The Painted Chain

I worked at Little Sprouts, a gleaming new day care perched on the edge of Candlewood, a town that pretended it wasn’t built on a reclaimed mining site. The building was all mint-green walls and rubber flooring, but behind our playground stretched the iron fence of Oakhaven Cemetery, its crooked crosses leaning like old drunks. My class, the ‘Rainbow Fish’, were eight two-year-olds—more than enough chaos—but I could always count them, until that week.

It started on a Tuesday. I was on my knees, coaxing a crayon out of Marcus’s mouth, when a blur of pink and yellow shot past the classroom door. Before I could even turn, those little rubber-soled feet pounded down the hall, the sound fading toward the supply closet. I sighed. Another game of ‘run-and-hide’ from one of my escape artists. I did my quick headcount: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. All present. I marched to the doorway, expecting to see little Amelia giggling by the cubbies, but the hall was empty, the lights humming a sour note.

I checked the supply closet, the bathroom, even the staff break room. Nothing. By the time I returned, my kids were peeling each other’s finger paint off the table, oblivious. I counted again—eight. I dismissed it as a trick of the light, the cemetery’s shadow flickering through the window.

Wednesday was worse. I was writing ‘D’ on the board when the same flash ran past, and this time I heard a sound—not a giggle, but a low, wet gurgle, like water straining through a clogged pipe. I bolted into the hallway, my heart pounding, and had the distinct feeling that something was just ahead, just around the corner, dragging its feet in a heavy, adult way. I double-counted my kids: eight. Then I triple-counted, my finger trembling on each little head. When I reached the door again, I forced myself to look down the hall, and the length of it stretched longer than it should have, the ceiling tiles blurring into a pale smear at the far end.

The rest of the week blurred into a hazy dread. I started keeping my class closer, their sticky hands always within reach, but the running and the gurgling never stopped. On Friday, I found a small, dirty doll in the book corner—a rag thing with button eyes and a stitched mouth, its dress stained with something dark. None of my kids claimed it, and when I turned it over, the back was covered in crude drawings: chains. Thick, jagged loops, each one linked to a tiny figure that looked like a child, but with elongated arms ending in claws.

My co-worker Dinah saw me holding it and went pale. She pulled me aside, her voice low. ‘That’s from the old school,’ she said. ‘The one that burned down back in the 80s. They say there was a fire in the basement, and they never found one of the kids. They built this place right on top of the old foundation, same lot. Some mornings I hear it too—little feet, but heavier, like a grown-up pretending to be a child.’ I laughed, nervously, and told her she was crazy.

But that night, I couldn’t shake the image of the chains. I went back to Little Sprouts after closing, let myself in with my key, and walked the halls with a flashlight. The air was cold, even in July. I found the supply closet where the sound always led, and pushed the door open. The shelves were bare, but in the back corner, behind a stack of paper towels, was a hole in the wall—rough, raw, as if something had clawed through. I shone the light in, and the beam caught a chain draped over a jagged edge. Not a real chain—a painted one, in thick, dripping strokes. And under it, written in shaky letters, was a name: ‘BECKY.’

That’s when the gurgle came from behind me. I spun around, and there, at the end of the hallway, stood a figure—small, like a child, but horribly wrong. Her skin was the color of old newspaper, and her arms hung too low, brushing her knees. She wore a faded smock with a rainbow on it, and in her hand she clutched a plastic shovel from our sandbox. She tilted her head, and her mouth opened into a black gash, and she said, not quite a whisper, ‘You’re not one of them.’ Then she turned and ran, and I heard her feet pound down the hallway, not away from me, but back toward my classroom.

I ran after her, my heart rattling, and burst into the Rainbow Fish room. The lights were off, but the moon through the windows cast a silver square on the floor. My kids were all there, lined up in their sleeping bags, perfectly still, their eyes open, staring at the ceiling. I counted: eight. But I knew there were only supposed to be seven tonight—one had caught a fever that afternoon. I turned to run, but the door slammed shut. The gurgle filled the room, and the painted chains on the wall—there were chains on every wall now, covering the fish and the bubbles—began to gleam like wet tar. The doll sat on my desk, its button eyes winking.

I don’t remember how I got out. I woke up in my car, in the parking lot, with the dawn creeping over the cemetery. I never went back. But sometimes, when I close my eyes, I see the little girl in the rainbow smock, holding a chain in her hand, and I understand now: she’s not trapped in the old foundation. She’s the one who’s been drawing the chains, one by one, to keep the children in—and she just added me to the link.