Annamarie

A Phantom Shelf Story

Content notes: Folk-horror, ~2.4k words. This was written as an entry for The Phantom Shelf Game hosted by Asteria Geisterblum

---

I died last week.

Not everyone was all that sad about it though. I knew my big sister was real broken up over it– she may as well have been Mama herself, she took care of me all the time. I know she loved me, I can tell she still does. Mama was there too, crying big fat tears over the casket and casting her eyes around to make sure that everyone saw how torn up she was about the loss. Father Freeman read aloud some words from the Good Book and offered his sympathies in that cold, serious preacher voice that sounded more demanding than mournful.

Other kids who never talked to me were there, and my teacher and people from the village that I didn’t even recognize. They had all these pretty flowers that they crowded up on the table next to a picture of me. Everyone got out their tears real good and hugged my mama and sister and patted the heads of my little brothers while they lowered me into the ground and covered me up with dirt. They all said the prayers I used to say along with them and then everyone went home, except for me.

It sort of seemed like I was supposed to do something after all that, but I just hovered there over the hole in the ground and witnessed. It was strange, I felt a lot like my own self but at the same time… I was certainly not. I’m all made up of cobwebs now, and I can just tell I was weaved by something wiser.

Wise enough at least to know that there weren’t many other souls just meandering around. I needed to be somewhere, I just wasn’t sure where yet. As I would with any other problem that ached me in life, I sought out my sister. It was a strange feeling to float through the village that I was playing and running in just the other day.

It didn’t take me long to realize that drifting around the house wasn’t going to attract me the attention I needed. No one could see me. I thrifted through the foggy little threads inside and tried to strum up some solution. After a moment, it came to me: Night. No one ever saw a ghost during the day.

I waited til after dusk, Mama went off to her room and Pammy came back to the kitchen after putting the boys to bed. I watched over her as she turned on the lamp and put a kettle over the wood stove, preparing a cup of tea. She seated herself and her drink at the little table, then opened up her faded deer-skin notebook.

Something shifted in my webbing, a little hum that wasn’t there before. It was dark outside now, and Pamela was writing down her feelings about the day in her private notes. There was an openness to the air that felt like a doorway I could step through. I teetered forward just-so.

It felt like a blink, but I couldn’t really do those anymore. A moment of darkness and all of a sudden I was staring up at Pammy from below, the scratching of her pencil on the page was grating right next to my ear. Her hand moved a little too rapidly across the page and knocked into the side of the cup— I jostled and warbled around in a swishing motion for a few seconds. Pammy’s scraping pencil paused as she took notice of her drink. Her eyes widened in shock, she picked up the cup and sloshed me around as she took a closer squint.

“What in the hell? Annamarie? I– You–” She set the cup down and pushed her chair back from the table.

Dang… I didn’t mean to scare you.

She didn’t seem to hear me, just sat there dumbstruck. I tried another wiggle forward into the space Pam’s feelings were keeping open. Another not-blink.

Hovering again over the table, I made for a grasp on her pencil. The whole notebook set-up seemed to glow with that inviting sense that let me interact with the world. It was difficult to write and maybe just as hard to read, but I got a message scrawled out.

Pamela looked at the notebook once the pencil had spent a good minute staying still, and her eyes just about popped out of her head as she looked it over, “‘Help me.’ Oh– oh, Annamarie, no…” Her hand rose up over her mouth and her eyebrows drew close together as the tears welled up.

After a few minutes, Pammy stood and cleared up the table. She tucked her notebook into a bag and threw her shawl over her shoulders, heading for the door. Before she left she turned back to the room and whispered aloud, “I’m going to get help Anna. You should be with the Lord.”

The look on her face wasn’t sad anymore, she looked like she was ready to run straight up to God to ask him why he forgot me.

---

Instead of going directly to the boss, Pammy went to his assistant. The pastor slept in the room at the back of the chapel, real close to God. I guess maybe he forgot how close because he had a face like a demon when he finally opened the door to Pam’s repeated knocking– all red and veiny, and full of that wrathfulness we ought to know better about.

When she told him that she thought she was being haunted, his anger turned into something else. His eyebrows raised and he seemed to be listening, but there was something smug about the smile that was slowly building in the corners of his mouth.

Father Freeman offered prayers and blame, and something else I can’t quite name.

“What I can tell you is that your connection with the Lord is tied directly to your sister being welcomed beyond the Gates. Maybe you’d consider lending a hand with keeping the chapel tidy, or… Well, your family has been late on the tithe– We could work something out, as I’ve said before, so that our Lord knows your family is devoted and worthy. Annamarie was a good servant to the church.” His lips curled up like a snake, all twisted and leering.

“I– I’ll pray on it. Thank you, Father.” Pammy took a step back and the pastor nodded.

“I’ll ask your mama about it tomorrow. She appreciated that we took your sister under the arm of the Lord when she started misbehaving, I’m sure she’ll approve.” He shut the door with his little snake grin still in place.

Pam’s shoulders were hunched as she walked away from the chapel, down through the village center. Floating behind her I thought she was sad again, but her pace was steady and direct. Pammy was heading on a determined path through the village, past the center shops and down toward the crossroads near the river. The trees grew closer together around here, but not so tightly that you couldn’t hear the water rushing somewhere within the green wall.

A left at the crossroads, down the dirt road that the forest was slowly starting to claw back. Past the signs warning wanderers to turn back and trespassers to beware. Over a rickety bridge that you couldn’t pay a single man in town to come out and repair. And up to the door of a house that every mother told her children to stay away from.

