The Keeper of Good Souls

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. As its warm light spilled out onto the black canvas of the night, Silas Northam opened his eyes.

He found himself standing alone in the woods, glaring out past the dark profiles of bare and branchy autumn trees. He could see the glowing ball of light dancing in the window of the cabin up the hill.

He knew these woods. He remembered how the scent of pine mingled with the smell of burning rubber from the factory in the town a few miles away. He came here as a child with his father in the summers to hunt. He knew the tattered cabin, too – his father would shudder as they passed it and whispered that Silas should never go near the old building.

Silas Northam remembered all of that, yes.

But he did not remember how he’d gotten there on this night, the same night the candle blazed for the first time in many years.

His memory was foggy, firing off recollections of vague sensations. There was the amber glow of a barroom lamp. There was the burn of scotch on his throat. There was the howl of laughter and the clinking of glasses. But nothing else. He could remember only that he opened his eyes and saw the cabin before him, felt the chill of fall on his skin.

A strange night bird carved a harsh caw against the silence. And around him, the dark profiles of leafless trees began to quiver. He could hear a faint noise in the distance, as rhythmic as a drum, a low thumping sound, over and over and over. It grew louder and faster until Silas was certain it was not a thump, but a crunch. A violent, permanent, sort of crunch. Silas thought it was the sound a fly would make as its body burst beneath the swatter, if only we were small enough to hear it.

Something was coming.

Silas spun in panic but saw nothing in the darkness. The sound beat on as if it were coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Then he saw flashes of something lurching through the darkness, dancing behind the skeletal trees all around him.

Then the screaming started.

Distant at first, but then louder, panicked. A woman’s scream, blended with the sorrow of a sob, desperate and pleading. It was the scream of a woman who’d lost something. And Silas felt hatred in its timbre.

Silas Northam did not know why he was here, but every instinct he had told him there was something evil in these woods. And he knew if he let it find him, he’d be lost to it forever.

He looked up to the cabin and remembered the way his father shuddered – broad-shouldered and armed with a rifle, the body of a doe over his shoulder. It was the only time he’d ever seen his father scared.

But the light in the window was golden and delightful. Silas knew it would keep him safe. He knew it would fend off the darkness lurking in the woods. So he ran. It felt like he'd run for miles, his legs pumping against the slight incline of the hill. He chased the warm light in the distant window until it was not so distant.

As he got closer, the crunching sound grew louder, more violent. It picked up its tempo. The screaming followed suit until he felt like some ghoul was beating on his ear drum. But he would not stop running, for he felt the prickle of something at his legs, reaching out from the dark, trying to envelop him forever.

He tumbled through the doorway of the cabin and collapsed onto the floor. He scrambled on all fours and slammed the door shut behind him. There was one last crunch, hard against the door from outside, shaking an age’s worth of dust loose and sending stray motes floating in the candlelight. Silas froze. He could hear deep breathing on the other side of the door. Something was out there. He felt a strange compulsion to open the door and see it for himself. He fixed his hand against the knob and started to turn, but then –

“If you open that door, you will be taken by the darkness,” a voice said.

Silas looked around the room of the cabin. In the dim candlelight, it looked like it could have once been a cozy place. There was a thick carpet with a floral design that covered most of the wooden floor. Big fluffy couches formed a square around a dead fireplace, thick with dust and cobwebs. A staircase ascended into utter darkness. But over by the window was the lit candle upon a table, and beside it, a man.

The man’s head was shaved, his skin was gray, but that was all that Silas could see, for the man’s back was turned. He sat in a rocking a chair, creaking back and forth while reading a book, which, as far as Silas could see over the man’s shoulder, was full of blank pages.

“Who are you?” Silas asked, his voice shaking.

The creature shut the book, stood and turned to face Silas. It was wearing a crisp white suit with a ruby red tie. Its face seemed otherworldly and ancient. Its skin was as smooth as an eggshell, cast in a gray sheen. Its features were human, but its eyes were like two black marbles.

“I am called the Keeper of Good Souls,” it said.

