FICTION BY CHAD ANCTIL

Chad Anctil grew up in Rhode Island, home of H.P. Lovecraft, where his love for horror began—probably too young, but that’s how Gen X did it.

A former Navy electronics engineer and lifelong creative, he’s the author of The Midnight Tree, guest editor of Circus of the Dead, and a contributor to more than two dozen horror and dark fantasy anthologies from Wicked Shadow Press, Signus Magnolia Collective, CultureCult, Altitude Press, and the New England Horror Writers, among others. His urban fantasy horror series, Providence Supernatural Crimes Unit, is now available from Perspective Publishing.

A member of HWA, NEHW, and ARIA, Chad shares more about his work at chadanctil.com.

MEMORIES REMAIN
by Chad Anctil

Sarah sat in the middle of her cluttered living room, gazing at the shattered remains of her life, scattered in mismatched boxes and spread across the scuffed hardwoods with little attempt at organization, like shards from a broken mirror. She managed to stop crying, but her eyes were still puffy and red, and she felt like she was on the cusp of starting again, the feelings of pain and despair and loss rising to the surface and threatening to drown her.

The phone rang. She stared at it, the lock screen flashing a picture of her daughter Melanie. The young girl’s cherubic smile drove an icy spike into Sarah’s chest, and she burst into tears again as she answered the call.

“Sarah,” the voice said, hovering over the phone like a spirit. It was her sister, Janet. “Sarah, it’s okay, I’m here…” she said, her voice filled with concern.

“I’m sorry.” Sarah choked through her tears. “I’m sorry, I just…”

“It’s okay; I understand—I’m here,” Janet said. “How are you doing with packing? Do you need help? I can fly out…”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Sarah said, composing herself a little, her tears dripping onto the coffee table. “I’m…I’m getting there,” she lied, looking around the room, knowing she was far from where she planned on being. “I just need to—” she stopped, a sob cutting her off.

“Honey, the funeral was only a week ago. How you are feeling is normal. Take your time and take it slow. My guest house is here and waiting for you, and if you need me to fly back out and help you, I can be there in less than—”

“No, I’m handling this on my own,” Sarah said, not believing it. She looked around the house. It was a small ranch that she moved into when she found out she was pregnant. The house where she first brought Melanie home. The house they had shared for six years, until…

“Listen, Janet, I appreciate it; I do. I appreciate all you’re doing for me. You don’t need to fly out, just give me a few more days, and I’ll get this all done. There’s just a couple more rooms to go through…”

Her room, she thought to herself, feeling a shiver of anguish shoot through her like an electric shock. It was the thing she was dreading more than anything else.

“Just a few more days, and then I’ll be ready,” she repeated. “It’s just…It’s hard, Janet. It’s just so hard,” she started to choke up again. “I’m sorry, I have to go, but I’ll be all right, I will,” she said, and as she hung up and looked again at the picture of her smiling, strawberry-blond daughter, now a week in her grave, she broke down again in deep, soul-wrenching sobs.

She lost track of time as she sat in her living room. And then suddenly she heard something that sounded like music. She recognized the tune immediately.

Her heart froze as a cold wave washed over her. A tremor shook her and she realized she was holding her breath. She let it out with an anguished groan.

She stood up, her head spinning from the sudden movement. She swayed unsteadily on her feet, and stopped herself from falling at the last minute. She could taste bile in her mouth from the fear she felt.

What she was hearing was impossible. Yet there it was: the music was real.

She headed down the hall and put her hand on the knob of Melanie’s bedroom door, feeling the cold metal between her fingers, anchoring her to reality. She listened, not even breathing, and she heard it again, that familiar melody from one of Melanie’s favorite toys.

Too afraid to even look, she closed her eyes. Sarah’s heart pounded as she turned the knob and swung the door open.

The pleasant smell hit her first, like a punch to the solar plexus. It smelled like her, like Melanie. A sweet smell of sugar cookies, citrus, and something Sarah could never name, but would forever recognize. She realized she hadn’t opened the room since…

Since Melanie died, she told herself silently. Even after seeing her small white casket lowered into the dark, damp earth, it still didn’t seem real. Couldn’t be real.

Sarah finally found the courage to open her eyes and look into the room of her dead daughter.

The toy, a plush cartoon chicken, lay in the middle of Melanie’s bed. It played the tune again, a playful jingle that had always made Melanie smile and giggle. Sarah moved to pick it up, but hesitated.

