Stay by the fire

My parents never fought. They had disagreements, sure, but they weren’t the kind of people to express it in an unpleasant way. They were kind people. A little reserved, but in a midwestern kind of way. With that said, there was one time in my childhood when they did not hold back; and I wasn’t supposed to hear it.

It was almost 2 am. I was sick with the flu and had to get up over and over to blow my nose. It was awful, but mom got me a Turtles comic book that I had been reading religiously. It’s amazing how little it takes to turn something awful into an adventure at that age.

I got up and headed for the bathroom after another bout of sneezing, when I heard loud voices coming from the kitchen. It was unusual. I’d never heard them talk like that before. My dad just didn’t get angry.

“We can’t pretend like nothing’s gonna happen,” he said. “We can’t send him out unprepared.”

“So you’re suggesting we drop this on him? Here and now? You think it’s better to have him live his entire life in fear?”

“I think it’s better for him to have a goddamn life to begin with!”

Dad was furious. His eyes were red. Had he been crying?

 

Mom sat at the dinner table, covering her face with her hands. She couldn’t stop sobbing. I’d seen her cry at the movies a couple of times, but never like this.

“Maybe it stops with us,” she sighed. “Have you considered that maybe this is it?”

“Have you considered the alternativ?”

Dad sat down across from her, taking her hands in his.

“We don’t have to make his entire life about it. We don’t. But can we please just agree to not leave him in the dark?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll figure something out. I promise.”

They sat there for a full ten minutes, looking at one another. I never heard the full conversation. But the next day, I was told that my grandparents had died.  They were 63 and 65 years old, and they died at the same time. No one told me what happened.

 

I didn’t think much about that night until many years later. I was 28 when my parents died. Both of them, on the same day, just like my grandparents. I didn’t get the full details, just an uncomfortable phone call from a police officer. Even as an adult, you never really expect your parents to die. Sure, you know it will happen eventually, but it hurts you in a way you wouldn’t know. You can’t prepare yourself for those great pains of the human experience. And if it didn’t hurt, well, then you’ve probably had enough pain as-is.

I was an only child, so there was no one to call but distant cousins and uncles. People I hadn’t seen for years. Among the flurry of funeral bills and condolences, I almost forgot to check what they left behind. It wasn’t until weeks later, while browsing their belongings, that I found a peculiar box. One with a note attached, along with my name. It was my mother’s handwriting.

“Please read.”

 

I brought it into the kitchen and turned on the light. It was just a shoebox, but it was taped up well and good. I cut the side open and bent the cardboard, only to reveal a couple of papers, along with a handful of jars.

“If you’re reading this, we’ve passed on,” one of the papers read. “If it happened before our time, chances are something did this to us. Something we hoped would never happen. Chances are that this ends with us, but just to prepare you for the possibility that it doesn’t, we want you to consider these steps when the time comes.

One. Light a fire.

Two. Burn the myrrh.

Three. Stay by the fire.

You will know the day, please don’t go looking for it. It will be in plain sight.

The myrrh is the sticky resin in one of the jars, there should be enough to last you for a night. The less you know, the better. We have prayed every night since you were born that this would not come to pass, but if it does, you must promise to be safe.

Light a fire. Burn the myrrh. And please, my most darling boy, stay by the fire.”

I didn’t even notice my tears until they touched the paper. There was no doubt in my mind that my mom had written that. She always called me that; her most darling boy. Something in my mind brought me back to that one night when I was younger, where they sat by the table.

If only I’d asked them about it.

 

Over time, all their belongings were put into storage. I thought a lot about that letter, and what day they talked about. I trusted I would know it when I saw it, but there was also that uneasy feeling that I was missing something. They were talking to the boy they knew – the adult me was a completely different person. I might miss something that a younger me wouldn’t. Then again, I didn’t know.

