Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Show off your fiction
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="ForceUser" data-source="post: 2185190" data-attributes="member: 2785"><p><strong>The Hearth Fire</strong></p><p></p><p>Aaron Isling lived in a world of grays. Outside his bedroom window, storm clouds shrouded the sky and dumped misty rain on the terraced lawns and sport-utility vehicles of a sleek neighborhood of social climbers. He watched as a yellow-striped cat with a white breast darted across his new dirt lawn toward a neighbor’s carport. It was wet and tawny and thoroughly miserable. Aaron sympathized. He felt thoroughly miserable as well.</p><p></p><p>“Aaron! Get down here! There’s more to carry up!” Robert, his stepfather, commanded from downstairs. Sighing, Aaron clambered off the box he’d been sitting on and trudged out into the upstairs hallway. He stopped at the head of the stairs and glowered at the scene below.</p><p></p><p>Robert Bellsly, his mother’s second husband, stood in the doorway to the new four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom home, imperiously directing the movers who carried the family furniture into the house. It was so new that it still carried that peculiar smell of new houses, like stale garlic butter leather. Aaron found it distasteful. What had been wrong with their old house? His old room had smelled like home. His new room smelled like sawdust and paint.</p><p> </p><p>“Aaron!” blustered Robert. He gestured harshly, as though striking the air with his open palm. “I said come here! There’s still dozens of boxes to bring in before you’re done. Now get to it. You can play later.”</p><p></p><p>“I wasn’t playing,” Aaron began, but his stepfather cut him off.</p><p></p><p>“Don’t back-talk me! Just do it!”</p><p> </p><p>“But it’s raining,” Aaron protested, unsure of where he was going with this, or why he was going there so vehemently. He knew the work needed to be done.</p><p></p><p>“Go!” His stepfather declared coldly. He pointed past the head of a struggling moving man who was trying to wedge the family couch through the front door. Aaron knew that further protest was pointless, that he had pushed Robert as far as he could dare. Further argument would elicit punishment. A tiny voice inside urged him on anyway, just to spite his stepfather, but Aaron was an exceptionally rational young man when he had to be. Annoyed for no reason he could articulate, he did as he was told, stepping through the kitchen, into the carport, and out into the hazy rain.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>“Coo-coo-coo!” said Aaron’s mother. “Coo-coo-coo! Who’s a good girl?”</p><p></p><p>The child in the crib wiggled her toes and gurgled happily. Aaron, standing outside the doorway, looked at the scene in disgust. Downstairs, a ballgame blared from the surround-sound stereo system, and Robert could be heard raging at the referee, who apparently knew nothing about calling plays. Aaron wondered how the referee could hold his job if he was really that bad.</p><p></p><p>“Aaron,” called his mother over her shoulder, “Run to the fridge and bring a bottle up, would you? Your sister’s hungry.”</p><p></p><p>“Half-sister,” Aaron corrected dully. He turned away quickly, but felt his mother’s hot stare between his shoulder blades as he bounded down the stairs two at a time. Her chastisement evaded, she called shrilly, “Don’t run on the stairs! I’m not paying for a broken leg!”</p><p></p><p>From the living room, Robert added thunderously, “Aaron! Stop running in the house!”</p><p></p><p>Aaron reached the kitchen and rebelliously took two quick steps and slid across the polished tile in his socks. He lost his balance and almost fell, but caught himself on the counter. He was very angry with his mother but couldn’t say why. He flung open the refrigerator door, yanked out a bottle of formula and slapped the door shut. The contents of the fridge rattled dangerously. He felt vindicated.</p><p></p><p>“Here,” he said to his mother when he returned.</p><p></p><p>“Watch that attitude, mister,” she replied. “I’m not telling you again.”</p><p></p><p>Aaron wasn’t sure if she meant his attitude toward his half-sister or his running indoors, and he wasn’t sure he cared. He looked at the infant in the crib. She stared at him, mystified, as if trying to figure out who he was and how he fit into her small world of bed and mother and playthings. She infuriated him. He waited until his mom turned away, then he crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue at the child. Her face scrunched up, and then she kicked and flailed her tiny fists. When his mother began to comfort her – “Sshh, baby, sshh. There, there, Lauren.” – he fled to his bedroom. He felt a strange mixture of satisfaction and regret. As he put on his pajamas and climbed into bed he thought of how his dad had left. His mom had told him that they’d “grown apart,” but Aaron suspected she’d driven him away. And now there was a new stepfather and a new baby and a new house and a new school on the other side of town, and he didn’t know whom to blame.</p><p> </p><p>When his mother came by to tuck him in, he pretended to be asleep. She walked in briskly, folded the corners of his sheets under the mattress with several sharp motions, and left without kissing him goodnight. When she turned off the light and closed the door, Aaron felt lost, as though she was shutting him away for good.