The Tenant’s Votive Candle

The cicadas started their nightly chorus around the time the last of the moving trucks pulled away from the old farmhouse. My name is Elias, and I had come home to our family’s property, a relic my grandmother left us, after my final exams. The house was a sprawling Victorian, its white paint peeling like sunburned skin, and the wrap-around porch sagged under the weight of too many winters. We lived on the top floor, a cramped but cozy apartment with sloped ceilings and a single bathroom. The ground floor was rented out to supplement our income, and for the past year, it had been occupied by the Murk family.

Father Murk was a gaunt man with eyes like boiled eggs, always scanning the room as if he were listening to something just beyond hearing. His wife was a silent wraith who never left the ground floor without her rosary, and their three children were pale, wide-eyed things that never played outside. They were devout to a fault, their prayers a constant, guttural hum that vibrated through the floorboards. Mother said they were ‘too religious,’ but I think we all knew there was something darker in their devotion. Candles burned at odd hours, and strange symbols were chalked on the basement door. We evicted them after a month, citing a lease violation, but their presence lingered like smoke.

After they left, I noticed small changes. A smell of rot in the hallway that came and went. Our dog, a lazy golden retriever, would growl at empty corners. But the worst were my own episodes. I blamed the stress of waiting for results, the anticipation that gnawed at my insides, but my mother blamed the Murks. ‘They left something behind,’ she whispered once, her eyes darting to the ceiling. ‘Something that wants to be fed.’

That summer, I practically lived in my room, a converted attic space with a slanted ceiling and a single dormer window. The light switch was on the wall beside that window, and every night, as I reached for it, I saw a hand. Not my own, but a pale, elongated shape that hovered just beyond the glass, its fingers scraping the pane. I thought it was a trick of the light, a reflection from the streetlamp through the distorted glass. But the shape moved, not with my movements, but with a will of its own. It would flex its fingers, then tap twice, a rhythm I couldn’t shake from my skull.

I started to sleep with the lights on, but that made it worse. The hand would press against the glass, its palm flattening, and I could see thin, black veins threading through the skin. I tried to ignore it, to rationalize, but my anger grew. I snapped at my mother for no reason, threw books across the room, and felt a constant, low-grade fury simmering in my chest. The house felt alive, its creaks and groans no longer just the sighs of an old structure, but something with intent.

One night, I decided to confront it. I opened the window and leaned out, but the hand was gone. Instead, I saw a figure standing at the edge of the property, by the overgrown hedges. It was Father Murk, his face a pale mask in the moonlight. He raised his hand, just as in my room, and pointed at me. Then he turned and vanished into the shadows. That night, I didn’t sleep. I sat awake, listening to the hum that had started again from the ground floor, a sound I realized I had heard before, in the deepest part of my dreams.

The next morning, my mother found me in the kitchen, unshaven, my eyes bloodshot. She handed me a cup of tea and said, ‘I found something in the basement.’ I followed her down the creaking stairs, past the laundry room, to the small, damp space under the house. In the far corner, behind a pile of old boxes, was a small niche in the wall. Inside, almost completely hidden, was a votive candle, burned down to a stub, and next to it, a piece of paper with a name written in shaky handwriting: ‘Elias.’ The paper was stained with something dark, and I swear, the candle was still warm.

That evening, I returned to my room with a hammer. I smashed the window, the glass shattering into the night, and the hand didn’t appear. But then I heard a sound from the ground floor, a low, rhythmic chanting. It was Father Murk’s voice, but it seemed to come from everywhere at once. I ran downstairs, my heart hammering, and burst into the empty apartment. The rooms were bare, but on the wall of the main bedroom, someone had drawn a large circle with strange runes around it. In the center, they had written my name again. And as I stared, the runes began to glow, faintly, like embers.

I felt a presence behind me, and I turned to see the pale hand reaching out from the wall, its fingers curling around my shoulder. I tried to scream, but no sound came. The hand pulled me toward the wall, and the runes spun around me, and I felt myself dissolving, being dragged into a space that was not my own.

I don’t know how long I was in that place. It was a gray void, filled with whispers that sounded like the Murk family’s prayers. I could see my mother’s house from a distance, but it was like looking through a fogged window. I wanted to call out, but my voice was gone. Then I saw the candle, the same one from the basement, floating in the void. It was lit, and its flame grew, and its light hurt my eyes. And I realized: the candle was my soul, and it was burning down.

When I woke, I was lying on the floor of my bedroom, the window shattered, and the room cold. The calendar on my wall showed that a week had passed. The Murk family’s apartment was sealed, and the landlord, a man who had taken over managing the property, wouldn’t tell me what had happened. But I knew. I saw the votive candle in my mind, and I knew it was still burning. And whenever I close my eyes, I see that hand, tapping twice, waiting for me to burn out.

My results came in the mail last week. I passed, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not the same person. I’ve started leaving the lights on, and I never go near the window. But when I was home, about two months after everything, I saw the hand again. But this time, it wasn’t outside the glass. It was inside, pressing against my mirror, its fingers cold on my reflection. And I realized, with a terror that froze my blood, that the hand wasn’t reaching for me. It was already inside.