After a while my paranoia faded into the background. I’d inherited my parent’s house in the outskirts of a small town in rural South Dakota. I had a job at the local hardware store and made some extra money on the side shipping stuff online. It wasn’t glamorous, and I knew for a fact that the delivery guy was getting tired dropping stuff off at my place, but everyone has to make a living.

I still kept the myrrh in the living room, right next to the fireplace. I kept the note in a drawer. I knew the words by heart. Light a fire. Burn the myrrh. Stay by the fire. My darling boy.

 

Four years after my parents died, my life had a sense of normalcy to it. I was going out with a girl, and I was looking at getting a Saint Bernard puppy. I’d looked one up from a local breeder and was getting everything ready for him. Life was pretty simple, but in a way that suited me just fine.

It was a Saturday in late April. The sun was setting, covering the horizon in a dusty red. I was charging my phone after falling asleep on the couch watching a documentary. Woke up to a battery warning. It’s fine to Netflix and chill, but don’t get too comfortable or you might chill yourself all the way to a Sunday morning you didn’t ask for. I had lunch with Annette the next day, which I was looking forward to. I’d already laid out my fancy shirt. Ironed it and all.

Then I heard something outside.

“Hey!” a voice called out. “I need to talk to you!”

 

I didn’t get a lot of visitors, but I knew most folks around town. I opened the front door without a second thought. At first, I didn’t understand what I was looking at.

There was a woman there. She was a couple of years older than me, but I’d seen her around town. I think she worked at the flower shop. They had those weird blue sunflowers in the window; I saw them every morning when I drove to work. She had these dark eyes and short curly hair. Her skin was about the same shade as the wood on her shotgun.

Yeah, a shotgun.

My eyes locked on the gun so hard it took me a skipped heartbeat to notice what else she’d brought. There was debris on the ground; something that looked like a smashed chair and sheets of plywood. Some kind of impromptu bonfire. She had this wild look on her face, and I could tell she was stressed.

“This is the day, right?” she said. “This is it, isn’t it?”

“What day? What are you-“

I took a moment to collect myself.

“Why do you have a gun?”

“He told me to bring it. Bring the gun, meet up by the easternmost house, light the fire.”

“Burn the myrrh,” I added. “And stay by the fire.”

“Myrrh?” she scoffed. “What do you mean myrrh?”

She lit up the bonfire with a fwomp. She looked exhausted. She pulled out a camping chair from a backpack she’d brought and sat down, dropping a pack of marshmallows on the ground.

 

I went inside and threw my firewood into the fireplace. My hand was shaking so bad I accidentally pinched a finger. Got a couple of splinters too. I just threw it all in there, spritzed some Firestarter on it, and lit a handful of matches. Another fwomp. The heat burned into my eyes, as if telling me to slow down. I grabbed a handful of myrrh from the jar and threw it into the fire. As I was about to close the jar when it slipped my hands. Trying to catch it just made it worse. I ended up spilling it all over my fancy lunch shirt. I let out a squeal that the lady outside must’ve heard. She said something, but I couldn’t hear what.

I ended up opening the living room window, letting some of the smell out. Myrrh isn’t very pleasant; it’s like burning wet mushrooms. I had a clear view of her from there.

“You alright in there?” she asked.

“Just lit the fire,” I said. “Dropped something.”

“What was that about myrrh?”

“They told me to burn it. They said that’ll help.”

“So you weren’t told to go here? You were told something else?”

“I live here,” I said. “They just said light a fire, burn the myrrh, and stay by the fire.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she nodded. “Bring a gun. Go east. Light the fire, stay by the fire.”

“You know what you’re supposed to do with that thing?”

“If your dad uses his final will to tell you to bring a shotgun, you bring a shotgun.”

“His will?”

We took a step back and started from the beginning.

 

Her name was Marolyn. She was four years older than me. Turns out, her dad died on the same day as my parents. In his will, he’d left something similar to what I got, but the instructions were slightly different. Marolyn had been told to bring a gun, and to head to the easternmost house. There she would light a fire and stay by it.

