The Weeping Tile

In the autumn of 2011, my family and I moved into a decrepit farmhouse on the edge of the Blackwater Marsh in northern Minnesota. The house was a two-story Victorian with peeling paint and a sagging porch, surrounded by tall cattails and murky water. We had no history of the property, only a cheap rent and a landlord who avoided our calls.

For the first month, nothing happened. My father, a long-haul trucker, was often away, leaving my mother, my younger sister, and me alone. I was fifteen, and I spent my evenings reading on the porch, watching the mist roll off the marsh. The only sound was the constant drip of water from the eaves, even when it wasn’t raining. I dismissed it as old pipes.

One cold October night, at 9:30 PM, I was sitting in my room with a tattered copy of ‘Moby-Dick.’ Everyone else was asleep. The house was silent except for that drip, drip, drip. Then I heard it: a voice, soft and clear, calling my name—’Ethan… Ethan…’ It sounded exactly like my mother, but muffled, as if coming from deep within the walls. I went to her room, but she was fast asleep, her breathing steady. I shook her awake, and she looked at me with confusion. ‘Why did you call me?’ I asked. She blinked, ‘I didn’t call you. Go back to bed.’

Nervous, I returned to my room. An hour later, I heard it again, this time more urgent, coming from the bathroom at the end of the hall. The door was ajar, and the light was off. I crept closer, and the voice seemed to come from the drain in the bathtub. ‘Ethan… help me…’ It was my mother’s voice, but distorted, gurgling. I ran to my parents’ room, but my mother was still asleep. My heart pounded. I grabbed a flashlight and shone it into the tub. The drain was clogged with dark, slimy hair, and as I watched, the hair seemed to writhe, and a faint whisper echoed up: ‘Let me in.’

I didn’t sleep that night. The next morning, I told my mother, and she dismissed it as a nightmare. But that night, she woke up screaming, clawing at her throat. She said she dreamt she was drowning in the marsh, and something was pulling her down. We tried to leave, but our car wouldn’t start. The only phone was dead. The landline, which had worked the day before, now emitted only a low, wet hiss.

Over the next week, the incidents escalated. My sister began talking to ‘the lady in the floor drain,’ and my mother found her in the bathroom, trying to remove the grate with a spoon. My mother grew pale and weak, as if she were being drained. Strange, dark water would pool in the corners of the rooms, leaving a foul, rotting smell.

One evening, as the sun set, my mother stood in the living room, staring at the wall. She turned to me, her eyes milky, and said, ‘She wants a child.’ Then she calmly walked to the bathroom, knelt by the tub, and lowered her head into the water. I screamed and pulled her out, but she was unconscious, blue-lipped. I saw, in the water, a shadowy face grinning up at me.

I carried my mother to the car, and somehow, the engine turned over. I drove with my sister and my mother, racing down the gravel road, but the marsh seemed to follow us. The road looped back to the house every time. Finally, at dawn, we reached the main highway, but when I looked in the rearview mirror, the house stood at the edge of the marsh, its windows like hollow eyes. My mother woke, confused, and remembered nothing.

We never returned. But sometimes, at night, I still hear that voice, calling from the drain, and I know it’s waiting for us to come back. The weeping tile in the old farmhouse will never stop crying.