The Candle in the Window

Trigger Warning: This story contains themes of grief, death, obsessive behaviour, and supernatural horror. Reader discretion is advised.

The desert goes quiet when the sun drops. The cicadas hush, the heat slips into the dirt, and the world folds into that deep, trembling stillness that only the outback knows. I wait for that silence before I light the candle.

It sits on the windowsill facing the flat, red horizon. Beeswax, pale and smooth, the wick trimmed to half an inch. I strike the match, listen to it hiss, and breathe in the first curl of smoke. When the flame catches, I whisper Ellen’s name three times. Softly, so the wind won’t take it.

Ellen. Ellen. Ellen.

It started after the accident. After they pulled me from the wreck and said she hadn’t made it. The doctors told me I was lucky, but I don’t feel lucky. I feel wrong. Like the world continued without asking me if I wanted it to. In the ambulance, the sharp scent of antiseptic clashed with the lingering jasmine and lavender of her shampoo, and it made my chest ache with the realization of her absence. That conflicting aroma anchored me in a disjointed reality, as though the perfume of her presence had been scrubbed away, but stubbornly clung on. In that moment, the candle became my lifeline. It is the only thing that makes the nights bearable. It reminds me she’s not gone, not entirely.

The first night I forgot, there was a storm. The kind that crawls over the horizon, black and green, swallowing the sky. I went to bed early and woke to something tapping the window. Slow at first, then frantic. When I looked, there was no one there. Just dust swirling against the glass. The candle sat cold on the sill, untouched.

I lit it straight away. The tapping stopped.

That was three months ago. Since then, I haven’t missed a single night. I time everything around it. Dinner before sundown. Bath after. Then the candle. One evening, I arrived home late, caught up in the chaos of a missed deadline and broken promises. The clock ticked past my usual dinner time, the scent of an untouched meal still wafting from the kitchen. I was too distracted to eat, my mind circling around the candle. The flame demanded precedence over hunger, a schedule altered, meals postponed indefinitely, the obsession all-consuming. Sometimes the wind presses against the house and makes the flame dance, but it never goes out. Not even once.

I like to think Ellen sees it from wherever she is. That maybe she stands out there in the red dirt, looking back at this tiny light and thinking of home.

Outside, the sky is a velvet-black, endless expanse. Inside, the flame flickers gold across the walls, warm and alive. I sit beside it, hands folded in my lap, and let the silence stretch.

Ellen. Ellen. Ellen.

The flame leans toward me as if listening.

The candle has begun to move strangely. At first, I thought it was the wind slipping through the cracks in the frame, but even on still nights, the flame bends and straightens as though it’s breathing. It leans toward me when I whisper. Sometimes, the floorboards creak with no apparent reason, a solitary sound that shatters the silence like a distant echo of things lost, stirring the heaviness in my chest. The flame trembles when I fall silent, restless, waiting.

I’ve started talking to it more. Small things, the kind Ellen would have laughed at. I tell her about the pump breaking again, about the galahs that nested in the windmill, about the way the desert smells just before rain. I tell her I miss her. The flame flickers and emits soft clicks as the wax shifts.

One night, I swear I see it shape a word. The flame stretches thin, then curls into the outline of a letter. It’s gone before I can be sure, but the image stays in my mind, burning bright.

The nights are long out here. Without the candle, I don’t know what I’d do. I keep it lit for hours now, until the wax pools and hardens around the base. I've taken to staring into it, watching the edges of the light blur and pulse. A deep, unsettling dizziness sometimes grips me, as though the very air shifts around me, the sensation akin to being slowly drawn into a whirlpool. This disorientation, where gravity itself seems to waver, heightens the unease. Sometimes I see movement beyond the glass, shapes in the darkness that seem to lean closer, curious.

I tell myself it’s tricks of the heat. Mirage ghosts, nothing more.

Still, I’ve noticed the smell changing. It used to be clean, honey-sweet. Now it carries a faint trace of smoke, like burning grass or hair. When I blow it out, the air feels heavier, thick with something that clings to the back of my throat.

Two nights ago, I heard footsteps on the veranda. Slow, deliberate, pacing back and forth. I stood at the window, candle in hand, and whispered Ellen’s name. The steps stopped. For a heartbeat, I thought I saw a figure out near the old gum tree. Tall, thin, head tilted toward the light.

When I blinked, it was gone.

I should be frightened, but I’m not. For the first time since the accident, I don’t feel alone.

The candle burns lower each night, but I’ve already ordered a new box. I can’t risk running out. The silence of the desert without that golden flame would be unbearable.

I found Ellen’s notebook in the bottom drawer of my desk, half-buried under old bills and a cracked pencil case. She had drawn symbols in the margins, little spirals and lines that looped like desert vines. My mind flickered back to a distant afternoon in Grandmother’s parlor, where she had shown us those very symbols, etched into the spine of an ancient book. Grandmother had whispered about their power as Ellen and I watched, captivated by the mystery of it all. Between the symbols in the notebook were words Ellen had copied from one of Grandmother’s old books, faded and brittle. I didn't know what they meant at first, but when I read them aloud that night, I felt the air change. Desperate and clinging to hope, I thought, 'If I chant these, she’ll return.' The bargaining became my anchor, a thread connecting me to the possibility of bringing Ellen back by sheer will through each whispered word.

The candle flickered more violently than usual, shadows flaring across the walls. I repeated the incantation three times, circling the candle with a line of salt I had borrowed from the kitchen. I whispered Ellen’s name over and over.

The wind dropped suddenly and unnaturally. The world outside the window became still. No cicadas, no rustle of leaves, nothing but a heavy silence. The candle flame stretched tall, then shivered as if caught by invisible fingers.

I froze.