Why was it on the bed? It had been on Melanie’s shelf; she remembered it clearly. So many moments from that day were etched into Sarah’s mind forever, and she knew she had made Melanie’s bed, and she put away all Melanie’s toys. The chicken was on the shelf, she was sure of it.

The song played again. Sarah picked up the toy chicken and looked at it. The song was only supposed to play when you pressed the chicken’s wing, so why did it start playing now? Maybe it was the battery, she told herself, looking at the bright yellow toy. A dying battery can make toys act strange, right?

Sarah looked at this piece of Melanie in her hands, a splintered memory glaring up at her with small plastic eyes.

“Melanie?” Sarah whispered, and the song started playing again. She collapsed against the bedroom wall and slid down to the floor, her face in her hands. “Oh god, Melanie…” she sobbed.

And then suddenly she knew. “Oh my baby girl, are you trying to communicate with me?”

Her eyes shot open, but she didn’t move, didn’t even breathe. She just sat and listened, straining to hear the song again. She leaned over to pick up the chicken from the floor. “Please let me know what you are trying to say. I’m listening.”

But the chicken remained mute. Instead, she heard footsteps in the hallway. Tiny, awkward, excited footsteps she had heard a hundred times. A thousand. She got up and ran to the hallway, and as she turned the corner to the kitchen, there was a heavy thud as the door to Melanie’s room slammed shut behind her.

“Melanie!” Sarah cried out, rushing back to her daughter’s bedroom and opening her door once again. “Melanie, baby!” she said, looking around the empty room. “Melanie, it’s mommy,” she said, heart suddenly full of an impossible hope. “Melanie, Sweetie, is that you?”

As if in response, the Paw Patrol night light on the far wall turned on, the cheerful characters glowing a sickly amber color that made Sarah think of sunset through thick smoke.

“Melanie…” Sarah sobbed and picked up one of her stuffed animals. “Mommys’ here, baby,” she said, and sat on Melanie’s bed. Tears were staining her cheeks once again, but these tears were warm and full of hope. She knew it didn’t make sense, she knew it wasn’t possible, but still she held out hope. Melanie was here with her. She squeezed the stuffed dog she held in her arms, her heart thudding in her chest. Her eyes searched the shadows for any sign of her daughter. “Melanie…” she whispered again.

The night light went out, and the room was suddenly bathed in darkness, interrupted only by the pale glow of the streetlight on the corner, shining in through the wide bedroom window. Sarah curled up on Melanie’s tiny bed and hugged her stuffed animal, the scents of her daughter, the familiarity of her room helping her drift off to sleep.

The remainder of the night was uneventful.

*****

The morning sun streamed into the small, pink bedroom. There was a glittering mermaid sticker on the wall across from her, catching the sunlight. She looked at the stuffed dog she still clutched, speaking to it. “She’s gone, Mister Bones,” she said out loud into the silent morning. “She’s gone, and last night was just a bad night, brought on by some electrical glitches. But, bad night or not…” she realized. “...That was my first decent night of sleep since you died, Sweetie. Thanks for that.”

Without warning, a piece of notebook paper fell from a bookshelf and drifted lazily to the floor, landing only a foot from where Sarah stood. She stared at it for a long minute before slowly bending down and picking it up. Her hands trembled as she turned it over and looked at the crudely drawn heart scrawled on the paper in purple-pink crayon, the barely legible text, written in red and orange, that said ‘I luv U Momy’ in Melanie’s shaky, four-year-old  handwriting.

The cherished document had been hung on the refrigerator for at least two years before Sarah had taken it down to replace it with a more recent mermaid picture that still hung in the kitchen gallery. Sarah had a hard time remembering what she had done with this love note after that; she had probably tucked it into one of the scrapbooks on Melanie’s bookshelf, but then how had it fallen out right at that moment?

Sarah’s hands were still shaking as she looked around the room. It had seemed so empty, but now it felt...different. She knew it was impossible—she didn’t believe in (ghosts?) she told herself. Melanie was in heaven. She wasn’t haunting her old bedroom.

She told herself she didn’t believe in ghosts, but as she stared at the note, she realized she wasn’t so sure anymore.