“This is a dream,” Silas said, his voice hovering somewhere between a statement and a question. But the Keeper just smiled warmly and shook his head.

“No,” he said. “This is a lie, as most dreams are. But dreams fade with waking. They cannot offer what I offer.”

His voice was warm and kind, and it reminded Silas of his father. He took a deep breath and stepped closer toward the candle.

“What do you offer?” Silas asked.

The Keeper tilted his head to the candle until Silas could see its flame reflected in each of his marble eyes.

“Peace,” the Keeper said. “For as long as you sit in the forgiving light of my candle.”

Silas looked into the flame, and he forgot the sickening crunch outside, the wails of the woman in the woods, the monster at his heels. Instead, he felt the warm summer sun on the back of his neck and his dad’s arms wrapped around him, helping him hold his rifle steady. He remembered his mother’s laugh as she saw them coming up the drive, dragging his first kill. He tasted the burst of strawberries in his mouth as they picked the first of the season from their family garden.

In the light of the candle, these were more than memories. They were his life, played out in real time – the best moments, the proudest. Silas felt loved. Silas felt the beauty of all that it means to be human.

“How did I get here?” he managed to ask, his eyes still fixed on the flame. The Keeper stepped toward him, standing beside him so they were shoulder to shoulder, staring together into the flame of the candle.

“I cannot tell you that,” The Keeper said. “For the moment that I do, this place will cease to be. It is a pocket of time, stretching out for as long as you need. You have been good, Silas. I saw it in you when you were a boy walking past this cabin with your father. I decided then that I could save you – should you choose to be saved.”

That thought made Silas smile. He’d been chosen. And he could stay here forever.

But then he saw something shift in the night outside the window.

A figure appeared in the frame. Silas could hardly make it out in the dim light. It was a man, and he wore a red flannel shirt and muddied jeans. And his face – no, his whole head – was swollen and gashed from some horrible beating, leaking blood and stained with red. The man’s eyes were forced shut by the swelling. His jaw hung loose in the left corner of his mouth. He was struggling to breathe. But he stared at Silas, as if he couldn’t quite see him but knew somebody was there.

Silas gasped, but the Keeper just smiled.

“You’d do best to ignore what happens in the darkness,” the Keeper said. He picked up the candle and held it up to the man’s face. The man fled off into the woods. Silas heard the crunching sound again, somewhere off in the distance. He heard the scream of the ghostly woman. He felt a twisting of his bowels – some vague fear that whatever was out there was hurting because of him. But the Keeper placed the candle back onto the table, sat back down in his chair and returned to the blank pages of his book, and soon Silas let the worries roll off him like rain on a windshield.

*****

At least a day passed. Silas could feel the passage of the time. But the sun never rose. Outside was an eternal night.

Silas Northam didn’t mind. At least not at first.

Because Silas had his candle. And in its gentle warmth, he felt no hunger, no thirst, no pain. He felt the chilly relief of lake water on a hot summer day. He remembered his family – it felt good to see them again. He’d lost them so long ago. He felt the soft lips of the girl he’d end up marrying. He remembered that he’d lost her, too. Mourned her and blamed himself. But that was a thought for the darkness. In the candlelight he only heard her laughter and felt the touch of her fingers as he cared for her in her last days. He heard her proud voice. You’re a good man, Silas Northam.

He ignored the part of him with questions, resisted the curious pull to look out the window and into the darkness.

But the temptation returned each time the man with the swollen face reappeared in the window.

Each time, Silas jumped. Each time, the Keeper only looked up from his book, released a gentle breath, a calming shhh, and Silas would shiver as he would hear that crunch out in the woods and the scream of the woman. But then, like a child sent to his room, the man with the swollen face would walk away, lost and dejected. And peace would return.

It happened the same way every time until the last time.

The figure appeared again and brought with it a chill. The Keeper didn’t seem to notice this time. His marble eyes were fixed on the empty pages of his book. Silas saw his own breath billow out from his mouth like cigarette smoke. He froze, his eyes fixed on the swollen sockets of the man beyond the window. Silas felt the chill in his bones and found he could say nothing. There was that crunch again in the woods. Then again. Then again. And Silas thought the man was coming for him.

