The Sun Through the Curtain

I was twenty-three when my grandmother passed, but the weight of that loss had been pressing on me for years. She had been the heart of our family, the keeper of old recipes and older grudges, and when she finally let go after a long illness, we gathered in the small village of Krosno, nestled in the Carpathian foothills. The funeral was set for the first of April, a date that felt like a cruel joke, just three days before what would have been her seventieth birthday.

The morning was bitter, with a wind that seemed to cut through the thin fabric of our mourning clothes. The sky was a heavy, bruised purple, and the air smelled of wet earth and pine. I stood beside my cousin, Marek, a man who had always been more like a brother to me. We were both hollow-eyed, not from grief but from the exhaustion of watching her suffer. The priest’s words were a dull drone, lost in the wind, as the coffin was lowered into the grave. I was shivering, my jaw clenched tight, when a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds and fell directly on us. It was warm, impossibly warm, and for a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath. Marek and I exchanged a glance, and I felt a smile pull at my lips, a guilty relief that her suffering was over. That warmth lingered for a few seconds, then vanished as the clouds closed ranks.

Three days later, on the evening of her birthday, I was alone in her house, sorting through her belongings as the family had asked. The house was a relic of another time, with thick stone walls and small windows that let in scant light. I was in the attic, rummaging through a trunk of old photographs, when I heard a faint scratching from the floor above. I froze, listening. The scratching grew more insistent, then stopped. I told myself it was a rodent, but the sound was too deliberate, too rhythmic. I climbed the narrow ladder to the loft, my heart hammering, and found a small, leather-bound journal wedged between the rafters. It was my grandmother’s, filled with her spidery handwriting, but the pages were blank except for one entry, dated the day of her death. It read: ‘The sun will find its way through the curtain, but only for those who see.’ I didn’t know what to make of it, so I tucked it into my coat pocket.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in the guest room, staring at the ceiling, but my mind kept drifting back to the journal. At exactly 3:00 AM, the old grandfather clock in the hallway chimed, and I heard a soft rustling in the corner of the room. I turned on the lamp, but the room was empty. The rustling continued, as if something were dragging itself across the floor. I got up, my bare feet cold on the wooden planks, and followed the sound into the hallway. The curtains at the end of the corridor were billowing, though all the windows were closed. A pale light seeped through them, casting long shadows. I walked toward the light, my heart pounding, and as I reached for the curtain, a hand shot out from the fabric and gripped my wrist. It was cold, impossibly so, and I screamed.

My scream must have been loud enough to wake the neighbors, but no one came. The hand pulled me toward the window, and I saw her face pressed against the glass from the outside—my grandmother’s face, but younger, with the same tired eyes that had been in the photo I’d seen earlier. She mouthed something, but I couldn’t hear. Then the hand let go, and the light vanished, plunging the hallway into darkness. I stumbled back, fell, and blacked out.

I woke the next morning on the hallway floor, the journal still in my pocket. I decided to tell no one, thinking it was a nightmare, but that afternoon, my cousin Marek called. His voice was shaky. He said he’d dreamed of our grandmother, standing in a shaft of sunlight, begging to be let in. He asked if I’d felt the warmth at the funeral—the same warmth we’d both felt. I said yes, and then I told him about the journal and the hand. He was silent for a long time, then whispered, ‘She’s not gone. She’s trying to come back.’

We spent the next week researching, looking for any hint in her things about what she might have meant. We found a key in a drawer, hidden under her prayer book, but we didn’t know what it unlocked. Then, on the anniversary of her death, we were in the attic again, and we noticed a loose floorboard. Beneath it was a trapdoor, locked. The key fit. We opened it and found a narrow staircase leading down to a cellar we never knew existed. The air was musty, heavy with the smell of decay. At the bottom, in a niche in the wall, there was a small box. Inside was a photograph of our grandmother as a young woman, standing in front of this very house. On the back were the words: ‘The sun through the curtain opens the door. But beware what walks through.’

We realized too late that we had opened a door. That night, the scratching returned, but this time it was everywhere—in the walls, under the floorboards, in our dreams. We started to see her in peripheral vision, just out of sight. And we both felt the warmth again, but it was no longer comforting; it was the heat of a fever, of an approaching illness. We tried to close the trapdoor, but it wouldn’t budge. We tried to burn the journal, but the fire turned cold. And then we heard a voice, not from any ghost, but from inside our own heads, whispering, ‘I want to live.’

Now I sit in the attic, the journal open on my lap, as the sun sets. The curtains stir, even though there is no wind. Marek is gone, lost to something that took him in the night, and I am alone. I know that when the sun breaks through the clouds tomorrow, it will fall on me, and I will feel that warmth again. And I am terrified, because I know that this time, it won’t be just a memory. It will be her, coming through the crack we opened, and she will not be content to stay in the dark. She will step into the light, and she will take my place.