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Aaron awoke sharply. He came instantly, vividly awake with total clarity. He opened his eyes and stared intensely at the wall across his bedroom. The Crab Nebula poster, eerie under the orange halogen light from the street lamp out front, stared back at him. His heart beat rapidly, and he lay tense and unmoving under the sheets, as though frozen in an ancient glacier. He realized that he was frightened and afraid to move, but he didn’t know why. He breathed quietly and listened to the stillness of the house. He found it to be unnatural.</p><p> </p><p>His old house had groaned when the wind blew or the cold settled in, the pipes in the walls had cracked their knuckles like old men when winter blew down, and the floorboards had creaked musical notes when you walked across them, every room in a different key. But this house, this new house, was silent like a tomb. They’d visited several times while it had been under construction, and he’d seen that the pipes weren’t made of iron, but of plastic and copper. The floors were carpet or tile over concrete, not hardwood. And the windows, double paned, hardly rattled at all when the wind blew. His old house had a personality, like an amusing relative that had taken up permanent residence, but this new house was dead. It had the personality of a zombie.</p><p></p><p>From the next room over, Aaron heard a bump. It was a muffled, shuffling sort of sound with a rasping conclusion. Inexplicably, he flinched in terror. Thoughts swarmed in his head. That was the baby’s room. Was his mother feeding or changing her, as she often did in the middle of the night? Had she fallen out of the crib? Maybe she had somehow climbed the safety rail and was lying on the floor right now, hurt. But why wasn’t she crying? Maybe she couldn’t. He lay there long moments, hoping that his mother and Robert had heard it too. Maybe they’d get up and go see what was the matter.</p><p></p><p>They didn’t. He thought about yelling, but he decided against it, imagining the trouble he’d get into if it turned out to be nothing. It probably was, after all, nothing.</p><p> </p><p>But then why was he so scared?</p><p></p><p>The noise thumped again from behind the wall, like someone was moving around a large object. He shivered. How could they not hear it? He realized that he’d been holding his breath, so he exhaled quietly, and was amazed to discover the air frost away from his mouth visibly in the wan orange light. He shivered then, and realized that it was freezing in his room. He looked at the calendar on the wall next to the door. He could read it in the dim light. It said June.</p><p></p><p>He blinked and carefully rubbed his eyes, moving his body as little as possible. He realized that he’d begun to shiver, and if he wasn’t careful his teeth would rattle and it would give him away and whatever it was that was in his sister’s room would come for him and that would be the end.</p><p></p><p>What was going on? he wondered desperately. Why am I thinking there’s something in Lauren’s room? It could be nothing. It could be Robert moving furniture around. But in the middle of the night? On a Wednesday, when he worked in the morning? Maybe it was a burglar. But why, then, was it so cold? It felt frigid as November in Aaron’s room.</p><p> </p><p>The bump slithered across the wall again, long and insidious. Unconsciously, Aaron whimpered. The noise stopped immediately.</p><p> </p><p>Oh, no, he thought. He dared not breathe. Seconds stretched into eternity, and he waited. He felt a burning sensation in the back of his throat, and black dots swam before his eyes. He’d have to take a breath soon.</p><p> </p><p>The noise started up again, and he sucked in air carefully, parceling it out like a diver returning to the surface from the ocean floor. Something was very, very wrong. Mom and Robert hadn’t awakened. The baby wasn’t crying. And something was in the house, not fifteen feet away on the other side of a thin wall.</p><p> </p><p>A feeling welled up within Aaron then, and though he couldn’t describe it, he clung to it intensely, for it spread warmth and purpose through his limbs. With the utmost care, he peeled back his sheets and sat up. His feet found his slippers and he wriggled into them gratefully. He glanced around the room, and his eyes alighted on a dim bundle tucked in the corner behind his bed. Softly, he tiptoed to the bundle and gripped a nine-iron, part of a set of golf clubs forced upon him by Robert last summer.</p><p></p><p>A successful man’s game, Robert had insisted, and one you’ll learn to play. Aaron thought about the snoring brute in his mother’s bed. For the first time, he was grateful Robert hadn’t let him refuse.</p><p></p><p>The noise from his sister’s room continued, and now it had a harsher, more urgent quality to it, as though the perpetrator had abandoned being stealthy. Aaron sidestepped across his bedroom, turned the doorknob as gently as he could, and stepped into the hall. He realized that had this been his old house, the creak of floorboards and oil-deprived hinges would have already given him up. He trudged silently on the carpet toward the baby’s room, then stopped. For no reason he could rationally explain, he hurried as quietly as he could to the hall closet and retrieved a squat blueberry-scented candle. Fumbling urgently in the dark – for the thumps now came more quickly – he located the lighter and flicked it on. A merry tongue of fire licked the candle’s wick, and with it Aaron dashed toward his sister’s door.