Candlelight

It was winter and I could distinctly recall a draft whistling through the molding of my singular window. It swiftly blew the flame in my candle out. We were only ever allowed one candle and it had to last the week. On this night, its flaming wick had already melted the wax down a quarter of the way. At the time, I thought it would be alright. I was intending to put it out soon anyhow. The fog of sleep had begun to wash over me and I could barely read the words scrawled across the pages of the book I’d reread so many times at that point, I almost knew it by heart. My fingers were stiff and cold from holding the novel above the covers. I never noticed this development until the struggle to keep my eyelids open had become stronger than my willpower to read on. I closed the pages and blindly reached for the nightstand, slowly and carefully so as to not drop it to the floor. The dull thump would certainly wake one of the other sleepers about or below in the house. 

I was lucky to have my own room, however small it may have been. I remember thinking that as I rolled over. There was just enough space for a thin bed and its wobbly side table, a set of three drawers, and the spindle chair I always kept my shoes under when I wasn’t using them. Someone had even attempted to paper the walls at one point before my time but that was peeling now. The faded roses were still a nice view when you noticed them. 

My eyes fell closed under the covers. I was unable to hold off the heaviness of sleep any longer and let my mind start its slow drip of thoughts until they would fade into the eventual vividness of my dreams. 

There was something about the way the book had rested, wasn’t there?

What do you mean?

Don’t you think it was rather soft? There was no brush of the wood to be felt against its cover, no vibration from the tabletop.

You’re being ridiculous…and your hands are too frozen to really feel a thing. Go to sleep.

The last image in my mind though, before I finally lost consciousness, was that of a book exchanging hands in a low-lit room. Almost as if I’d already known what was to come. 

I think it was about a quarter of an hour later that the light flickering shadows across my lids and the hushed shuffling coming from somewhere behind woke me up. I opened my eyes to the room being completely unaltered and empty as it had been before. The only blinding difference was that somehow the candle had relit itself. 

Now, I know for certain that’s not right. 

I blinked the fuzziness of sleep from my eyes and sure enough it was blazing away, still jerking in the wake of the ever persistent draft at its side. I glanced about the room, certain that I’d find another of the maids from next door waiting for me to rouse. 

There was no one. 

I crawled from the bed thinking I’d just missed them, that something was wrong and I should go check. Each step across the wooden boards that spanned my room seemed to echo against the walls like the battering of a ship. It grew so much in intensity that I stopped halfway across to shake the cobwebs of confusion from my head but this did nothing to affect the sound. When I continued toward the adjoined door the pounding of my soles stamping down became so loud that I was certain all nearby could hear it. 

I stood still at the threshold letting the silence crest. It was then that I realized that the deep quiet that followed my crashing footfalls filled not only this room but the next. Either they were frightened in the bedroom over or no one had awoken at all.

I swiveled to glare at the burning flame on my nightstand. 

How can that be?

I turned back to the door and knocked lightly. “Marta,” I whispered, hoping someone had been awake. There was no reply but the sound of the wood in the walls popping from the cold night air seeping in. 

“Aimee and Marta, this isn’t funny,” I tried to threaten without actually shouting. My knuckles met the door once more but again there was no response.

I hadn’t realized my hands had begun to shake until I looked down at the fingers reaching to turn the doorknob below me. We never used this door but for once in a blue moon. The latch would often take some jiggling to undo and the frame had a tendency to squeeze everything immovably into place. I could recall once in the summer having to shove Aimee through from the other side and us both landing in a heap on the floor, cackling and rubbing our knees. I had a feeling it wouldn’t come free from the frame with just me here pulling. 

“I’m coming in.”

I didn’t wait for them to reply if they actually had been awake trying to scare me and worked the handle. As I’d expected, it took some persuading before the bolt unlatched and one good pull from my side gave me access. 

Everything on the other side was straight blackness. 

I froze in place, stiff with the shock of how dark it was in the next room. Absolute solid black - thick as midnight - came creeping toward me from the open doorway. It seemed dense in some way. As if, had I decided to reach out to it, it would feel soft as velvet and cold as stone. My instincts told me to jump back and slam the door closed once more. I would be safe if only it could no longer see me. But I found the more I told myself to move, the more I could not. I was transfixed by the darkness. If I were to run from it, it would most definitely follow. 

The candle. You need the candle.

I stepped back slowly, rolling my feet from toe to heel, never losing sight of that terrifyingly tenebrous room. Each footstep felt as though the risk to my safety was increasing. The further I got away, the closer to the candle, the more likely that this thing would come creeping in after me. 

I reached for it then, sensing the light emanating from behind me and almost scorched the tips of my fingers but never did I take my eyes from the door. The metal holder was warm in my hands when I brought it in front of me. The wick flickering a dance cradled in the pool of white wax it had created. It was up at eye level for me where I could make out its soft form and the threatening shadows just behind it. What do you want, I wished to shout. I didn’t think anyone was listening though, not anyone that would actually reply. 

I took the path back just as slowly because I knew how clumsy I could be. If I wasn’t careful I would trip over the floorboards and send the candle rolling off under the bed or flying straight into Marta and Aimee’s room where I would dare not go alone. 

They have to be in there somewhere, I remembered, but my voice was lost. Even my breathing had tightened so that I found myself gasping and telling my body to inhale and exhale. 