But the figure just put its fingertips to the glass in longing. Its swollen face was wet with tears. It trembled and sobbed. Silas longed to touch it – not like how he longed to stare into the candle, no. It felt more like Silas was the candle, longing to offer light himself.

Silas’ breath fogged the glass of the window, and a chill ran over it, frosting the edges of the condensation. Slowly, the lines of letters started forming in it, as if drawn by an invisible finger, a message in the frost.

Do not leave me in the dark.

Suddenly the cabin shook – Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. That sickening sound came from all around, bouncing off the trees. The ghostly woman started to yell again. But there were new sounds, too. Glass breaking. Shouts of disgust.

The candle flickered and as its light flashed around the cabin, Silas noticed for the first time how decrepit it really was. The ornate rug was stained with an inky black splotch in its center. The cushions on the couch were torn deliberately and violently. The wooden floor was splintered as if razor blades had been drawn across it. Silas feared for a moment that the cabin would come crashing down as it shook. But soon the candle steadied. The noises stopped. The figure outside the window left. All was peaceful again.

But the Keeper was no longer there. His chair was empty. His book was gone.

Silas tried to stay calm. He looked into the candle again and felt the same warmth. He saw the day he became an Eagle Scout. A congressman came to the ceremony and gave him a certificate. Silas tried to focus on the memory but was startled by the sound of a door creaking open, like an old dog whining in the night.

Then there was that crunch.

Violent still, a splatter, as if someone had dropped a fruit from atop a tower. And now, it was coming from inside the cabin, down a dark hallway outside of the candle’s light. It beat like a slow and labored pulse. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

Silas remembered the fingertips of the man in the woods. The tears upon his face. Do not leave me in the dark. He thought of his wife’s voice and wanted to make her proud. Maybe whatever was out there needed help. Maybe, if the man with the swollen face could see the candle, he, too, would find peace. Silas stepped further into the darkness of the cabin.

“If you leave the light of the candle, I cannot promise you will find your way back,” said a voice. It was the Keeper. He stood now atop the stairs, his gray hand resting gently upon the railing. His marble eyes looked curious. His suit was crisp.

“That thing in the woods needs the candle,” Silas said.

“It does not,” the Keeper said. “I have not prepared it for him. He seeks not the candle, but you.”

But Silas Northam was a good man. Not perfect, maybe, but good. Wasn’t that why the Keeper chose him? A good man should help someone in pain, he thought. So Silas ignored the Keeper’s warning. He started down the hallway. As if he’d heard Silas’ thoughts, the Keeper spoke softly from atop the stairs as he watched Silas fade into the darkness.

“Truthfully, there are no good and bad souls – just good and bad deeds,” the Keeper said. “You have done good deeds before. You may still do so again. You must remember that when the darkness takes you.”

The floorboards of the cabin croaked with each step. The crunch persisted. It grew louder as he advanced down the hallway. And eventually Silas found himself standing in a room lit only by dim moonlight falling through an expansive window. The figure with the swollen face stood there, his face turned out upon the woods, his back turned to Silas, standing beside a half-opened door that wavered in an icy breeze.

The figure was shaking, sobbing, holding itself at the elbows. It turned to face Silas. There was blood dried all upon its cheekbones and knotted in its hair.

“I’m scared,” the man whimpered. Silas could see that it was in fact a man – no older than he was.

“Come to the candle,” Silas said, conscious of the dull crunching that persisted from somewhere all around them. The man jumped at the sound of Silas’ voice, as if he hadn’t truly believed that Silas was there. The man strained to see but his eyelids could not overcome the weight of his swollen brow.

“I – I cannot see the candle,” the man said. “Who are you?”

“I can help you,” Silas said. And he stepped forward, toward the man. As he did, he felt something dark and heavy within him. It was like he’d gone swimming with his clothes on, and now the fabric clung to his skin like lake muck and algae. He felt his insides twist in some fit of guilt. It was a feeling he could not wash off. He fought the urge to return to the candle – to see his father’s eyes, hear his mother’s laugh, feel his wife’s touch.

