Dale Wilson passed away in 1951 at the age of seventy-seven. He had survived heart attacks and blood pressure problems for twenty years or so but it was cancer that finally took him down.

But I was there when he passed away and I don’t think cancer had much to do with it.

See, in Dale’s younger days, in the late 1800s, there was this movement in Salem and the surrounding towns. There was this shadow organization that met in secret. They were self-proclaimed men of God that did everything they could to revive the fabled witch hunts that had once flourished in Salem.  Poor old Dale was born into this culture, watching his father and grandpa capture women that were supposedly practicing witchcraft.

Later in life, Dale became more active in the group. He captured several of the accused and, at the age of thirty-five, burned a “witch” at the stake with his father.

Dale told this story to a few visitors that had come by his house to say their farewells. I’m not sure if he was boasting or trying to finally unburden his heart, but he told the tale to anyone that would listen.

It just so happened that I was one of those people. And before you judge me, rest assured that I never participated in those bogus witch hunts with the Wilson men. But I had known Dale since childhood. So when I got the call from Emily, his daughter, saying that the doctor didn’t expect Dale to make it through the night, I went to him.

I sat by his side and we talked about his family’s vineyards, our youth and Dale’s deceased wife. Seventy-seven years old, and that’s the first time I ever saw him cry. He told me that he felt certain that God would turn him away and deny him a reunion with his wife.

I asked him why he felt this way.
“I burned that poor woman,” he said. “I knew that she was innocent, but we burned her. And when the flames licked at her feet and her skin started burning, she prayed to God. When I heard her speak His name, I knew that I was damned for what I was doing. But I just kept helping Daddy and threw more wood on the fire.”

I had nothing to say. What do you say to something like that?

What he said next was worse.

“I heard her screaming last night in my sleep.” He wanted to say more but his voice was weak and I could see in his eyes that he was fading fast.

He looked away from me as a tear coursed down his cheek. Ashamed, he cast his eyes to the window.
And gasped.

He whimpered and reached out for my hand. “She’s here,” he said in a trembling breath. “She’s come for me.”

“Who?”

I looked to the window, wondering if Dale’s cancer was making him see things that weren’t there. But what I saw at the window nearly made me scream.

There was a woman standing there. She wore a white dress that seemed to have been charred. Her face was in a similar condition, her features blistered and burned. But through the cracked pain of her face, there was the faintest sign of a smile.

“I’m sorry,” Dale moaned.

The smile dropped from the girl’s face as she reached up to the glass with a mangled, burned hand.

Dale whimpered once more and then expelled his final breath. And as this breath dissipated, so did the woman at the window.

I stood up from the chair, trying to gather my wits. I called for Emily, wanting to tell her about what I had seen. But I was already trying to convince myself that I hadn’t really seen it.

So in the end, all I said was “He’s gone.”

We covered him with a sheet and Emily prayed over him as we waited for the coroner to arrive. As we left the room, I looked back to the window.
Sometimes, in my dreams, I can still see what remained on the glass after leaving that room: a delicate handprint, smudged with ash.

—
©2009 Barry Napier

At three in the morning I’m awoken by a knock on the door. Then the doorbell rings. First once, then twice, then over and over again.

I stumble out of bed and peer down from the second story balcony that overlooks the entry foyer. Through the glass panel next to the door I see the outline of a small figure on the front stoop.

“Who’s there?” I ask.

My mom’s face, framed on either side by her tiny hands, suddenly presses against the glass and peers in.

“Sarah? Is that you?”

“Mom?” I ask, astonished. I race down the stairs and fling open the door. “Mom?” I repeat, because I can’t believe my eyes. The hospice called three days ago to say she had passed.

“Why did you leave me?”

“I didn’t leave you,” I say as I usher her to a chair in the kitchen, my mind whirling. I start asking her all the questions I’m thinking: “How did you get here? Where have you been the past three days? Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

I have to call someone, but who? Then I remember the sticker on the back of the phone. The hospice gave it to us when we’d first signed my mom on with them. Back when we thought she would die in our house, before she had the stroke and became too much for me to care for alone.

Speaking of us, where is my husband? How could he sleep through all of this commotion?

I call the afterhours emergency number.

“New Light Hospice, how may we help you?”

“Yeah, um, I don’t exactly know what’s going on, but I received a call three days ago that my mom had died. She was at your downtown location.”

“Yes,” the operator said politely.

“Yeah, well, um, she’s here right now. I don’t know where she’s been the past three days, but she’s not dead.”

“Can I get your mother’s name?”

“Sure,it’s—”

“Sarah!” my mother says, clutching at her chest and falling from the chair to the floor.

“Mom!” I scream, forgetting the operator on the other end for a moment as I rush to my mom’s side.

“Ma’am?”

“I need help! My mom’s had another stroke or heart attack or something!”

I’m sobbing, unable to revive my mom, being forced to relive losing her all over again.

I didn’t go see her her last night in the hospice. They’d called to tell me she had a few hours at best, but I couldn’t bring myself to be there when it happened. The next time they called was to say she was gone. As in dead, not as in missing. Or at least that’s what I had presumed at the time. Now I’m not so sure.

“Sarah? Sarah?”

The operator’s voice is changing. It’s getting deeper, transforming from a woman’s to a man’s. To my husband’s.

“Sarah, wake up. You’re having the nightmare again.”

I open my eyes and find my husband staring down at me. He wipes away the tears that have fallen in real life.

I clutch him tight, realizing it’s just my recurring nightmare. The one I’ve had almost every night for the past six months. He holds me as I drift back off to sleep again.

But then there’s a knock on the door.

I know who will be there.

My mother. My ghost. My nightmare.

—
©2009 C. Le Mroch

C. Le Mroch is Courtney Mroch’s horror and fantasy pen name. In addition to writing, she hunts ghosts and is creating a website for restless spirits called HauntJaunts.net, set to launch in August/September 2009.