The Thirteenth Holder

“The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.” Pastor Nate had been sitting on his green Coleman chair to deliver the opening line of his story, his head intentionally pointing groundward so that none of the youth group campers could see his face. He paused for dramatic effect, the sound of the snapping fire before him the only music to challenge the vibrant songs of the crickets and peepers surrounding them in the White Mountain Forest. Nate raised his head slowly, a sinister grin on his bearded face, and continued the story, slowly scanning the eyes of the ten fourth graders encircling the fire. He clearly had their attention.

“It was a local who discovered the candle, a scoundrel named Caleb Brown. He was a grizzled old vagrant who knew these woods because the neglected cabin the candle was in was so close to his moonshine still, and more than once he’d hidden his equipment in that beat-up building to dodge the Forestry Rangers when they came snooping about. Caleb Brown found the candle that night, and as Caleb wasn’t… normal… he turned and walked toward the cabin, his eyes focused and reflecting that low flame.”

Above the cricketsong and the snapping fire, a barred owl called out a perfectly timed whoooooo, so Pastor Nate paused again. “Caleb Brown,” he whispered sharply, then paused again, and looked deeply and deliberately into the flames. “I should tell you first about Caleb Brown.”

Five boys and four girls shifted slightly where they sat, all on pine-needled hard ground, and several of them looked at each other with nervous excitement. Only one boy stayed completely still, his eyes focused on Pastor Nate on the opposite side of the campfire.

“Old Caleb was born in 1888 to cursed parents, so the legend says, although I’ll tell you right now I could never find any records about who his daddy might have been. And the house he was born in was a big one, a mansion, really, aside Cemetery Hill over in Whitefield. It was a house far too big for common folks to afford – this the townspeople all knew – and as Caleb’s family had moved there just months before he came into this world, they were ‘outsiders’ to the locals. It didn’t take long for the cruel stories to begin circulating, from the schoolhouse to the post office.”

“What stories?” asked Bethany. The Pastor took the opportunity to lean in her direction to tell her.

“Stories about how that cemetery had more and more residents without the benefit of headstones. Stories about strange sounds coming from that house, stories about unholy midnight ceremonies. Stories about how rich visitors at the Grand Hotel would leave unannounced, without checking out. Stories about how they could afford that big mansion on Cemetery Hill.”

Pastor Nate leaned back in his Coleman camping chair. “So Caleb Brown was about fifteen years old when the townspeople could no longer ignore the strange noises, the strange lights, the screams at 3am coming from up on the hill. That was the day when the son of a prominent Whitefield family came home from New York City to visit, driving one of the first fancy motorcars anyone in town had ever seen. Sure enough, when he went out on the golf course by himself, he never came back to the clubhouse. He’d just disappeared into thin air. But the townspeople knew what really happened.”

Fashioning his fire-poking stick like a sword, the pastor adjusted one of the larger pieces of wood in the campfire, and instantly the fire flared brightly. “Caleb Brown was surveying the cemetery that evening when more than a dozen men in town made their way up that hill with petrol cans and stick matches, and he watched as those men set his home aflame with his mother and sisters inside. This time, he listened to the horrible screams, and he didn’t move until there was nothing left of that house but one of the seven chimneys. He didn’t move a muscle all night as his cursed family burned alive in that fire.”

Almost all of the children sat with their mouths open, visages of smoke and destruction in their minds. All except for Daniel, who even still hatefully stared across the campfire at the pastor, whose history he so desperately wanted to share with his classmates. At least to warn them. But after two years of whispered threats, Daniel still hadn’t spoken a word about Pastor Nate’s sick recreational distractions.

“That poor boy,” stated Bethany’s sister Charlotte, sitting to her left. “No wonder he’s all messed up. He didn’t do anything wrong, and he saw…”

“But he did do things that were wrong, Charlotte,” the pastor replied, “evil things that I can’t possibly describe, because the townspeople who burned down his house? They were right.”

Nine children gasped.

“They were right about all the missing people, about there being so many bodies in the cemetery who never had funerals or headstones. Caleb and his family did put them there, including the original owners of the house! The townspeople were right about the midnight rituals held in there, the evil ceremonies that caused the screaming and the unnatural lights! Caleb lived only because he had just finished burying a young girl he himself strangled to pocket her money and jewelry! He’d murdered his first victim when he was no older than any of you!”

