The Stain on the Curtain

The house sat at the edge of the coconut grove, a relic of a past century. Its wooden walls, once painted a deep green, had faded to a patchwork of grey and peeling flakes. The upper floor, where we played, always smelled of dust and dried herbs, and the floorboards creaked like old bones. At night, after the kerosene lamps were lit below, the upper floor swallowed the light, leaving only the pale glow from the stairwell.

My cousin Bella, my sister Ana, and I had a ritual. After dinner, while our lola and mother cleaned the dishes, we’d climb the stairs to the dark, playing hide and seek among the old furniture. The upper floor was a maze of forgotten things: a wooden chest, a spinning wheel, and the second kitchen, where a rusted sink stood under a window that looked over the grove. Near the stairs, there was a storage nook under a prep table, covered by a long piece of faded fabric. It was my favorite hiding spot.

That night, Bella was ‘it’. I counted to ten against the wall, my face buried in my arms, feeling the cool wood against my forehead. When I turned, they were gone. The darkness seemed to breathe. I tiptoed to the chest first, but it was empty. I checked behind the spinning wheel, but nothing. The silence was heavy, broken only by the faint clink of pots in the kitchen below.

I moved to the storage nook. The fabric hung straight, not a ripple. I knelt, my heart thumping, and lifted the edge. It was dark inside, but I saw two shapes huddled together. ‘Gotcha!’ I whispered, but they didn’t move. Then one of them turned its head, and in the dim light from the window, I saw it wasn’t Bella or Ana. It had no face, just a smooth expanse of skin where features should be. A cold hand, damp and bony, clutched my wrist from inside. I yanked back, but the grip tightened. I screamed, tearing the fabric as I fell back.

The thing crawled out, its body contorting like a spider. It wore clothes that looked like my grandmother’s, a floral dress that hung loose on its frame. It made no sound, but its head tilted, and I could feel it staring at me. I scrambled to my feet and fled down the stairs, my bare feet slapping against the wood.

At the bottom, my mother and lola were still at the table. They looked up, alarmed. ‘What’s wrong?’ my mother asked. ‘There’s something upstairs!’ I cried, pointing. My lola placed her hand on mine, her skin warm and dry. ‘It’s just the dark, child. Come, sit.’ But my sister and cousin came down a moment later, looking puzzled. ‘We were in the back room, waiting. Did you give up?’ They hadn’t seen it.

I tried to explain, but they dismissed it as a nightmare. Yet that night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling, and heard a shuffling from above, like someone dragging their feet across the floor. The next morning, I went upstairs. The fabric was torn, but the nook was empty. On the floor, I found a small, dried leaf that I had never seen before, shaped like a hand.

Years later, we moved away. The house was sold, and I never returned. But sometimes, in the quiet of my own home, I feel a chill on my wrist, where that hand had touched me. And the stain on the curtain in my old room, shaped like a child’s hand, would never wash out, no matter how hard we scrubbed. It was as if the house had marked me, and I would carry that mark forever, a reminder that some shadows in the dark are not just shadows, but doorways to something else.