The Cellar of Candle Wax

When I was nine, my parents parked me with my Aunt Marlene and Uncle Josef in their creaking farmhouse on the edge of the Rhenish Uplands. My father’s construction work had dried up, and my mother’s weaving commission sent her to a monastery in the Alps, so I was left to the care of relatives who smelled of damp wool and linseed oil. Their house was a long, low building with a slate roof that sighed in the wind, and behind it stood a separate workshop for Uncle Josef’s carpentry. Beyond that, almost swallowed by a thicket of blackthorn, was a squat, stone storehouse they called the ‘root cellar,’ though it was really above ground, with a heavy iron handle on its oak door. Inside, one side was stacked with sugar beets and sacks of potatoes, the other side lined with shelves of pickled jars and preserved plums. I loved those plums. Electricity in that valley was a fickle thing, often dying for hours during the nightly storms, so I did my homework by the light of a turned-down oil lamp, and we heated the house with a great tile stove in the parlor that Uncle Josef fed with split logs from the storehouse. It was a quiet, peaceful life, and I grew to love the smell of burning pine and the hiss of rain on the windows.

One late October evening, when the wind was rattling the gutters and the stove had burned low, Uncle Josef handed me his torch. ‘Be a good girl and fetch the biggest log you can carry,’ he said. ‘The one with the bark like a crocodile. I left it at the back, near the corner.’ I pulled on my rubber boots, took the torch, and stepped into the cold, damp air. The storehouse door groaned open, and I aimed the beam inside. On the left, the dark shapes of beets and sacks; on the right, the glint of jars. I swept the light to the far corner, where the big log should be. And then I heard it, a soft, wet, suckling noise, like a mouth working in a pool of something thick. I moved the beam closer, and there, in the corner, I saw a puddle of black liquid that hadn’t been there before. It was spreading slowly, seeping from a crack in the stone floor, and it glistened like oil under the torchlight. The suckling grew louder, and I felt a cold draft rush past my ankles, carrying a faint smell of rotten honey and burnt sugar.

I stepped closer, my rubber boots squelching on the wet stone. The black puddle was wider than I first thought, maybe three feet across, and it rippled even though there was no wind. In the middle of it, something bobbed, a small, dark shape like a lump of coal, but it moved with a slow, deliberate rhythm, rising and falling as if it were breathing. I aimed the torch directly at it, and the light reflected in a wet sheen, and I saw it was a lump of old, blackened wax, the kind that drips from a candle that has burned too long. But this wax had a shape, like a bloated finger, and it twitched. The suckling sound came from it, and I realized it was drinking the black liquid, drawing it in through tiny pores in its surface. I wanted to run, but my feet were rooted to the spot, and I watched as the wax finger slowly uncurled, stretching toward me, reaching out of the puddle with a wet, glistening tip.

A sound behind me, a creak, and I whirled around, shining the torch toward the door. Aunt Marlene stood there, her apron stained with flour, her face pale in the dim light. ‘Josef sent me to check on you,’ she said, her voice tight. ‘He said you might be having trouble finding it.’ She stepped inside, and her eyes went to the corner, to the puddle and the wax thing that was now standing upright, its tip pointing at her like an accusing finger. ‘Oh,’ she said, and her voice was strange, almost reverent. ‘You’ve found the candle wax.’ She walked past me, her steps careful, and knelt beside the puddle. She reached out a hand, and the wax thing curled around her fingers like a snake, and she smiled. ‘It’s been waiting for a child,’ she said, looking up at me with eyes that had gone black, black as the puddle. ‘It needs a wick to grow.’ She pulled a small candle stub from her apron pocket, and she pressed it into the wax, and the wax opened like a mouth and swallowed it whole. Then she turned to me, and her smile was wide, too wide, and she said, ‘Come, dear, it’s time for supper.’ I ran. I ran all the way back to the house, leaving the torch behind, and I didn’t stop until I slammed the kitchen door shut and locked it.

Uncle Josef was at the table, carving a piece of bread. He looked up at me, his eyes calm, and said, ‘Did you get the log?’ I shook my head, panting. ‘There’s something in the storehouse,’ I said. ‘A black pool, and wax that moved, and Aunt Marlene…’ He set down his knife. ‘Ah, so you met her,’ he said softly. ‘I was wondering when it would happen. That’s not Aunt Marlene, child. That’s the thing that took her place five winters ago. It lives in the corner, feeding on wax and dark water, and every few years it needs a new child to keep it company. You’re the first to come since then.’ He stood up, and I saw his hands were coated in black, oily substance, and his eyes were beginning to darken. ‘But don’t worry,’ he said, stepping closer. ‘We’re all part of it now, and soon you will be too.’ I backed away, and my hand found a candlestick on the counter, a heavy brass one. I grabbed it and swung it, hitting him square in the face, and he staggered back with a wet crunch. I didn’t stay to see what happened. I ran out the back door, into the night, away from the house and the storehouse, and I kept running until I found the road and a passing farmer who took me to the village.

I never went back. The authorities said my aunt and uncle both died in a fire that swept through the farmhouse a week later, but I know the truth. The fire started in the storehouse, they said, but I know it started in the corner, where the black pool had grown to cover the entire floor, and the wax thing had grown into a towering pillar that reached the ceiling, and it had consumed them. I was placed with another family, far away, and I never touched a candle again. But sometimes, on dark autumn nights, when the wind rattles the windows and the power flickers out, I hear that suckling sound, and I see the black, glistening puddle spreading from the corner of the room, reaching for me. And I know it’s still there, waiting, patient, and someday it will find me again, because I was the one who lit the wick.