The Salt Wound

It had been two months since the incident at the old house, and I thought the worst was behind us. My friend Mark and I had decided to meet at my new apartment, a cramped two-bedroom on the third floor of a building in the industrial district. The place had a weird history, but the rent was cheap, and I needed to move on. That night, we were in the basement, where I’d set up a small gaming nook with a couple of old TVs and a mountain of clutter. The air was thick with dust and the faint smell of oil from the old furnace. We’d been at it for hours, our eyes glued to the screens, the only sounds the click of controllers and the occasional curse. When we finally decided to call it a night, Mark suggested we head upstairs to grab a drink from my kitchen. The stairs were steep, old wooden things with cracked varnish, and we trudged up in the dim light of a single bulb at the top. I was in the lead, my hand grazing the railing, when a sudden, searing pain ripped across my inner wrist. I yelped and yanked my hand back, staring at it in disbelief. A thin, red line was already beading with blood, as if an invisible razor had sliced me. There was nothing near the stairs, no nails, no splinters, and Mark was a step behind me, out of reach. I shook it off, blaming a stray piece of wire from the old intercom system I’d seen earlier, but the scratch had a strange shape—three parallel lines, almost like claw marks. We got upstairs, cleaned it, and after a tense silence, we laughed it off, calling it a freak accident. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had watched us from the shadows near the basement door. The next night, I was alone. The scratch had healed into a faint pink scar, but it tingled as I walked past the basement door. I decided to check the stairwell, shining my phone’s flashlight at the walls and floor. Nothing. Then I saw it: a faint, sticky residue on the railing, like a smear of salt. I touched it, tasted it—sure enough, salt. That was odd, but I shrugged it off, assuming a previous tenant had spilled something. That night, I had a nightmare: I was back on the stairs, but a figure was crouched at the top, its face obscured by a hood, and it was screaming in a language I didn’t know. I woke up gasping, my wrist burning. The scar was gone, replaced by fresh welts, as if the wound had reopened and healed in minutes. I called Mark, and he came over, his face pale when he saw it. He told me he’d had a similar dream, but in his version, I was the one screaming, my mouth filled with salt. We decided to investigate the basement, something we should have done from the start. It was a maze of old furniture, boxes, and a boiler that groaned like a wounded animal. In a corner, half-buried under a tarp, we found a child’s drawing—a crude stick figure on a staircase, with a red slash across its wrist. Underneath, in shaky handwriting, was a name: ‘Elias.’ We asked the building manager about it, and he went pale. ‘Elias was a boy who lived here in the 70s,’ he said. ‘He vanished one night. They found him in the basement, his wrists cut, but the weird thing was, his mouth was packed with salt.’ My blood ran cold. I looked at Mark, and I could see he was thinking the same thing: we had invoked something by using the basement as our gaming haven. We tried to leave, but the door to the basement slammed shut. The lights flickered, and we heard a child’s giggle from the stairs. We turned, and there, at the bottom step, was a small figure, no more than a silhouette, holding a saltshaker. It shook it, and salt poured out, covering the floor. Then it spoke in a voice that was both young and ancient: ‘You took my space. Now you’ll take my place.’ We ran, but the stairs stretched, and the salt rose like a tide, filling our mouths, our lungs. I woke up in a hospital bed, Mark beside me, both of us with bandages on our wrists. The doctors said we had a salt overdose—we’d eaten something that caused severe sodium poisoning. But I knew the truth. The boy’s spirit, hungry for a new victim, had latched onto us. The scratch on my wrist was not a wound but a mark—a claim. And every night, I hear that giggle, and I taste salt. The apartment? I moved out, but the scar remains, and sometimes it itches when I pass a darkened stairwell. If you ever see a child’s drawing with a red slash, don’t touch it. And never, ever ignore the salt.