The Ash-Wreathed Visitor

I was sixteen, lying in my narrow bed in the attic room of my aunt’s old farmhouse. The room had a single dormer window that faced the barn, and the door, which I always kept ajar, opened onto a cramped landing at the top of the creaking stairs. Below, the ground floor stretched into a long, dark hallway that ended at the kitchen. At night, that hallway was a black throat, swallowing any hint of light.

Across the landing was my cousin’s room, where she slept with her window wide open, letting in the cool breeze and the silver glow of the moon. That light spilled across the landing and into my room, casting pale rectangles on the floor. I had grown used to that half-light, the way it made familiar objects look like strangers.

That night, I woke with a start, my heart pounding for no reason. My eyes snapped open, and there, in the doorway, stood a figure. It was tall, impossibly tall, wrapped in a robe that looked like it had been woven from old ash and morning mist. The robe hung loose, with no hood, but where a face should have been, there was only a void – a blackness so deep that it seemed to drink the moonlight. I could see the pale glow of the window right through the thing, as if it were made of smoke.

I tried to scream, but my throat was locked. The figure took a step forward, and the floorboards did not creak. It made no sound at all. A faint, dry rustling came from the robe, like leaves skittering on pavement. It raised a hand – not a hand, but a dark shape that seemed to end in tattered wisps. It pointed at my chest, and I felt a cold pressure, as if a finger of ice were pressing on my sternum.

My mind raced. This was not a dream. I could smell dust and old wood, and something else – a faint, sweet odor, like rotting apples. The figure’s head tilted, as if it were studying me. The void that was its face seemed to pulse, and I heard a voice, not through my ears but inside my skull, like a memory that wasn’t mine. It said, ‘You carry a splinter of my realm. You have since the day you were born. I have come to collect.’

I had no idea what it meant. I was just a girl who had come to stay for the summer, who had played in the fields and climbed the old oak. I had never seen anything like this except in horror movies, which I now realized were pale imitations. I tried to move, to crawl away, but my body was paralyzed.

The figure moved again, closer, and the temperature in the room plummeted. My breath misted in front of my face. The pressure on my chest increased, and I felt something inside me – a memory, a feeling – being tugged at, like a loose thread. I saw a flash of my mother’s face, but she was young, and she was crying. She was holding a small bundle of cloth, and she was whispering, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

The vision faded. The figure was now right beside my bed, his head inclined down toward me. The darkness of his face seemed to swirl, and I saw stars in it, as if I were looking into a deep, empty universe. ‘You were not meant to survive,’ it said. ‘But you did. And now you carry the debt.’

I wanted to ask what debt, but my voice was gone. Tears streamed down my cheeks, hot against my cold skin. The figure reached out with his tattered hand, and I felt it touch my forehead – a touch that was not cold, but absolutely nothing, a numbness that spread through my skull. I felt something snap inside me, like a bone breaking in my mind, and then the darkness of the room surged up to swallow me.

I woke in the morning, drenched in sweat, the sun streaming through the window. My cousin was shaking my shoulder, asking why I was crying out. I told her I had a nightmare, but I knew it was not that. On my nightstand, there was a small pile of ash, exactly the shape of a handprint. And in the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a wisp of grey smoke dissipating into the air. I never slept in that room again, but even now, years later, when I look into a mirror in a dim light, I sometimes see a shadow in the shape of a robe, and I feel that cold pressure on my chest, and I know that the ash-wreathed visitor has marked me, and that one day, it will return to finish what it started.