</p><p></p><p>Candle in one hand and golf club in the other, he burst into the room. The crib was no longer in the corner by the door; instead it now sat adjacent to the window, which was open to the night and blowing a cold wind inside. In the darkness under the crib something malevolent moved on two legs, a quick pitter-patter of steps, followed by a tiny growl. Aaron flipped the light switch and nothing happened. He felt this should surprise him, but it didn’t. Instead, the warming flicker of the candle reassured him. Wielding his nine-iron, he half-stepped toward the crib and shouted, “Hey! Get away from there!”</p><p></p><p>He heard a trio of squeals then, like pigs gargling with soda pop, and two small, dark forms climbed out of the crib and landed wobbly on the plush floor. Another emerged from underneath, and all three forms, like squat shadows, advanced on him and growled. When they growled, the sound they made cut deeper than a pack of stray dogs he’d once encountered. Irrationally, Aaron thrust the candle forward instead of the golf club. The creatures squealed and covered their faces, and Aaron caught a glimpse of piggish noses, slimy gray skin, filthy black hair and rotted, pointy teeth. Each wore badly cured strips of leather wrapped around mildewed cloth, and their miniature hands, gnarled and veined, ended in black-nailed claws. One of the creatures wore a badly stitched skullcap, and another carried a pepper-gray feather in its hand. This one spoke piggishly to the others, who snarled and spread out, carefully backing away from the flicker of flame and maneuvering toward both of Aaron’s flanks. He swung the golf club menacingly but was ignored. They appeared to fear only the light. He held it in front of him like a talisman and stepped further into the room. As he did so he cried “Robert! Mom! Mom!” but they didn’t – or couldn’t – come to his aid. His voice sounded distant to his own ears, as though it was coming from another room in the house.</p><p></p><p>The tiny pig-creatures swarmed around him. Each time one closed, he would thrust the candle toward it, and each time the little beast would shy away as if stung by a bee. But they were crafty, Aaron could tell, and he realized that his candle would not keep him safe forever. The creature on his left flank, eyes blazing darkly, hissed and darted toward him. Aaron waved his fiery talisman at it and it retreated, but as he guarded his left, the creature on his right flank leapt at him, latching onto his leg with a triumphant piggish howl. It dug into the flesh of his thigh with its horrible little claws, squealing in malicious glee, and bit deeply into his leg and sucked. Paralyzed by a paroxysm of pain, Aaron screamed and dropped the candle. Feebly, he gripped the creature’s infant-sized head in both his hands and shoved and hit it, but the beast, impossibly strong for its size, ignored him. It happily continued to savage his leg.</p><p> </p><p>Aaron screamed and screamed, his gray world turning red. The second pig-creature leapt upon him, seizing his left arm and champing down vigorously. He struggled with all his might, but he understood in a detached way that he was going to die. He writhed on the floor of his half-sister’s room. The third creature merely danced a perverse jig, twirling the feather between filthy fingers and cackling hideously, clearly pleased.</p><p></p><p>Staggered by gouging pain, Aaron’s head lolled as his strength and will to resist began to fade. Just beyond his grasp, the fallen candle lay on its side, the wick miraculously still lit with a diminutive blue flicker of light. Behind the candle and piled against the wall cowered a stack of cloth diapers, recovered from the washing machine and placed there by his mother earlier that day. Feebly, his hope fading, Aaron stretched out the fingers of his right hand. His fingertips grazed the squat blueberry-scented candle. The final flicker began to die away, casting the room into a menacing blackness that would end him and his baby sister.</p><p></p><p>His sister. She wasn’t the cause of his recent misfortunes in life, merely a result of them. His mother said that babies were a blank slate, pure and clean of sin. Sin came later when you began to make choices. His father had once told him that when he had looked at Aaron as a baby, he knew what hope truly was. At the time Aaron had felt embarrassed by this. Now he understood what his dad had meant. Lauren was hope swathed in life. These creatures, he realized, ate purity, destroyed hope. He knew then what he had to do.</p><p></p><p>With lassitude overwhelming his limbs, Aaron gave one final push, extending his right arm as far as he could and flopping his body like an Amazonian tourist being devoured by piranha.</p><p></p><p>He shoved the candle. It rolled across the plush fire-resistant carpet, spindly flame guttering, and came to rest snugly against the pile of cotton diapers. Long, rending moments passed. His arms and legs felt numb, distantly painful and heavily weighted. He heard the tearing, gulping sound of his own flesh being devoured. He closed his eyes and waited to die.