden floor. I held my breath, waiting, but nothing came.

I convinced myself it was a dream, or maybe the wind. But the next morning, when I went to the bathroom, I found a trail of water on the floor, leading from the door to the bath, and the bath itself was half-full of seaweed. Rohan laughed when I told him, said it was probably a prank by some local kids. But there were no other houses nearby, and the beach was empty save for us.

That day, we decided to explore the headland at the far end of the beach. We’d never gone there before. There was a crumbling path that led up among the rocks, and at the top we found the remains of an old structure, maybe a storage shed or a watchtower. It was made of weather-beaten timber, and inside, half-buried in sand, was a small wooden box. I felt a jolt of excitement, thinking we’d found a treasure, but when we opened it, we found only a collection of photographs, black and white, their edges curled with moisture. They showed an old woman with a sharp, lined face, standing outside a house that looked exactly like the cottage, but older, more weathered. I looked closer and saw that the window frames were different, and the porch had a different design. But the setting was the same, the same curve of the beach, the same dunes.

Rohan dismissed it, saying it was probably just an old photo from when the town was first settled. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something sinister about the image. I pocketed one of the photos, a close-up of the woman, and that night, I placed it on the nightstand beside my bed. I dreamed of the sea, of drowning, of a cold hand gripping my ankle and pulling me down. I woke with a start, gasping for air. The room was dark, but I could see the photo on the nightstand, and in the faint light from the window, I could swear the woman’s eyes were looking at me, not through me, but at me, with an intensity that made my blood run cold.

The next day, I decided to investigate. I asked around in the small town at the end of the road, and an old man with a weather-beaten face told me that there used to be a cottage on that beach, built by a woman named Edna, who had lived there alone for decades. She was a recluse, a witch, some said. She had died in the house, and the place had fallen into ruin, until it was torn down. The new cottage was built on the same spot, he said, by some family from the city. He looked at me with a strange wariness. ‘They say her spirit still lingers,’ he said. ‘She never liked outsiders.’ I tried to laugh it off, but a cold knot had formed in my stomach.

That night, I couldn’t sleep again. I lay in bed, listening to the sound of the waves, and I heard the footsteps again, but this time they were accompanied by a soft humming, a tuneless melody that seemed to come from far away. The door to our bedroom creaked open, and I saw a shape in the doorway, a woman in a long dress, her hair hanging over her face. She started to walk towards the bed, and I could see that she was dripping wet, her clothes soaked with seawater. She raised a hand, and I saw that her fingers were long and thin, like branches. I screamed, and Rohan woke up. The figure vanished, but the room felt cold, and the smell of salt was overpowering.

Rohan tried to comfort me, but I could see that he was rattled too. We decided to leave the next morning, but as we packed our things, I noticed that the photo I had taken was gone. I searched for it everywhere, but it was nowhere to be found. I felt a crushing sense of despair, as if I had lost something precious, and I knew, with a certainty that chilled me, that we had trespassed on something. As we drove away, I looked back at the cottage, standing alone against the gray sky, and I saw a figure in the window, watching us. The salt-stained window, the very one I had looked out on our first morning. It was Edna, her lips parted in a silent scream.

We never went back. I tried to rationalize it, to forget, but the memory of that face, that dripping figure, stayed with me. And sometimes, in the quiet of the night, I would hear footsteps in my apartment, a faint humming, and I would feel the cold presence of the sea. I know now that some places are marked, and that no matter how new the building, the past leaves its stain on the very ground. And I know that Edna, whoever she was, is still waiting, watching, for the next visitor to her shore.