Guiding Flame
Your lantern’s light was but a small island against an ocean of darkness—a void that consumed all beyond your small sliver of safety—a precarious ledge that your fragile sense of reason now hinged upon. Large timbered pillars emerged, its lofty reaches somewhere above you. High gates spanned the spaces between and you were determined to search out each one.
You couldn’t have heard what you had and chasing it now teetered you in a direction you knew was away from safety. But that laughter... There was no mistaking it—the laugh was of a child ten years in the past. It shouldn’t be here. You knew that. You did. Still, here you were, searching.
The first gate creaked open, the resident horse protesting as you prodded it from one side to the other. It shuffled around, the two of you in a dance until you finally herded it both from the stall and the building. This search was going to be slow going, methodical, but you had to be certain. There could be no doubt.
You approached the next gate but hesitated. This was the one you had locked the goats within. They always went where they pleased, so had you started pinning them up wherever they end up. They were stubborn assholes, and your every encounter ended up being a confrontation of some sort. Someone once claimed your likeness was the reason behind your constant head butting. You forgot who, but the thought had you consoling your forehead with your fingertips. Some of that head butting had been literal.
You postponed that headache, instead moving to empty two more stalls and sending the horses out to graze in the night. The light’s safety seemed to waiver with each emptied enclosure. You didn’t want to find what you were looking for but you hoped to. The owner of that laugh was just a boy—a fearless sort who climbed in and out of trouble like others did trees. But he climbed plenty of those too.
‘Pa?’
You froze, shoving your lantern upward to a place its light had no hope of reaching---the hay loft.
“Poppa?”
You spun to find Pamela, your eldest of three daughters. The eight-year-old’s shoulder length blond hair framed an expression of uncertainty as she stood in her night gown, a candle in her hand. She was ten years younger than her brother; he had been a surprise, but the rest of them had been plans that came to fruition. Plans... All they were ever good for was going to shit.
“I made you some dinner, Poppa,” she said. “Just like Momma showed me.”
You blinked and looked back up at her having forgotten she was there. “That’s fine, sweetie,” you replied, turning back to task.
“Won’t you come in and eat?”
“Go ask your mother.”
“Ask her? Ask her what? She’s still sick and in bed. I already made it so she don’t gotta do nothing.”
“Yeah, well just do as she says,” you replied, nodding absently. “She knows best.”
As you made your way to the loft’s ladder, your light washed over a support pillar, then revealed a figure standing atop the only gate still closed. Geyaah! you shrieked, stumbling back a step. The goat’s black and white coat labeled it as your life’s one true antagonist, an entity placed in the world solely to cause you ever lasting turmoil.
As it looked down at you, you thought it might be gloating. ‘You only thought you were pinning me up.’ You knew you were beyond striking range, but still, your empty hand went up alongside your lantern before you even realized you had surrendered.
Your adversary seemed contented by this. It hopped down, then strolled out into the darkness.
Willful ass, you thought, shaking your head. With that disaster averted, you opened the gate and watched as the rest filed out to trail the first. The evacuation rendered another stall empty—your sagging shoulders settling a little deeper.
‘Hehe’ came a muffled giggle.
You spun, raised your light, and paced alongside the gates, a child’s game returning to you and taunting out a word. “Marco?” you heard yourself say.
No response.
The ladder came and went, leaving you standing beneath a pitched roof, surrounded by heaps of silence. “Marco?” you said more deliberately. But the mounds and bails were either not playing or they thought you might actually be looking for someone named ‘Marco.’
With reluctance, you took up a fork speared into a mound. You hung the lantern near the rafters and made ready to transfer the loft’s contents from one side to the other. But you hesitated. And if he really is hiding up here?
You gingerly raked tufts away, combing the surface and deciding to sweep it all down to the ground level. The work was slow going, the fork doing a terrible impression on a rake. When the last pile was whittled to nothing, you set to inspecting each bail before tossing them over the ledge.
The former storage contents all disappeared below, leaving you alone with your hands on your hips, the flooring made to seem like a raft set adrift in the surrounding darkness. The only things remaining in the surrounding space was your unimpeded lamp light, your labored breathing, and your shadow.
