Little Girl Lost
by Kirsti Mikoda
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
The second time Henry saw the little girl, he was in the basement, re-starting the pilot light for the furnace. He was musing again over the history of the house, intrigued by the fact that the basement still had a dirt floor. It must have been sunk a hundred years before, now hardpacked into glassy smoothness. He got up off his knees, swiping at the dust, and stopped dead when he glanced up. She was standing at the bottom of the stairs, facing him. Henry’s eyes dropped to the girl’s feet. They were bare, her skin like porcelain, the flesh delicate and translucent.
“Helen?” he asked quietly. Henry had no idea where the name had come from, but it was there in his mind, so clear he could see it as if scrawled in a child’s cursive writing on a sheet of paper, the Ls looping like the petals of a hastily scrawled flower.
The girl stood staring, large eyes dark, hands hanging at her sides. She wasn’t transparent. She didn’t shimmer or give off an aura. She simply stood, real as Henry, her blonde hair hanging as motionless as the rest of her.
Henry closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. He remembered the silent urges he had felt at their last meeting, guiding him down the hall. But there was nothing now, only a feeling like they were in a place of utter stillness.
When he opened his eyes again, she was gone. Henry sprang for the stairs, taking them two at a time. He was in the kitchen seconds later, but it was empty. He looked out the back door, opened cupboards, checked the front room and the room upstairs, cursing the whole time.
The next day, he rose early from his sleepless night, took a hot shower, shaved, and went to church.
* * *
“Well, Mr. Edgell, I hope you know the Church doesn’t really deal with ghosts. With one notable exception,” the priest said, raising a hand to stop Henry mid-protest. “I simply mean we don’t do exorcisms.”
Henry considered the man seated in the pew beside him, hands tucked into pants pockets, legs crossed at the knee with the topmost ankle bouncing with buoyant enthusiasm. The priest’s pale blunt face mirrored this energy. His cheeks and nose-tip had a high pink colour, splotchy as if he had just been out in a wind.
“The problem is,” Father Gordey continued, oblivious to the scrutiny, “that people watch too many movies these days. I’m not saying that’s you, mind, but it’s far more likely you’ll find a lack of spiritual guidance is responsible for these sightings, rather than the supernatural.”
Henry leaned back a fraction, considering what an appropriate response to this might be. The one that came to him first was definitely inappropriate for the setting. “I really just came to see if you knew if there were any people in the neighbourhood who might remember some of the families that lived there before me.”
Father Gordey watched him for a moment, and then went on as one might to a child, imagining his superiority would be mistaken for friendliness. “I’ve heard no rumours, if that’s what you mean, no old tales. But the house is old; it must have seen a lot. Who can tell? Just, if you do find anything suspicious, call the police, alright? That’s the best thing you can do for either one of you.”
Henry nodded, but the priest was not done. “It might also help to discuss the personal tragedy you mentioned earlier,” Father Gordey continued, still pinning Henry with an earnest look. “I’m happy to listen.”
Henry smiled tightly.
* * *
In the following weeks, Henry scoured his house, and Helen appeared only twice. Both times at night, always silently. Henry spent his few thrilling moments in her presence looking for signs of distress. But there was nothing. No wounds marring her white flesh, or her even whiter nightdress. No tub water dripped from her dark blonde hair, no scrapes or bruises or strangely angled joints disclosed any hints about why she was here, so silent.
Desperate to prove himself a friend, Henry attacked the boxes piled around him, one after another, flinging the contents everywhere, tunnelling through clothing and mantle ornaments and sheafs of business paperwork, until he finally came upon his prize, locked safely inside one of Nancy’s lunchboxes: her teddy bear. A little brown one that she had never left the house without before the jeering of her fellow first-graders had caused her to hide it under her bed. From there it had made its way to the top of the dresser in her parents’ bedroom as a memento.
Henry had been unable to part with it. On a whim, he placed the bear in the center of the kitchen table and left it overnight. The next morning, he found it sitting in his chair at the table. After that, Helen’s visits became more regular. At first, Henry had been afraid to sleep but soon noticed that whenever she was around he woke easily, at any time, feeling compelled to go to whatever part of the house she was in. As a consequence, Henry fell into the habit of sleeping early and deeply.
He threw himself into renovations in the daytime, going so far as to tear through the wall of Nancy’s intended closet and extended the new art space into the adjoining room, where he removed a vast chunk of exterior wall to install a gallery window. He paneled the new space in select pine, giving the room a deep honeyed glow when the sun poured in.
He even took the opportunity to catch up on back orders at the shop to make the days go by and the nights come faster. And since he was going out more now, to the records building to continue his investigations and to the building supply store for renovation material, he invested in a haircut and did his best at least to check his clothes for stains before he dressed.