There were a couple of things we had in common. Our parents were roughly the same age and from the same area. Vastly different lives and jobs though. But the fact that her dad and my parents passed on the same day couldn’t be a coincidence.

I ended up sitting on the windowsill, one foot out the window. The flames in the fireplace flickered back and forth, licking away at the wood. The sun was almost completely gone, bathing the flat countryside in long, cutting, shadows. I offered Marolyn to come inside, but she wasn’t sure if that was allowed. She was supposed to light a fire and stay by it – it didn’t say whether she could stay by someone else’s fire. She wasn’t taking any chances.

I ended up sharing my experience with her. I told her about that night when I was a kid, watching my parents have their first real secret argument. Marolyn nodded, letting the shotgun rest on her lap.

“My dad did that too,” she said. “Right after my grandmother passed. He was up all night, talking to his brother on the phone. Never heard him talk like that before.”

 

Marolyn had a husband and three kids, but she didn’t want to get them involved. She figured that whatever asked her to bring a shotgun to a stranger’s house might be better left unspoken. Instead we sat there, talking about some of the most unsettling memories of our loved ones. Marolyn was the first to state the obvious.

“I think something killed him,” she said. “And I think it killed my grandmother too.”

“Sounds like it. But why would it come for us?”

“I dunno,” she shrugged. “But it didn’t sound like it was supposed to come for our parents either. But it did.”

“But why today?” I asked. “How’d you figure today was the day?”

She looked off into the distance as she pierced another marshmallow with a thin metal rod. The bonfire was as lively as ever, reaching high into the air.

“My dad used to sing me this song when I was a kid. You know Bob Marley?”

“Sure, yeah.”

“Three little birds. That was his favorite song. Sang it to me every night. Come hell and high water, he’d sing that song and tuck me in. I’ve heard every cover of that song, by every singer I can imagine, for as long as I can imagine it. And you know what I woke up to today?”

She raised the marshmallow to her eyes, inspecting it. It was burned, but still good.

“There were three dead little birds outside my doorstep.”

She looked up at me, the fire shimmering in her wet eyes.

“And I knew, you know? I felt that cold. And I don’t doubt for a second that today is that day.”

I looked back at my fire. I threw on a little more myrrh. I believed her.

 

A couple of hours passed. I sat by the window, trying to keep myself occupied. Marolyn was watching something on her phone. I took down a hip flask of whiskey from my liquor shelf. I’m not much of a drinker, but I figured it was as good a day to start as any. Marolyn indulged in a vice of her own, lighting a cigarette. She’d quit about a decade ago when she had her first kid, but she figured tonight was a special kind of wrong. The kind that didn’t really count.

It was almost 9pm when I looked up and noticed something in the distance. Far out, across the field, there was something bright. Looking a little closer, I could tell it was a fire. I pointed it out to Marolyn.

“Looks like there’s more of us,” I said. “You see who it is?”

“I barely see the fire. You sure it ain’t a car?”

“Cars don’t flicker.”

She rolled her eyes at me and got up. She took a few steps away from the fire and called out at the top of her lungs.

“Hey!” she yelled. “You staying by the fire?!”

Someone called back from across the field. I didn’t understand a word. Marolyn tried again, slower.

“You. Staying. By. The fire?”

One word back, one syllable. It sounded like a ‘yes’.

 

By 10pm, there were two more fires across the fields, making us five people in total. None of the others came to the house, and they all kept their distance from one another. Marolyn was rocking back and forth, trying to keep her eyes open. I could tell the worst stress had run its course, leaving her sleepy and warm. That it was a windless spring night didn’t help.

“Hey,” I said, trying to keep her up. “You ought to burn some myrrh too.”

“Hm? Why?”

She shook her head, trying to keep herself from going cross-eyed and nodding off.

“They were clear about burning it. There’s gotta be a reason for that.”

“It smells like old cat, and not like a good kind of cat.”