She forced herself to leave Melanie’s room and headed into the kitchen, but she wouldn’t put down the love note. She couldn’t. She started the coffee and put toast in the toaster, and just stared at the purple-pink crayon art in her hand, and she realized that she wasn’t sure what to do. She looked around at the house she had been trying to pack up for the last five days, her decision to put all these connections to her dead daughter behind her, to put all this pain behind her, but she just wasn’t so sure anymore. What if Melanie were still there? It was impossible, yes, she kept saying that, but…what if it wasn’t so impossible?

What if? kept spinning around and around in her head as she ate breakfast and started organizing the DVDs and books in the living room, slowly placing them into appropriately labeled boxes. Every few minutes, she looked over at the love note again.

“Melanie?” she called out, listening for a response, but she wasn’t hearing anything. No more music or miraculous revelations. It was just her, alone again with her grief, with that deep hollow inside her.

She finished packing up the living room around lunchtime and realized she had barely left the house since the funeral. She decided a change of scenery might help her clear her head, and she grabbed her keys, though it took her three tries, actually, to cross the threshold and leave the house. She kept looking back into the house, listening. Hoping.

As soon as she made it to her car, something felt different once again. It felt almost like she had lost Melanie a second time and the feeling of grief flooded into her. She sat in the car, took a breath, and turned the key in the ignition, but she found she couldn’t put the car in gear. She just sat there, feeling the tears burning her cheeks again, feeling the loss and despair welling up in her, feeling all that pain that had finally started to subside, flowing back up to the surface. It was all too much.

Sarah looked back towards the empty house, at the windows staring out like gaping, unblinking eyes, when she thought she saw movement. She shook her head, forcing herself to look away from the house, her hand reaching for the shifter, but instead of putting the car in drive, she grabbed the keys and turned it off.

She got out of the car and headed back into the house, and that emptiness she was feeling once again started to subside.

“Is it you?” Sarah asked the empty house in a whisper as she sat on the living room couch. She sat there for several hours, just listening, thinking about Melanie and how her beautiful little girl was always so full of joy and life.

“Are you really there, baby?” she asked again, but again she heard nothing. The shadows grew long and darkened the corners of the room as the sun slowly faded. 

“Mommy…”

The sound slithered out of the darkness, low and purposeful, making Sarah jump. She squinted into the dusk.

“Melanie?” Sarah answered.

“Mommy…” came again, low and wet but strangely melodic. Sarah heard the echoes of tiny footsteps in the hallway.

“Oh, baby, Mommy’s here!” Sarah cried out, stumbling forward in the darkness, excited, feeling her way to Melanie’s bedroom without even turning on any lights. She stopped in the doorway and realized there was someone there, in Melanie’s bed. In the gloom of late dusk, she saw Melanie’s tiny form, curled up in bed, tucked under the covers in the way she always slept. Sarah could almost see her under there, sucking her thumb. 

“Melanie!” Sarah cried out, turning on the overhead light as she leapt towards the bed, ready to pick up Melanie in her arms in the fiercest hug.

“Mommy…” the voice cried out, this time thin and pained, as if it had been scalded, and as the light came on, Sarah saw that the bed was empty; the sheets looked undisturbed. She collapsed on her dead daughter’s bed, her back pressed against the cool wall, her face in her hands, shaking her head and sobbing.

“What the hell is going on?” she whispered into the empty room. “What is happening to me?”

The night grew darker.

*****

“Read me a story, Mommy?” Melanie asked her, her cherubic face raised, looking at her and smiling. It was a dream Sarah had had a few times now.

It had been a comfort at first, this warm memory of her little girl, the joy of simpler times. Now, it had become a nightmare, because no matter how hard she tried, no matter how much she wished for it, in the dream, Sarah could never open the book that Melanie handed her. Melanie stood there, tugging on her dress, saying “Read me a story,” with more and more urgency, until Sarah finally woke up, balled up in the fetal position and crying, tears staining the pillow.

“Read me a story, mommy…” the sound undulated across the bedroom, making Sarah shiver with a cold she felt in her gut. She opened her eyes in the shadow-black room.

“Melanie?” she whispered.

“Story, Mommy…” the voice came again, a low echo that Sarah felt in her chest. There was a creaking of floorboards as if little feet were creeping down the hallway outside Sarah’s bedroom.

“What…” Sarah’s mouth was bone dry. She licked her lips and tasted sadness. “What story do you want me to read, baby?” she asked the darkness.

