The Fever Candle
Feb. 15th, 2011 01:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonDeep into the waters of memory. A time far back enough that I can no longer even recall my exact age, only that I was a small child and wracked in bed with a blistering temperature of a 103°. Laid there shivering under a mound of blankets, consumed with ferocious coughing fits that would rattle the throbbing aches that had seeped from my muscles to my joints to my bones. Plunged into sporadic black out naps and frequently woke to the celestial bodies of my parents’ faces hovering above my own. Sipped lemon sour and honey sweet hot tea. Gulped spoonfuls of chicken soup and bitter cough syrup down. The cold press of the back of my Dad’s hand against my brow and the way he would recoil his touch back in mock shock, shaking his fingers frantically and blowing on the spot. Then Mom would lean down to imprint a protective kiss directly above my eyes, easing the heat ravaging my thoughts and launching me back towards sleep.
But sometimes I would wake in the middle of the night, hacking up an invisible ball of thorns trapped in the center of my throat and by the time I dislodged it with a gasp I’d realize that they weren’t there. And that wasn’t the part that scared me. The part that scared me was that though I couldn’t a thing, I knew there was someone else in the room.
“Beware the Fever Candle’s light, Jack!” a voice cried out – not a child’s voice per say but rather something ancient and terrible that could do a wicked impression of one.
I glanced around the room nervously, my eyes had adjusted to the ambient street lights seeping through the drawn curtains or spilling out from under the crack of the door. Silhouettes of spaceships, Shogun Warriors and action figures emerged. Heaps of clothes and the barest skyline outline of shelves. The shadowed framed of movie posters. Our cats white face peering up at me from the side of the bed. My pooh-bear mysteriously absent from my side and we don’t have a cat…
… and I look back over and the white cat is standing up on its hind legs and staring right at me. Only it’s not a cat’s face, it’s His.
The Face at the Window. The one that watches me when I’m asleep. Bulged eyes that don’t blink and stare at you with raw anger. A last minute grin clamped over a perpetual scream. Two slashes of holes for where there should be a nose. The rule is that he could never come into my room so long as he thought I was sleeping. If he saw my eyes open, catching his… I would be his.
I try calling out for my Folks… but there’s another ball of thorns lodged in my throat and all that comes is a pitiful gurgling for help.
The cat hops up onto my chest and drains the breath from my body. Suddenly the darkness has a weight to it and I’m pinned under it’s depths.
“Beware the Fever Candle’s light, “ the Face on the Cat repeats, “for it is a beacon that burns bright to the hungry things living beneath the shadows.”
I whimper and squirm to no avail.
“It’s no use,” the Face on the Cat hisses with human fangs and human hate, “they’re already on their way. Listen!”
From some vast depth, a cascade of thunderous crashes come thudding down the secret winding stairs that wait in the closets of all little boys, good or bad.
“You should count yourself lucky that they’ve chosen you. After all they’ve taught the Spider how to spin his webs and are the song the Wolf sings to Father Moon. They gave the Owl her wisdom at the small cost of never seeing Mother Sun again. They taught the winding Snake the poetry of Venom and as for fat little boys…”
The Face on the Cat leaned in closer to my own: “… they taste especially delicious when they are marinated in sickness and fear.”
The rule was that the Face at the Window could enter only if I was awake.
But there were other rules as well governing the occult kingdom of my distant childhood.
That if you ran to the bathroom with your eyes closed at night the ghosts couldn’t touch you. If something was drawn with my left hand then it would happen (but only to someone else) and if I could one day be fast enough to do so, and beat my reflection to the mirror, then I would be able to leave this world for one of my own choosing.
Another one of the rules was that I was allowed to call upon him three times to save me.
My Pooh-Bear.
I had already used one up by then, a Halloween skeleton that came to life and hopped off the wall to dance menacingly around my bed. My parents could hear me screaming. Later they’d tell me it was a dream. To this day, though I know they weren’t lying, I also know much better.
So with the thudding getting dangerously closer and the Face on the Cat purring with vicious glee… I croaked with my last drop of breath my Pooh Bear’s secret name.
Nothing.