“You want some or not?”

She thought about it and nodded. She took a few steps closer. I put a couple of resin nuggets in a matchbox and tossed it over. She caught it and shook it, making it rattle.

“A shitty gift for the king of kings.”

“A what now?”

“The king of kings. Lord Jesus, my friend. You ain’t read your bible?”

“I like my books with pictures.”

“Myrrh was one of the gifts from the three wise men,” she said. “Along with frankincense and gold.”

“Gold?” I scoffed. “That’s a tough act to follow.”

“Yeah,” she said, throwing some myrrh on her fire. “It’s symbolic. Gold for the king of earth. Incense for the son of God. And myrrh, well…”

She threw on another nugget.

“That’s embalming oil. A symbol of the mastery of death.”

 

I don’t remember what time it was, but both Marolyn and I noticed someone calling out from across the field. We couldn’t tell which fire it came from. Marolyn tried calling back, but we got no response. After a couple of seconds, I saw the distant flames erupt in a burst; only to die a second later. Marolyn got up, gripping her shotgun. Her camping chair fell over, but she didn’t even look at it.

“Holy shit,” she mumbled. “Holy shit, you see that?”

“The fire went out.”

“He was right by it!” she said, pointing. “He was right by it, and it just… what happened?”

She tried calling out to them again. The words echoed across the field, but there was no response. Someone from another fire called back. I couldn’t make out all the words, but I’m pretty sure I heard the last two.

“It’s big.”

 

I crept inside and stayed by the fireplace. I threw some more firewood on for good measure, along with a few more nuggets of myrrh. There were sounds coming from the fields. Yells. Screams, perhaps. Another fire died close to midnight. Shortly after, I saw movement. Someone was running towards us.

Marolyn was up on her feet with her shotgun at the ready. I could see a pale face running towards us, barely lit up by Marolyn’s bonfire. It was a man, maybe 40, 45 years old. He was running at full speed, his eyes wide enough to look black.

But there was another sound too. Something akin to a gallop, but with a few hooves too many. As the man reached the ditch by the side of the road, something smacked into him. I saw his white shirt disappear into a bush. Seconds later, there was this sickening bone crunch; fractures popping like bubble wrap.

A mangled corpse was thrown out of the bush like a napkin in the wind, leaving a trail of gore on my driveway.

Marolyn’s fire flickered. The embers recoiled, shrinking into themselves. We looked away for less than a second, but the moment we looked back, the man was gone. All that remained was a torn sleeve, blood, and a backpack.

 

Once the fire flared back up, Marolyn scanned the perimeter with her shotgun. There was nothing there. One more fire shone across the field, but they weren’t answering. There was nothing moving out there. Nothing to defend against. We were holding our breaths, trying to hear something. Anything.

I don’t know if it was my pulse or not, but I swear I could hear that galloping noise by the side of the house. One, two, three, four, five – break. That same pattern, over and over. It was big, fast, and I could tell the limbs were of different sizes. Some came in immediate succession; others in a staccato.

Before I could say anything, I saw Marolyn grab a piece of wood from her fire. With it, she rushed out to get the backpack.

 

The moment she left the light, the galloping turned from a suspicion to an immediate threat. It was coming along the left side of the house. I screamed at Marolyn to get back, and she threw herself to the safety of the fire. As she did, something ran past.

It was much larger than a horse. It kicked up dust, and the edge of it smacked into the edge of my sedan. The whole car shifted four feet to the right, breaking the leftmost headlights. The thing just kept going, disappearing into the dark on the other side. I had crawled back into the living room and pressed myself against the fireplace, holding the jar of myrrh like I was cradling my own heart. I yelled at Marolyn through the window.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

“It looked heavy! I don’t know!”

She launched into a barrage of spits and screams. Just peeking out the window I could see her hands shaking as she cradled her shotgun. It was only then that it dawned on me that she was holding it more like a crutch than a weapon. Maybe she’d never fired it before.