Something started crackling then from a far off corner in that other room. It sounded like a fireplace that had suddenly reminded itself to burn. There was still no light, only that of my singular candle, but for all the world I could hear the wood snapping in on itself in the grate. 

“Marta?” 

This was the first and last thing I was able to utter out into the quiet of the two rooms. 

It was as if the sound had heard me and the fire held its breath because in that moment there was a pressure pressing down on my ear drums. One of those heavy sort of silences that starts a ringing in your ears and threatens to squish your brain between.

And then, like it was a massive relief, the sound of a deep sigh was let off from the pitch-blackness that permeated everything beyond and with it a strange gust of wind that sucked the air from my own room inward to theirs. Marta and Aimee’s door careened into my shoulder hard, sending the candle from my hands to the floor before slamming itself firmly closed again. 

It was all night now. 

I fell to the floor on my hands and knees, reaching around in the dark for the sacred last candle or even the holder it had been sitting in. The dust and dirt from the floorboards clung to the sweat of my palms but there was no sign of wax or metal. A breeze pulled in again from outside and swept up between the boards at my knees making me shiver in my nightclothes. 

Oh God, what to do? What will I do?

It was simple. The idea came to me like a bolt brought on by instincts to survive. I could just go to sleep, or at least pretend to. If I hid under the covers until dawn arrived then all of this madness would end. I just needed to slam my eyes closed and refuse to open them for the next few hours. Nothing could bother me if I wouldn’t let myself see or acknowledge it. 

My fingers slid around searching this time for the leg of the bed frame and gathered even more grime. Something hard and leathery slammed into my knuckles and I jumped back. Somehow, I had gone further off to my left where my boots were. I was surprised at how disoriented I could become in such a small room and wondered how I hadn’t managed to also ram my head into the chair above. 

I scrambled back a bit at floor level and finally felt the quilt meet the crown of my head, then reached back to pull it around me. The wooden frame protested loudly against its ropes, creaking under my weight rolling across its mattress. I would tuck myself deep under the fabric, enveloped and away from these abrupt hauntings, protecting myself until they grew bored and drifted on to some other bed chamber. 

My eyes clamped closed, determined to be rid of this as the clock on the dresser ticked on unbothered by what it had witnessed.  

I tried to sleep. I really did, but my mind had other ideas and wanted me to focus on where the crackling sound had come from. Who produced that gust of wind, had the candle rolled off to a corner of the room, and where were Marta and Aimee? Was I supposed to save them? Could I even try?

I didn’t think I was that brave nor was I strong enough to unhinge that door.

You could go around. 

Can I though? You saw what happened the last time I tried one of those exits. What might be lurking out in the hall? I don’t think we’d like to find that out, not today.

What if it’s gotten them? Imagine how afraid they are if it scared you half to death?

Internally, I groaned. 

I could still picture the way my hands had shaken when reaching for the doorknob the first time and how hard it was going to be moving about without any source of light. How I would most likely fumble into a wall or the chair, but at least there was little that I could break in the room. 

I had to at least check on them, to know if this was all happening in my own little world or if they were actually in danger. 

I peeked up above the edge of the quilt readying myself to leap out of bed again and paused at the sight before me. There were shadows indeed but there was also a wavering glow. 

And of course, it radiated from behind me and near the window. 

The blood drained from my face, my hands and feet. The wind began a pleading howl through the window cracks, picking up higher than it had ever been that night and making the light of the flame dance eerie figures on the far wall once again as if to mock me, but somehow it was not strong enough this time to snuff it out. I could swear the sound of it was like voices begging in the darkness, a mournful choir gathered in the back garden to face my chambers specifically. 

What they wanted, they never quite said; but their song struck me in the chest. It had me bolted in place below the quilt. I would not leave, I could not leave that bed. My eyes stayed wide and fixed straight ahead for there was no way of me sleeping anymore or even pretending to. I watched the almost hypnotic flow of the flickering light against the torn, pattern wallpaper and waited with no hope of this ending soon.  

Someone subtly cleared their throat on the other side of the bed. 

It was such a quiet sort of exhaling, one small cough at the end, that for the draft blasting in I could have told myself it wasn’t real…if it had been any other night. My own breath hitched in my throat. My toes reflexively curled up and in on themselves in tight knots. Everything was so cold, as if all life had been sucked from the room and I was the last remaining ember to be crushed into soot.  

Incrementally, I swiveled my head until my chin was tucked over my shoulder. There it was. Not a candle burning down its wax or even some magically appearing oil lamp like they had downstairs, but a small flame floating a few inches above where the candle holder had always sat. Nothing seemed to be attached but it looked exactly as a regular wick would, like there was something holding it down at its base. A fixed point where it twitched from. Something about it made me feel as if it had its eye on me but to look away at this point would be just as hazardous as to turn my back on the blackness from before. So, I stared at it burning the night away, it never lowering or raising. The angry gusts of nature grew quieter outside and again could be heard the little clock with its metronomic clicks. 

Just when my eyes started to feel heavy, to grow dry from such a long period without much blinking or shifting, the flame let me spot what had been hiding in plain view. It let me see the other face in the room. 

Just behind the glow, they were gazing right back at me. Eyes flanking the candle that was not a candle. 

And with one quick breath, they blew it out.