“Thirty Days in the Dark”Day 4

                                Day 4: The Woman in the Rain

             

The storm arrived on the fourth night.

The wind howled like a thousand voices screaming, shaking the rusted walls of the lighthouse. Rain lashed against the glass windows, and the sea waves pounded the rocks so violently that Daniyal wondered if the whole structure might collapse.

All day he had been restless after the incident with the mirror. His bandaged hand still burned from the cuts. The words from the drowned keeper haunted his mind: “You are already one of us.”

That night, as lightning flashed across the horizon, Daniyal sat near the window with his Quran in his lap. He tried reading, but the storm outside drowned out his voice.

Then, through the sheets of rain, he saw her.

A woman. Standing on the rocks below the lighthouse.

Her long, black hair was plastered to her pale face, dripping wet. She wore a torn white dress, soaked through, clinging to her thin body. She didn’t move. She only stared up at the window — at him.

Daniyal froze, his breath caught in his throat. “It’s not real,” he whispered. “It’s the storm… it’s just my mind.”

But the woman began to walk. Slowly. Each step echoing louder than the rain. Bare feet on wet stone. She walked straight into the waves — and then, impossibly, straight through them. The water didn’t slow her. It bent around her.

Within moments, she was at the lighthouse door.

Daniyal’s heart pounded. He heard it — the heavy iron door creaking open below. Krrrrreeak… The same sound from his first night.

Footsteps on the spiral stairs. Wet. Bare. Closer. Closer.

He held the Quran tightly, whispering verses, sweat mixing with the rainwater dripping from the ceiling. The footsteps stopped right outside his room. He could feel her presence — standing there in silence.

He forced himself to look. The doorway was empty.

But the floor was wet. Puddles spread across the stones, as though she had been there just seconds ago.

Then, he smelled it: seawater, rotting seaweed, and something else — decay.

He backed into the corner, shaking, his flashlight trembling in his hand. And then he saw it: in the reflection of the rain-speckled window, she was standing right behind him, hair hanging over his shoulder, her mouth open in a silent scream.

Daniyal spun around, but the room was empty.

The storm raged on until dawn. And when morning came, the lighthouse door was open, swinging in the wind. On the steps outside lay a single object that hadn’t been there before — a child’s shoe, soaked and torn, as if it had been in the sea for years.