The Red Maw

The winter of my eighth year was the coldest I could remember in Idyllwild, a small mountain town where the pines stood like silent sentinels against the snow. My grandfather had just passed, and we were house-sitting for a neighbor who had fled to the coast. Our own house was under repair, and the borrowed cabin felt alien, full of the previous owner’s knick-knacks and the smell of mothballs.

My mother, Elara, would not sleep in the bedrooms. She said it was because the house was old and the wind howled through the cracks, but I knew better. She’d been like this since the funeral, jumping at shadows, her eyes darting to corners. So we camped out in the living room, unrolling our sleeping bags on the worn Persian rug before the great stone fireplace. The fire roared, casting dancing shapes on the walls, and I was told to sleep with my back to the flames, facing the hallway that led to my grandfather’s bedroom.

“Don’t look at the fire, Cassie,” Elara had said, her voice tight. “It’s not safe. The sparks can jump.”

I lay there, watching the hallway’s darkness, my heart thudding. The floorboards creaked like old bones. After a while, sleep took me, but it was a shallow, uneasy rest.

I woke to a cold that had nothing to do with the temperature. The fire had died to embers, bathing the room in a dim, orange glow. And there, in the mouth of the hallway, stood a figure. It was impossibly tall, draped in a long, black hooded coat that seemed to drink the light. It had no face, just a void beneath the hood, but when it slowly lifted its head, I saw a mouth open where the face should be, and it was filled with a swirling, fiery red, like the heart of a furnace.

I tried to scream, but my throat was frozen. The thing took a step forward, and the floor didn’t creak. It glided, as if it were just a shadow made solid. Its mouth widened, and I felt a pull, like it was drawing the heat from my body into that crimson void.

Then, from behind me, my mother’s hand clamped on my shoulder. “I know,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “Just turn around and close your eyes. It won’t bother you if you don’t look.”

I felt her hands turn me, and I buried my face in the sleeping bag, my body trembling. I kept my eyes squeezed shut, listening to the silence. The next morning, the first light of dawn filtered through the curtains, and the figure was gone. The fire was nothing but ash.

Elara never spoke of it, but I saw her staring at the hallway with a terror that mirrored my own. She made rice pudding, a comfort food, but she didn’t eat. She just stirred the pot, gazing into the steam.

Days passed, and the figure returned each night. I learned to keep my back to it, but I could feel its presence, its cold breath on my neck. Then, one afternoon, as I was rummaging through a drawer in the study, I found a photograph. It was of my grandfather, but he was young, standing before this very fireplace, and behind him, in the shadows of the hallway, was the shape of a tall, hooded figure. The red mouth was just a smear, but it was unmistakable.

On the back, in my grandfather’s handwriting: ‘They say when the mountain whispers, the old ones listen. Never turn your back to the fire.’

I was confused. I had been sleeping with my back to the fire, facing the hallway, as my mother had instructed. But perhaps the warning was different. Perhaps it meant never turn your back to the fire, as in, never trust its warmth to protect you? Or maybe it meant the fire itself was a beacon for that thing.

That night, I decided to test a theory. I would sleep facing the fire, my back to the hallway. I slipped my hand into my mother’s, and she stirred but didn’t wake. The embers glowed low, and in the reflection of the old brass clock, I saw the figure emerge from the hallway. But this time, as it drew near the circle of our sleeping bags, it stopped. It hovered at the edge, as if an invisible barrier held it back. Its mouth opened, and the red churned, but it could not advance.

The fire sputtered, and I realized the heat of the flames was like a shield. As long as the fire burned strong, the thing couldn’t cross. But we had almost let it die. My mother had known to face away, but she hadn’t known why. She was just following a primal instinct.

The next morning, I told her what I’d figured out. She listened, her face pale. Then she said, ‘Your grandfather used to say the same thing. ‘Keep the fire high, and the long one can’t come nigh.’ I thought he was just rambling.’

We kept the fire blazing day and night, hauling logs from the shed, but the figure kept appearing at the edge of the circle, patient, waiting. It knew we had to leave eventually.

One night, I dreamt of my grandfather. He was an old man in a faded flannel shirt, and he said, ‘You feed it, Cassie. Any fire you make, it can take. But you can starve it if you stop feeding it your fear. It eats the fire you breath, the heat in your blood. Keep your blood cold, and it’ll get hungry and leave.’

I woke with a gasp. The figure was there, its mouth a gaping red, and I realized what I had to do. I sat up, facing it, my mother’s sleeping form behind me. I forced myself to breathe slow, to calm my racing heart. I thought of cold things: the frozen lake in winter, the icy mountain air, the deep blue of a glacier. I pictured my blood turning to ice water, my heart a lump of frost.

The figure’s mouth seemed to flicker, the red dimming. It took a step back, then another. The fire flared, casting a warm light, and the thing stood at the edge of the circle, its hood drooping. I kept my focus, my breath shallow, as the embers crackled. The figure began to fade, like smoke dissipating, and within moments, it was gone.

I sat there till dawn, my body shivering, but triumphant. My mother woke to see me smiling, and she hugged me tight. ‘You did it,’ she said. ‘You banished it.’

We never saw the figure again. And to this day, when I hear wind in the pines or see a fire burn, I think of my grandfather’s warning, and I know that some things are fueled by our fear, and the only way to defeat them is to go cold inside.

The Red Maw, as I’ve come to call it, still haunts my dreams, but now I know its weakness. I just have to remember to stay cold, and to never, ever, let the fire go out.