The Salted Gate

I’m a twenty-two-year-old marine biology student from Port Lincoln, South Australia, where the ocean is a constant, breathing presence. My flatmate, Jules, and I lived in a creaking Victorian-era house on Flinders Street, a block from the Esplanade. The house was charming in daylight, but at night, the wind off the Spencer Gulf made the weatherboards groan like a ship in a storm. Jules was obsessed with the paranormal, a passion she’d inherited from her grandmother, who’d once claimed to see the dead in the foam of the tide. I humored her, because I loved her, and because I was young enough to believe that fear was a thrill, not a warning.

It was a humid February night, the kind where the air sits heavy and the sea sounds closer than it is. Jules had bought a Ouija board from a dusty shop in town, the kind with a scratched wooden surface and a planchette that felt too smooth. She’d been dying to use it, and I finally agreed, thinking it would be a laugh. We lit candles, turned off the lights, and sat cross-legged on the floor of her room, which faced the water. The windows were open, letting in the salt breeze and the distant crash of waves. She placed her fingers on the planchette, and I placed mine opposite hers.

‘Sarah, don’t laugh,’ she said, her eyes serious. ‘We have to be respectful.’ I nodded, trying to suppress a grin. She called out into the darkness: ‘Is there anyone who wants to speak with us?’ The glass moved, hesitant at first, then slid to ‘YES.’ I felt the hair on my arms rise. Jules was trembling, but she continued. ‘What is your name?’ The planchette spelled ‘MORGAN.’ I didn’t know any Morgan. Jules asked, ‘How did you die?’ The piece moved slowly: ‘DROWNED.’ The candle flickered, and the wind through the window picked up, as if the house had sighed. I wanted to stop, but Jules pushed on. She asked, ‘Where are you?’ The answer: ‘NEAR.’ A coldness settled in the room, and the smell of salt and rot filled the air.

Then Jules, emboldened, made a mistake. She said, ‘If you’re really here, give us a sign. Knock on the wall three times.’ I grabbed her arm, but it was too late. The planchette spun violently, then stopped. The three knocks came from the wall directly behind me, so loud that the glass rattled in the window frames. I screamed, and the candles went out. In the dark, I heard a sound like water pouring, and the floor beneath us began to feel slick, as if covered in brine. Jules fumbled for the light, and when it flickered on, we saw that the wall was wet, dripping with seawater that had no source. The planchette was now resting over the word ‘YES’ but had cracked down the middle.

We didn’t sleep that night. We stayed in the living room, doors locked, and tried to convince ourselves it was a trick of the humidity. But the next morning, the wall in Jules’s room was still damp, and there was a trail of wet footprints leading from the window to her bed. The footprints were too large for any human, and the toes were webbed. I wanted to move out immediately, but Jules refused, citing the cost and her stubbornness. That was when the dreams began—not dreams, but visitations. I’d wake at 3 a.m. to the sound of dripping, and in the corner of my eye, I’d see a figure hunched over, gills pulsing on its neck, its skin glistening with algae. It didn’t speak, but I felt its hunger.

We tried to bless the house with salt and sage from a local shop, but the salt turned black within hours, and the sage ashes smelled like death. We called a medium, a wizened old woman who took one look at the house and said, ‘You’ve opened a door. Something followed you through, and it’s not going back.’ She gave us a jar of seawater from a different shore, telling us to sprinkle it around the perimeter at dawn. But as she left, she whispered to me, ‘The problem is, you asked for proof. It’s anchored now. It likes this place.’ I felt the weight of her words.

One evening, a week later, I came home to find Jules standing at the edge of the pier, her back to me. She was swaying, and I called out, but she didn’t turn. When I reached her, her face was blank, and her eyes were milky white, like a dead fish’s. She spoke in a voice that wasn’t hers—deep, guttural, and slow, as if waterlogged. ‘You called me. You owe a debt.’ I grabbed her arm, but she was cold, and her grip was surprisingly strong. I managed to pull her away, but she collapsed, and when she came to, she had no memory of the pier. From then on, the occurrences escalated. Shadows moved in the house, doors slammed on their own, and at night, I heard the sound of the ocean right under my bed, the floorboards swelling and creaking as if alive.

I sought help from an aboriginal elder who lived on the edge of town. He told me stories of the tides, the groper devils, and the ones who drag the unwise below. He said, ‘The ocean is a gate. When you invite one through, it brings the tide with it. You have to find what it wants and give it back, or it’ll take you instead.’ He gave me a small carving of a seal and said, ‘The old people used these to travel between worlds. You need to return the spirit to its place.’ Under his guidance, we planned a ritual at the exact spot where the wall had been wet, at the new moon. We were to draw a circle of seaweed, chant a song of sending, and offer a piece of ourselves—a lock of hair, a drop of blood—to appease it.

But the night we prepared, Jules went missing. I found her in her room, naked, her skin pale and pruned, lying in a puddle of saltwater. Around her neck was a necklace of shark teeth, and her hair was wet and tangled with kelp. She was breathing, but barely, and she kept murmuring: ‘It’s coming. It wants both of you.’ I realized then that the entity we’d contacted wasn’t a ghost; it was something far older, a creature of the abyss that had found a door through our childish game. I carried her out to the garden, where the elder waited with his drum. We began the ritual, and as we chanted, the air grew thick, and the ground beneath us shook. A shape rose from the shadows, formless but with the sound of gushing water. It reached for Jules, and I felt a force pulling me toward it. I threw the seal carving into the center of the circle, and for a moment, everything was still.

The elder cried out, ‘Now! Say its name!’ But I didn’t know its name. I thought of Morgan, and the planchette. I shouted, ‘Morgan, you are bound by the tide! Return to the deep!’ The creature howled, a sound like a whale’s call mixed with a scream, and then it collapsed into a vortex of water that spun and vanished into the floorboards. The house fell silent. Jules gasped and woke, drenched in sweat, her eyes clear. She hugged me, sobbing. We thought it was over.

But three days later, as I walked along the beach at dusk, I saw a figure at the water’s edge. It was Jules, but her posture was wrong, and she was waving at me. As I approached, I knew with dread that this was not Jules. It was the thing, wearing her skin, smiling with too many teeth. The real Jules, I realized, was still in the house. The spirit had found a way to split itself, or it had taken me, and the Jules on the beach was a lure. I turned to run, but behind me, the house lights flickered, and through the window, I saw another figure—Jules again, or a reflection—pressing a Webbed hand against the glass. The Tides were not done. And that is the truth of it: when you ask for proof of the unseen, you must be prepared to pay for it with more than you ever thought you had. My name is not important anymore, but mine is a story among the salt shanties, a warning carved into the pier: never call the drowned, for they will answer with your own breath.