The Cinder Man

My grandmother used to tell me that old houses have long memories, and that the walls of the one on Juniper Lane were especially good at keeping secrets. I never understood what she meant until the summer I turned nine, the summer we moved into that sprawling, drafty Victorian at the edge of the woods. My mother, a woman who thrived on renovation projects, saw only potential in its peeling wallpaper and creaking floorboards. I saw something else, something that made the hair on my arms stand up every time I walked past the narrow door under the stairs.

My room was at the end of a long hallway, a space that had once been a nursery. The wallpaper was a faded pattern of dancing bears, and the window looked out onto a tangle of overgrown rhododendrons. But the room’s defining feature was the vast, walk-in closet with a heavy oak door. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, decided it would be perfect for storing all our unpacked boxes, and she insisted on keeping it slightly ajar ‘for air.’ I hated that closet. I hated the way the darkness inside seemed thicker than it should be, and how, at night, I could swear I heard a faint, rhythmic creaking coming from within, like the slow rocking of a chair.

The first time I saw him, I thought I was dreaming. I had woken up needing to pee, and as I shuffled towards the hallway, I glanced into the closet out of the corner of my eye. There, just beyond the doorway, stood a figure. He was tall, impossibly tall, and his skin had a strange, ash-gray pallor that seemed to drink in what little light crept in from the window. But it was his face that froze my blood. His mouth was stretched in a grotesque, impossibly wide grin, the corners of his lips pulled so far back they seemed to split his cheeks. He wore a battered top hat, the kind you’d see in old photographs, and his eyes were like twin voids, empty and bottomless. I didn’t scream. I just stood there, my pajamas suddenly damp, and watched him tilt his head with a slow, deliberate motion, that horrible grin never wavering.

The encounters became a nightly ritual, always in the liminal spaces of the house: the foot of my bed, the threshold of the bathroom, the top of the stairs. He never spoke, but I could feel a pull, a silent invitation to follow him down into the dark belly of the house. My parents dismissed it as night terrors, but I knew the truth. The creaking from the closet grew more insistent, and I began to notice other sounds at night—a faint, shuffling drag, like something heavy being hauled across the floor upstairs. Once, I found a small, burnt-looking matchstick on my windowsill, though neither of us smoked.

One night, I woke to find the hallway bathed in an eerie, orange light. I crept to the door, my heart hammering. The door to the attic stairs, which had always been locked, was standing open, and from within came the unmistakable crackle of fire. I climbed the narrow, dusty stairs to find my mother standing in the middle of the attic, her back to me, staring at a wall covered in old, crumbling photographs. She was muttering, her voice low and foreign. ‘He comes for the children,’ she whispered. ‘He’s been waiting.’

I don’t remember what happened after that. I only remember waking up in my bed, the smell of smoke thick in the air, and a strange, sooty mark on my pillow. My mother’s face was pale when she came to check on me, and she avoided my eyes. When I asked her about the attic, she said I must have been dreaming. But I knew better. And that night, when I opened my eyes at 3:33 AM, he was standing at the foot of my bed, closer than ever before. His grin was wider, and in his charred, crumbling hand, he held out a small, blackened matchstick. He didn’t point, but I knew where he wanted me to go. The closet door was open.

I was a child, but I knew what he was offering. My grandmother’s words echoed in my mind: ‘Old houses have long memories, and they always collect their debts.’ The house on Juniper Lane was built on the site of an old orphanage that had burned to the ground, killing a dozen children. The town had erected a memorial, but the owner of this house, a reclusive man named Ashworth, had allegedly torn it down to make room for his garden.

I never spoke of the Cinder Man, as I came to call him. But every night, I left a matchstick on the windowsill, an offering. And he always took it, replacing it with a small, burnt finger bone. I kept them all in a velvet box under my bed, a secret I dared not share. The summer I turned twelve, I found my mother in the attic again, this time with a can of kerosene and a book of matches. Her eyes were hollow. ‘He won’t stop until the house is cleansed,’ she said. ‘It’s the only way.’ She struck a match, and the fire spread quickly, swallowing the old house and all its secrets.

We moved away, to a brick apartment in the city, far from the woods and the old Victorian. But the Cinder Man didn’t stay behind. He appears at the edges of my vision, a shadow in the corner of my eye, always wearing that same twisted grin. I am fifty now, and I have learned to live with him. I have a family of my own, and I keep my box of finger bones hidden in my study. But tonight, as I sit in my armchair, I smell smoke. And I hear that faint, rhythmic creaking, like a rocking chair, coming from my own closet. The door is ajar. And he is waiting, offering me a matchstick.