“The Cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.”
The fire crackled as we sat in the front yard, the crickets tuning up and the little stream lapping at the banks of the small channel that bore it. The snow melt had been thick that year, and the small cold snap we had experienced the first week of June hadn’t hurt it any. I had been living with Grandpa for nearly a year now, ten months to be exact, and he had been making these bonfires a near-constant Friday even since the snow melted in spring. They suited me just fine. I had been cleaning up the spring limb falls since April, and the bonfires made a perfect excuse to get rid of them.
“Wait, you were just wondering in the woods and found a house?”
Grandpa snorted, “You tellin’ this story, or am I?”
I raised a hand in placation and invited him to continue.
Grandpa didn’t like to be interrupted.
“There was a little more to it than that. Wasn’t you payin attention?”
I looked away sheepishly. I had been kind of hypnotized by the sounds of nature and had only been half-listening to Grandpa’s story. It was just so peaceful out here at night with only the fire and the bubble of darkness surrounding us. I liked Grandpa’s stories almost as much as you all seem to, but I still get distracted every now and again.
Grandpa settled himself again, giving me a look that clearly bemoaned the attention spans of the young, and began his story again.
I was young when this happened. It was after my friend became a tree, but before Grandma started to teach me the ways of the woods. I had started taking to the woods more often, not having anyone to play with much, and sometimes I would camp all weekend in the Appalachian hills. My parents never worried about me. They knew that I knew the hills and hollers like the back of my hand.
So, when I kissed mamma goodbye one morning, my rucksack packed, she told me to be home Saturday night, so I wouldn’t be late for church on Sunday. I told her I would and set out to camp in the woods for the next two nights. This was High Summer, late June or early July, and it was about as hot as it ever got beneath the canopy of the trees. I was looking forward to finding my way to a spot I knew near a little creek. I could fish and swim and generally enjoy my time in the woods.
When I got to the Widow’s House, however, I hunkered for a moment to make sure the coast was clear.
Not because I was afraid of any widow, mind you. She was supposed to have been dead for a long time, but her house still remained, and you never knew who might be using it. This was just after The Depression, and sometimes vags and tramps would use the woods for long-term camping. I had heard of them robbing people, and worse, and did not want to blunder into a group of them who might be squatting in the Widow’s House.
The Widow’s House was a bit of an anomaly in the area. Terry Manx, just called The Widow by the time I’d come along, had lived out in the house till she was one hundred years old, they said. Her husband had gone to fight in the Civil War, leaving her and her young son behind. He had never returned, and when her son had disappeared a few years after the end of the war, The Widow had been heartbroken. She lived alone in that house, but travelers said they often saw a candle burning in the window as if to guide her son or her husband home again.
She lived in that house from eighteen thirty until she died in nineteen ten.
The townspeople didn’t discover she had passed until someone noticed that the candle was no longer being lit and went to check on her one fateful night. The man had knocked, and upon receiving no answer, he had gone inside to check on the poor widow. She had lived there for so long, remaining independent till the last, and it was said that he found her in her rocking chair as she sat before the remains of her last fire.
The candlestick was frozen in her mummified hand, and neither decay nor corruption had touched her.
She had simply dried into a wrinkled corpse that had been buried in her chair, or so the legend said.
As if taking its cue from its mistress, the house remained eternally. It had sat in that little clearing since her death, and no amount of snow on the roof or water in the valley seemed to change it. Thirty years after her death, the roof remained on, and the windows remained intact. The house sat like a monument, and it would likely remain to this day if it weren’t for me.
Now, I wasn’t afraid of anything like that.
Even so, you wouldn’t catch me staying there after the sun went down, tramps or no tramps.
After a few minutes of watching the house to make sure it wasn’t full of homeless people, I went along and put the house out of sight and mind.
I spent the next two days doing just what I had wanted to do. I fished in the stream, explored the woods, cooked my catch over a fire, and Friday night saw a creature approach my fire that I would later call a Moon Child. It had smelled my fish and came to have a look, but that’s a story for another time. I don’t want to muddy the waters too much, and this story is about the Widow’s House and, more specifically, the Widow’s Candle.