 

She opened the backpack. There were a couple of items. A water bottle and a candy bar, along with a pack of cassette tapes. There was a player too, but the batteries had run out. There was a power cord attached, but there was no way to power that thing out there. We had no rope to pull it over to me, so Marolyn decided to throw it. If we got the tape player across, then we’d throw the tapes.

Marolyn counted down from three and sent the player sailing. I was leaning halfway out the window when I caught it. It was heavier than anticipated and almost made me lose my balance. I had to grab the fireplace. A couple of inches to the left and I would’ve burned my fingertips.

We repeated the throw for the cassette tapes. They were all arranged in this sun-bleached plastic carrying case with a lock on it. The flimsy key was in there, I just had to turn it. This one was easier to throw, but we counted down nonetheless. Once I caught it, Marolyn had to do a little dance to get the tension out.

 

I plugged the cassette player in and put it on the windowsill. There were six tapes in total, so I put one on. I turned up the volume so Marolyn could hear.

The first tape started in the middle of a discussion. A cacophony of voices, all struggling to speak over one another. At first one might have thought it was a brawl, but once you listened a little closer, you could tell it was a discussion. As a crowd settled, a single voice came through.

“They all died on the same night!” the voice boomed. “We lost family on one and the same night! Who cares if one lived forty minutes longer than the other?!”

“We have to look at the data!” said another. “Half of them died at the same time! The same minute! Everything past that has to mean something!”

“And what is that?!” the first voice continued. “You think it’s scared of fire?! Of smoke?!”

“Everyone who stayed by a live fire lived, on average, four hours longer! Four! Hours!”

The discussion crashed into another eruption of loud voices. I noticed Marolyn holding her hand in front of her mouth. I paused the tape as she shook her head.

“That’s dad,” she sobbed. “That’s dad on the tape.”

 

The discussion continued. The picture became clearer. This was our parents, holding some kind of meeting. From the way they talked, their parents (our grandparents) had recently died.

From what we could understand, our grandparents had been working on something. Most of them were Stanford graduates, and they had been working on a kind of project back in the 70’s. There were only a couple of details. Something about an echo. A telecom project. Something that they tried throwing in the river.

It had caused their death. All of them. And by various means, our grandparents had let their children know, in no uncertain terms, that now it was coming for anyone even tangentially related. Our parents didn’t know if they were next or not, but just in case they were, they wanted to figure it out. So, they gathered what data they had.

Marolyn found a couple of notes in the backpack. It summarized most of what was discussed in the tapes. Everything mentioned in the background or mumbled as an afterthought; it was all there. That, and a couple of rules this other person had relied on. Find a field to the west. Don’t say a word. Light a fire. Stay by the fire.

 

The people on the tape had tried to summarize what was different about those who didn’t die at exactly the same time. For example, one person had a gun in the house. That person had lived twenty minutes. Another had burned myrrh, that was another hour. One person was drunk, which gave them another five minutes, it seemed. Smoking cigarettes was another four. But the most decisive factor was that of a living fire. All who stayed by a fire lived about four hours longer than those who didn’t.

But they didn’t make it through the night. None of them did.

 

From what I understood, our parents didn’t want to leave things up to chance. A couple of folks who died had several factors at once. For example, one man who had a fire in the house, but smoked cigarettes, had died exactly the same time as those who didn’t have a fire. It seemed a couple of things might either be up to chance, or there was some kind of correlating factor that we didn’t see. So instead of telling everyone to do everything, our parents spread things out, hoping at least some of us might make it with just the right combination of factors.

That’s why we’d been getting different rules. They had no idea what the best course of action was. They had no idea what we were even facing.

As the tape played out, Marolyn’s dad chimed in one final time.

“If that day comes, I’ll be staying indoors, and I will light a fire. If that works, I’ll tell my daughter to do the same. If it don’t, I’ll have her try something else when it’s her turn. And I’ll be gone.”

Then, a new voice.

