Candle in the Attic Window(42)

Aunt had never married, though she could tell you one tragic tale after another about the men she had loved. Oh, certainly, she wished to wed (a dozen times, if you believed her), but the men she loved always seemed to flee onward to something else, leaving her behind, a memory, a ghost, although she was a living girl – until two weeks ago.

Without a family of her own, Aunt made us her family, treating Louisa and me as her own daughters, which, at first, made our mother prickle and scowl, for we were her daughters, not those of her sister. Aunt snapped during one argument they had – faces heated to scarlet as they screamed, making me and Louisa wonder, as we crouched under the kitchen table, if such a sound might indeed break the kitchen windows. When the glass did shatter, oh, the four of us simply gaped. We looked all afternoon for the stone that someone had surely hurled, but there was no stone, no brick, nothing physical that might have caused the pane to break. Only those terrible screams.

Aunt snapped, yes. Said, of course she knew we were not her daughters, but where was the harm in giving us a place of our own, a place to run to should we need, a place to dream? And when she cried, tears running down her hot cheeks, our own mother also snapped, gathering her older sister close to hug, and rock, and wipe her cheeks clean. So, this house and its countless rooms were dear to us. Though even Aunt had fled, going to that great unknown, I still felt her here. Felt her in every shadow as a warm hand, guiding me along.

My room was cold, however, the very windows beginning to ice up in the corners. I shivered and bent to the vent in the floor, finding it tightly shut. The little lever did not move until I cursed at it. Even then it moved with a squeal, as though I’d stuck a knife into a living creature. It even seemed to wriggle under my fingers. I pulled my hand back quickly, wiping my fingers on my jeans. Disgusting.

I straightened and set my sketchbook upon the desk that ran under the windows, windows which looked out onto the lake. The storm was deepening now, the moisture in the air and that in the lake combining to throw snow every whichway. At the dark flicker at the edge of the window, I leaned forward, pressing a hand against the chilled pane. The shadow skimmed the lakeshore, seeming like a bird in flight, but there were no wings ... only arms wrapped in a dark great coat. The tails snapped in the rising wind. It was him – out on the lake!

The window creaked beneath my hand, so loudly that I looked down. My hand had made a foggy impression upon the glass and condensation ran downward, warm enough to melt the hint of ice that had begun in the corners. But there was a strange shadow pressed against my hand, only the creaking glass between. I stared at it for the longest time, trying to fathom what it was, and then I realized, it was another hand.

Another hand, and it had no warmth, for where my hand left an imprint of fog, this hand left a deeper imprint of ice and snow. My head came up sharply, so sharply that it hit the edge of the lamp on the desk. But the light was unlit and, through the window, I saw him, the man at the lakeshore, the man upon the rocks. The man crouched upon the roof just outside my window – how many times I snuck out via that little ledge, I could not tell you, but in the summer, there were sweet vines to help me find my way safely down – and pressed his shadowed hand to the glass. He had no eyes – nor even a face, I suppose – for with the swirling snow, he seemed only the impression of a man.

“M?dchen.”

He only whispered my name, but it came clear to me, through the very window. His breath, if it were his breath and not simply a random puff from the storm, swirled against the window and reached me, smelling of wintergreen oil. Sharp and strong and dark, like the planks of the old windmill.

“Come to me.”

I screamed and jerked my hand back from the glass. In that moment, he dissolved, like a snowflake upon a tongue. There and then gone. I was left to wonder if he had been there at all, or if perhaps Aunt’s house was laughing at me, turning shadows into whatever it would.

“What on earth is wrong with you?”

Louisa’s voice came from the doorway and I turned to look at her with eyes that must have been wide, because she came forward with a look of concern. She even reached for me, taking up my hands. Her mouth fell open in a soft O.

“You’re like ice! Did you check your vent?” She squeezed my hands and crossed the room to check it. “Mine keeps closing on its own – something to tell the handyman about, I’d guess ... yeah, yours is open and there is warm air. M?dchen –”

I shoved my hands into my pockets, forcing a smile for my sister. “Just a long day and I – I miss Aunt, don’t you? This place is different without her. She’s here and yet, she’s not.” It was a good cover – because it was entirely true. My strange behaviour could easily be blamed on missing our aunt, and Louisa – trusting, sweet Louisa – nodded.

“I do feel her here, but she’s still gone. I think they call that a paradox?” She shrugged and then reverted to her 15-year-old self. “Dunno – I’m not thinking about words until I’m back in school. Storm’s getting worse; Internet is down. I may not survive the night!” With that, she stomped out of my room and toward her own, as though she hadn’t just shown me concern a moment before.

I closed the door behind her and looked to the window, thinking to see nothing, but there on the other side of the glass was the clear outline of a hand in ice.




Aunt’s house was something of a legend in the city. It was not uncommon for tourists to drive past, snapping photographs, or to even stop and take more detailed shots. Aunt had once found a man prostrate in her vegetable garden (on top of her very kale, she would tell you!), for that, he claimed, gave him the best angle on capturing the uppermost tower room of the build. “The build.” Oh, those words were poison to Aunt. It was not a mere structure; it was her home, she informed people, and quite often called the local police to come retrieve those who took to poking around.