The Last Fire

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. It burned red. And it burned for a reason….

I looked to my left as far as I could see, ignoring the potential safety that the small, creepy cabin offered. The sun was setting in a fiery orange glow on the horizon, and my fire was dying as well. I stoked and added some kindling to coax the failing embers enough to find some larger hardwood branches that would sustain my warmth just a little longer.

To my right, he stood staring at me. Two blood-red irises laser-focused on my forehead. I thought I had lost him long ago. Long before the air was lost and the seas turned black, sending schools of fish to die slowly on the beach. He had returned only recently, late and dark with no moon … and no sound.

“Ray?” I choked out the question. “Why’d you come back?”

His red, unblinking eyes worked to burn their way through my skull. I turned my back to him, yanking my knife from the sheath at my hip. “Fire’s dying. Help me get some wood?” I asked, though my tone made it more of a command.

The heavy, sluggish footsteps stomped and thunked as he followed behind me. “Remember the last thing you said to me, Ray?” I asked, turning back briefly to catch his crimson gaze. The large man said nothing. “I remember, Ray. I remember everything.” I said, stacking a few sticks in the man’s brawny arms. “Don’t … ever … let the fire go out.”

But it had. He knew it. Of course he did. Why else would he have come back?

“Ray…?”

Head cocked back at a grotesque angle, he was looking up. His eyes were glowing puddles of azure now, reflecting the undulating streams of blue and purple waves of preternatural light above us that had, in the past, been a majestic, awe-inspiring sight. A rare and exquisite example of the natural beauty that surrounded us. It had become a warning. A sign. A siren call answered by a darkness that would descend to engulf us, except for our tiny point of light.

“Ray…? The wood…?”

But Ray didn’t answer. Or wouldn’t.

“I couldn’t help it, Ray. I didn’t sleep for days after you left. I had to close my eyes. I didn’t mean it. It wasn’t completely out. Not really.”

But that wasn’t true. The embers were black when I woke, and a hot streak of terror had run through me as I struggled to restart it. And then I had dozed again, mere minutes before Ray returned this time.

“Ray. Set the wood over here.”

I put more wood on the fire, and Ray sat. Dropped actually, on to the frozen ground. He seemed empty. Depleted.

I felt the same. Though I tried my best to hide it from the husk of my brother. I couldn’t let him know my true emotions, raw and soured by my failures. Even this dull, soulless version of Ray didn’t deserve to suffer my despair. I smirked an invisible mask of platitudes, a veil of false comfort. I hid my truths and offered my lies like a traveling merchant, eager yet cautious, anxious to dissuade particular … notions.

“It’s back, Ray,” I said calmly. “I got it back.” His dark, glassy eyes glowed orange now, reflecting the burgeoning fire. “And so … where are you, Ray? Are you back too then?”

Darkness shifted behind him. An echo of endless shadow. It stretched and wavered in the flickering firelight. It almost seemed to … crawl.

The shadow wormed its way from Ray’s body. It wriggled and squirmed, reaching out oddly, as if it was physically tethered to his waist. As if it was trying to disconnect from him.

As if the umbra itself was trying to … escape.

It snaked far into the distance, losing itself in the blackness at the horizon. It simultaneously stretched in my direction, crawling into my body, making black an already desiccated heart.

Only the heart knows.

I found myself fading again, flickering like the fragile fire we had tried to maintain. A phoenix that was struggling to rise.

I was twelve, and Ray was fourteen at the time. Our father was celebrating his 45th birthday. A milestone at the time, but for the life of me, I can’t remember why. The family was in the backyard of our childhood home.

Ray and I were out front with the neighborhood kids, riding our bikes, imagining ourselves sky-bound, framed against a full moon, like the scene from a movie I can barely remember.

The sun was slowly setting as the moon rose over the trees that lined the far end of the cul-de-sac.

Ray popped a wheelie, spun sideways—lost control—and flew headfirst over the handlebars like a ragdoll cast aside by a bored child. He hit the tarmac hard. His head twisted, and his mouth violently gave birth to several teeth. They bounced, as he did, and came to rest in a peculiar, star-like arrangement around his still head.

“God damn it, Ray! One way or another, it’s always about you.”

Ray didn’t move.

And I didn’t care.

“Mom!” I screamed out, waking myself back to the moment.

The fire was blazing now. Its warmth was intense. I scooted back a bit, looking down at the shadow that had connected us at the hip. It was slowly receding in the light of the bonfire, returning to hide behind my brother’s back.

