A Candle Burns

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. My curiosity burned like that candle that night as I crept closer. It seemed to burn in my soul like nothing else ever has. I felt drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

As I moved closer, I could see out of my peripheral vision glimpses of light. Daylight through the trees, another world but the same, but older. The light didn't scare me but the candle in the window made my heart race and pulled at me. The cabin had been standing as long as or longer than my family had lived in this mountain region. Each generation remembered the cabin but never talked openly about it only murmurs here and there in the dark around campfires in secret.

I walked closer and closer to the cabin in the woods with the light shining in the window and there was a light shimmering in the area of vision that is sometimes real and sometimes not and there were eerie globes of light floating in and out of my line of vision. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I took another step. I felt drawn to the place that was by unspoken rule forbidden.

I woke that night and sat up but couldn't figure out what woke me. I was 15 with a vivid imagination that infected my dreams. Something in my dream, a clashing of something, yelling, I woke clawing my way through hot thick silence. I wanted to lay back down but looked out my second-story window instead and saw the light from the cabin in the woods. I had never seen the light and it burned and warmed the thick darkness surrounding me as it calmed the drum that beat in my chest. I could feel that candle through the distance and my window as it burned and pulled at me. Why did I know that it was a candle it was pictured so clearly in my head that night?

Another step, the trees around me seemed to brighten, not daylight but I could see the angles in the bark and the green of the leaves. The crunching under my feet sounded soft as I crept through the fallen leaves and a snapping of a twig went unnoticed in the muffled silence. The cabin was closer, the light warmer, and I had a feeling of being watched. My world, my home, and my family faded behind me as I stepped closer. I didn't feel like I should run or back away I was being drawn towards that beautiful candlelight shining warmly in the window in the cabin in the woods and the light around me fading in and out of my reality. I wasn't scared I was drawn.

I have lived in my family's home since I was born. The main house always goes to the oldest child a family legacy, but aunts and uncles live close by we are a close family. The house has been added to little by little over the generations. The cabin in the woods has always been behind the house. It has sat all these years quietly waiting never changing. No one knows or at least tells the history or its story only that it sits, and we never go near it. It is far enough behind the main house hidden among trees and ferns to not be seen until the candle started burning on the hot summer night of my 15th year.

I stepped closer I was close enough to make out the candle it was a long-tapered beeswax candle in a homemade clay holder with a fingerhold to carry it with. The flame was a warm yellow that only illuminated the windowsill it was sitting on, and the aroma of bees and honey drifted my way. The window had no glass, and it was open to the night, but the flame burned bright as if protected from the night air. The trees around me were brighter as if the sun was coming up on the distant horizon, but it was the middle of the night when I awoke from my dream.

I felt as if the night had rushed by and was nearly over. The cabin within was dark and I felt something behind the candle watching and waiting. My thoughts drifted around wondering had the watcher watched all these years? The lights around me swayed in and out of my vision each one radiating a feeling of knowing and of watching. I was so close and the unspoken rule of staying away from the cabin flitted through my head, but I just as quickly pushed it away. I had a quick thought that no one would know since I was the only one up.

There was a door next to the window and it was shut tight. I noticed a string hanging from a hole and wondered if it had always been there. I also remember I forgot my flashlight and wondered why I could see in the middle of the night details of the cabin like the string. The air around me was cool like early morning and I faintly heard noises not quite within my hearing like a whisper but not quite there. The whispers sounded like the breeze through the leaves in the autumn as they are changing color and falling from the trees. But it had been summer, and everything was lush and green.

I stood next to the cabin if I took 2 more steps would I have touched it? I took my eyes off the memorizing candle and looked at the cabin and saw details unseen before. The door, the logs, the window, the roof with cedar shakes, and their rough-hewn appearance. They do not look brand new but had an age to them that was worn but not rotting as they should have been.

