The Candle’s Ash

I’ve never told anyone this, not even my therapist. They’d lock me up or chalk it up to a teenager’s overactive imagination. But here, where I know others have felt the touch of the unseen, I can finally speak. It happened in the summer I turned sixteen, in my grandmother’s old house in the dusty town of Morrow’s Rest. The house sat on a hill, overlooking a dried-up riverbed, and the air always smelled of sage and something else, something sour, like old secrets.

That summer was a bad one. My parents had split, my best friend had moved away, and I felt like a ghost in my own life. I’d taken to sitting in my grandmother’s study, a room she’d forbidden me to enter, but she was in the hospital with pneumonia, and the house was mine. The study was cluttered with books and oddities, but what caught my eye was a small, brass incense burner shaped like a lotus, and a photograph of a woman I didn’t recognize, standing on a cliff, her face hidden. I was desperate that night, crying into a yellowed cushion, praying to a god I wasn’t sure existed. I lit a stick of sandalwood incense and placed it in the burner, thinking that if I burned something, maybe my prayers would rise with the smoke.

I stared at the photograph, asking for a sign that there was something more than this hollow feeling. The incense smoke curled upward, and I felt foolish. I blew out the flame on the incense, and a thin wisp of smoke lingered, then drifted toward the photograph as if pulled by an invisible breath. I leaned closer, and in the glass of the frame, I thought I saw a shape, a suggestion of a face, watching me. I stood up, a chill running down my spine, and as I turned to leave, the air thickened with a sound like the sea, but deeper, like a whale’s song played in reverse. It wasn’t scary at first; it felt like a warm blanket wrapping around my shoulders, a pressure at my back, gentle and reassuring. I thought, maybe this is the sign.

But then the pressure grew, pushing me forward, toward the hallway that led to the attic stairs. My feet moved on their own, my heart hammering, as the sound swelled and distorted, morphing into a chorus of whispers, all saying my name, Cora, over and over. The softness evaporated, replaced by a cold, pinching grip on my shoulders. I tried to stop, but a force shoved me up the attic stairs. The door at the top was ajar, and I could see a faint, sickly light flickering inside. The whispers grew urgent, frantic, and I could feel a presence breathing down my neck, its breath smelling of burnt matches and wet earth.

I didn’t want to go in, but my body moved without my consent. I stepped into the attic, and the door slammed shut behind me. The light came from a candle on a table, burning with a green flame. Scattered around it were photographs, all of the same woman, but in each one, she was closer to the camera, until in the last one, her face was a blur, and her eyes were black pits. In the corner, there was a rocking chair, and in it sat a doll, a porcelain thing with cracked skin, wearing a yellowed lace dress. The whispers resolved into a single voice, a woman’s voice, crackling like old paper. ‘You called, and I answered.’

I wanted to scream, but my throat was frozen. She stepped out of the shadows, a woman in a gray dress, her features shifting like smoke. She was the woman from the photograph, and she looked at me with eyes that held a universe of sorrow. ‘I’ve been waiting,’ she said. ‘You lit the incense, you burned the offering. Now you must take my place.’ She gestured to the doll, and I saw that the doll’s face was now my own, frozen in a silent cry. She smiled, and her mouth was too wide, full of teeth like needles. ‘The candle holds the spirit,’ she said. ‘You must keep it burning, or it will find you.’

The pressure at my back turned to a shove, and I stumbled toward the table. The candle flickered, and the green flame danced. I felt a cold hand close around my heart, and I knew that if I left, something would follow me. I grabbed the candle, the hot wax searing my fingers, and I blew it out. The attic plunged into darkness, and the silence was absolute. I stood there, shaking, and then I heard a child’s laughter, echoing from all around me. The doll was gone, but on the table was a single black hair, lying in a pool of cold wax.

I fled the attic, down the stairs, out of the house. I ran until my lungs burned, and when I finally stopped, I was at the edge of the dried-up riverbed. I looked back at the house, and every window was lit, and in one window, I saw the silhouette of a woman, waving. I didn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t. My grandmother died that night, and the doctors said it was sudden. When I went to her funeral, I saw the woman from the photograph standing at the back, and she smiled at me. I’ve never lit a candle since, and I never say my own name out loud after dark, because I’m afraid she’ll hear it, and she’ll come back. This is real… it’s so real. The candle is still burning somewhere, and I know she’s waiting for me to forget. But I never will. I carry her with me, always.