“This could stop with us,” the voice said. “I won’t drag my darling boy into this unless absolutely necessary.”

Mom?

 

Marolyn moved her chair so that she sat with her back towards the house. Her hands cramped around the shotgun; I could see her wince when she moved her fingers. We were looking at that spot of blood on the driveway. No one said anything.

As the clock crept past 1am, the last light across the field died. Marolyn checked her watch.

“Two hours,” she said. “We’re just two hours in.”

“What?”

“First one went around 11pm. It’s just past 1am. They said those by the fire live about four hours longer.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying we’ll be dead in two hours unless we try something.”

She was right. I felt safe and cozy around the fireplace, but she was right. Four hours, give or take, was the maximum that the fire could give us. At least if the data was correct. We might get a couple more minutes if we combined the other factors correctly.

I threw some more myrrh on the fire.

 

I kept playing tapes as Marolyn flipped through the man’s notes. They eliminated a couple of factors and added a couple more. It seemed that a fire was the only answer; electric light didn’t seem to have any effect. Our parents weighed in on the things they were going to try. My parents did too. They were going to stay in their car and stay together. That’s the way the police eventually found them.

Marolyn’s dad had stayed by a fireplace much like mine. He said on the tape he’d be sitting in his rocking chair, playing music and smoking a cigarette. We didn’t have an exact time of death, but he hadn’t made it until dawn.

“It’s not a solution,” Marolyn recounted. “The fire is not a solution. It’s not a fix. It’s not a… it’s not the whole story.”

“But it gives us time, right?”

“Time for what? What can we do?”

“We can try something. Or, at least, write it all down. If we don’t make it, don’t you want your family to know what happened?”

Marolyn’s face turned ashen. She hadn’t even considered that. Then again, if the tapes were anything to abide by, it was better not to know. Apparently, some folks who were completely left out of the loop were left unscathed. Maybe that’s what our parents had hoped for us. Maybe, by letting us in on the secret, they accidentally pulled us into it.

 

As Marolyn started writing something, I pulled out a couple of papers from a drawer. My hands shivered as I wrote down every factor I could think of. I started with the man who came running. He left his fire, that much was true. But there had to be a reason for that. Maybe it was about to go out?

“Is there anything else in that backpack?” I asked. “A lighter, wood, anything for a fire?”

“I dunno.”

Marolyn wasn’t paying attention. She was sniffling and writing something on a note, leaning it against her thigh. The pen kept pushing through the paper, and I could tell she was getting frustrated. Finally, she balled the paper up and threw it into the fire. She let out a scream, kicking dust into the air. When she turned to me, something in her face changed.

“The backpack,” I repeated. “Can you check it?”

She nodded.

 

There was a lighter, and a handful of what looked like wool. Cross-checking the notes, it seemed that wool was one of the deciding factors. All who had worn some kind of wool fabric had survived for another 10 minutes. Marolyn was just wearing a blazer, while I was wearing a plain white cotton-blend tee.

“What if we add it all up?” Marolyn asked. “Won’t that be enough time?”

“Someone in the meeting tried that,” I said. “It’s right there, four minutes in. They said they’d do it.”

“So? Did it work?”

“You think they’d let us all die if it did?”

She shook her head. Of course they wouldn’t.  Besides, it’d already been established that certain factors seemed to cancel each other out. There had to be a pattern, but we weren’t seeing it.

 

We considered the biblical angle. Myrrh, frankincense, gold. Problem was, there’d been one man with incense, and another man who had a lucky gold coin. Both had died on the minute. That didn’t mean it couldn’t be a factor, but chances were slim that it mattered.

As Marolyn considered setting a trap or even going as far as burning the house down, I heard that sound again. The galloping was coming closer, moving across the field. I could hear the deep thuds as it moved through the mud on the west side of the building. I held up a hand to Marolyn, and she immediately shut up, raising her weapon as she did.

