The Salted Earth

The year was 2008, and I had just turned nineteen. I was a recent high school graduate with no plans, no job, and a restless mind. My mother, a woman of surprising decisiveness, announced one humid evening that we would visit my grandmother in the Mekong Delta. It wasn’t a suggestion. She had already booked the flights. My father and siblings stayed behind, but I had nothing to lose, so I packed a small bag and followed her into the unknown.

We landed in Vietnam, then took a series of buses and boats that grew progressively smaller and more dilapidated. The air thickened with the smell of wet earth and rotting vegetation. My grandmother’s house stood on stilts at the edge of a village, surrounded by rice paddies that shimmered like green glass under the scorching sun. She was a tiny, wrinkled woman with sharp eyes that seemed to see through you. She welcomed us with a toothless smile and a bowl of sour fish soup. The first night, I noticed strange carvings above the doorframe—curved symbols that resembled entwined snakes. I asked my mother what they meant, but she just shook her head, as if to dismiss the question.

On the second day, my grandmother asked me to help her collect medicinal herbs from the nearby marsh. She moved slowly, her bare feet sure on the muddy paths, and she chattered in a mix of Vietnamese and French, pointing out plants with names I couldn’t remember. At one point, she stopped before a gnarled tree that grew at the edge of the water. Its bark was covered in thick, dark sap that looked like dried blood. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small cloth bag, its fabric stained and frayed. She tied it to a low-hanging branch with a piece of red string. I asked what she was doing. She looked at me with those hawk-like eyes and said, ‘This is to keep the hungry ones away. You must never touch the tree. Never take its fruit.’ I saw a few small, pale fruits hanging from the branches, like unripe apples. I promised I wouldn’t touch it.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The silence was deeper than any I had ever known, broken only by the drone of insects. I lay on a thin cotton mat, listening to the occasional splash from the river. It was around midnight when I heard a faint scratching sound from outside, like claws on wood. I sat up, heart pounding. The scratching grew louder, then stopped. I crept to the window and peered out. The moon was nearly full, casting silver light on the muddy yard. I saw a figure standing at the edge of the tree line, motionless. It was tall and thin, with limbs too long for its body. It seemed to be looking at the tree. After a moment, it turned and walked into the shadow of the reeds, and I lost sight of it. I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

The next morning, I tried to tell my mother what I had seen. She listened silently, then said, ‘It’s just an old tree. Maybe you had a dream.’ But she avoided my eyes. My grandmother, who was crouched by the fire, muttered something under her breath. I felt a chill despite the heat. I decided to ignore it, chalking it up to an overactive imagination.

But the incidents escalated. The following day, I was walking back from the latrine when I saw a child standing near the tree, a little girl in a white dress. She was facing away from me, but I could see she was holding one of the pale fruits in her hand. Before I could say anything, she bit into it. I felt a sudden wave of nausea, and the world seemed to tilt. The girl turned her head, and for a second, I saw her face—but it was not a face. It was a smooth, blank surface, like a mannequin head. She dropped the fruit and ran into the swamp, and I was frozen, unable to move until the sun set.

That evening, I confronted my grandmother. I found her in her room, surrounded by candles and bundles of herbs. She was chanting in a language I didn’t recognize. When she saw me, she stopped and motioned for me to sit. ‘You have seen the ones without faces,’ she said, not as a question. I nodded, my throat dry. She reached into her cloth bag and pulled out a handful of salt. She told me that when she was a young woman, the jungle was thick and dark, and the villagers had cut down many trees to make fields. But the tree by the water was sacred. It was a dwelling place for the spirits of the unborn, those who were lost too soon. When the villagers cut down its companions, the spirits grew angry. They began to take the forms of children and lure the living to the tree, where they would wither and join them. My grandmother said that the bag she tied on the branch was to protect us, but the spirits had grown strong over the years, and her power was fading.

I wanted to leave. I begged my mother to go home, but she refused. She said we had to stay for another week to finish family business. I felt trapped. The next three nights, I saw the faceless child more and more. It would appear at the edge of my vision, always near the tree, always holding a fruit. On the fourth night, I woke to find the child standing beside my mat, its blank face hovering inches from mine. It raised a hand and gently touched my forehead, and I felt a cold that sank into my bones. Then it spoke, in a voice that sounded like rustling leaves: ‘You took the fruit.’ I had not, but I remembered that I had earlier, out of curiosity, picked one and let it fall. That was enough.

I staggered outside, past my grandmother’s sleeping form, and ran to the tree. The cloth bag was gone. The carvings on the doorframe were glowing faintly with a sickly light. I fell to my knees at the base of the tree, feeling the roots tremble beneath me. The ground began to crack, and I saw that the soil was not black but a dark, red-brown, as if soaked in old blood. I dug with my bare hands, tearing through the mud, until I unearthed something small and white—a infant’s skull, fragile as an eggshell. And then I uncovered more, dozens of tiny bones, all jumbled together.

I screamed and tried to scramble away, but my legs wouldn’t move. The faceless childmaterialized in front of me, and behind it, a host of other shapes, all faceless, all silent. They surrounded me, and I felt something cold enter my mind, like fingers probing. I heard my grandmother’s voice from the house, chanting louder, but it was distant. The last thing I saw before I passed out was the tree’s canopy shifting, as if it were exhaling a long breath.

When I woke, I was in a hospital bed in a city I didn’t recognize. My mother sat beside me, her face pale. She told me that I had been found unconscious at the tree, covered in mud, and that my grandmother had died that night, her heart giving out. They had brought me to a clinic, and the doctors found nothing wrong. But I knew something wrong was planted in me. Ever since, I have seen the faceless ones in the periphery of my vision, always just out of focus. And sometimes, at night, I taste the faint, metallic flavor of the fruit on my tongue. I carry a small bag of salt in my pocket now, and I have never returned to the delta. But I know they are waiting for me, just beyond the edge of sight, patient and hungry. They have claimed a part of me, and they will not let go.