Pammy paused, whispering under her breath, “Here’s hoping this won’t damn me as wholly as the Pastor would…”

---

The Witch opened after the first knock, Pam’s hand still midair as the door swung inward. The little shack was decorated with a slew of roots and stems, petals and powders, and jars full of strange substances. Mama would have called them the tools of a sinner, but I think she was a little confused about the concept of sin herself.

There was something about the lantern shining yellow-orange light from the table, like it held its own heartbeat. It was thump-thump-thumping and before I knew it, I was floating over the light and squinting into the flame. Pammy gasped when the front door shut behind her, but she wasn’t looking at the door or the Witch. She was staring right at me.

Pammy?

“Annamarie!” She rushed forward, arms outstretched, but her embrace went right through me. I still felt it though, a little tickle of warmth ran along my webs before Pammy dropped her arms forlornly.

“Yinz got a soul caught betwine,” the Witch drawled out, frowning toward us.

“You see her? Oh thank goodness! Father Freeman didn’t believe me. Annamarie should be with the Lord.” Pam’s words rushed out all on top of each other.

“Mmm,” the elderly woman grunted and mumbled something bitter under her breath. “Men ordained by the Devil hisself.” The Witch settled herself at the little table, and waved her gnarled fingers toward the other chairs. Pammy sat herself gently, and I hovered over the final seat quite politely. They both stared at me for a moment.

“What’s holding?”

“I– I don’t know what you mean. She had a proper burial, she prayed like she should, she was a good kid.” Pamela’s eyes teared up, her voice creaking upward like an ungreased hinge.

“Ah,” the Witch rumbled, “An’ who killed her?”

Pammy’s eyes went wide. Mine did too.

Killed me? I didn’t actually remember dying. They’d said it was an accident at my service.

Before Pam had a chance to respond there came a shuffling from outside. The Witch raised a finger to her mouth in a hushing motion and the lantern went out. Vigorous knocking rattled the front door in its frame.

When I adjusted to the sudden dark I noticed the Witch had disappeared, Pam stumbled toward the door in the unfamiliar darkness. Behind it stood the Father, all red-face with a sweat worked up. He looked angry again, but those hidden scales must have caught against the moonlight because I watched his eyebrows crease up with concern while his eyes stayed sharp.

“Oh my dear girl– What have you done?” Father Freeman gripped Pammy around the shoulders and drew her outside, talking at her like she needed forgiveness. He chastised her for coming out here and hustled her along back toward the village proper, offering her a chance to confess and admit what the Witch had told her.

“That woman– No. That she-devil– she’ll put thoughts in your head. Ungodly sorts of thoughts. You can’t trust a lick of what she says! Now then, what did she tell you?”

Pamela frowned, the pastor was entirely too eager sounding about this all. Their path shifted, I don’t know if Pammy noticed that they went down the wrong bend in the crossroads. The woods got thicker, and there was a cold thread weaving itself into my webbing as they walked toward the river.

Father Freeman prodded and pried while Pammy replied with quiet statements of surprise and contrition but beat around the bush about what had been said in the Witch shack. As they arrived at the shore of the river she stopped. The pastor, still gripping her around the shoulders, stuttered to an awkward stop beside her, then pushed her closer to the river.

“Come my child, wash away the taint of that sinner. Come back into the embrace of the Lord.”

Pam resisted, slowing their approach to the waters edge. The water itself seemed to pulse unnaturally, more than just lapping against the banks or the rushing of rapids. I floated forward.

Her heels dug into the sandy dirt at the river’s edge, “Is this what you did to Annamarie?!” She wrenched against the pastor, but he held fast and dragged her waist deep into the rushing stream.

I felt it then. The thread of connection, the wizened whispers. I felt the cold grip of river water pulling me under, the breath stolen from my lungs, the weight of the sins against me. Holding me down, holding me back from freedom and peace. The water was dark, dark now and dark then too.

How tragic. A little girl fell into the river– Pastor found her on the bank this morning. Second one this year.

There’d been swirling rumors that the Witch was responsible for the first girl, and admonishments of mothers who ignored their ken– but those were lies, manipulations. Snake-tongued forked words meant to send you down the wrong turn at the crossroads, while the Devil got his due down by the riverside. And now he was coming for Pammy.

I saw his fury through Pam’s eyes as he tried to force her head under the surface, the scene overlapping with other memories of the same sin repeated on other darkened nights. Unholy baptisms. I felt them too, the other woven girls wandering in the shadows, waiting for now. They waited for me too, but I just wasn’t strong enough.

Pam was. Her head went above and below, gasping with the breath of girls long drowned, scrabbling against the pastor with every bit of strength she had. Father Freeman held her underwater for a few moments, his grin growing wide as Pam’s movements slowed and then stopped. He let up the pressure and laughed to himself, turning back toward the shore.

Woven silence bubbled up around Pammy, lifting her from the water without even a ripple. She stood and waded through the river mutely, hand clenched tight just below the surface as she came up behind the pastor.

His snaked grin faltered when the stone cracked against the back of his skull. I felt our hands inside of hers as she climbed onto his back and held him under. She was crying again, but it was different this time.

“I’m so sorry Annamarie… I wish I had known sooner…”

It’s okay, Pammy. I wish I had too.

She rubbed her hands against her arms, shivering as she reached the banks. I felt the warmth of her touch.

“Did it work?”

There wasn’t a soul left to answer, the woven girls now free and the sinner sinking deeper and deeper.

I touched Pammy on the shoulder as my little webs began to unwind and drift away. I think she felt it, just that one last time.

I love you, Pammy.

“I love you too, Annamarie.”

---