No One is There

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. The flame was not a flame you could warm your hands with or burn your fingertips. The flame would not singe your whiskers or blister your skin. It was a cold flame. No one had been there to light the candle. It was a ghost-flame.

Old Will-o’-the-wisp would dance across the marshes, leading folk astray, leading hapless fools into boggy waters where they would stick and squirm and drown. Then the sun and the tide would reveal them in the morning. Eyes wide and red; mouths gaping, throats clogged with mud. And later that night, Old Will-o’-the-wisp would be out merrily dancing again.

That’s what some places do. Some places wake up lonely and hungry in the night, sometimes after years of starving, sometimes after decades alone. They turn on a light. a signal of invitation. A lure floating in the darkness. And they wait.

That’s when the creatures are welcomed in from the night. Drawn to the brightness. Moths to the flame, flies bouncing against the lightbulb. A young man enticed by a candle in a window.

There was a young man stalking through the trees. He had been out hunting with his father but strayed from his path. He had thrown his gun down and ran away in shame after pulling the trigger. Separated from his father, angry and confused, lost in the cold.

The trails that zig-zagged through the forest were a labyrinth. The young man weaved his way deeper into tangled undergrowth. Each tree he passed began to look much like the last. Every route he tried seemed to narrow into a dead end. Any hope that he had was fading.

Images flashed through his mind. His father’s firm scowl. The barrel of the gun rising in front of him. The panicked movement of the deer before it collapsed.

The young man spied the candlelight in the window of the cabin and the worry was shaken from his face. And then he was there, at the door of the cabin. He called out but there was no answer. And then he was there, stood in front of the flame. He called out but no one could hear him. And then he was gone. No one was there. No one had ever been there, as far as anyone could tell.

The candle flickered in such a way as one might lick their lips after a satisfying meal. The Will-o’-the-wisps of the modern world are no longer found on the marshes, they dwell in the one working fluorescent strip light in the empty parking lot, they lurk in the dull glow of a vending machine at the end of a corridor, they wait for you in the blinking exit sign in the corner of the night club. The modern Willow-the-wisps don’t always get to dance their dance. They don’t always get to feed. They wait for you, ever patiently in dark places.

We are all fools following lights in life from time to time. Some lights in life inspire us or lead us to better things. Some of those lights are more misleading. It’s better to light your own way.

So, when you wake up in the night, and you find in the darkness of your home, the bathroom light flickering against the shadows, if there’s any doubt that it was you that left it on, don’t go to it. Leave the light be. Go back to bed, close your eyes, and hope for a swift rising of the sun.