Corpse Candles

The hills were robed in vibrant greens and golds which grew still brighter and more alive in the orange evening sunlight. Upon stepping outside, Meredith found the air to be deceptively cold. The sun was still stuck in her hazy hues of summer despite the frosty transition in the air.

Meredith released the breath caught in her throat, shuddered, and then gulped more crystal-cold air down eagerly. The autumnal hues sent a shiver of excitement down her spine. The chill in the air was refreshing; exciting.

Summer heat had a way of weighing one down. In the early days of summer, Meredith sought the sunbeams shining through her window and stretched her arms and legs out, for what felt like the first time in months. She imagined that it was the same sensation a butterfly must feel coming out of its chrysalis. Her arms unwrapped themselves from their perpetual place around her torso; she didn’t need to keep the heat in any longer. There was enough to go around.

But by the end of the summer, the heat and sun felt as if they were bearing down, pressing her to the ground. The cold brought life and adrenaline and energy back into her. She smiled wider, looking up at the green and gold gilded hills. Birch and spruce trees did not provide the vibrant reds and oranges of other trees, but there was something beautiful about the simplicity of the two inter-mingled colors.

The sun would be setting soon. Meredith wanted to squeeze in a brief walk before it did. She had thrown on a hoodie and put Luna’s harness on her. The goofy Great Dane wagged her tail and seemed to grin up at Meredith. She never tired of their evening walk. Meredith wished she could so easily feel such excitement and contentment toward the routines of every day life.

A slight breeze had picked up, playing with the loose strands of hair which framed Meredith’s face. The breeze was nice at first, but as the sun began to set and the wind picked up even more, it became a bit too gusty.

Meredith maneuvered her hood over her head with one hand. With twilight upon them and darkness quickly approaching, Meredith turned around and coaxed Luna to begin a leisurely trek back home. The darkness did not usually concern her. It never had, even when she was a small child.

But an eeriness seemed to rise up around them now. Luna became less playful. Her bludgeon of a tail ceased to wag and her ears pricked up. Despite the wind, Meredith lowered her hood, unnerved by the inability to hear well. Branches rattled, scraping against one another. Birch trunks shone in the twilight like pale wraiths.

Meredith knew this path well. She had ambled down it cheerfully , confidently, many times before. And yet, the eerie feeling-an ever-growing dread- seemed to envelop her. She told herself it was just because her parents were away. Coming out from the shadows of the trees, Meredith could see the house; one lonely light shone out the kitchen window.

“Almost there, Luna.”

A sharp whistle pierced the air. Luna stiffened. A low growl bubbled up in her throat. Meredith yanked the leash. “Luna, no.” An immediate pang of guilt hit her; she’d spoken a bit more sharply than she intended to. “I’m sorry, girl. Come on. Come on, we’re going inside.”

Luna stayed frozen. As much as Meredith pulled on the leash, coaxed, and pleaded, Luna stood, unresponsive as a marble statue. She looked the part as well, her white coat standing out against the darkness.

Meredith heard some sound, though she couldn’t determine from whence it came or what made it. As her attention focused in on hearing the sound if it came again, the realization that the wind had died down struck her. At this realization her carefully restrained fear tore free and sent a cold shudder throughout her entire body.

“Luna, I’m going to leave you.” She whispered through clenched teeth. “The house is right there. We need to go in, now.” Still, she kept the leash wrapped around her hand and wrist, clinging to it with not only her left hand, but the right as well.

Another whistle sounded, longer, lower, deeper, and more frightening. Without warning, Luna bolted back into the woods. Meredith was yanked off her feet, and, (being a small person) dragged after Luna with a shrill shriek.

When Henry and Marissa Weathers arrived home late that night, they were filled with a nervous anticipation. Marissa had texted Meredith twice; once to ask if she had eaten dinner, and then at ten-thirty to let her know they were approximately forty-five minutes away. Neither text had been read or replied to.

There was one light on when they returned. The kitchen light seeped feebly out into the darkness. The porch light was not on.

“Henry.” Marissa whispered.

“It’s alright, hon.” His voice was steady, but after twenty-four years of marriage, it was easy for Marissa to sense the fear he felt, despite his calm demeanor.

Upon entering the house through the unlocked front door, Henry and Marissa did not find much out of the ordinary. The house was virtually pristine. The kitchen had been cleaned after dinner. The only thing out of place was a mug of coffee sitting on the kitchen island. It had long ago stopped steaming.

Meredith yelled at Luna to quit running, but the Great Dane wouldn’t listen. She couldn’t get the leash off of her aching wrist. Each step sent another sharp, hot pain up her arm. Meredith could feel the pain in her teeth.

Finally, Luna slowed and stopped. Meredith managed to push herself up to her knees and unwrap the leash from herself, with tears in her eyes. The tears were mostly due to frustration and fear, but the pain didn’t aid in her resolve to not cry.

Her hand hurt. Her arm hurt. She couldn’t move her swollen wrist. She was almost certain her stupidity had broken it. She pressed it gingerly, trying to see if she could feel a break. She could not. Even if the bone had broken, it had not broken through the skin, which she was thankful for. She’d already experienced the horror of seeing her bone on the outside of her body once, three years ago, after she crashed her bike into a fence and broken her shin. She took a deep breath. Now they just had to walk back home.