</p><p></p><p>As he drifted toward unconsciousness, Aaron heard horrified squeals. Dazedly, he came to and gazed upon a flickering orange light, growing brighter. Unable to move, he craned his head around to see crisp flames licking their way up the stack of diapers. He felt the weights on his arms and legs vanish as the fire grew taller and more consuming, and the light grew ruddy and pervasive. In seconds, the fire began to eat the paint on the walls like a blazing virus.</p><p></p><p>Squealing and cursing in their pig-tongue, the little monsters scattered like leaves. One retreated to the window and climbed backward like a spider, twisting its head toward Aaron at an impossible angle. It snarled at him with feral rage and disappeared over the sill. Another dashed into the hallway beyond. The third leapt at the baby’s closet where his mother stored the stroller. The door was ajar, and it bounded inside and slammed it closed behind it.</p><p> </p><p>Aaron lay on the floor in shock. Smoke billowed, the fire raged. Thoroughly defeated, he screwed his eyes shut and waited for the end. Perhaps when they found his charred remains they’d understand what he’d tried to do. He fervently hoped so.</p><p> </p><p>Almost a minute passed before Aaron realized that he no longer smelled smoke. He opened his eyes to discover that he lay in his bed, uninjured. Disoriented, he jolted upright. His gaze crawled across the walls. The calendar said June. The clock-radio said 3 a.m. He sweated through his pajamas in the sultry heat of the summer night. Aaron glanced behind his bed. The nine-iron he’d grabbed sat in the bag with the other clubs. Disbelieving the evidence of his eyes, he darted to his bedroom door, wrenched it open and flew to the hallway closet. He turned on the garishly bright hall light and opened the closet door. The blueberry-scented candle squatted between a carton of light bulbs and an iron. It appeared unused.</p><p></p><p>It couldn’t have been a dream, he thought desperately. It was too real. He glanced down the hall at Lauren’s bedroom door. It hung partly open. Aaron thought about getting his nine-iron again but decided against it. Instead, he lit the candle and, feeling a sharp sense of déjà vu, walked toward his sister’s room in a surreal haze.</p><p></p><p>Inside, he flipped the light switch up, this time flooding the space with electric radiance. The crib sat near the door, as always. The window lurked on the far wall, closed to the night. The room felt warm and stuffy. To Aaron’s left, the stack of cloth diapers sat neat and tidy on the carpet.</p><p></p><p>He looked at the crib and saw only silence. Fear gripped him then. Not a fear for his own safety, but for the tiny person who had entered his life so abruptly and had been the target of so much of his anger and resentment. Hesitantly, afraid of a thousand awful sights that might await him, he stepped up and peered inside the crib.</p><p></p><p>Lauren lay in her bedclothes and teddy bear blanket amidst the candy corn sheets and armada of plush animals. She appeared asleep. He reached down and touched her, feeling warmth in her limbs. She wiggled in her sleep, then stirred and yawned. Her eyes opened, and she stared around searchingly for a bit before coming to rest her gaze upon Aaron. When she saw him, she opened her mouth and grinned toothlessly.</p><p> </p><p>Aaron grinned back. “Hi,” he said gravely, “I’m your big brother.”</p><p></p><p>Aaron played with his sister, relieved. “You look thirsty,” he said. As he searched around for her bottle in the tangle of blankets and toy animals, he heard a dim thump from the baby’s closet. He jerked his head around. The door was closed. Glancing at his sister, who looked back at him curiously, Aaron held the candle tightly in front of him and stepped cautiously toward the closet. Screwing up his courage, he said to the closet, “I’ve had about enough of you!” and pulled it open. Inside he found nothing but an old vacuum cleaner, the baby’s stroller, and a tiny pepper-gray feather.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Penelope Bellsly awoke to an echo of a dream that flittered away from her consciousness and left her with vague feelings of terror, urgency, and maternal protectiveness.</p><p></p><p>“Robert,” she whispered to her husband. He lay on his back, snoring and crowding her side of the bed as always. “Robert!” she repeated more harshly, pinching him.</p><p></p><p>He jumped awake. “Huh! Whuzzat? Penny? What do you want?” he blustered blearily. “It’s your turn to change her. I did it last night.” He rolled away.</p><p></p><p>“Robert, I think someone’s in the baby’s room,” she whispered dramatically. Aaron’s mother had been a theatre major at university and had a knack for drama.</p><p></p><p>Robert Bellsly grumbled, “No, there isn’t. Go back to sleep.”</p><p></p><p>Penelope’s voice rose shrilly. “Robert, so help me, if you don’t get out of bed this instant and go check on your daughter, I am going to get very angry!”</p><p></p><p>“All right, all right,” he groused. “I’m going. We’re in a nice neighborhood, though. I made sure of it, remember? The cops patrol all the time. I swear. Women.”</p><p></p><p>Ignoring his comment, Aaron’s mother replied primly, “I’m coming with you.” She gathered up her robe and put it on.