I was sweating and it dripped off my chin, my fingers, and down my back. I was breathing deeply like it was hard to breathe but I wasn't faint or tired. The trees weren't dark and spooky anymore I could see the shape of them the outlines of leaves with the brightening of the sky but also the stars of the night that we had looked at before bed. Outside the cabin, it was filled with soft subtle light and the globes floating in and out. Inside it was dark as ink and when I looked in the window it felt thick.

I felt dizzy as if I were in two places at once. I remembered the string on the door from a story I read in school. The string was a latch string an old way of locking a door. If the string was out, you pull it, and it opens the door. If the string was in the house the door was locked. I took two steps and grabbed the string. The light burned brighter, and the wind began to rush around the cabin, but the candle didn't move, its steady flame grew and pulsed like my heart and my sweat dripped off of me like rain.

I pulled the string, and the door opened, blackness oozed into the doorway and my vision. Everything around me fell away and I heard screaming and cursing, firing guns, whistling projectiles slicing the air around me. There was a blur before my eyes the sky was bright the trees were vivid but not quite the trees that I had just walked through. I smelled the acid smell of woodsmoke, blood, horses, unwashed bodies, and something intertwined that was thick and rotten. The turbulence around me shook me but I stood strong in my fear and determination.

We had horses and I hunted with my dad and my children the smells of that night are the same but different in a distant way. The woodsmoke was like winter bonfires that have simmered after a long day. The feeling in the air was savage, thick with hate, anger, remorse, death, and grieving. The yelling and the screaming chilled the sweat on my back. I felt the struggle of life being ripped from space and time. I felt torn in half by the sounds, smells, and emotions rolling around me. I felt like I was being bashed against rocks and there was no ending in sight as each wave of violence crushed me against the next. What seemed like hours lasted only moments and left an impression on me that is just as strong today as it was those years ago.

As quickly as it began it stopped as I dropped the string on the door and the candle went out. Hadn't the door opened? The night crashed in on me I felt raw as the summer heat enveloped me. Everything went black and I was on my knees next to the cabin in the woods that no longer had a candle in the window. My breathing slowed and the thoughts racing in my mind finally started putting themselves in order. I remember being there on my knees and at 15 felt like what I thought an old man felt like. I tried to remember why I was there and what brought me to this forbidden place. I wanted to remember everything I felt and saw but it was like a vivid dream.

Slowly the night sounds crept in, my breathing slowed, and I was chilled to the bone. I smelled wood smoke and I thought for a second it was coming back for me, but I remembered the family campfire earlier. My pajama pants were soaked from my sweat, and I slowly stood up and made my way home. I stopped once to look at the cabin it no longer drew me towards it, it no longer had the candle in the window, but somewhere inside I felt connected to it, fear of it, but protective of it. I knew that night had changed me, had marked me, and had set me on a path I could not and would not leave.

I walked home through those old trees and looked at them differently I knew they were watching. As I neared my house, I saw the small light of my dad lighting his thinking pipe the one with the cherry tobacco. My mother said he only smoked it when he was thinking hard and only on the back steps of our home. The aroma filled the air as he sat watching me. I thought I was the only one up and now I would be in trouble as I slowly walked up with soaked pajama pants and dirty feet. He handed me a blanket and patted the step next to him and asked me to tell him about the cabin in the woods with a candle burning in the window.

As my story unfolded, I felt his understanding, his love, and his connection to that cabin. That night we became more than father and son and as the years passed, I learned and accepted my family's legacy and path.

Years later...

I sit on the step on a hot summer night remembering the memories I have of that long-ago night the first time I was called to the candle in the window of the cabin in the woods. The candle burns one day a year on a new moon on what seems to be the hottest night of the year. Only a few can see it and every year we watch. I have returned every so often and each time I have learned something more and felt something new. The war of good and evil, light and dark wait on the threshold of time we are the guardians, and every firstborn must take their steps. I watch as my daughter walks to the candle in the window and feel that rush of fear as her steps are taken and the destiny of her path is placed before her. Cherry tobacco fills the air as I feel the guardians of the past silently make their appearance to see the next in line take her place.