The Wet Tile March

The summer I turned eight, my mother and I had a ritual. Every evening, after the sun dipped below the hedgerows, we would walk the gravel paths of our small desert town, laughing at our own shadow puppets and collecting cool pebbles that we pretended were dinosaur eggs. It was our time, a pocket of warmth against the dry, buzzing quiet. But the warmth always ended at our front door.

Our house, a single-story stucco box, had a strange layout. The bathroom connected to the main bedroom through a narrow passage, its door a set of sliding frosted glass panels. Light from the hallway barely reached that back corner, leaving it perpetually dim. I avoided it. I had a fear of the dark, but more so, I had a fear of that specific sliding door. It was too wide, too silent on its tracks, and sometimes I thought I saw a faint, greasy handprint on the glass that no one ever wiped off.

One night, after our walk, my mother asked for her phone, which she’d left charging in the bathroom. ‘Honey, can you grab it? I’m bone tired.’ I froze. The hallway light was on, but the bedroom was a void. I tried to pawn the task off on my father, but he was snoring in his recliner. So I took a deep breath, stepped into the gloom, and headed for the frosted doors. My heart hammered, but I kept my eyes fixed on the faint glow of the phone’s charging light._

I told myself there was nothing to fear. I reached the sliding door and felt the cool aluminum handle under my fingers. That’s when I heard it: a wet, clear slap of bare feet on cold tile. It came from the other side of the door. Not a shuffle, but an aggressive, deliberate step. My blood turned to ice. I yanked the door open with a shout that was supposed to be brave, but came out as a squeak. The room was empty. The shower curtain was still. The phone glowed on the sink. I grabbed it and ran.

I slammed the door shut behind me and sprinted to my mother, thrusting the phone at her. ‘There’s something in there!’ I gasped. She looked at me, puzzled. ‘It’s just the house settling, sweetie.’ But I knew what I’d heard. I also noticed the bathroom floor was wet. We hadn’t used the bathroom since the morning, and the tile was cold and slick, as if someone had just walked across it.

Over the next week, the wet footsteps became a regular occurrence. I heard them every time I neared the bathroom, but only when the sliding doors were closed. If I left them open, silence. My mother dismissed it, but my father grew uneasy. He once checked the bathroom and found a puddle of dark, oily water near the drain, with a small, jagged piece of glass in it. He said nothing, but he started sleeping with the lights on.

One evening, determined to conquer my fear, I decided to confront it. I waited until my parents were asleep, then crept to the bathroom door. I placed my hand on the handle. The wet footsteps started immediately, slow and heavy. I didn’t open it right away. I leaned close to the frosted glass. Through the translucence, I saw a shape—tall, thin, with limbs that seemed too long. It was standing just on the other side, its head tilted, as if listening. And then it pressed its face against the glass, distorting into a gray smear. I stumbled back, but my foot caught the edge of the hall rug, and I fell hard.

When I looked up, the shape was gone. But the bathroom door was now slightly ajar, and a sliver of blackness peered out. I heard a whisper, so soft it might have been the wind: ‘Hello, little one.’ I scrambled to my feet and fled to my parents’ room, shaking. My mother held me, but I saw her glance at the doorway, her face pale. She didn’t say it was the house that time.

The next day, we called a plumber. He found nothing wrong with the pipes, but he mentioned a strange stain on the bathroom ceiling, shaped like a hand. He also said, in a low voice, that the house’s foundation had a history of water damage, maybe a leak from a long-abandoned well beneath. That night, my mother told me we were moving. She didn’t look at the bathroom door when she said it.

We left the house a week later. I never went back. But sometimes, in the dead of night, I still hear that sound—the wet slap of bare feet on cold tile, moving across my bedroom floor, even though I now live in a dry, third-floor apartment. And when I close my eyes, I see the frosted glass, and the shape standing there, waiting. It never really left. It just found a new door. Sometimes, I close my bathroom door and hold my breath, hoping I don’t hear it. But I always do. It’s always there, waiting for me to open the door, to step into the dark, to join the march.