</p><p></p><p>What they found within their daughter’s room amazed and perplexed them. Penelope gaped, her eyes immediately glittering. Robert scowled and would have entered threateningly had his wife not restrained him with a pinch on the arm. Aaron sat in a rocking chair next to the crib, holding his half-sister gently, and feeding her from a warm bottle by the light of a single scented candle. He ignored Robert and his mother. They stared at him for long moments, looked searchingly at each other, and then slowly entered the room.</p><p></p><p>When they came in, Aaron looked up and smiled. “Sshh,” he whispered, “she’s almost back to sleep.”</p><p></p><p><em>The End</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="ForceUser, post: 2185190, member: 2785"] [b]The Hearth Fire[/b] Aaron Isling lived in a world of grays. Outside his bedroom window, storm clouds shrouded the sky and dumped misty rain on the terraced lawns and sport-utility vehicles of a sleek neighborhood of social climbers. He watched as a yellow-striped cat with a white breast darted across his new dirt lawn toward a neighbor’s carport. It was wet and tawny and thoroughly miserable. Aaron sympathized. He felt thoroughly miserable as well. “Aaron! Get down here! There’s more to carry up!” Robert, his stepfather, commanded from downstairs. Sighing, Aaron clambered off the box he’d been sitting on and trudged out into the upstairs hallway. He stopped at the head of the stairs and glowered at the scene below. Robert Bellsly, his mother’s second husband, stood in the doorway to the new four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom home, imperiously directing the movers who carried the family furniture into the house. It was so new that it still carried that peculiar smell of new houses, like stale garlic butter leather. Aaron found it distasteful. What had been wrong with their old house? His old room had smelled like home. His new room smelled like sawdust and paint. “Aaron!” blustered Robert. He gestured harshly, as though striking the air with his open palm. “I said come here! There’s still dozens of boxes to bring in before you’re done. Now get to it. You can play later.” “I wasn’t playing,” Aaron began, but his stepfather cut him off. “Don’t back-talk me! Just do it!” “But it’s raining,” Aaron protested, unsure of where he was going with this, or why he was going there so vehemently. He knew the work needed to be done. “Go!” His stepfather declared coldly. He pointed past the head of a struggling moving man who was trying to wedge the family couch through the front door. Aaron knew that further protest was pointless, that he had pushed Robert as far as he could dare. Further argument would elicit punishment. A tiny voice inside urged him on anyway, just to spite his stepfather, but Aaron was an exceptionally rational young man when he had to be. Annoyed for no reason he could articulate, he did as he was told, stepping through the kitchen, into the carport, and out into the hazy rain. *** “Coo-coo-coo!” said Aaron’s mother. “Coo-coo-coo! Who’s a good girl?” The child in the crib wiggled her toes and gurgled happily. Aaron, standing outside the doorway, looked at the scene in disgust. Downstairs, a ballgame blared from the surround-sound stereo system, and Robert could be heard raging at the referee, who apparently knew nothing about calling plays. Aaron wondered how the referee could hold his job if he was really that bad. “Aaron,” called his mother over her shoulder, “Run to the fridge and bring a bottle up, would you? Your sister’s hungry.” “Half-sister,” Aaron corrected dully. He turned away quickly, but felt his mother’s hot stare between his shoulder blades as he bounded down the stairs two at a time. Her chastisement evaded, she called shrilly, “Don’t run on the stairs! I’m not paying for a broken leg!” From the living room, Robert added thunderously, “Aaron! Stop running in the house!” Aaron reached the kitchen and rebelliously took two quick steps and slid across the polished tile in his socks. He lost his balance and almost fell, but caught himself on the counter. He was very angry with his mother but couldn’t say why. He flung open the refrigerator door, yanked out a bottle of formula and slapped the door shut. The contents of the fridge rattled dangerously. He felt vindicated. “Here,” he said to his mother when he returned. “Watch that attitude, mister,” she replied. “I’m not telling you again.” Aaron wasn’t sure if she meant his attitude toward his half-sister or his running indoors, and he wasn’t sure he cared. He looked at the infant in the crib. She stared at him, mystified, as if trying to figure out who he was and how he fit into her small world of bed and mother and playthings. She infuriated him. He waited until his mom turned away, then he crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue at the child. Her face scrunched up, and then she kicked and flailed her tiny fists. When his mother began to comfort her – “Sshh, baby, sshh. There, there, Lauren.” – he fled to his bedroom. He felt a strange mixture of satisfaction and regret. As he put on his pajamas and climbed into bed he thought of how his dad had left. His mom had told him that they’d “grown apart,” but Aaron suspected she’d driven him away. And now there was a new stepfather and a new baby and a new house and a new school on the other side of town, and he didn’t know whom to blame. When his mother came by to tuck him in, he pretended to be asleep. She walked in briskly, folded the corners of his sheets under the mattress with several sharp motions, and left without kissing