It was darker outside, and the fires looked smaller. As something moved in the field, I saw Marolyn sweeping the shotgun left and right, waiting for something to show itself. I could hear it breathing; these big, long, breaths. The irregular thud of its legs echoed as it dragged itself by, just outside our vision.

Then, a noise. Like a sharp inhale, followed by stuttered clicking. It stopped moving. It exhaled, and Marolyn’s fire flickered. Her breath turned into a cold cloud as her teeth started to chatter.

Her fire was dying.

 

As the thing began to move, I could hear something shift. An intensity. Intention, and direction. It was heading for my house. Marolyn looked down at her dying fire, watching full flames turning into dying embers in a matter of seconds.

“Inside!” I cried out. “Now!”

She took a step away from her fire as something moved down the driveway. As the last ember snuffed out, something smashed into the ashes, sending the pulverized charcoal spewing into the air. Marolyn unleashed the double-barreled shotgun as something ran her down.

She must have hit something. I heard a noise, and the thing changed its angle of attack. It was going to run straight through the house, but it ended up crashing into the wall of the guest bedroom. I could hear the window shatter and the bricks break as it scrambled to get away, keeping the momentum.

Marolyn was mangled; thrown straight through the front door, which hung from broken hinges.

 

I could hear the thing coming back around. It was still moving, turning for another go. Marolyn was out there, in the hallway. In the dark. She was out cold. And it really was cold – I could see my every breath forming in a puff of white smoke.

I broke the third rule. I didn’t stay by the fire.

Running into the hallway, I could hear the thundering coming closer. I took Marolyn under her arms and dragged her back into the light of the fireplace. She got her foot stuck on the corner of my couch. The sudden pull made me lose my balance, falling backwards.

As I lay there, I heard those big steps slowing down. It stopped short of my front door, poking at it. The wood came loose from its hinges, pieces smacking into the floor.

Then I saw a hand reaching in.

 

It had this gray texture, like old leather. Four fingers of various sizes. Not like our fingers, where there’s an opposable thumb, index finger, and so on. No, it was all… off. One finger had four joints. One had two. One was really long and curled outward. It was feeling the floor, its sharp black nails scraping against the wood. It was so gentle.

It was reaching for Marolyn.

I pulled her back a little. Just a couple of inches. That was enough for the hand to retract. All without a sound.

I moved back toward the fire, throwing some more myrrh on. Marolyn’s eyes were open, but I could tell she was concussed. Her right arm was broken, but she didn’t seem to notice. I had to call for help. I didn’t know what I would say, but I had to try.

Picking up my phone, I input my password and stopped. There was a black square blocking most of the screen, and it started making this awful high-pitched sound. I dropped my phone, cracking the screen. Marolyn rolled her eyes at me.

“Point- point four,” she mumbled. “Those- on phone. Died.”

I blinked. It took me a moment to realize she was talking about the notes from the tapes. People who had called for help didn’t survive as long as those who didn’t. Was that a factor?

The fire flickered. I could only stay by the fire if there was a fire to stay by.

Time was running out.

 

As the flames shrunk, I tried to put on more firewood. It didn’t work. The flames weren’t biting anymore. I tried putting on more Firestarter, emptying half the bottle and spraying my fancy shirt with a good handful of it, but nothing worked. It’s like the fire wasn’t hungry anymore. It stopped trying.

I pulled Marolyn next to me, closer to the fire. Her eyes couldn’t focus, and she was barely breathing. If she held her head at the right angle, there was less bleeding.

“It kills the fire,” I mumbled. “It kills it.”

“Make more.”

I tried. Using my matches, I tried setting the frills on the carpet on fire. Then, one of the chairs. The curtains. Nothing worked. It’s like the fire forgot what it was supposed to be doing. Like it wasn’t even fire anymore – it just looked the part.

