The Ash Collector

The winter of that year was brutally cold, and the small town of Gravenhurst was buried under a thick blanket of snow. My mother, Elinor, worked as a liaison for a travel agency that catered to wealthy visitors seeking rustic charm. That December, she befriended a woman named Ingrid, who came from the highlands of Iceland. Ingrid was a medium, and my mother, ever curious, had invited her to our home for a traditional solstice dinner.

That evening, as the wind howled outside and the candles flickered, Ingrid revealed her gift. She claimed she could see the ‘ash of the dead’—the lingering residue of the departed that clung to the living. To prove her ability, she took my mother’s hand and closed her eyes. After a moment, she sputtered, coughing violently, as if she had inhaled a mouthful of smoke. Then she spoke in a voice that was not her own, a raspy, hollow whisper that echoed off the timber walls. She described a man in a trench coat, standing by the old mill, holding a lantern. My mother paled; that was her grandfather, who had died in a fire there decades ago.

I watched from the corner, half-enthralled and half-terrified. Ingrid’s body convulsed, and her eyes rolled back until only the whites showed. She began to speak rapidly in a language I didn’t understand, and then she collapsed. When she came to, she looked at me with a strange intensity. ‘You have the mark,’ she said, pointing at my left wrist. ‘The Ash Collector has noticed you.’ I looked at my wrist and saw a faint grey smudge that hadn’t been there before. I tried to rub it off, but it stayed.

Over the next few days, the smudge darkened and spread like a bruise. Strange things began to happen. I would wake up with ash on my pillow, and the air would reek of burnt wood. My reflection in the mirror seemed to lag behind my movements, as if a specter was mimicking me. In a panic, I called Ingrid, who was still in town. She agreed to see me at her rented cabin on the outskirts, but warned me not to tell anyone.

When I arrived, she was huddled over a cauldron, stirring a thick, grey paste. ‘The Collector is a spirit that feeds on psychic energy,’ she explained. ‘It latched onto you because of the readings I did. It wants to take you to the other side, but not in a peaceful way.’ She handed me a pouch of herbs. ‘You must burn this and bathe in the smoke. It will sever the tie. But beware, the Collector may try to lure you with a vision of a loved one. You must not follow.’

That night, I followed her instructions. As the smoke curled around me, I heard a voice, my grandmother’s voice, calling from the backyard. ‘Come, child, I have a gift for you.’ The voice was sweet, but I remembered Ingrid’s warning. I gripped the pouch, and the voice turned to a shriek, then faded. The smudge on my wrist lightened, and I thought I was free.

But the next morning, I found a small clay urn on my doorstep, filled with grey ash. There was a note, written in a shaky hand: ‘You owe a debt. The Collector will return when the snow melts.’ And indeed, when the snow began to recede in late April, I saw the figure of a man in a trench coat standing at the edge of the woods, just beyond the fence, his lantern swinging. He hasn’t moved since. The ash on the urn now swirls on its own, and I know, come summer, I will have to face him again. Until then, I keep the curtains drawn, and I never look at my wrist, where the faint grey smudge has started to return.