The Firewood Room

I was seven that summer, the year the birches along the gravel road turned black before their time. We lived on a narrow spit of land called Skarvik, where the sea gnawed at the cliffs and the wind never quite stopped. My father had built our house from timber that smelled of salt and pine, and beside the garage stood a narrow shed where we stacked the winter firewood. It was a dark place, even at noon, with only a low door that creaked on its hinges.

On that particular afternoon, the sun was high and the air was thick with the scent of cut grass. My father and my two older brothers were mending the fence by the north field, their voices drifting over the yard like distant gulls. My mother was inside, humming some old lullaby as she kneaded dough for the evening bread. I was crouched by the garage, drawing patterns in the dust with a stick, when I heard my name called—not from the field, but from the shed.

‘Elsa,’ the voice said, soft and familiar. It was my brother Mikkel’s voice, but not quite. There was a drag to it, a rustling quality, as if each word were being pulled through dry leaves. I looked up. The shed door stood ajar, a black rectangle against the whitewashed wall. Inside, I could see nothing but darkness.

I took a step closer. The voice called again, more insistent. ‘Elsa, come here. I have something to show you.’ The end of the sentence had a deeper, grainy undertone, like the growl of a distant engine. I felt a cold prickle on my arms, and my heart began to beat faster, though I didn’t know why. Something was wrong. Mikkel never called me like that. He was always loud and laughing, not whispering from dark places.

I wanted to run to the field, to the safety of my father’s voice, but my feet seemed rooted to the ground. The darkness in the shed seemed to pulse, to breathe. And then I saw them: two small points of red light, floating in the blackness, level with where a man’s chest would be. They were not eyes like any creature I knew—they were embers, burning with a hateful glow.

The voice came again, slower, each word dripping with false sweetness. ‘I’m in here, Elsa. It’s cold. Come keep me company.’

A wave of wrongness washed over me, so strong it made my stomach twist. I tried to scream, but no sound came out. The red eyes seemed to grow brighter, and I felt a pull, a tugging at my chest, as if something were reaching out to drag me into that suffocating dark. I knew, with the clarity of a child’s nightmare, that if I stepped over that threshold, I would never come out again.

But just then, the wind caught the shed door and slammed it shut with a bang. The red eyes vanished. The pull released me, and I stumbled backward, gasping. My mother came running out, her hands white with flour, and found me sitting in the dirt, shaking. She asked what was wrong, but I could only point at the shed. ‘Mikkel,’ I said. ‘He’s in there.’ But Mikkel was with my father, and when they opened the shed, it was empty except for the stacked wood, and the day went on as if nothing had happened.

I never told anyone the full truth, because they would say I imagined it. But I know what I saw. And now, every winter, when we take logs from that shed, I notice that the wood at the back is darker than the rest, almost black, and it gives off a faint, sickly-sweet smell, like burnt sugar and damp earth. And sometimes, when the wind is just right, I hear my name called from inside the house’s walls, in a voice that sounds like my brother’s, but not quite. I never answer. I never will.

Years later, I learned that the previous owners of our land had built a small root cellar beneath the shed, and that a man had died there—a recluse who had gone mad in the dark, his eyes said to have glowed red with fever before he passed. They sealed the entrance, but the shed remained. Sometimes I wonder if the blackened wood is not just from age, but from something else, something that lingers in the cold, waiting for the unwary. And I count my blessings that the wind shut that door when it did.

But I can’t help thinking: what if the wind wasn’t the wind at all? What if something in that shed chose to let me go? And what if, one day, it changes its mind?