"Butterfly"

Annabelle was dreaming. But they were not the whimsical, bright coloured dreams of a 10 year old child with not a worry in the world; There were no friendly woodland creatures or tiny, delicately winged women with slippers fashioned of pink blossoms. She did not find herself in a beflowered forest clearing with golden sunlight streaming through the foliage and the peaceful twitter of birdsong sounding through the tree-tops. Instead, she was in her bedroom, in the dark, with muffled yelling accosting her butterfly-charm-clad ears from the kitchen beneath the floor boards and a small sliver of yellow light creeping through the cracked door.

The voices rose and fell as if in a rhythm, almost a song, one that resounded every night in her dreams in the days since her mother had disappeared.

“Left us to fare for ourselves, she did. Said she’d had enough of it, that she didn’t want this life with us anymore. Didn’t want her daughter. Nor her husband. She took off, she did. Always saw it coming, the eyes she gave that damn cop, I should’a known…”

Her father was clearly hurt by her mother’s sudden uprooting. You could see it in his eyes. At 42 years old and the youngest of 3 brothers, he didn’t know what to do with a little girl, much less all by himself. Annabelle didn’t know if he was more upset at losing her mother or at being condemned to another decade with a tiny near-stranger with his wife’s soulful eyes.

The crescendo beneath the boards rose again, climaxing in an enormous boom that seemed to shake the very house, and the illusion was shattered, causing Annabelle to wake with a start from her nightmare, sitting up in the dark and rubbing her eyes. The house was silent; there was no light under the door, the smoke had cleared, and her mother was gone. It had been but a dream. A memory that haunted her sleeping hours, a reminder of days past, when her parents had argued because they were both here in the house and everything had been right in the world.

Dragging her fists away from her eyes, Annabelle waited for bursts of dark, pressure induced colour to fade beneath her lids and her vision to adjust to her surroundings. She took a deep breath, steeled herself, glanced up towards the slightly ajar door.

She was there.

Again.

The shape of the woman slipped behind the doorjamb just as the last jets of colour cleared from Annabelle’s vision. One could almost imagine she had been a trick of the dark, a shadow of a hanging coat turned sinister in a little girl’s mind, a fading remnant of a dream trickling away in the wake of consciousness.

But night after night the woman returned, growing ever bolder until her existence could no longer be denied, materialising at the end of the short hallway beyond the bedroom door one night, reappearing beside the slim, low table against the wall the next. Always a fleeting shadow, just a flicker, a hand disappearing around the corner, a shadow blending with the small, chipped furnishings.

Monday night, Tuesday night, closer each time. And now Wednesday, and the ghost was at the door.

Officer Thorne came by again in the morning. He jotted details in his little black notebook as her father glared at him with barely concealed rage across the kitchen table, a steaming mug of coffee gripped in his white knuckled hand, and the officer returned his gaze with cool suspicion, his pen scribbling furiously while Annabelle stared sullenly at the floor. The same questions were asked again, the same answers given, the tone becoming shorter with each admission until Annabelle was sure her father would erupt. His face was fat and red like a small volcano and Annabelle imagined his mouth opening and molten lava rolling out in an angry wave.

“Was there anything out of the ordinary the night of Maria’s disappearance?” a glance up from the notebook, flashing quickly away from the vengeful eyes across the tabletop.

“Disappearance,” scoffs, “No, nothing.”

“Did she appear nervous? Afraid even?”

“No, like I said, she was her usual self”

“Any idea why she would leave without her belongings? Her purse, her driver’s license? Her winter coat in this weather?”

“I already told you, no!” The volcano erupted; Officer Thorne tucked his notepad away, pressed his lips together in a tense line at Annabelle, and returned hurriedly to the station. Annabelle cleaned up the spilled coffee and the broken mug.

The crack of the gunshot once again signalled the dream’s end and Annabelle’s abrupt return to the waking world. She sucked in a mouthful of air, attempted to calm her fluttering heart and readied herself to face the shadow in the doorway.

But the doorway was empty.

She almost breathed a sigh of relief.

Almost.

The feeling of a cool hand trailing down her cheek sent her rigid, near turned her to stone. It was the lightest touch, like the breeze off a hummingbird’s wings, or a gentle sigh from across a room, floating on the air and caressing her face. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing with all her being to simply vanish into thin air, to sink into the floor, to be anywhere but here. Her panicked mind cycled in a non-sensical rush, sending desperate signals to her body to fly. She thought she might vomit. And then… a whisper…

“My little butterfly”

The terror evaporated, Annabelle opened her eyes. Then she climbed slowly out of bed, tiptoeing gently across the creaking floor-boards to her winter coat, pulling it on over her pyjamas. She followed her mother out of the house, and into the night.

Her mother left no footprints in the snow. Where Annabelle trudged and struggled, sinking ankle deep into the soft drifts, her mother seemed simply to glide, floating serenely across the surface like a feather drifting on a lake.

She was beautifully pale, almost the shade of the snowflakes themselves as they fell around her, her movement leaving their gentle trajectory undisturbed. Though she was not dressed for the weather, she did not hug herself with her uncovered arms as Annabelle did. In fact her limbs seemed to drift slightly upwards, weightless, as if she moved through water, a graceful dancer in a world of grey and white.

They travelled together through the forest, Annabelle gazing in wonder at her mother, now smiling and beckoning, hair wafting about her face in the cold, still air.

The ancient tree her mother stopped at brought back summertime memories for Annabelle, a tiny child climbing and playing amongst the gnarled roots, taking her laughing mother by the hand and pulling her into the shelter of the hollow at its base. Now it was her mother who took Annabelle’s hand, who motioned for her to duck her snow covered head and join her inside the cubby, where fungi was growing free from the snow and the leaf litter was dry. And where a small silver jewellery box sat waiting, tucked in a dark nook surrounded by lichen.

Inside was money. A lot of money by a child’s standards, more money than Annabelle had ever laid eyes on.

“I will always take care of you, my butterfly”

And then Annabelle was alone again in the tree hollow, the whispered words seeming to echo around her, clutching a secret inheritance in her freezing hands.