“Luna-” her voice broke and to her surprise she felt the hard lump of unshed tears growing in her throat again. She shook her head. “What on earth, Luna?” She muttered.

Luna was not paying attention. She stared in the opposite direction. Meredith followed her gaze and then gasped.

A few yards away, merely three or four, a bluish-violet light glowed. All the stories her grandfather had told her came back to her mind. Ogres, trolls, fairies, will-o-the-wisps. Other creatures one did not hear about quite so often, such as the Ahjualune.

Corpse candles.

Grandpa had never called the will-o-the-wisps by their most commonly used name. Rather, he had stuck by the term “corpse candles” stating that every time he had seen them, it had been in a graveyard or some other place of death.

He was distrustful of such things. Meredith gazed at the bluish light a little bit longer before pulling her focus back to the present. Luna still gazed at the corpse candle.

A chill went down Meredith’s spine as she remembered her grandfather’s stories. He had told her on more than one occasion of when he had been walking in the woods; these very woods, and come across the corpse candle for the first time. It was evening. The dim shadowy twilight was fading faster than Grandpa could walk, even if he had been walking as quickly as he could. He and Grandma had only been married for a little over three years and she was out of town, staying with her older sister to help out with the children while the family adjusted to a new baby.

In the shadows of the trees, he saw something…a light, burning. Burning is the best way to describe it, he’d said. The light flickered and seemed to dance like the flame of a candle or campfire. It would surge bright and then fade down again. He was intrigued, wondering what sort of natural phenomenon he had come across. He wondered if it was exclusive to this region. He pulled out his notebook and began describing it in detailed words. Meredith had never seen his notebook. Grandpa always paused the story here and asked her if she had. She would shake her head with a smile, and he would say, “Oh! I had better show that to you sometime.” He always forgot, almost immediately forgot, and Meredith never reminded him. She wished now that she had.

As he wrote he stepped closer, and the flame disappeared, only to reappear a moment later, a few feet farther into the shadows. And Grandpa had followed it, describing it, knowing that when Grandma returned she would be able to illustrate his words as skillfully as if she had seen it herself.

She never did though. Because after following the corpse candle for nearly a mile, Grandpa had come to the edge of a small lake. And he swore, every time he told the story, that he heard something or someone, giggle.

The sound filled him with terror. He dropped his pen. And the stories that he had heard as a child came back to him. He remembered long days in the forest looking for fairies and will-o-the-wisps. But now, upon finding them, he did not have any sense of mystery or childlike wonder. Only a cold, dreadful realization of doom. Whether his own or somebody else’s he could not tell in that moment. He turned and fled.

The next morning, Grandpa said that there was an article in the newspaper about a young girl who had gone missing in the forest. Her body had been found in the very lake which Grandpa had stood in the edge of the night before.

One detail stood out to him. The searchers said that they had looked in the wrong places, wandered east instead of northwest because they heard laughter that sounded as if it belonged to a little girl.

Grandpa said that when he read that, he felt a cold shiver go down his spine. All the child-like wonder associated with fairy-land had turned into a deep distrust and fear. He said that from that point on, he realized there was something dark and dreadful about it.

“Fairy-land is real, Meredith.” Grandpa had leaned in to say this. “Perhaps more real than our own world. Too real…” His voice died down and his face took on that distant look she knew so well. He-

Somebody, or something, giggled. Luna whined. Meredith held her breath.

“Luna, we need to go home. We do not belong here.”

The dog tucked her tail between her legs and cowered against Meredith.

“You’re a big baby,” the girl whispered, her voice strained as she tried to keep it from trembling.

It was early morning, just after dawn, when Henry Weathers found his daughter laying on the ground. She was breathing steadily, and upon opening her eyes, she was able to speak with perfect clarity. Once at the hospital, the doctors confirmed her only injury was the fractured wrist. She would need a cast for a little while.

When asked what had happened, Meredith could only reply, “I went for a walk. I suppose I must have gotten lost. I think Luna ran off…ran off while the leash was still wrapped around…” and here her voice would quiet. Her eyes took on a far-away look. After a few moments, she would snap back to reality. “But Luna is gone now.”

The statement was true. The dog had disappeared. Missing posters went up, but after about a week, Henry and Marissa lost hope of ever having their beloved pet returned. Meredith, though she took it hard, did not take it as hard as her parents would have thought. "

“She’s not coming back,” Meredith said on her first night back home from the hospital; a little over twenty-four hours after she had been found. “She’s not coming back.”

“Do you have any idea what happened to her?” Marissa asked. “What direction she ran in? What she was chasing?”

Meredith didn’t respond immediately. “No…No, I don’t. But I know she isn’t coming back.”

Meredith didn’t go for walks in the dark anymore. She refused to hike up Morrow’s Peak in order to watch the sunrise on her twentieth birthday, though it had been a tradition the last eight years. Something had changed, though not something very noticeable. When her parents would try to explain to extended family members, the only way they could think to put it in words was to say, “She’s more hesitant.”

When Meredith explained, she said, “I am more wise. There are things much more powerful than myself in the world.”