In the reflection of the glass, I saw her.

Not the memory I carried, warm and bright. This was her, taller, thinner, with hair spilling around her shoulders, standing barefoot in the red dirt of the yard. Her eyes were the same, the green I remembered, but they moved too slowly, too deliberately, as if she were learning how to see me for the first time.

“Ellen?” My voice was small, swallowed by the stillness.

She smiled. A flicker of the sister I loved, and then something else, something hollow lurking in the corners of her expression.

I should have stopped, snuffed out the candle, and run. But I couldn’t. I wanted to believe she had come back to me. I wanted her to step inside and tell me it had all been a mistake, that she had only been gone for a moment.

I repeated the words from the notebook again. The candle’s light shivered, and the reflection grew sharper. Her lips moved, shaping words I could not hear over the pounding of my heart.

I placed my hand on the glass, and she did the same. The temperature dropped, suddenly and sharply, like walking barefoot over frost. My breath clouded in front of me, even though the air outside was still warm. The desert was impossibly quiet, and then, faintly, I heard her voice, low and slow, whispering my name.

“Mar…ra…”

I pressed closer. The candle flickered violently, splattering molten wax across the sill. My fingers trembled. She was reaching, almost touching me. The veil between her world and mine had thinned.

I knew then I had crossed a line. The ritual was no longer just keeping her close. It had opened a door, and she was on the other side. Waiting.

I couldn’t look away.

After that night, the house felt different. The air inside was thick and warm, even when the desert cooled. The candle’s flame burned brighter than it should, casting long shadows that seemed to move against the walls. The weight of it pressed on my chest, as if the desert itself had leaned in.

Ellen came more often. Not always in the reflection, sometimes in the corner of my eye. I would glance up and see her silhouette, shifting among the furniture or standing in the doorway. The form was almost real, and yet it was wrong. The shape of her was too elongated, the shadows stretching her limbs beyond natural limits. And yet, in the midst of this wrongness, her fingers would occasionally tap softly on the table, just like she used to when she was nervous or deep in thought. It was a small sign of the sister I loved, piercing through the horror of what she had become. I told myself it was my imagination, but the scent followed me, smoke mixed with something sweet, like honey gone bitter.

I started losing weight. I didn’t notice at first, caught up in the ritual's obsession. I ate little, slept less, and spent hours whispering to the candle. Neighbours at the nearest station mentioned the thinness when they called to check in. They asked why the light never went out, but I lied, saying it was a timer.

The candle demanded me. Every night, I had to be present, speaking, circling it with salt, repeating the incantations. Each repetition made her more tangible. Her eyes, once green, became deep hollows that shimmered with something I could not name. When I reached for her in the reflection, my hand passed through empty glass, and yet I felt resistance, like the air itself was holding her back.

The desert around me seemed to darken at night. The cicadas no longer sang. Only the candle's light cut through the black, fragile, and golden. I started to see shapes in the red dirt beyond the veranda, moving just out of reach, listening. Whispers, low and soft, like her voice echoing across the homestead. Beyond the immediate vicinity of the house, I noticed that the cattle were starting to wander aimlessly, their movements sluggish due to a lack of care and attention. The water pump, so crucial for survival out here, sputtered and failed, mirroring my internal decay. The neglect of these essential duties caused the very land to crack and wither, a reflection of my spiraling obsession with the candle and the ritual. The impacts of the ritual were no longer contained within me; they now seeped into the desert, casting a shadow that extended beyond my control.

I wanted to stop. I wanted to run and throw the candle into the firepit and break the spell, but I couldn’t. Every time I tried, the flame flared violently, as if punishing me for even thinking it. The ritual had become something alive. Something that would not let go.

I realised, too late, that the candle did not keep Ellen close. It fed her. Every night, a piece of me drifted into the flame, dissolving into warmth and shadow. The end was coming; the ritual had grown beyond my control. Still, I stayed. Still, I whispered. One night, I chose the old family photograph, our last family holiday, as an offering to the ritual. The picture showed us laughing at the beach, Ellen with her straw hat tilted against the sun. The moment was dear to me, a representation of happier times. I watched as the flame consumed the edges, turning our memories to ash. With each curling corner, an irreplaceable part of my past was sacrificed.

I knew it had to be the final night. The candle sat on the windowsill, tall and trembling, its wax pooled and hardened over the edges. Outside, the desert was black, endless, silent. I took a deep breath and whispered Ellen’s name. Again. And again.

The flame surged suddenly, bright as the sun over the red dirt. It flared in waves, casting a golden glow across the veranda and the rooms inside the house. I saw her there, whole, perfect, stepping from the shadows into the light. Her feet were bare, her hair spilling like ink, her eyes the green I had memorised. She smiled, wide and slow, and for a moment I felt her warmth, the sister I had loved.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

I reached for her. My hand brushed against the air, and something pulled sharply, dragging a shiver through me. The flame roared, higher than ever, and I felt pieces of myself being drawn into it. The walls trembled, dust and soot falling, the candle’s light stretching beyond the glass into the night.

And then, it was gone.

Morning came, slow and pale. The heat pressed against the house, cicadas stirring back to life. I stepped to the window. The candle burned still, tiny and steadfast, as if nothing had happened. The homestead was silent and empty, but in the glass, I saw her face again. Watching. Smiling. Waiting.

I do not know if she is truly there, or if the flame carried her beyond my reach. I only know I cannot touch it, cannot snuff it, cannot leave it. And as the desert stretches endlessly before me, I realize the ritual will burn on, and I will burn with it, for as long as the candle lives. What other specters might the candle's light call forth, whispering across the red dirt into the solitude of my nights? The answers remain obscured, a shadow lingering just beyond the horizon.