The Face on the Cat looked around, Cheshire Smile lit up through the gloom, before turning back to me and giggling: “I guess he couldn’t hear…”
And a small brown blur pounced across the top of the bed between us and tackled the Face on the Cat off my chest. There was a loud crash across the floor. I struggled to move and follow the battle with my eyes, but I was paralyzed from the neck down and struggling to force breath down my lungs.
There was a terrible hiss, a broken steam valve spitting death from a rusted crack…
… but then there was a roar; the sound of the beast waiting outside the first campfire.
Growls and hisses flooded the room, while the steps of the Things that Live under the Shadows grew closer. Shelves toppled over. Toys were crushed and scattered in a whirlwind fury. A roar of pain followed by a primal screech. I squeezed my eyes shut, I prayed to the God I was taught didn’t exist. I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t wet the bed and then…
… a flare of yellow light behind the lids and they were here.
My parents.
“What the hell is going on in here?” Dad roared scanning around the wreckage of the room as she walked in.
I just shook my head and started bawling.
Mom came over by my side, doing her best to focus past the damage and the fresh urine stain, and asked me what was wrong. I told them everything. The White Cat. The Face at the Window. The Things that Live under the Shadows. The Unseen Stairs in my closet. How my poor Pooh-bear died in combat protecting me.
“No he didn’t,” Dad chuckled and plucked up a bed adjacent Pooh-Bear up off the floor. “See, he’s just fine… it was just a bad dream.”
“Then what happened to his eye?” I protested with folded arms.
Dad looked down and saw that the right black plastic button of his eye was gone now and multi-colored stuffing was oozing out of the wound.
“What’d you do to him?” Dad asked perplexed, pushing the stuffing back into the wound with his thumb.
“It was the Face on the Cat that did it.”
Then before either of them could utter an inevitable protest, I jabbed my finger accusingly towards the floor.
There they turned and both took in the series of claw scratches freshly engraved into the hardwood floor around the bed. By the closet door, was a tuft of white fur and splattered on the wall a few specks of what must’ve been surely anything but blood.
Neither of them said a word. Finally Dad picked me up out of bed and carried me into their bedroom. Mom followed behind with my Pooh-Bear. They cleaned me up, got me out of my wet ‘jammies and into some fresh ones. Then Mom put on a cup of coffee and Dad promised me he would stand ‘guard’.
Then they closed the door and I could hear the murmur of their voices drifting from the kitchen into the dark. I hugged my Pooh-Bear for dear life and thanked him again and again and promised we’d fix him up.
He didn’t say a word, staring with his one good eye towards the window.
Slowly the blaze of the Fever Candle ebbed into nothingness as I softly drifted into sleep.
But sometimes I would wake in the middle of the night, hacking up an invisible ball of thorns trapped in the center of my throat and by the time I dislodged it with a gasp I’d realize that they weren’t there. And that wasn’t the part that scared me. The part that scared me was that though I couldn’t a thing, I knew there was someone else in the room.
“Beware the Fever Candle’s light, Jack!” a voice cried out – not a child’s voice per say but rather something ancient and terrible that could do a wicked impression of one.
I glanced around the room nervously, my eyes had adjusted to the ambient street lights seeping through the drawn curtains or spilling out from under the crack of the door. Silhouettes of spaceships, Shogun Warriors and action figures emerged. Heaps of clothes and the barest skyline outline of shelves. The shadowed framed of movie posters. Our cats white face peering up at me from the side of the bed. My pooh-bear mysteriously absent from my side and we don’t have a cat…
… and I look back over and the white cat is standing up on its hind legs and staring right at me. Only it’s not a cat’s face, it’s His.
The Face at the Window. The one that watches me when I’m asleep. Bulged eyes that don’t blink and stare at you with raw anger. A last minute grin clamped over a perpetual scream. Two slashes of holes for where there should be a nose. The rule is that he could never come into my room so long as he thought I was sleeping. If he saw my eyes open, catching his… I would be his.
I try calling out for my Folks… but there’s another ball of thorns lodged in my throat and all that comes is a pitiful gurgling for help.
The cat hops up onto my chest and drains the breath from my body. Suddenly the darkness has a weight to it and I’m pinned under it’s depths.
“Beware the Fever Candle’s light, “ the Face on the Cat repeats, “for it is a beacon that burns bright to the hungry things living beneath the shadows.”