Ray sat to my left, engrossed by the flames. He watched them like an old TV. As if they told him a story. His eyes twinkled golden, orange light.

“What is it, Ray?”

He said nothing, staring into the fire. His aging face wore a look of sagging sorrow.

“You were gone!” I barked. “You left me, Ray! You left me to the fire. Why?” I pleaded, managing to catch his eyes briefly. They glanced at me with what felt like malice.

“I need to know what we’re doing here.”

“I told you.” Ray croaked, finally opening his mouth. Though his voice sounded … off.

“One thing. One job.” Ray jerked in my direction. “KEEP THE FUCKING FIRE GOING!”

His scream threw me like a gust of wind. I was on my back, and Ray was quickly on his feet, standing tall above me, his back to the ferocious fire. His shadow engulfed me like a dark blanket. Though it felt so … cold.

His eyes were black coals.

Fireless….

Unburnt….

Like deep pools of infinite darkness.

I began to shiver from Ray’s white-hot fury. The black pools that used to be his eyes seemed to see everything and nothing at all. Surely he didn’t see me. His scream became a gale from the west, freezing the moisture on my face. The beard I had never been able to grow.

The fire was gone completely now. Snuffed out. I didn’t have the strength to move, and despite myself, I was more worried about Ray. He still towered above me, scraping the sky with the red hood barely covering his head, his teeth clenched. His gloved fingers spread into claws that flexed and grasped at invisible demons.

What happens without the fire? He never told me. He spared me from that, scaring me more than if I had known. But I had a sense. A feeling: that the cold breath from the west was a portent of what was to come. My eyes began to tear, becoming drops of crystal at the corners of my eyes.

Ray took off his fur-lined coat and tossed it aside. His skin was pale and raw, webbed with white and red scars and blemishes that checkered his broad, muscular torso. I wiped the frost from my face as another spasm of cold jolted through my bones. Finally, the enduring screams of wind had turned to whispers. The night stilled.

Ray continued to stand before me, though he seemed to actually be looking for something now, craning his neck from side to side.

What?

“You must be freezing, Ray! What are you doing?” I barked at my older brother. “No sweater? No undershirts? Where do you think we are? Florida?” He turned his head toward me and stared directly into my retinas. His flesh was steaming in the frigid air like silvery wisps of smoke in the muted celestial lighting. His gaze pierced my very soul.

“Wait … Ray.” I couldn’t figure out what was going on. “Can you … can you see me?”

Ray drew his mouth into a wide, menacing grin. His irises were a natural pale blue.

His aura was a deep, pitch black.

“Ray?” His tone was demonic. “Ray’s not here….”

Not anymore. Not ever again. Maybe. Probably.

“James … Raymond is gone."

He never called me James. Not Jim. Always Jimmy. It sounded like “chimmee” in an accent that seemed to have arrived in the mail when we were kids. Overnight USPS Priority. His voice now the sound a reanimated corpse might make. A croak? A wavering screech? I imagined him screaming “Nevermore!” into the deepening gale.

"But I see you. And in time, you will come to see me too.” Was-Ray rasped.

He turned quickly and moved behind me, so fast that I only had time to notice that he left no footprints before everything went black again.

I dreamed. Dreams lit by a flickering flame emanating from the chest of a bearded man, nailed to a cross of iron, weeping tears of gold and smiling at a soldier piercing his flesh with a blackened tree limb.

“What have I done?!” I screamed, waking myself to the strange darkness. Was-Ray was gone. Only the crystalline blues and greens of the heavens glazed the area. The dim aquamarine light seemed to swim and swirl above as if I was submerged in a neon fish tank. I felt the last remaining bit of warmth flow out of me in a violent shiver.

It was all my fault. I had forsaken all that Ray had done for me. For us. For everyone. I rescinded Ray’s greatest sacrifice. In the span of a night….

I shivered again. Deeply.

“I’m sorry, Ray,” I said as I began to remove my fur coat and sweater.

I felt my bones rattle. My lungs fought against the frost.

I let the fire out. I brought the darkness back…. It was over. For me. For you. For everyone.

It made sense to give in. To embrace it. I took off my undershirt and cast it aside. My flesh froze in the crisp, icy air. It felt like my skin was cracking, rupturing. Like a glacier torn asunder.

It was coming….

We were done for.

And it was all my fault….