So, Saturday morning dawned warm and clear, and I decided to spend the day on the banks as I fished for some dinner to bring home with me. As I lay on the bank, pole balanced against my stomach, I found myself warm, comfy, and utterly at peace. I could hear the birds as they called through the trees. I could hear the squirrels at play as they moved through the brush. I heard the gentle lap of the stream and the splash of the small fish that swam there.
Before I quite knew what was happening, I had slipped off into a nap and awoke to find the sun riding low, and my bait was gone.
I judged by the sun that it was about seven o’clock, and I cursed myself for sleeping away most of the day. I packed up quickly but knew I’d never make it home before dark. The sun was sinking even as I packed my things into my rucksack and started making my way home with all haste. I could hear the night birds beginning to tune up and wanted to be well and out of the woods before it got too dark.
Regardless of my wants, it was full dark by the time I made my way back to the Widow House.
As I got close, I felt like I could see a light coming from it. The forest is black dark at night, moon or no moon, and the light coming through the trees was like a beacon in the night. I thought about taking a wider trail around it after seeing that light, being sure it would be the light of a hobo camps fire, but I was only ten, and I don’t know a ten-year-old that wasn’t possessed with a wellspring of curiosity. As I got closer, I put my pack down and crept towards the house like an Indian raider on the prowl. The closer I got to the house, the less sure I became that it was a campfire. The blistering fire became smaller and smaller until I came to the edge of the clearing and found the source of the light.
It was a candle, a single candle, left burning on the window sill.
Just as The Widow used to do when she was calling her menfolk home.
I hunkered at the edge of the property line, looking for people who might be hiding and finding no one. This would be a great way to draw in the curious, after all. Leave a candle burning on the sill, just like it says, in the stories, and wait for someone to approach. You could hide beside the porch or even in the barn, and once you had them good and interested, you could spring out and have them.
It was a great plan, except I didn’t see anyone around.
The porch held no hulking brutes or half-starved tramps, the “barn” was of the pole variety, and the hiding places were minimal.
They would have to be poor fellows indeed to hide anywhere on the property, and that just left someone in the house.
I should have turned around and left, but I wanted a story to tell my friends when I went to school next.
How exciting it would be to sit in the warm sun on the playground and tell them all how I had seen a candle burning in the Widow’s House.
How they would gasp and sigh when he told them about how I had gone to the window to see who had lit the candle.
And I could already see them putting their hands to their mouths and looking shocked when I told them what I had seen inside that place of bones.
My curiosity wasn’t the only thing that lured me toward that house.
I’ve always been a sucker for a good story, especially when it’s a story I can tell others.
But I suspect you’ve already guessed that.
So there I was, standing on the porch with that candle burning behind the ancient glass window, gazing in on the one-room farmhouse that, I suspect, had once been considered spacious. I expected to see people in there, maybe even people trying to hide, and I kept myself low to avoid being seen. Inside, though, there was very little to hide behind. A kitchen table, a few chairs, a small kitchen with a wood-burning stove, a few bookshelves, and, to my horror, a rocking chair.
A rocking chair with someone in it.
The person was sitting in front of the fireplace, and I could see a dying fire smoldering in the grate. They were dressed in a long black dress, complete with a bonnet, and a pair of knitting needles were moving slowly in their lap as they sat at work. The chair was going back and forth slowly, and the whole scene seemed almost surreal.
I backed away, trying to get back to my pack and get the hell out of there with my story, but that was when the door creaked open with a noise like a swollen hinge with a mouthful of rust.
The voice that followed it sounded twice as creaky and just as spooky.
“Thomas? Is that you? It’s so dark, son. Can you come and help your poor mother?”
