Roger, enjoying his morning tea, watched as one of the women from the village across the valley picked her way up to his cabin. He had a hard time recognizing her until she crested the hill, not fifty feet from the comfort of his chair; he wanted to blame that on too much time away from the village, but he had a nagging sense that his eyes were just getting that bad.
He maintained his silence, staring past her into the mountains looming in the distance, turning purple at the sun’s first touches. Breathing heavy, she trudged over to his chair and dropped herself onto the ground. After a few moments, her breathing slowed and she spoke.
“What a view, eh? I guess you see it every day, but I should’ve made the trek up here sooner.”
Roger set down his cup, half-turned toward her. “Don’t try an’ flatter me, Emma. Twenty years out here by m’self, an’ you’re the first visitor in all that time. Tell me what brought you my way.”
She chewed the inside of her cheek and stared down, picking at the grass between her shoes. When she spoke, her voice was small, with a tinge of fright.
“John Miller’s missing, Roger. People say they’ve heard strange noises from his house in the night, but no answer when we knock on his door. Nobody else would come out here to ask you, but they wouldn’t tell me why. Have you seen him anywhere?”
“Haven’t seen him since I left. What kinda noises?”
“His neighbors say it sounds like a dog licking up spilt stew under the table. But a whole hell of a lot louder.”
Roger could feel the color leaving him, as if the sun had chased the previous night’s chill into his face all at once. Emma misinterpreted it, looked up at him with an impish grin.
“C’mon, old man — I know I was a kid the last you saw me, but everyone starts swearing sometime.”
Roger didn’t even hear her. He stood so fast his chair fell over backward, pulling the little side table after it, feeding the dregs of his tea back into the earth. Unbothered, he marched over to the door, beckoning her with a waved hand.
“Has your father taught you to hold a sword, Emma?”
Startled, she sprang up after him. “Yes! I mean, a little. But why?”
“Because I’m getting my axe and lending you a sword and we’re going to John Miller’s house.”
They walked in silence. Emma had a question here or there, but mostly she hefted the sword in her hand, feeling out its balance and running through her warmup routines to keep her muscles moving.
It wasn’t until they were approaching the village that she asked the question she most wanted the answer to.
“What are you hoping to find at John’s?”
Roger rested the head of his axe on his shoulder and grunted. “With any luck, an old friend, a hot meal, and a welcoming fire.”
“Why are we armed?”
“Always better to be prepared than not. You know that.”
She grimaced and set her eyes on John’s house, a hundred feet up the dirt path. Everyone they passed had a cheerful wave for Emma and an averted gaze for Roger. She was too focused now to ask.
They reached John’s door, knocked, and got absolute silence in answer. Roger tugged on the door handle, but it wouldn’t move an inch. Barred by something. A hush fell over the people moving about their days outside; some gathered around to see what would happen, but most headed for their homes.
Roger fashioned a torch from a branch, an oiled rag, and a nearby cookfire. He handed it to Emma.
“We’re going in here. If I tell you to get out, you get out and hold this to the door until it catches fire. Then do the windows, and throw it into the foundation under the house. Understand?”
She shook her head. “But John might be in there and you might-”
“Emma! I know you don’t fully understand what’s happening right now, but I need you to do this. Can you do it or not?”
She nodded, and, without a word, Roger slammed his axe in between the door and the frame, pried it open, and stormed inside.
Rushing in behind him, she was slammed by a heavy stench of decay. She nearly dropped the torch right there, but managed to recover herself enough to look around the room. The walls and ceiling were coated in a thick, viscous, silver fluid. It seemed to absorb the light streaming in from the sun, now high in the sky, casting a disorienting darkness over the inside of the house.
John’s family were nowhere to be seen. Roger took a wide stance between her and the chair closest to the cold, dead fireplace. She watched over his shoulder as a human-shaped mass of the silver fluid stood and moved out from behind the chair.
It had John’s face, but it wasn’t John.
Roger lifted his axe over his head and heaved it down in a punishing vertical arc. It sank into the thing’s shoulder, caught in its chest, and slipped out, slamming into the floorboards at its feet.
It laughed and spoke in an unholy cacophony of John’s voice and something deeper, older. “You already know you’re going to need more than that, Roger. Of course, we don’t even have to do this. You can always come back to us.” The tone was mocking, taunting.
Roger looked over his shoulder at Emma. “It’s time, girl. Time for you to go.”
She lingered for a moment, eyes locked onto the thing with John’s face until it turned to her with a flash of sharp, pointed teeth and an exaggerated, watery wink.
“Yesss, girl. Time to leave. The old man would hate for you to see what happens next.” Another laugh, a rumbling cackle that seemed to come from all of the silver fluid at once.
Roger pulled the sword from her grasp and shoved her back to the door. His hands caught in the fabric of her shirt for a moment, as if they were covered in sap. She turned and ran out the door, pausing to run the torch over every part of the wall she could reach. The silver fluid made a hissing sound and retracted away from the heat, but, eventually, it caught.
She glanced over her shoulder for one more look and saw Roger plunge his left hand into the thing’s chest, raising the sword high in his right. And then she was outside, bounding around the house, setting it aflame everywhere she could reach. The next thing she knew, she was sitting alone in the grass, watching the cinders blow away on the wind.
The house burned for hours. When the last timber fell, Emma picked herself up and stepped gingerly into the destruction. All was ash save the fireplace, the weapons, and two iridescent stones, the size of her palm, half-hidden in the soot.
She buried them up on the hill, in clear view of the mountains.