But the figure backed away. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

“No,” the man said. “You’re the reason I’m here.”

The man found the door and pushed it open, running out into the woods.

“Wait!” Silas called out. But there was no answer. Silas froze for a moment, remembering again the candle, the Keeper’s kind voice and the endless black of his eyes. But now it was not the candle that lured him, but the chill of the autumn night, the mystery of the man with the swollen face.

So Silas Northam left the cabin. He ran down a small set of wooden stairs until he felt the crunch of leaves beneath his boot.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

He could hear that sound coming from all around him. In the starlight, he could not see where the man had gone. Between the dark trees, Silas thought he saw eyes, the shifting of beasts. He thought he heard growling. The crunch had become unbearable. He could hear the ghostly wail of the screaming woman, the hushed voices of disgust. The breaking of glass. A ghostly orchestra of hate and anger rising to a crescendo. He put his hands to his ears and screamed into the night, for he did not want to hear what the voices said.

He no longer wanted the candle in the cabin. He wanted to go home. Far away from this place. Back to the life he knew. The life without questions and without doubt. The life he saw in the candlelight. And so he ran back through the woods from the direction he’d first come from, toward the place where he first opened his eyes. Thorny brambles scratched at his jeans like claws. Night creatures flew from the trees and he felt the flapping of wings brush the tops of his ears. The crunching grew ever louder, trailing behind him like the footfall of a giant.

He struck something hard and fell backwards upon the ground, realizing too late that he’d run right into the disfigured man. For a moment, all life froze. There was utter silence all around them as they beheld each other in the woods, the man’s face beaten like ground beef. There was only the gentle tide of the man’s labored breathing.

“You cannot keep me in the dark,” he said, his voice breaking into a sob.

“Come with me,” Silas pleaded. “We can go back to the cabin. To the candle. The Keeper will keep you safe.”

But the man only scrunched his face in anger.

“The candle is a lie you don’t deserve,” he said.

Silas looked behind him, back to the cabin in desperation. In the shadows of the distant candlelight, he could see the shape of a man in a suit standing behind the window. The Keeper shook his bald head in pity. He licked his fingers and squeezed the wick beside him, and all became black.

*****

Crunch.

Silas heard it again in the darkness. And this time, when he did, he felt a small burst of water upon his face.

He opened his eyes and felt the oppressive luminescence of a tacky lamp sear his consciousness. He smelled tobacco and beer. He was in a bar. That’s right, he thought. A bar. Blurry memories of what happened before the cabin slowly reformed. But he swore he could still feel the chill of the cold air of the woods lingering on his skin.

A woman was screaming. Now Silas understood it. It was a scream of grief.

Silas looked around but all the world was hazy. He looked down at his hands and the edges blurred. He was drunk. He touched his face to wipe away the water that had splashed, but when he looked down at his hands again, he saw not water but a liquid of bright red.

His vision focused for a moment and he saw that he was on the floor, pinning a man beneath his weight. The man wore a red flannel shirt and muddied jeans. The man’s face was swollen, bloodied and gashed.

The man lay still, his swollen face frozen in some far-off gaze.

The haze of alcohol dissipated, and Silas remembered. This man had said something. Something awful. Perhaps about his wife – though now, he wasn’t so sure. It was all so hazy. They argued. The man punched first. But Silas punched harder. Silas had won.

And won. And won.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

With each fall of his fists, some lost part of himself called out, desperate to stop it. And just before the last crunch, Silas remembered realizing too late that he was about to cross into a place he could never truly return from. Inside his heart, Silas cried out for peace. He cried out for a place where he could still be the man he had once been, before things got out of hand.

Just before the last crunch, Silas Northam wished for a place where he could still be good.

But now Silas looked up and met the horrified eyes of patrons, frozen at the sight of a monster among men. Then he saw something in the mirror behind the bar. The Keeper with his marble black eyes stood behind the glass, as if it were a window, staring out at Silas. Silas longed for the Keeper’s soothing voice. He longed for the golden candlelight of a cabin in the woods.

But he could not find his way back.