“And how do you know any of this?” asked Daniel, wearing an expression completely devoid of emotion.

“Because I knew Caleb Brown,” Nate replied, “Because this story is real! I knew Caleb Brown when I was just a kid, and let me tell you, he was more evil a man than any I’ve ever known!”

“Birds of a feather, then?” mumbled Daniel.

Pastor Nate didn’t hear what the boy had said, but he could feel a biting cold numbness slither down his back hoping that the other children hadn’t heard either. He stuttered for a moment, getting back to the ghost story he had meant to tell as just that: a story.

“So... in that house – in the ruins of that house – the only things they found that survived the fire were candle holders… a dozen jet-black candle holders, ancient-looking things, covered in strange markings no one could decipher and no one has been able to decipher in all the years since. Decades later, the police and the FBI brought crews of investigators up to that cemetery, and they found all of the bodies the Brown Family had buried there. Almost fifty of them, or about one every thirteen weeks they were in that house.”

“Where was Caleb all the years in between?” asked Elijah.

“For most of it, I don’t know,” replied Pastor Nate, a fact that added rather than detracted to the story. “I know from state records that he’d spent some time in jail for breaking and entering, and theft. He robbed a pawn shop once, and I guess he was living in the woods when he’d eaten some farm animals he’d stolen. And he had been moonshining for a while before I encountered him.”

“Where did you…” began Elijah, but the preacher interrupted him.

“So, let me get back to the ghost story part, we kind of branched away from it.”

The kids again settled down, and again, Daniel was stoic and motionless.

“The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, Caleb Brown came across it as he walked in the darkness, and there was a candle in the window, and it seemed to call out to him. It was a night much like this… warm, with a soft breeze, and all the sounds of the nighttime forest in full orchestra: owls, and peepers, and frogs. So Caleb Brown, the cursed child, the thief, the molester, the mass murderer, walked up the decaying path to the cabin, and as he did, the candle gleamed brighter, and in an instant, all the sounds of the forest went completely silent. Not a peep, or a hoot, or a croak. But he wasn’t fazed at all by this: he just stepped inside the heavy, creaky door, and as he did, it shut behind him with a quaking slam.

“Inside, there was a smell of rotten meat, and the candle grew five times brighter as he neared the center of the room. He knew there was a presence there, and at first he thought it was someone getting even with him by scaring him to death. So he spoke aloud:

“Come out so I can see you, he said. I shall not be frightened.”

“Then the cobweb-pasted log beams in the cabin seemed to become animated, as if an old zoetrope were spinning strange symbols about him. Then he looked at the candle, and he recognized the holder it was placed in from so many years before: it was black as darkest night, and the runes upon it were glowing, and rotating around the base in the windowsill. It was one of the twelve cursed candleholders in the Cemetery Hill house!”

“Thirteen,” Daniel interrupted, startling Pastor Nate, who ignored him.

“Then a voice more sinister than death spoke to him:

“My son, it said, it has been sixty years to the day since last we spoke.”

“Caleb shrank into himself slightly, the cold recognition of the voice of the King of Evil which he had not heard for so long was a shock to his system:

“Father, he bowed his head, I am yet still here to do your will.”

“My will… the shadow replied, has been unremembered by you for two generations of man.”

"Caleb Brown felt more scolded than terrified. I have done unspeakable acts as a child, and now as an old man, I have… spoiled the innocence of others. In your name.”

“Yes, you have ruined the pristine and corrupted the blessed of our enemy,” the voice shook the cabin. “Caleb, my son, your work on earth is complete. I now call you to be by my side, in the innermost circle of Hell, wherein we shall rot and burn together forever.”

“The candle in the window burst into an inferno which no man can imagine, and Caleb screamed in the most insidious pain a human being has ever felt, matched only by those in his family six decades before. His flesh dissolved before he could beg for mercy, his soul spilled between the floorboards, and within moments, the log room was dark again. The candle was spent in the window, the holder still emitting thin tendrils of thin smoke, the room unblemished save for a sizzling, blackened powder in the shape of a sprawling human on the floor. As the door released and slowly swung open, the crickets began singing again, and the owls began hooting again, and the frogs began hooting again. Because the evil had gone from the forest.”