him goodnight. When she turned off the light and closed the door, Aaron felt lost, as though she was shutting him away for good. *** Aaron awoke sharply. He came instantly, vividly awake with total clarity. He opened his eyes and stared intensely at the wall across his bedroom. The Crab Nebula poster, eerie under the orange halogen light from the street lamp out front, stared back at him. His heart beat rapidly, and he lay tense and unmoving under the sheets, as though frozen in an ancient glacier. He realized that he was frightened and afraid to move, but he didn’t know why. He breathed quietly and listened to the stillness of the house. He found it to be unnatural. His old house had groaned when the wind blew or the cold settled in, the pipes in the walls had cracked their knuckles like old men when winter blew down, and the floorboards had creaked musical notes when you walked across them, every room in a different key. But this house, this new house, was silent like a tomb. They’d visited several times while it had been under construction, and he’d seen that the pipes weren’t made of iron, but of plastic and copper. The floors were carpet or tile over concrete, not hardwood. And the windows, double paned, hardly rattled at all when the wind blew. His old house had a personality, like an amusing relative that had taken up permanent residence, but this new house was dead. It had the personality of a zombie. From the next room over, Aaron heard a bump. It was a muffled, shuffling sort of sound with a rasping conclusion. Inexplicably, he flinched in terror. Thoughts swarmed in his head. That was the baby’s room. Was his mother feeding or changing her, as she often did in the middle of the night? Had she fallen out of the crib? Maybe she had somehow climbed the safety rail and was lying on the floor right now, hurt. But why wasn’t she crying? Maybe she couldn’t. He lay there long moments, hoping that his mother and Robert had heard it too. Maybe they’d get up and go see what was the matter. They didn’t. He thought about yelling, but he decided against it, imagining the trouble he’d get into if it turned out to be nothing. It probably was, after all, nothing. But then why was he so scared? The noise thumped again from behind the wall, like someone was moving around a large object. He shivered. How could they not hear it? He realized that he’d been holding his breath, so he exhaled quietly, and was amazed to discover the air frost away from his mouth visibly in the wan orange light. He shivered then, and realized that it was freezing in his room. He looked at the calendar on the wall next to the door. He could read it in the dim light. It said June. He blinked and carefully rubbed his eyes, moving his body as little as possible. He realized that he’d begun to shiver, and if he wasn’t careful his teeth would rattle and it would give him away and whatever it was that was in his sister’s room would come for him and that would be the end. What was going on? he wondered desperately. Why am I thinking there’s something in Lauren’s room? It could be nothing. It could be Robert moving furniture around. But in the middle of the night? On a Wednesday, when he worked in the morning? Maybe it was a burglar. But why, then, was it so cold? It felt frigid as November in Aaron’s room. The bump slithered across the wall again, long and insidious. Unconsciously, Aaron whimpered. The noise stopped immediately. Oh, no, he thought. He dared not breathe. Seconds stretched into eternity, and he waited. He felt a burning sensation in the back of his throat, and black dots swam before his eyes. He’d have to take a breath soon. The noise started up again, and he sucked in air carefully, parceling it out like a diver returning to the surface from the ocean floor. Something was very, very wrong. Mom and Robert hadn’t awakened. The baby wasn’t crying. And something was in the house, not fifteen feet away on the other side of a thin wall. A feeling welled up within Aaron then, and though he couldn’t describe it, he clung to it intensely, for it spread warmth and purpose through his limbs. With the utmost care, he peeled back his sheets and sat up. His feet found his slippers and he wriggled into them gratefully. He glanced around the room, and his eyes alighted on a dim bundle tucked in the corner behind his bed. Softly, he tiptoed to the bundle and gripped a nine-iron, part of a set of golf clubs forced upon him by Robert last summer. A successful man’s game, Robert had insisted, and one you’ll learn to play. Aaron thought about the snoring brute in his mother’s bed. For the first time, he was grateful Robert hadn’t let him refuse. The noise from his sister’s room continued, and now it had a harsher, more urgent quality to it, as though the perpetrator had abandoned being stealthy. Aaron sidestepped across his bedroom, turned the doorknob as gently as he could, and stepped into the hall. He realized that had this been his old house, the creak of floorboards and oil-deprived hinges would have already given him up. He trudged silently on the carpet toward the baby’s room, then stopped. For no reason he could rationally explain, he hurried as quietly as he could to the hall closet and retrieved a squat blueberry-scented candle. Fumbling urgently in the dark – for the thumps now came more quickly – he located the lighter and flicked it on. A merry tongue of fire licked the candle’s