The Cinder Man of Saratoga Road

My grandfather, Elias, told me this story when I was a boy, and I have never forgotten it. He was a young man then, a foreman at the ironworks in the town of Blackthorn, a place of rust and rain, where the foundry smoke stained the sky the color of a bruise. One night, after a double shift, he was walking home along Saratoga Road, a lonely stretch of dirt that cut through the marsh. The moon was hidden behind a bank of clouds, and the only light came from the flickering lantern he carried, casting long, wavering shadows on the reeds.

That’s when he heard the footsteps behind him. Not the crunch of gravel, but a soft, shuffling sound, like wet leaves dragging on the ground. He quickened his pace, but the sound grew closer. Then a voice called out, friendly and familiar, ‘Elias! Elias Crane! Wait up, it’s been too long!’ Elias turned, and saw a man he didn’t recognize at first. He was tall, gaunt, with a face that seemed to be made of ash and soot, and he was smiling with teeth that were too white. ‘Don’t you remember me? It’s me, Abram. From the old neighborhood.’

Elias had never had a friend named Abram. He’d grown up an orphan, raised by his aunt, and he had learned early that strangers were not to be trusted. So he kept walking, muttering, ‘I think you’ve got the wrong man.’ But the stranger kept pace, his voice sweet as molasses, ‘Oh, I know you, Elias. I knew your mother, God rest her soul. She used to call you her little sparrow. And your father, he worked the docks, lost his hand in a winch accident, didn’t he? They said you’d never amount to anything, but look at you now, foreman, eh?’

Elias felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. The man knew things no one could know, things Elias had buried long ago. He stopped, his lantern shaking. The stranger’s face was now inches from his, and Elias saw that the man’s eyes were not eyes at all, but hollow sockets filled with a faint, red glow, like embers of a fire that never died. ‘Who are you?’ Elias whispered.

The man laughed, a dry, rattling sound, and said, ‘I’m the one who remembers everyone, Elias. For I am the Cinder, and I take what is left when the fire is gone. I have come for you.’

Elias bolted. He ran through the marsh, his boots sinking in the mud, the lantern snuffed out. He could hear the stranger’s footsteps behind him, not running, but walking, always the same pace, yet growing closer. He stumbled into the foundry, where the furnaces were still blazing, and he hid among the pipes and machinery, his breath ragged. He saw the stranger standing at the entrance, silhouetted against the dark, and the man said, ‘You cannot run from me, Elias. I am the ash that clings to your boots, the soot in your lungs. I am what you leave behind when you forget.’

Then the stranger began to fade, like smoke rising from a dying flame, but not before he said, ‘Remember, Elias. Remember what you left behind.’

Elias never spoke of that night again, but I saw the fear in his eyes whenever he passed a mirror, and he never went near Saratoga Road. He died old, but he died with a secret, and I often wonder if the Cinder Man came back for him. But that is his story, and I am his grandson, and I have not forgotten.