Pastor Nate leaned back in his Coleman chair. “This is just a story I tell you now, children, a ghost story in the tradition of scary stories told by a campfire. But let it also be a warning to live a life like Jesus lived, and not like the one who tempted him in the desert. For one who commits unspeakable sin will be found by the candleholder, and an eternity of flame and pain awaits in the bowels of Hell. This is just a story… for I wasn’t there when the devil took him, but I am the one who placed the candleholder in the cabin window. My studies revealed the legend that a flame would light as evil approached the holder at the time of reckoning when the world of the righteous would have its revenge, and justice was served on Caleb Brown. And to prove it…”

Pastor Nate reached behind his chair and into his backpack and withdrew something out of the sight of the children.

“And to prove it… THIS is the twelfth candleholder of the Murder House of Caleb Brown!” He stood up and held the black candle base above his head, laughing a dreadfully fake maniacal laugh. The kids jumped a bit, but they knew that the metal piece was certainly a prop, and after listening to Pastor Nate’s ridiculous laugh, they began to laugh a little themselves, then dutifully applauded.

“Yeah, I know it’s not a man with a bloody hook for a hand, but…”

“I know that house, Pastor Nate,” interrupted Daniel, who still sat motionless.

“Wh..what?” asked Nate, candleholder still above his head.

“That was my great grandfather’s house, up in Whitefield. It was he and my great grandmother who were murdered by the Browns – disemboweled, I think you call it – and they were the first to be planted in the cemetery, one on top of the other, in dirt, no casket. And there were thirteen candleholders, not twelve. They were my family’s before the Browns took them. Eleven of them are in a box in the Whitefield Historical Society, one is in your hands…”

Nate felt his spine tense up, and a wave – like freezing liquid – descend it. He found himself barely able to move the candleholder to the front of his chest. These aren’t the words of a fourth grader, he thought. He couldn’t breathe.

“…and the last candleholder was on my grandfather’s mantle for decades. Then my dad’s. Polished with love every Good Friday at three in the afternoon. Here. Let me show you.”

Daniel reached into his backpack, and as he pulled the thirteenth candle holder out of a pocket, suddenly, all the nighttime sounds of the forest ceased, and the world became completely silent.

Before the children could react, both candleholders began to glow with a supernatural light, strange etchings on each radiating an eerie pall, and the markings began to rotate around the holder’s base.

“Would you… like to hear his voice, you damned, perverted hypocrite? Or will you spare yourself that honor and just repeat the words?”

Pastor Nate’s eyes were cartoonish in size, staring into the rotating symbols on the holder before him. “For one who commits unspeakable sin will be found by the candleholder, and an eternity of flame and pain awaits in the bowels of Hell.”

Daniel's eyes opened as Nate's had, to the size of silver dollars, the capillaries within seeming to glow an unnatural hue of red. "Say hello to the undead brethren for me, won't you?"

The children around the campfire were entirely confused, and they remained stunned until the campfire erupted into an inferno upon Pastor Nate, an unseen force blowing them all back on a tidal wave of heat. When they recovered, they saw the pastor was engulfed in flames, still clutching the candleholder before him in blackening hands. It was only when the Pastor began screaming ungodly sounds of insanity and pain that the nine children also screamed, scrambling into the most distant tent to hide.

“Daddy has called you home, Pastor Nate,” spoke Daniel, smiling at last, continuously staring at the preacher as his shrieking finally began to fade. Still standing, still grasping the holder, the charred, smoldering body of Pastor Nate finally collapsed face-first and lifeless into the flames,

Daniel stood, turned, and slowly walked into the darkness of the woods. “You can keep the candleholder,” he said, patting his backpack. “I’ll need mine again one day, of course.”

As Daniel disappeared from the light of the pyre, the sniffling, terrified weeping of the children faded, and the crunching of his own footsteps quieted. The crickets began singing once again, the frogs once again called out to one another, and the barred owls once again began asking each other their eternal question.