The Allen House

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Frankie almost didn’t see it. He was falling asleep to adult cartoons on TBS, comforted by the television’s flickering lights of color. A harsh zag of white cut through his eyelids once, inciting shock and pain, then came the return of the blue light from the TV. The light flashed again, and he shielded his eyes before opening them to near-darkness.

Up the hill, where the old Allen cabin sat, orange carved a circle into the night. Its soft corona created shadows in a building that had been vacant for years. “A house becomes a home becomes a house.” That’s what Frankie’s mother said every now and then, peering up the unkempt hill with sympathy, and always something else that he didn’t understand.

There once had been a concrete path, leading from his house up to the Allen’s. It wasn’t often Frankie thought of his childhood friend Brynn. A few different people had come and gone since her family, so even though it was the Allen house, it was no longer hers. It’d been empty for years now, covered more and more with kudzu climbing its way to where the roof flaked and caved in. Some of the steps leading to the front door were splintered, others were soft and broken from succumbing to rot.

When he did think of Brynn, he remembered sledding from her house to his in the wintertime, and making water slides using dish soap as a lubricant in the summers. He remembered how she often smeared purple lipstick across her mouth, once leaving a sloppy kiss on his cheek that resembled cake icing.

Some of Frankie’s memories with Brynn were a clouded haze and he often wondered if he dreamed them. She liked to dig, always claiming the bigger shovel for herself though its spade was the worn color of rust, and they’d spend the day making a hole in the ground. Her mother watched through one of the small windows. Her father swore every time he twisted an ankle or stumbled into one while working in the yard. “Jesus cripes, Brynn!” He would snatch up the shovel and bring her inside, sending Frankie back home to his mother. Frankie remembered her mom staring at him through the window, watching to make sure he made it all the way into his house.

Over time, Brynn’s father filled the holes with empty beer and liquor bottles. He kept them well organized: blue labeled bud lights in one, fifths of liquor in others. The Allen shovel was on its last leg, dull and dented, the rust color spreading like a staph infection.

One night they sat across from each other in the day’s hole. She made a small divot in the center of the cool packed dirt and wiggled in a candle. She lit it and said “If we concentrate, we can see ghosts. We did it at church once, and a woman swore she saw Jesus.” Her smile moved like a wave behind the heat of the flame. “Just breathe in and out slowly. They’ll come to us.”

Frankie didn’t want to see the ghosts, he wanted to go home, but Brynn always made fun of him for chickening out. His pulse quickened and he couldn’t catch his breath as a chill ran across the tops of their heads. “It’s just the wind, Cranky Frankie. Now concentrate. Breathe slowly, remember?”

He had slowed his breathing and still his heart went faster. He stared into her brown eyes ,alight with fire, and she held him captive there. An owl called from the distance, and he jumped, but she grabbed his hands and squeezed. Hers were cold and he tightened his grip to warm them. Her eyes widened as she stared at the candle, then they focused just beyond it. Frankie turned to see what was behind him on the dirt wall but she pulled his arms forward to keep him facing her. He fell forward and the candle knocked onto her baggy blue jeans. The whites of her eyes glowed in the night, and she stood, leaving the shovel behind. “I’m sorry. Good night, Frankie.”

Frankie had stared after her through a wispy fog that swept over the hole. The next thing he remembered was waking up safely in his bed, so that hazy night felt like it was most likely a dream.

Now, he watched this candle in the vacant cabin as he recalled this possible memory, possible dream, but then isn’t a previous dream still a memory? He wondered where Brynn was now. The Allens had moved so long ago to southern Georgia according to Frankie’s mother. Frankie was sure Brynn grew up to be just as beautiful as she was as a kid. He figured she was dating the same kind of popular guys in her school that beat Frankie up at his. He had his friends, but he missed their friendship, their childhood. They didn’t keep in contact because they hadn’t been allowed cell phones in elementary school, and she moved before Frankie’s family could afford him one. After that, he blamed the passage of time.

He searched her name on Facebook now and multiple matches for a Brynn Allen showed up. He clicked on each one, trying to figure out which was her. He thought about what she told him, about seeing ghosts, and slipped on his hard-bottomed slippers. Without thinking, he grabbed his old shovel, whose stick now offered a few splinters. Frankie began the climb up the hill, picking his feet up high from each step away from the grip of thorny weeds. He stepped onto a mound of pine straw and his foot came down hard, his leg followed. The bottoms of his shoes were not enough to protect a poking crunch underfoot. He put out his hands and climbed out of one of their old holes, continuing his ascent to the Allen house.

Frankie pulled himself onto the front porch, legs stretching over the gaps in the stairs, and leaned into the same window from which Brynn’s mother used to watch him go home. The candle wavered in the house. There was no wind, no chill in the air, and surely no air blowing through this old home. His breath slowed and his chest grew heavy. He hinged toward the window; unaware it was happening. His chest was sludge, an invisible weight pressing down on it. He couldn’t hear any familiar sounds that were the woods at night. He couldn’t see anything but the aura surrounding the candle. It flickered and it flickered and it flickered and a mouth with dirt stained teeth dropping blood smiled a purple smile. Frankie’s hand went through the softened wood on the outside of the cabin, and he pulled it back, now covered in green maggots.

He turned and leaped from the porch, darting, and rolling down the hill, picking up speed, skin finding shards of glass from some of the holes, hair collecting weeds and leaves and pine straw. He found an abrupt stop, the same hole as before, and now the same white bone that broke his slipper pierced through his neck. Warm blood gurgled from Frankie’s throat and puddled into his mouth, bubbling and hot. He couldn’t move. He could just see over the top of the hole, and he grasped around him, hoping for the strength to stand and make it home. Hoping he had hope. His hand brushed something rough, caked with dirt. and he lifted Brynn’s old shovel in front of him.

He understood now what his mother always saw when she looked up at the old Allen house. Doom.