wick, and with it Aaron dashed toward his sister’s door. Candle in one hand and golf club in the other, he burst into the room. The crib was no longer in the corner by the door; instead it now sat adjacent to the window, which was open to the night and blowing a cold wind inside. In the darkness under the crib something malevolent moved on two legs, a quick pitter-patter of steps, followed by a tiny growl. Aaron flipped the light switch and nothing happened. He felt this should surprise him, but it didn’t. Instead, the warming flicker of the candle reassured him. Wielding his nine-iron, he half-stepped toward the crib and shouted, “Hey! Get away from there!” He heard a trio of squeals then, like pigs gargling with soda pop, and two small, dark forms climbed out of the crib and landed wobbly on the plush floor. Another emerged from underneath, and all three forms, like squat shadows, advanced on him and growled. When they growled, the sound they made cut deeper than a pack of stray dogs he’d once encountered. Irrationally, Aaron thrust the candle forward instead of the golf club. The creatures squealed and covered their faces, and Aaron caught a glimpse of piggish noses, slimy gray skin, filthy black hair and rotted, pointy teeth. Each wore badly cured strips of leather wrapped around mildewed cloth, and their miniature hands, gnarled and veined, ended in black-nailed claws. One of the creatures wore a badly stitched skullcap, and another carried a pepper-gray feather in its hand. This one spoke piggishly to the others, who snarled and spread out, carefully backing away from the flicker of flame and maneuvering toward both of Aaron’s flanks. He swung the golf club menacingly but was ignored. They appeared to fear only the light. He held it in front of him like a talisman and stepped further into the room. As he did so he cried “Robert! Mom! Mom!” but they didn’t – or couldn’t – come to his aid. His voice sounded distant to his own ears, as though it was coming from another room in the house. The tiny pig-creatures swarmed around him. Each time one closed, he would thrust the candle toward it, and each time the little beast would shy away as if stung by a bee. But they were crafty, Aaron could tell, and he realized that his candle would not keep him safe forever. The creature on his left flank, eyes blazing darkly, hissed and darted toward him. Aaron waved his fiery talisman at it and it retreated, but as he guarded his left, the creature on his right flank leapt at him, latching onto his leg with a triumphant piggish howl. It dug into the flesh of his thigh with its horrible little claws, squealing in malicious glee, and bit deeply into his leg and sucked. Paralyzed by a paroxysm of pain, Aaron screamed and dropped the candle. Feebly, he gripped the creature’s infant-sized head in both his hands and shoved and hit it, but the beast, impossibly strong for its size, ignored him. It happily continued to savage his leg. Aaron screamed and screamed, his gray world turning red. The second pig-creature leapt upon him, seizing his left arm and champing down vigorously. He struggled with all his might, but he understood in a detached way that he was going to die. He writhed on the floor of his half-sister’s room. The third creature merely danced a perverse jig, twirling the feather between filthy fingers and cackling hideously, clearly pleased. Staggered by gouging pain, Aaron’s head lolled as his strength and will to resist began to fade. Just beyond his grasp, the fallen candle lay on its side, the wick miraculously still lit with a diminutive blue flicker of light. Behind the candle and piled against the wall cowered a stack of cloth diapers, recovered from the washing machine and placed there by his mother earlier that day. Feebly, his hope fading, Aaron stretched out the fingers of his right hand. His fingertips grazed the squat blueberry-scented candle. The final flicker began to die away, casting the room into a menacing blackness that would end him and his baby sister. His sister. She wasn’t the cause of his recent misfortunes in life, merely a result of them. His mother said that babies were a blank slate, pure and clean of sin. Sin came later when you began to make choices. His father had once told him that when he had looked at Aaron as a baby, he knew what hope truly was. At the time Aaron had felt embarrassed by this. Now he understood what his dad had meant. Lauren was hope swathed in life. These creatures, he realized, ate purity, destroyed hope. He knew then what he had to do. With lassitude overwhelming his limbs, Aaron gave one final push, extending his right arm as far as he could and flopping his body like an Amazonian tourist being devoured by piranha. He shoved the candle. It rolled across the plush fire-resistant carpet, spindly flame guttering, and came to rest snugly against the pile of cotton diapers. Long, rending moments passed. His arms and legs felt numb, distantly painful and heavily weighted. He heard the tearing, gulping sound of his own flesh being devoured. He closed his eyes and waited to die. As he drifted toward unconsciousness, Aaron heard horrified squeals. Dazedly, he came to and gazed upon a flickering orange light, growing brighter. Unable to move, he craned his head around to see crisp flames licking their way up the stack of diapers. He felt the weights on his arms and legs vanish as the fire grew taller and