The Stitcher’s Visit

My mother drowned when I was four, a boating accident on Lake Merrow that the police called a freak wave. I have two daughters now, and I’ve never spoken of her. There were no pictures in the house, no stories, nothing. I thought that was the cleanest way to keep the past buried.

One afternoon, my oldest, Lily, who had just turned three, toddled into my bedroom and came out holding a photograph I’d forgotten in a drawer. It was of my mother, smiling in a yellow sundress, her hair wild in the wind. Lily pressed the picture to her chest and said, ‘Mama’s mama.’ My blood ran cold. I asked who told her that, but she just giggled and ran off. She carried that photo everywhere, babbling about ‘Grandma’ and things I had never even described.

That night, my husband Mark and I were settling into bed when we heard Lily’s voice coming from her room. She wasn’t crying, just talking in a singsong tone. Mark went to check. Through the crack in the door, he saw Lily sitting up, waving at her closet door, which was slightly ajar. ‘Grandma’s gone!’ she said happily. Mark smiled, thinking it was a game, and gently closed the closet door. He came back and told me, and as he finished speaking, the temperature in our room dropped. The air grew thick, and I smelled dampness, like river water and rotting weeds.

Then, from the hallway, we heard a sound like wet fingers scraping against plaster. Mark froze. The sound moved down the corridor toward us. Our bedroom door creaked open on its own, revealing a shadow that wasn’t cast by anything. It was tall and thin, with arms that hung too long. I saw the face of my mother, but it was wrong. Her skin was the color of lake mud, and her eyes were empty sockets, dripping water. She held a needle and a spool of black thread.

I couldn’t move. Mark tried to raise his hand, but his fingers were stiff as if frozen. The thing, my mother, shuffled toward Lily’s room. ‘What does she want?’ Mark whispered. I couldn’t find my voice. Then I heard Lily laugh again. ‘Grandma says she’ll fix you,’ she said.

Suddenly, I was struck by a memory I had buried for years. I remembered my mother sewing a dress the night before she died, her hands moving in frantic, jerky motions. She kept saying, ‘I have to make it right. I have to finish the pattern.’ I had never understood. Now, as the thing reached Lily’s door, I did.

I ran forward, grabbing a shoe from the floor, and threw it at the shadow. It struck the wall and clattered to the floor. The thing turned its head, and its mouth opened in a silent scream, revealing rows of small, sharp teeth. Then it vanished. But the smell of water remained. Lily’s voice came again, now sad: ‘Grandma’s mad. She left.

The next morning, we found the picture of my mother torn into tiny pieces, arranged on the kitchen table in the shape of a needle. And on Lily’s arm, there was a faint bruise, perfectly shaped like a hand. She hasn’t spoken of Grandma since. But sometimes, at night, when the bathroom tap drips once, I hear my mother’s voice in the pipes, whispering, ‘I’ll finish the pattern.’ And I know she’ll be back for me.