 

I was panicking. I went through every possibility in my head as the fireplace slowed to embers. Maybe it wasn’t about what they weren’t doing. Maybe it was about what they were doing. They all had heartbeats and pulses. They’d all had dinner. They’d all had something to drink. What if that was the answer? What if it was not about doing something, but abstaining from something? Why had no one suggested that?

My mind was racing as I smacked the firewood around with a poker.

“Come on, come on, come on…”

The thumping returned. Slower this time. Deliberate. And within a minute, something heavy stepped down on my broken front door, making the wood crackle under immense pressure.

 

It got dark as the embers cooled.

I held Marolyn close. Something reached out, and a six-jointed finger wrapped around her foot. She mumbled something as I pulled her away, out of its loose grip. It barely fought me.

I had a couple more matches, but I didn’t know what else to do. I pushed Marolyn behind me, stood up, and took a deep breath. Maybe a little light would be enough.

“Don’t worry,” Marolyn mumbled. “About… a thing.”

Mom’s most darling boy lit the matches.

 

It had gray leather skin. It was so big it barely fit through the door. There were limbs, but different sizes. It’s like something that forgot what people were supposed to look like, and how big we were supposed to be.

The eyes didn’t look right. They were aligned to the sides, like a horse, or a frog. They were big. Too big. So big I thought they’d pop out of their sockets.

I couldn’t even see all of it as it moved. Maybe that head wasn’t the head. Maybe the arm wasn’t the arm. But something like a mouth opened and inched closer, and its teeth were dripping with a charcoal ichor.

The matches slipped out of my hand. All fight ran out of me. I’ll be the first to admit, I would’ve given away anything and everything at that moment.

I just wanted to live.

 

The matches landed on my fancy shirt. The one splattered with Firestarter and myrrh. The tiny specks of resin glowed as the ember reignited.

I looked down. There was a fire in there. Deep, deep inside. I grabbed the shirt, wrapped it around my hand, and blew.

An ember breathed. I blew again. A stuttered click came closer as something heavy dragged itself across my floor. I wrapped my whole arm in that damn shirt and waved it like a goddamn flag, screaming at it to please just work!

And then, it flared up.

 

My entire arm lit up in flames. Half a dozen eyes blinked and turned away as that leathery thing scrambled into the dark. It was too big to turn. It screamed in fear, and I screamed in pain. I stepped forward, as if the flames themselves pushed it back. I stretched my arm out to keep the pain from my chest, hoping the fire wouldn’t have time to spread. I stepped forward – it stepped backward.

It crawled on its belly into the guest bedroom, only to roll out the window. I could hear the crunch as its weight thudded into the bushes outside. Seconds later, the galloping began anew, heading for the fields.

I ripped away the shirt stomped it out. I was burned all the way up to my shoulder. I fell to my knees, as I noticed the cracked screen on my phone light up.

The black square was gone.

I could call for help.

 

I tried to explain it all as a home invasion gone wrong. I wanted to say exactly what it was, but Marolyn recommended against it. After all, this thing tended to attack people who knew about it, according to what we’d learned. It was better to keep quiet. Safer.

We made it through that night, albeit with burns and a severe concussion. Marolyn also caught a compound fracture in her arm. Then again, that’s a small price to pay considering the alternative.

We’ve met a couple of times since. We’ve written up what we know in a way that we can present to children of our own in case of our sudden death. After all, who’s to say this thing won’t return? We don’t know the rules. No one does for certain.

I did look up a couple of children of other people who attended that meeting. Some died that night. Others were fine. It seems that all are not treated equal. There are factors we have yet to understand.

 

In the end, I stayed by the fire. Any fire. Even if I had to become the damn fire. I don’t think that’s what my parents wanted me to do, but in the end, it comes down to what gets you through the night. Sometimes we don’t have the luxury of walking the straight and narrow. Sometimes we have to burn.

I haven’t had another day like that since. I reckon I never will. But if that day comes, and I see three dead little birds outside my doorstep, I’ll know what to do.

I’ll be mom’s most darling boy, and I’ll stay by the fire.