A Thousand Tiny Lights

The last time I saw my grandmother alive, she was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, sorting through a pile of dried beans she had spilled. She looked up at me with those sharp, knowing eyes and said, ‘Marisol, I was trying to count the stars in the carpet.’ I thought it was the dementia talking, or maybe just her usual strange humor. But now I know better.

She came to live with us in the fall of 2007, after her second heart surgery left her too frail to stay with my uncle. He said he couldn’t handle her anymore, but he never told us why. My mother and I took her in because that’s what you do for family. She was stubborn, proud, and sharp-tongued, and we butted heads constantly. But beneath it all, we had an understanding. She knew I was just as stubborn, and I knew she loved me in her own gruff way.

That winter, she started talking about the lights. ‘They’re coming back, Marisol,’ she said one night, gripping my wrist with surprising strength. ‘Their little lights, blinking in the dark. I used to see them when I was a girl, back in the old house. But they went away when I came here. Now they’re back.’ I chalked it up to her medication or the snow playing tricks on her eyes. But she kept insisting, and she started to seem afraid.

In early January, she took a turn for the worse. She refused to go to the hospital, saying, ‘I’m not leaving this house again. They’re waiting.’ I found her on the floor that morning, her legs useless beneath her, but she was smiling. ‘I fell,’ she said, ‘but it’s okay. They helped me down gentle.’ When I asked who, she just nodded toward the corners of the room, where the shadows seemed to deepen.

After I called the ambulance, I went back to her side while we waited. She grabbed my hand and pressed something into it. It was a small, smooth stone, like one you’d find in a river. ‘They gave me this,’ she whispered. ‘So I’d have a light to follow.’ I looked at it, and for a moment, I could have sworn I saw tiny, pinprick lights swirling beneath its surface, like stars reflected in a pond.

The ambulance took her away, and she died that night. The official cause was heart failure, but I saw the look of peace on her face. I kept the stone in my pocket, thinking it was just a keepsake. But a few days after the funeral, I started seeing the lights.

At first, they were just flickers at the edge of my vision, like fireflies in the summer. But they grew more persistent. They seemed to gather in the corners of rooms, in the hallways, under the bed. They weren’t bright, but they pulsed with a cold, blue light. And they always seemed to be waiting.

One night, I woke to find them all in my bedroom, arranged in a circle around me on the ceiling. They weren’t just lights anymore; they were tiny, winged creatures, like moths made of frost and moonlight. Their wings beat soundlessly, and they watched me with eyes like black beads. Panic seized me, and I grabbed the stone, which sat on my nightstand. The moment I touched it, the creatures swarmed, and I felt a cold, ancient intelligence pressing against my mind.

A voice, a thousand whispers combined, spoke: ‘We have waited so long. She said you would come. She said you would count with us.’ Images flooded my mind: my grandmother as a young girl, sitting on a porch in a house I’d never seen, a dark forest beyond; tiny lights flitting among the trees, calling to her; her refusing them, running away, and the lights growing dim with grief. And then she came to our house, and the lights found her again, but she was too weak to answer. So she passed them to me.

Now, the lights are always there. They follow me when I walk, they hover at the edges of my vision, and at night, they whisper her name. ‘Luz,’ they say, ‘Luz, come count with us.’ I know they want me to join her, to cross into that dark forest where the stars fall to the ground like rain. But I’m not ready. I hold the stone tightly, and I wonder if the fear I feel is my own, or if it’s her warning.

Last night, I saw her in the hallway again. She looked younger, stronger, and she smiled at me. She pointed at the stone in my hand and said, ‘Don’t lose it, mija. It’s the only thing that keeps them at bay. But sooner or later, they’ll get what they want. They always do.’ Then she faded, and the lights grew brighter, pulsing like a heartbeat.

I don’t know how much longer I can resist. Every night, they call to me, and every night, I clutch the stone and think of her. But I can feel my own heart starting to beat in time with their light. And I’m beginning to believe that when I finally count all the stars in the carpet, I’ll see her waiting for me on the other side, ready to show me the way home.