more consuming, and the light grew ruddy and pervasive. In seconds, the fire began to eat the paint on the walls like a blazing virus. Squealing and cursing in their pig-tongue, the little monsters scattered like leaves. One retreated to the window and climbed backward like a spider, twisting its head toward Aaron at an impossible angle. It snarled at him with feral rage and disappeared over the sill. Another dashed into the hallway beyond. The third leapt at the baby’s closet where his mother stored the stroller. The door was ajar, and it bounded inside and slammed it closed behind it. Aaron lay on the floor in shock. Smoke billowed, the fire raged. Thoroughly defeated, he screwed his eyes shut and waited for the end. Perhaps when they found his charred remains they’d understand what he’d tried to do. He fervently hoped so. Almost a minute passed before Aaron realized that he no longer smelled smoke. He opened his eyes to discover that he lay in his bed, uninjured. Disoriented, he jolted upright. His gaze crawled across the walls. The calendar said June. The clock-radio said 3 a.m. He sweated through his pajamas in the sultry heat of the summer night. Aaron glanced behind his bed. The nine-iron he’d grabbed sat in the bag with the other clubs. Disbelieving the evidence of his eyes, he darted to his bedroom door, wrenched it open and flew to the hallway closet. He turned on the garishly bright hall light and opened the closet door. The blueberry-scented candle squatted between a carton of light bulbs and an iron. It appeared unused. It couldn’t have been a dream, he thought desperately. It was too real. He glanced down the hall at Lauren’s bedroom door. It hung partly open. Aaron thought about getting his nine-iron again but decided against it. Instead, he lit the candle and, feeling a sharp sense of déjà vu, walked toward his sister’s room in a surreal haze. Inside, he flipped the light switch up, this time flooding the space with electric radiance. The crib sat near the door, as always. The window lurked on the far wall, closed to the night. The room felt warm and stuffy. To Aaron’s left, the stack of cloth diapers sat neat and tidy on the carpet. He looked at the crib and saw only silence. Fear gripped him then. Not a fear for his own safety, but for the tiny person who had entered his life so abruptly and had been the target of so much of his anger and resentment. Hesitantly, afraid of a thousand awful sights that might await him, he stepped up and peered inside the crib. Lauren lay in her bedclothes and teddy bear blanket amidst the candy corn sheets and armada of plush animals. She appeared asleep. He reached down and touched her, feeling warmth in her limbs. She wiggled in her sleep, then stirred and yawned. Her eyes opened, and she stared around searchingly for a bit before coming to rest her gaze upon Aaron. When she saw him, she opened her mouth and grinned toothlessly. Aaron grinned back. “Hi,” he said gravely, “I’m your big brother.” Aaron played with his sister, relieved. “You look thirsty,” he said. As he searched around for her bottle in the tangle of blankets and toy animals, he heard a dim thump from the baby’s closet. He jerked his head around. The door was closed. Glancing at his sister, who looked back at him curiously, Aaron held the candle tightly in front of him and stepped cautiously toward the closet. Screwing up his courage, he said to the closet, “I’ve had about enough of you!” and pulled it open. Inside he found nothing but an old vacuum cleaner, the baby’s stroller, and a tiny pepper-gray feather. *** Penelope Bellsly awoke to an echo of a dream that flittered away from her consciousness and left her with vague feelings of terror, urgency, and maternal protectiveness. “Robert,” she whispered to her husband. He lay on his back, snoring and crowding her side of the bed as always. “Robert!” she repeated more harshly, pinching him. He jumped awake. “Huh! Whuzzat? Penny? What do you want?” he blustered blearily. “It’s your turn to change her. I did it last night.” He rolled away. “Robert, I think someone’s in the baby’s room,” she whispered dramatically. Aaron’s mother had been a theatre major at university and had a knack for drama. Robert Bellsly grumbled, “No, there isn’t. Go back to sleep.” Penelope’s voice rose shrilly. “Robert, so help me, if you don’t get out of bed this instant and go check on your daughter, I am going to get very angry!” “All right, all right,” he groused. “I’m going. We’re in a nice neighborhood, though. I made sure of it, remember? The cops patrol all the time. I swear. Women.” Ignoring his comment, Aaron’s mother replied primly, “I’m coming with you.” She gathered up her robe and put it on. What they found within their daughter’s room amazed and perplexed them. Penelope gaped, her eyes immediately glittering. Robert scowled and would have entered threateningly had his wife not restrained him with a pinch on the arm. Aaron sat in a rocking chair next to the crib, holding his half-sister gently, and feeding her from a warm bottle by the light of a single scented candle. He ignored Robert and his mother. They stared at him for long moments, looked searchingly at each other, and then slowly entered the room. When they came in, Aaron looked up and smiled. “Sshh,” he whispered, “she’s almost back to sleep.” [i]The End[/i] [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Show off your fiction
Top