Henry also noticed that since his talk with Father Gordey, word must have gotten around the neighborhood about the new occupant of the house being a single man with a tragic past. The ladies of the neighborhood began to visit, at a rate of about one a week. First. the older housewives showed up, bearing obligatory casseroles. They were followed by the younger working set, women in athletic gear out for a morning run or a book club meeting.
They were there to be nice, to show support, to take his measure. They always had time if he ever wanted to talk. They brought flowers at first, wine afterwards, and dutifully following them by a few weeks their husbands appeared, six-pack in hand, ready with an invitation to an afternoon barbecue.
Henry started to put weight back on, and his cheeks regained a healthy glow. Daily work around the house reversed much of his muscle atrophy. He spent most nights with Helen, who seemed to have accepted him as a harmless reality of her existence.
Once or twice a week he found himself sitting close to her on the second-story stairs or speaking to her in a low and comforting voice, as one would to a skittish kitten. He asked her if someone had hurt her. He asked if there was something he could do to help. He told her all about his own little girl, who looked so exactly like her. He grew to look forward to Helen’s visits as he had looked forward to Nancy’s footsteps pounding up the front steps after school.
But this growing trust also brought with it a sad realization for Henry. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t convince himself that Helen was here of her own free will. Her continued presence could have only one real reason, and it spoke to Henry of a deeply buried sadness, a stillness that could only be described as the end.
For Helen, after this place, there was nothing. He put the idea off, knowing it was wrong to do so, but unable to admit that he had come to need her in his life. That he was scared of losing yet another little girl. Then, finally, almost six months to the day after giving Helen the bear, he bought a shovel and pickaxe.
* * *
That night Henry, having had plenty of examples to follow, tossed together one of his own casseroles and met some of his new friends at the pub to watch the darts league. He needed to keep his mind off his plans for that evening. It was after eleven when he got home and tumbled exhausted into bed.
He awoke only a few hours later to find Helen seated on the end of his mattress. He rubbed sleep out of his eyes and took in her solemn look. It was a look he could feel, like stomach-ache.
“Okay, kiddo. Let’s go.” He dressed in work clothes, and they went together down the basement stairs. Henry had set his tools out earlier that day. He already knew where to dig. He had found Helen standing there the second time they met. Throughout their interactions, his certainty had grown, not at anything specific, but slowly, layer upon layer as silt forms a mountain. The knowledge grew in him until there was no room for doubt.
He started with the pickaxe, hacking into the compact dirt at the base of the stairs. After he had torn up a good space, more than large enough to hold Helen’s small body, he switched to the shovel, cutting further and further down, careful lest he should damage any of her that was left. It took hours, and he had almost tired himself out completely when he saw a flash of dirty white at the bottom of the waist-high hole he had created.
He did the rest on his hands and knees, scraping away with his fingers, carefully lifting and prying until he was holding bones, tiny and delicate, and then finally, a skull. It came out of the ground with a small sucking sound, as if the earth, a makeshift tomb for a possible hundred years, wanted to keep its treasure.
Henry knelt there for a long time holding the little, unblemished skull in his hand, refusing to look up at the girl standing at the lip of the grave above him. Still no clues about how she died or who had planted her at the bottom of a flight of creaky wooden stairs. Henry’s hand shook with rage, born of the type of love reserved for the mortally wounded.
He saw at some point that there were now rivulets furrowing the dirt that clung to the indents of the skull, as if someone was shedding tears, but he was too preoccupied to realize they came from him. Instead, he told himself that he had done as she needed, and now all that was left was to phone the authorities. He had to invite them into his home to take Helen’s bones away from him, and along with the remains, the comfort of her presence from his life. An hour later, Henry climbed from the hole and padded up the stairs to bed.
The next morning he rose early. He was at the hardware store shortly after opening to buy all the supplies he needed.
He spent the rest of that day in the basement. First, he carefully replaced the little skull and bones back in the earth he had found them in. He shoveled all the dirt back on top and packed it down tight, with his feet, then with a leveling tool. Next he covered every inch of exposed basement floor with a thick layer of concrete, smoothing it out, mindful that there would be a uniformity of depth so it would dry without cracking. He wanted there to be no chance of anyone needing to redo his work.
Later, after the concrete dried, he planned to paint on a sealant that would give the floor traction and a waterproof finish. As he worked, he rehearsed what he would tell Helen that night when she appeared. How she would be better here at home with him, where they could be together. How his single short life would seem to pass so quickly for her, who had already endured so many more years than her share. For this, he worked slowly and carefully, erecting, by way of his imagination and hard work, a tomb that would last her another hundred years.
Copyright © 2025 by Kirsti Mikoda
