The Scale-Fingered Visitor

At seventeen, I was home alone for the first time in weeks. My parents had recently split, and my mother was staying with her sister in another state. My father worked the night shift at the paper mill, so I had the house to myself from after school until the early hours. That particular March evening, I was sprawled on my bed, listening to the wind rattle the bare branches against the window, trying to dredge up the courage to use the new laptop my cousin had given me. It was a secret, something I’d been too embarrassed to try before, but I was determined to feel grown-up.

I remember the light was on, a warm pool of yellow on the ceiling. I was on my back, my hands by my sides, when I felt it—a pressure on my ankle, sliding up my calf. It was not a cloth or a draft; it was a hand. The touch was unmistakably dry, scaly, and cold, like the underside of a snake. I didn’t see it, but I could feel each individual scale as it brushed against my skin, the texture like baked sequins. In that instant, a vision flooded my mind: a green, scaly hand, up to the wrist, with long, tapering fingers, hovering just above my leg. The scales were large, overlapping, and had a faint iridescent sheen, like the wings of a beetle.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I tried to scream, but my throat was paralyzed. The hand continued its slow, deliberate advance, reaching my knee, then my thigh, the scales rasping against the fabric of my jeans. In my mind’s eye, I saw the hand grip my leg firmly, its grip strong but unhurried, as if it were claiming something. A wave of nausea washed over me as I snapped out of the trance. I threw myself off the bed, landing in a heap on the carpet, and scrambled out of that room so fast I left a shoe behind.

In the living room, I flicked on every light, even the ones in the kitchen and hallway. I crouched in the corner of the couch, my knees drawn to my chest, my eyes glued to the dark hallway that led to my bedroom. The house was silent, except for the ticking of the grandfather clock and the hum of the refrigerator. I didn’t dare fall asleep. I stayed like that, shivering, for the next four hours, until the garage door groaned and my father’s footsteps echoed down the hall. When he saw me, he asked if I was sick, but I just shook my head and mumbled something about a nightmare. He yawned and went to bed, and I crept to the bathroom, avoiding the hallway.

I never told anyone about that night until I met Sam, my husband. Even then, I only told him after three years of marriage. He listened, his face unreadable, then asked, ‘Did you see it again after that?’ I said no. But sometimes, late at night, when the wind rustles the leaves and the house settles, I feel a pressure on my thigh, and I see that green hand in my mind, its scales shimmering like forgotten sequins. I never told Sam that part. I never told him that sometimes I think it’s still there, waiting, since I left its touch unfinished.