The Forgotten Child

Every year, on the same night, a child appears in my dreams, but this time… This time, I woke up and saw her standing in my room.

Her silhouette was unmistakable against the pale moonlight filtering through my curtains. The same pigtails I'd seen for fifteen years, the same small frame that never grew taller, the same tattered dress that hung loosely from her shoulders.

"You can see me," she whispered, her voice like wind through autumn leaves. Not a question. A revelation.

I had rehearsed this moment countless times in my mind, imagining what I would say if my recurring dream visitor ever crossed the threshold into reality. Yet now, with her actually standing before me, all those prepared words evaporated.

"Yes," I managed to say, my voice hoarse from sleep. "I can see you."

She stepped closer, and I noticed something I had never been able to discern in my dreams—her eyes were mismatched, one blue, one amber, both luminous in the darkness.

"No one has seen me since that night," she said. "The night of the fire."

The fire. Those words triggered something—a memory buried so deep I had convinced myself it was just a nightmare. The cabin in the woods where my family vacationed when I was seven. The smell of smoke that woke me. My father carrying me through flames that devoured everything behind us.

"What's your name?" I asked, though somehow I already knew.

"Eliza," she replied. "You promised you wouldn't forget me."

The memory rushed back with painful clarity. Eliza, the girl from the neighboring cabin. We had become fast friends that week, inseparable during the days, whispering secrets across our shared wall at night. When the fire broke out, I had heard her calling for help through that wall.

"I tried to tell them," I said, tears welling in my eyes. "I tried to tell them you were still in there, but no one would listen."

Eliza moved to the edge of my bed, moonlight passing through her form as she sat. "I know. I was scared for so long, but then I found you in your dreams. Every year on the anniversary."

"Why now?" I asked. "Why can I see you when I'm awake now?"

"Because it's time," she said simply. "Time for both of us to stop being forgotten. They never found me, Alex. They never looked in the right place."

I understood then what had drawn her to me all these years, what had finally brought her across the veil between dreams and reality. The promise I had made as a child, forgotten by my conscious mind but remembered in the depths of my dreams: I would tell her story. I would make sure she was found.

The next morning, I called the forestry department about a decades-old fire and a little girl whose body was never recovered. Three days later, I stood beside investigators at the overgrown ruins of the cabin resort as they unearthed small bones from beneath what had once been a stone hearth—a hiding place two frightened children had discovered during a game of hide-and-seek.

That night, I dreamed of Eliza one last time. She wore a white dress now, her mismatched eyes bright with peace rather than sorrow.

"Thank you for remembering," she said, taking my hand. "Sometimes being remembered is all we need to find our way home."

I haven't seen her since, not in my dreams or in my room. But every year, on that night, I light a candle and whisper her name—Eliza—into the darkness. A promise kept for the forgotten child who finally found her way home.