This was crazy. You knew that. But you weren’t crazy. You knew that too. You had seen crazy in men. Crazy was being in a combat zone and shooting your commanding officer because you reasoned it would get you home sooner. This wasn’t that.
You tossed the fork down to the ground floor, retrieved your lantern, than made you way back down the ladder.
‘Polo.’
You froze, your gaze level with the loft’s floor as your light retreated from the space. At least, you didn’t think this was that. But you were growing less certain. Haunted, you decided. Has to be.
As you departed the structure, you remembered you had a family to protect. And if a ghost really had taken up residence here... Ghosts hate fire, don’t they? They have to? What doesn’t? An orange glow continued to build before you as you deliberated, the lantern no longer in your hand.
Cold fingers, you realized. *And someone needing to flush out an enemy. *It seemed there really were things that didn’t hate fire. Perhaps there were more.
You started as a small hand closed around two of your fingers. You turned to find Pamela looking up at you, her younger sisters echoing her concern. “Poppa? Are you and Momma gonna be okay?”
The question staggered you, and you turned back to the inferno that adorned a building’s frame. She was still young—too young to understand adult things. You had to remember that.
When you turned back to her, you knelt, nearing her eye level. “Of course we are, sweetheart,” you said, brushing her hair back over her shoulder. “Everything’s fine. We’re just taking care of some grown-up stuff.” You tapped her on the tip of her nose, a gesture that usually garnered you a smile. But those seemed to be in short supply as of late.
“Daddy, why’s the horse house all burned up?” your youngest asked.
“Oh, that? I don’t want you to worry about that. There was a ghost in there but Poppa took care it. It won’t be able to get you now.”
Speaking it out loud was backing you into a corner. You didn’t believe it yourself. Not really. And even less so when the suggestion reached you through your ears. So, you retreated. Again, giving up ground to an enemy that encroached from all sides. You turned away your girls, ashamed that you really couldn’t believe what you hoped they would.
Opposite of you and also eye level stood a goat—the goat. It was well within striking range and with a footing that suggested the incoming impact might omit logging a memory of the event, meaning you would likely wake up with one hell of a headache, black eyes, and no clue why your ego had also sustained bruising.
You winced, your eyes shutting in anticipation.
Only—it never arrived.
You opened your eyes to pressure against your forehead, your gaze down and observing planted hooves as your adversary leaned into you. Damned goat. It was always getting into places it didn’t belong, and now, it had leisurely strolled past your defenses and cut off your retreat. You were a soldier once, a second generation of father-soldiers. How could you let yourself get surrounded like this?
Your trembling hand rose to cover your mouth. Father-soldiers. It occurred to you there wouldn’t be a forth generation, your other hand moving to cover the first. You sobbed, leaning into your head’s pressure only for the goat to return as much as you gave.
The boy returned to your thoughts, his smile, his laugh, his stride—the last of which always stretched to land his steps within yours. Until he didn’t need to stretch any longer. Still, he followed your steps as you had with your father.
You were wrong. You were never on a ledge. All at once, the perimeter of your light’s gentle glow shattered like glass and the void swept in on you from all sides. In the span of a breath, you were there, then you were gone.
You stumbled, alone and in the dark. And thought, maybe, you’d be lost here forever.
But a candle’s flame stood amidst all the black, the void swooping around the wavering light as if it were a stone in a river. Its soft glow was framed by blond hair—Pamela. Two more candles appeared alongside the first, and suddenly, you realized your girls were hugging you from all sides, their expressions infected by your sorrow.
Your next hug might have been the hardest you’d ever closed around anyone or anything. As you stood, you hefted your youngest two, where they clung to your neck and buried their faces into your shoulders. “Everything’s not alright,” you admitted to Pamela as she walked next to you. “But it will be again. Maybe not soon. But eventually.”
You and your company returned to a small home, its windows of light both lancing darkness and beckoning your arrival. It was a planted flag on a hill—a place you and yours had acquired only through great sacrifice. But the fight wasn’t over, and now, you remembered the fight wasn’t yours alone.
[WP] A famous prompt: Describe a barn as seen by a man whose son has just been killed in war. Do not mention the son, or war, or death. Do not mention the man who does the seeing.
