The Fear That Flickers

How likely is it that creatures exist lurking in our dark places? Think of it this way: Throughout the course of human history everything that happened had to happen just the way it did in order for things to line up, your parents to meet, and you to exist.- For better or worse.- I’m far from a statistician. Hell, I failed math at least once. I’d feel safe putting the odds at something in the one in million range. That’s you buddy, you’re one in a million. It’s for that reason I have to apologize that you also happen to be unfortunate enough to come across this… I would urge you to turn around now as this is not something you can unlearn and, worse still, the truth won’t protect you from them. Not Daemons and especially not Ifrits.

No one can hope to know everything about every one of our “That Which Bumps in the Night.” creatures. In reality, very few can accurately separate fact from fiction on a regular basis. This makes the group of hunters that I run with sound far more like old fisherman telling exaggerated tales than the last bastion between you and the boogeyman. Anyone in this business long enough can tell you though: If you don’t have a good spiritualist on speed dial then eventually you are gonna find yourself cornered by something your armaments cannot harm. Now I’m gonna call back to those odds again good buddy. Despite the complexities involved in human birth you are still one in a million. However, horror can arise from something as mundane as lighting a candle. Even at one in a trillion, a fire starts in a far simpler manner then human life… and may be among very few things that spread faster. So, should that candle in the window pull something from perdition then know that there is extraordinarily little anyone can do to save you. It is the flame that tethers them but only someone who knows their true name can extinguish their flame and banish an Ifrit. While a Daemon may not necessarily be evil, an Ifrit seeks only destruction.

If you have made it this far then I invite you to sit down with me and allow me to regale you with the first tale any hunter worth their salt hears. From decades past and origins unknown this story is the reason for the fear behind every modern hunter’s anger…

As the sun made it’s way below the horizon the farmhouse was sheathed in a dark, moonless shade, permeated only by the weak glow from the one lightbulb in the entire house, at its very center, hanging from the living room ceiling. The family was just starting to separate for the night. Preparing for bed, however, older brother stayed seated, with his book and his parents, in the living room. Nero was tasked that night, as he was every night, with helping his little sister get ready for bed. The routine never took anytime at all and he didn’t mind. His little sister was the only one who seemed to appreciate him anyway, and every night always ended the same.

This end’s beginning was no different as they left the rest of the family in the living room. Nero stuck a match and lit the candle in his hand before they rounded the corner and already Sister was getting excited and asking if he was going to play her a song tonight. He liked that she asked because he wasn’t particularly good and it was nice to have someone, however small, to give him a reason to keep practicing. He set the candle into its holder in his sister’s open bedroom window, the wind causing it to flicker and cast a shadow like a sinister grin on the opposing wall as Nero picked up his fiddle.

Just like that, the night was different. There was a heat in young Nero’s hands like he had never felt before as his fingers danced across the neck of the fiddle and he worked the bow with a ferocity and understanding that he had never possessed before. When he looked over to his little sister, to see if she looked drowsy enough for him to try and slow down and lull her to sleep, he was alarmed to see that she was staring at him with a speechless terror plastered all over her face. Then he noticed that he couldn’t speak, nor could he stop playing… He could only look on through his own eyes at his horrified little sister as he felt something curl his lips into a grin.

The shadow that Nero cast on the far wall was broad and looming, despite the small child’s lithe frame. To say that the musical ferocity would look more at home from a creature the size of his shadow as opposed to the little boy himself would make a lot of sense. What didn’t make sense though was that the shadow was growing, becoming more harshly angled… and not playing the fiddle at all. Rather, as the darkness behind Nero grew so too did it become thicker. Until it was something more than just a darkness on the wall, and the Ifrit abruptly stood behind young Nero. It draped its impossibly long fingers around his shoulder and the warmth that he had felt in his hands seemed to spread down his arms and up into his throat. The fiddle played on but at a lower volume as Sister watched the Ifrit open its mouth and call out in Nero’s pubescent voice. “Brother come quick! I’ve gotten so much better!”

“HE-…” Sister started to shout but the wind from the window pulled the flame of the candle outside for a minute and though the flame was able to hold on the room lost all visibility. An unnatural dark, punctuated only by a sudden heavy crack, and the frantic music coming from the instrument within. Sister now silent. Had it been quieter that night you might have even been able to hear the wind whistling across their small farm, yet nothing could be done about the little flame in the bedroom window. As that flame began to settle back onto its candle it illuminated the room once more to reveal Nero still playing his fiddle but now looking on towards Sister’s bed where she lay face down… and body up. The Ifrit allowed Nero to cry, but only stretched the child’s grin further. The tears steamed off his overheated face as the inhuman grin on his visage began to crack his lips.

Just before the bedroom door opened, he could hear his older brother’s footsteps. He tried to scream… to tell him to run away… to grab Mom and Dad and never turn back… but nothing. Instead as the door opened over Nero’s right shoulder his own neck was immediately and violently turned to face his brother in the doorway. “I’m so glad you could join us!” It was still Nero’s voice that spoke, even if his mouth never moved, yet now the voice sounded wrong, rattling, inhuman, and excited. The child stared at Brother with eyes that now leaked blood from their corners only to drip past torn lips and stain a youthful smile crimson. The door to the bedroom then slammed into Brother from behind forcing him into the room and briefly pushing the flame back out of the window. Sending the room once again into a fiddle-fueled and inexplicable darkness.

In the deep black the sound accompanying the fiddle now could perhaps only be described as a sort of wet percussion. The wind had died down, not knowing enough to defeat the little flame in the window. Its quiet whistling briefly replaced by solemn splattering and stretched strings that seemed to never end. Then a thud before Nero’s now smoking form played the flame back onto its roost.

The dim light revealed a bloody scene. Brother’s body now contorted in a corner, holes in his chest large enough to see the wall behind him. Mom or Dad could now be heard making their way towards the bedroom, presumably to put their foot down about all the noise at bedtime. The Ifrit curled his tail around the child who served as such a fine musical backdrop for his evening topside then he flicked his tail across Nero’s feet and the child ignited. The fiddle never stopping as the fire spread up Nero and across the bedroom at the same impossible speed.

Only now in the inferno, as the instrument itself snaps through burning strings and the music comes to a halt can the Ifrit truly be seen as something more than just a shadowy figure. The Ifrit floats with terrifying grace to the open window, braced by the inferno behind him, he picks up his own candle and grins a grin with an impossible number of teeth before blowing out his own candle. Flames in the room as so hot now that the candle is nearly melted before it can hit the floor and the Ifrit had returned to Perdition before even that. For to them the Earth is no different and we are all but kindling for the flame that must be.