Knots and Stitches

They only came when she dropped a stitch.

That was the first thing he heard in that house. He hadn’t even knocked yet—just stood there, shivering slightly on the porch, unsure whether the sound of the sea in the distance was real or imagined. The wood beneath his feet creaked like it had a memory of him that he didn’t share.

Inside, something moved.

And then the door opened, as if it had been expecting him.

He didn’t remember climbing the hill. Not really. One moment he was walking through the town, then the forest, then a crooked fence and a garden overrun with ivy and silence. The house was there like a breath held too long. It wasn’t ominous, but it wasn’t welcoming either. It simply was.

She stood in the doorway like she’d been knitted into it. Part of the frame. Part of the history. Pale, but not frail. Quiet, but not weak. Her eyes didn’t ask why he was there. Only whether he’d stay.

“I don’t know where else to go,” he said, and hated how small his voice sounded.

She opened the door wider.

That was enough.

He slept in the attic, curled beneath a quilt that smelled faintly of smoke and lavender. Moths fluttered against the eaves like lost dreams. The rain came that night, soft and persistent, like someone tapping to be let in.

He didn’t ask questions. Not that first night. Not the next morning either, when she handed him tea the colour of rust and honey, and watched him drink it as though memorising his shape.

There were things you didn’t ask, when the air was that still.

But he noticed.

The way she walked like someone used to silence. The way her hands trembled when they passed over wool. The way the corners of the house were full of something. Not dust. Not time.

Something else.

It wasn’t until the third evening that he saw one.

She was sitting by the hearth, fingers dancing through yarn the colour of stormclouds, when a shape began to form beside her. Not solid. Not shadow either. More like... absence made visible. It hovered. Flickered. Then sat cross-legged on the floor, hands in its lap, waiting.

He said nothing.

She didn’t introduce them.

He didn’t sleep that night.

By the seventh day, he had questions. But by then, he also had awe.

He asked to learn. She nodded, but didn’t smile. Placed a ball of yarn in his palms as gently as a bird’s egg. It shimmered faintly. He couldn’t name the colour. Something between memory and regret.

Knitting was harder than it looked. The needles clacked like bones. His fingers cramped. He dropped stitches. Swore once. She raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“You have to feel it,” she murmured finally. “Not think it.”

That was when he realised. This wasn’t craft. It was conjuring.

Ghosts began to appear more frequently now. Not always human. One was the shape of a song someone had forgotten. Another was laughter with no mouth. One was a woman with a hole in her chest, where her heart should have been.

He didn’t ask their names.

But they looked at him. And sometimes, he thought he understood.

On the fourteenth day, he told her his own name.

“Kit.”

She looked at him a long moment before replying. “Elva.”

They shook hands like that moment mattered.

Kit told her fragments. That he’d run. That his father had found the dress hidden beneath the bed. That the shouting had cracked something inside him that no apology could mend. He didn’t tell her the rest. Not yet.

But she nodded like she already knew.

“Can you knit someone who isn’t dead?” he asked on the twenty-first evening.

Elva didn’t answer. She simply stood, left the room, and returned with yarn that shimmered like fire seen through tears.

Together, they began.

The figure that emerged was not beautiful. Not gentle. It snarled. It wept. It changed shape constantly. Boy. Girl Child. Storm. But it existed.

It stood. Walked. Laughed with its whole body. Sat with Kit sometimes and whispered things that made him blush or cry or laugh until his ribs ached.

He named it “Me.”

Something shifted.

The ghosts no longer hovered. They danced. Sang. Played. The house itself began to breathe differently. Kit saw Elva smile once. Just a crack at the corner of her mouth, but it softened the whole room.

Then, the storm came.

Not outside. Inside.

He came downstairs one morning to find Elva gone. No fire. No needles. Only silence.

And in a chair, with an indifferent expression, was himself.

Or something that wore his face.

He froze.

The ghost smiled. “She lied to you,” it said. “You’re not real.”

Kit tried to speak, but the words caught on something in his throat.

“You’re a wish,” the ghost said. “An apology with legs. You’re the version of someone she lost. Made again. Nicer this time.”

Kit’s knees buckled. “No. I, I feel, I am—”

“You are what she couldn’t forgive herself for losing.”

The ghost leaned in close. “Do you want to see who you really are?”

And it changed.

Hair silver.

Eyes fierce.

Marian.

Elva appeared then, in the doorway. She looked older. So much older.

“Marian,” she whispered.

The ghost turned. “Hello, Elva.”

“I made you. Again and again. But I never made you angry. I only ever stitched the parts of you that loved me back.”

“And now?”

“Now I’ll stitch the truth.”

She picked up her needles. Her hands shook. But she began.

Yarn the colour of thunder.

Stitch by stitch. Tear by tear.

Not perfect.

Not pretty.

But real.

And when the last loop tightened, Marian was gone.

…

Kit sat alone. The fire crackled. The yarn in his lap felt colder now. He looked at his hands. Still real. Still trembling.

Elva sat beside him.

“You are not her,” she said gently.

“I’m not me either,” he replied.

“You’re both.”

Kit looked at her.

And then, slowly, began to knit again.

The house on the hill still stands.

Ghosts still come, but not because a stitch has been dropped.

They come because a boy and an old woman sit by the fire and make space for the ones the world has forgotten.

They come because someone, somewhere, believed that acceptance could be made from yarn and grief and memory.

And maybe, if you listen closely to the wind one night, you’ll hear it too.

Tap, tap, tap.