I was frozen there, looking back at the open door as the raspy croak beckoned me inside. You likely won’t believe me, none of my school friends did when I told them, but I was torn as I stood there with my fear crawling like bugs up my spine. On the one hand, the whole situation was just so weird, and all I wanted was to show my heels all the way home. On the other, this woman sounded old, possibly infirm, and my mother had always taught me to help people in need. It was the Christian thing to do, after all, and as the creaky old voice asked if I was there, I took my first shaky steps onto the porch and walked into The Widow’s House.
The inside was spartan, but it was warm and dry for a house that had been empty for thirty years. I could now see why the vagrants liked it so much, and I imagined I could smell pastries and fresh bread as I crossed the threshold. The fire was warm too, and when the door didn’t slam shut behind me to trap me inside, I felt that perhaps this was some old woman who was just a little lost.
“Thomas? Is it really you? I’ve waited so long for you, boy. Why have you kept your mother waiting?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m not Thomas. I think you must be mistaken.”
She cut me off before I could say more, though, swishing her hand at the candle on the windowsill.
“Bring that candle over here so I can have a look at you, Tommy. My eyes aren’t what they used to be, and it’s so dark in here.”
I thought that was odd, she was sitting right in front of the fire, but I was too well-mannered to argue with her. I was becoming less and less afraid with every step I took, and when I picked the candle up, I saw the flame waft a little before it went out. She tutted then, though how she could see that the flame had gone out was beyond me, but her words were good-natured as she called to me to light it again.
“Silly boy, you’ve gone and put out the flame. Come light it again so your old mother can have a look at you.”
I walked past her, her sewing needles still clicking as her old chair creaked away merrily. Bending low, I stuck the tip of the candle into the dying flames and saw it wink back to life. Then I turned, candle held out before me, as I started to ask her if that was better?
When I caught sight of her, I came to realize why she thought it was so dark.
The woman had no eyes.
Her face looked like a burlap sack, like a scarecrow whose face had been drawn a little too well, and as her toothless mouth grinned wetly at me, I saw the hollow pits where her eyes should be.
It was The Widow, sure as I’m sitting here, and when I dropped the candle onto her, she went up like a pyre.
I stood in horror as she burned, her mouth opening spittily as she laughed and laughed.
“Such a warm welcome for your old mother! Such a warm welcome!” and as she croaked out her cobwebby mirth, I ran for the door.
I could feel the heat behind me as the dry boards of the Widow’s House caught fire, but I never stopped running.
I didn’t bother with my pack, either.
I just ran for home, the image of that eyeless old mummy carved perfectly into my mind forever.
When I got home, my mother was waiting for me, all her bluster at me being late lost as I threw my arms around her.
I never told her what had happened, and she never asked.
At that moment, I was just happy to have the protective walls of her arms around me.
I went back for my pack a few days later after school. It was exactly where I had left it, but I couldn’t help noticing the burnt husk of The Widow’s House. The house had burnt to the ground, nothing left but ashes and charred boards, and I never went near that spot again. The people of the town thought it had been the vagrants, and I never tried to dissuade them of that idea. The children I told the story to never seemed to believe me, and I was always careful not to tell it to any adults. They would think it an omission of guilt, and I didn’t want anyone to think it was a fire I had set on purpose.
The spot remains barren to this day. Nothing will grow there, and nature seems unwilling to come and retake its space. I’ve thought about going back there to pay my respects sometimes, but it’s not a place I would ever want to return to. I think, deep down, I’m still afraid of seeing her there, toothless mouth laughing and sunken pits looking for her lost son.
It’s an image I’ll carry forever.
The crackling fire caught a pine knot then, and I was pulled from the story as I jumped.
“Is there anything out there in those woods that isn’t horrifying?” I asked, finishing my beer as I threw the bottle into the woods.
This was a habit I had picked up from Grandpa, and it seemed as natural as breathing now.
“Of course,” he said, “you’ve seen some of it. But, the world is full of dangers that, much like any animal, can be conquered if you know how. Your studies are coming along well. By the time you learn all I have to teach, I’m sure I won’t feel so hesitant about dying.”
I patted his hand, “Hopefully not for a long time yet.”
He smiled, but I thought it looked a little sad, “We can only hope.”