The Night Visitor

Maria didn’t want to move. She missed her friends, her city, the way the streetlights glowed on rainy evenings. But after her father lost his job, they had little choice. The only place they could afford was her great-aunt’s old farmhouse, squatting at the edge of distant, silent woods.

The farmhouse was a relic from another, less forgiving era. Heavy curtains draped every window, and the wooden floors ached and moaned beneath her steps. The narrow staircase curved to a cold attic, and the cellar door always seemed to tug gently at its own latch. Maria’s room was on the second floor, facing the wild, ancient woods—a view that filled her with unease.

The first night, her father tried to comfort her. “It’s just an old house, mija. It creaks and sighs, but all old things do. You’ll get used to it.”

But Maria did not get used to it. On the second night, lightning zig-zagged through the sky. Rain pelted the roof in sharp, angry needles. She lay curled under the blankets, stubbornly refusing to let her mind wander. Still, every groan and clang in the house made her jump.

And then, just past midnight, she heard it for the first time—a soft tapping at her window. At first, she thought it was branches. But when she peeked through her blanket, she saw two glowing eyes peering in from the darkness.

She screamed. Her father came running, but by the time he flicked on the light, there was nothing at the window but droplets of rain.

“It was an animal,” he insisted, mopping her brow as she trembled. “Probably a raccoon or an owl. You’re safe inside.”

But Maria wasn’t so sure.

The next day, when she trudged outside, she could see no branches close enough to reach her window. The woods, dense and tangled, seemed to press closer, as if listening.

On the third night, the visitor returned. This time, Maria was not asleep. Her stomach twisted as she heard the tap-tap-tap at her window. The same glowing eyes stared through the glass, but this time, a faint, hungry smile formed on the other side.

She sat up, voice barely a whisper. “Go away.”

The smile grew wider. A gray, spindly hand tapped at the glass, long fingers leaving trails of condensation.

Maria whimpered, scrambling backward. “Dad! Please—!”

But the house was silent, as if her voice had been swallowed whole.

The tapping stopped. The eyes flickered and faded, and Maria remained frozen until sunlight filtered in and the fear melted just enough for her to dash downstairs.

Her father believed none of it. “Nightmares, Maria,” he said gently, though his eyes darted toward the woods as if remembering old stories he never shared.

“Great-aunt Rosa,” Maria said at breakfast, “was she afraid?”

Her father stiffened. “She used… she used to talk to herself. And she kept the windows locked tight every night. But Rosa was very old.”

That night, Maria double-checked the lock on her window. She pushed her bureau in front of it for good measure, covering the glass with a quilt. Sleep felt like a distant planet.

She awoke to a scratching. Not taps this time, but thin, frantic scrapes. The sound wormed into her skull, desperate, insistent.

Her heart thudded in her chest as she peeled back the quilt. The eyes blazed brighter than moonlight. The face grinning at her was warped, its mouth stretching open, revealing teeth like broken glass.

“LET ME IN,” it whispered. The words etched ice on the inside of the window and made her bones ache.

Maria screamed. The scratching grew louder, the glass bowing inward with each wordless shriek from the thing outside.

Footsteps thundered up the stairs. The door banged open and her father burst inside. The room was empty—no eyes, no warped face, only her own reflection trembling in the dark.

He held her until her sobs quieted. “Tomorrow, we’ll do something about this.”

Morning brought uneasy calm. Her father hammered extra locks onto the windows. They sprinkled salt on the window sills at her grandmother’s suggestion, murmuring blessings neither truly believed. Maria hung her mother’s rosary on the knob and pressed her face into her father’s chest.

“It can’t hurt us now, can it?”

He said nothing.

For two nights, nothing disturbed her rest. Maria dared to hope. She even unpacked her old sketchbook, drawing the trees under syrupy sunlight.

But on the fifth night, as the clock struck three, she woke cold and gasping. The room reeked of carrion. As she sat up, she saw dark shapes swirling at the edges of her room—shadows with teeth, clawing at the salt barrier and howling in voices that sounded like her mother and aunt Rosa.

Her window burst open with a crash.

The thing was inside.

It moved in jerks, twisted and wrong, its limbs bending too far. Its eyes flickered in her direction. As Maria tried to scream, it lunged at her, pinning her to the bed with talons that burned like frostbite.

“Don’t,” Maria sobbed. “Don’t take me—“

The thing lowered its mouth to her ear, breath rank and sweet, and whispered, “I was alone for so long.”

To her horror, she saw that it wore a necklace—her great-aunt’s locket. Inside it, a tiny, smiling photograph of Rosa as a girl.

“Please,” Maria begged. “Leave me alone.”

The thing’s face flickered, eyes briefly human, soft and sad. It shuddered, as if remembering.

“Let me in,” it tried again, softer this time. A plea.

Maria snatched her mother’s rosary and pressed it against the creature’s arm. Steam hissed and flesh burned. The entity shrieked, stumbling back, its form shifting, arms and legs writhing for a moment like a nest of snakes.

Maria flung herself from the bed. “Dad! Help me!”

The bedroom door slammed shut. The thing reached out one last time. “So lonely…”

As the cross burned through its skin, it vanished in a storm of black moths, spinning and dissolving into the darkness.

Her father crashed through the door moments later. He found Maria curled on the floor, clutching the broken rosary.

“It’s gone,” she whispered, shaking. “But it’ll come back. Not for me…”

Though they left the house the following morning—never to return—sometimes, when the wind cries and the woods press close, Maria dreams of eyes glowing from the dark, and a voice, forlorn, just outside her window, still asking to be let in.