I whimper and squirm to no avail.
“It’s no use,” the Face on the Cat hisses with human fangs and human hate, “they’re already on their way. Listen!”
From some vast depth, a cascade of thunderous crashes come thudding down the secret winding stairs that wait in the closets of all little boys, good or bad.
“You should count yourself lucky that they’ve chosen you. After all they’ve taught the Spider how to spin his webs and are the song the Wolf sings to Father Moon. They gave the Owl her wisdom at the small cost of never seeing Mother Sun again. They taught the winding Snake the poetry of Venom and as for fat little boys…”
The Face on the Cat leaned in closer to my own: “… they taste especially delicious when they are marinated in sickness and fear.”
The rule was that the Face at the Window could enter only if I was awake.
But there were other rules as well governing the occult kingdom of my distant childhood.
That if you ran to the bathroom with your eyes closed at night the ghosts couldn’t touch you. If something was drawn with my left hand then it would happen (but only to someone else) and if I could one day be fast enough to do so, and beat my reflection to the mirror, then I would be able to leave this world for one of my own choosing.
Another one of the rules was that I was allowed to call upon him three times to save me.
My Pooh-Bear.
I had already used one up by then, a Halloween skeleton that came to life and hopped off the wall to dance menacingly around my bed. My parents could hear me screaming. Later they’d tell me it was a dream. To this day, though I know they weren’t lying, I also know much better.
So with the thudding getting dangerously closer and the Face on the Cat purring with vicious glee… I croaked with my last drop of breath my Pooh Bear’s secret name.
Nothing.
The Face on the Cat looked around, Cheshire Smile lit up through the gloom, before turning back to me and giggling: “I guess he couldn’t hear…”
And a small brown blur pounced across the top of the bed between us and tackled the Face on the Cat off my chest. There was a loud crash across the floor. I struggled to move and follow the battle with my eyes, but I was paralyzed from the neck down and struggling to force breath down my lungs.
There was a terrible hiss, a broken steam valve spitting death from a rusted crack…
… but then there was a roar; the sound of the beast waiting outside the first campfire.
Growls and hisses flooded the room, while the steps of the Things that Live under the Shadows grew closer. Shelves toppled over. Toys were crushed and scattered in a whirlwind fury. A roar of pain followed by a primal screech. I squeezed my eyes shut, I prayed to the God I was taught didn’t exist. I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t wet the bed and then…
… a flare of yellow light behind the lids and they were here.
My parents.
“What the hell is going on in here?” Dad roared scanning around the wreckage of the room as she walked in.
I just shook my head and started bawling.
Mom came over by my side, doing her best to focus past the damage and the fresh urine stain, and asked me what was wrong. I told them everything. The White Cat. The Face at the Window. The Things that Live under the Shadows. The Unseen Stairs in my closet. How my poor Pooh-bear died in combat protecting me.
“No he didn’t,” Dad chuckled and plucked up a bed adjacent Pooh-Bear up off the floor. “See, he’s just fine… it was just a bad dream.”
“Then what happened to his eye?” I protested with folded arms.
Dad looked down and saw that the right black plastic button of his eye was gone now and multi-colored stuffing was oozing out of the wound.
“What’d you do to him?” Dad asked perplexed, pushing the stuffing back into the wound with his thumb.
“It was the Face on the Cat that did it.”
Then before either of them could utter an inevitable protest, I jabbed my finger accusingly towards the floor.
There they turned and both took in the series of claw scratches freshly engraved into the hardwood floor around the bed. By the closet door, was a tuft of white fur and splattered on the wall a few specks of what must’ve been surely anything but blood.
Neither of them said a word. Finally Dad picked me up out of bed and carried me into their bedroom. Mom followed behind with my Pooh-Bear. They cleaned me up, got me out of my wet ‘jammies and into some fresh ones. Then Mom put on a cup of coffee and Dad promised me he would stand ‘guard’.
Then they closed the door and I could hear the murmur of their voices drifting from the kitchen into the dark. I hugged my Pooh-Bear for dear life and thanked him again and again and promised we’d fix him up.
He didn’t say a word, staring with his one good eye towards the window.
Slowly the blaze of the Fever Candle ebbed into nothingness as I softly drifted into sleep.