A book fell to the floor next to the bed. The sharp sound made Sarah jump. Sarah peered into the ink-black room and saw nothing, but she could feel it; she could feel the presence. She could feel Melanie.  She slowly reached down and picked up the book.

“Suzy Strawberry…” Sarah said, recognizing the cover art even in the dim darkness. “Your favorite. I’ll read it for you.” She had tears in her eyes. She dared not turn on the light, but she knew the book by heart; she had read it countless times. She began to read from memory.

“Suzy Strawberry lived in a magical land with her best friend Belinda Blueberry and her cat, Whiskers…” she began, her voice trembling, and she felt something… someone… Melanie… climb into the bed with her. 

“Oh my sweet baby…” Sarah whispered and kept reading aloud.

*****

“What do you mean, you’re not coming?” Janet said on the video call, clearly concerned. “Sarah, we talked about this. You shouldn’t be alone. That house, everything that—”

“I’m okay,” Sarah said, shaking her head and smiling. “Really, everything is fine here, I promise. Janet, I’m telling you, I’m doing fine. I really am. Things have happened that just…well, I’m at peace with it all.”

“Sarah, what do you mean you’re at peace? What happened? Please, I’m your sister; I love you, please tell me what’s going on.”

“I don’t know how to explain it, but… something wonderful happened, and I’m just feeling good about all of this now. I’m not coming there. I have to stay here, in the house.” Sarah smiled on the FaceTime video, but realized when she looked at herself in the small box at the bottom of her phone screen that her smile never quite reached her eyes.

“Sarah, please, I’m just worried, I don’t know what you mean…” Janet stopped speaking abruptly. “Sarah, who is there with you? Is there someone there?”

Sarah turned around quickly and then returned to the screen, suddenly looking concerned.

“There’s nobody here. I need to get going, Janet. I love you!” she said with a broad and unconvincing smile, then cut the connection.

She knew that Janet didn’t believe her.

*****

Janet arrived at Sarah’s house just over twenty-four hours later, having caught the first flight she could and then renting a car to get through the final length of the trip as quickly as possible. It was just after dusk when she pulled up; the streetlights were flickering on, and the first thing she saw was that Sarah’s house was dark. Not just ‘no lights on’ dark, but a deeper darkness that she could feel more than see.

Janet approached the front door slowly and reached for the doorbell, but before she could press the button, she heard her sister from within.

“It’s not locked. Come in.”

Janet opened the heavy oak door and peered into the gloom. She reached for the light switch, but Sarah stopped her.

“Don’t,” she said softly. Janet realized that her sister was sitting on the couch. The house was a mess; everything was scattered around the room, boxes overturned, and toys placed about the room as if they had recently been played with. “Don’t turn on the lights. Melanie doesn’t like it,” she said softly.

“Melanie?” Janet repeated, her heart sinking. “Sarah, Melanie is not here, remember?”

“She came back to me, sis,” Sarah said, her words slurring, sounding almost drugged. “You see why I have to stay…she came back to me…”

“Sarah, this isn’t— “ Janet began, but then she froze where she stood. She felt a desolate coldness surrounding her. As her eyes were adjusting to the gloom, she realized that Sarah wasn’t alone.

There was a figure there with her, lying across her lap. It wasn’t the figure of a little girl, though. She had no idea what Sarah thought she was seeing, but the thing in her lap was not Melanie. It wasn’t even human.

“Sarah, what is that?” she said and immediately regretted it. Sarah’s eyes narrowed.

“Is that any way to talk about your niece?” Sarah hissed, angry and protective. “You’re going to make her cry.”

The thing also turned to look at Janet, the two jewel-black pits that must have been its eyes piercing her, causing her whole body to tremble.

Janet’s bladder released, and she barely realized it. She backed away slowly and fearfully. If only I can make it to the front door, she thought. I’ve got to get out of here. To go get help.

“Read me a story, mommy…” the thing said, turning to look up at Sarah. Its voice was unnatural, thick and wet, rasping. It hurt Janet’s ears to hear it, even though it was barely a whisper.

“See…” Sarah said, looking up at Janet with wild eyes. “I can’t leave, she needs me…”

“Oh god, Sarah…” Janet said, backing out the door, shaking.

“Mommy will never leave you, my love…” Sarah said, stroking the thin, damp hair of the thing that lay across her lap. “Now, let’s read you a story.”