By Candlelight

Ghost Story

By Candlelight

It would be dark as death if not for the candle burning above the fireplace. The candle’s flame levitates above the mantel’s shelf as though it is alive and possessed of a soul, or possessed by one, which of course it can be neither. While a flame may in some sense have a life, as it does eat, breathe, and die, it cannot be considered “alive” in a conscious, soulful sense, can it? We would not say that a tornado is “alive” would we, even though it eats, breathes and dies? No, and neither can we say that a flame is. To be “alive” requires an organic body, and some sort of instinct for survival, something more than just a raging, rampant energy. I would have laughed at the irony of that thought had I cared enough to do so, but affectivity, like the other perspectives, is long forgotten in my current state. Emotions are inconsequential to one who is no more “alive” than a candle’s flame.

The candle by itself is insufficient to illuminate the entire mantle, let alone the large, high-ceilinged room, but it must suffice. Without it there is nothing but blackness, and there must be something. The flame is mine. It is the one thing I can control. I alone spark it to life, and I alone snuff the life from it. In between doing those things I am only a spectator watching as invisible drafts from the chimney bend the candle’s flame this way, and waft it that way. The flame appears to enjoy the drafts. It spirals on tiptoes, as she once did. It dances lightly, barely jiggling the lubricious surface of molten wax that collects in the hollow melt surrounding its wick. When the opportunity arises, the flame leans hungrily toward the ragged Victorian wallpaper, but barring an accident it is tied to the candle as I am tied to the room. The difference between us is that fire lacks conscious thought. It cannot be unhappy about it's situation, and so it twirls, bends, and illuminates, while I merely endure perpetuity.

The chimney’s antique flu sucks heavily at the outside air, pulling it through a creosote crusted trachea filtered by an assortment of abandoned webs, and nests that thicken downward as the gales cascade through the depths of its shaft. The gusts whistle and howl angrily through the blockages while the steady, hollow clunk of a loose damper keeps unsteady time, it all supplying an eerie accompaniment to the candle flame’s gyrations.

Above the mantel, in the spotlight of the candle, hangs the portrait of a girl. A young woman rather. It is not a particularly good portrait. She was much more beautiful when seen while alive. However, the painter needed renown, and the portrait received high reviews, so that other young ladies who saw it begged, some demanded even, for the handsome painter to come paint their portraits. The girl in this one begged him not to go, but he was young. He needed the work. Besides, those other young ladies had beauty of their own, and even more money than this one, and the demands of success and fame are intoxicating, so he went.

But those other portraits all took on the aspects of this one, their eyes shining with her luster, and their smiles with her benevolence. How could they not? With her picture framed forever in his mind’s eye, his hand painted what he saw, the tips of his brush blushing her cheek, or twirling her hair, even as he gazed upon another.

Of course, I am that painter. And, of course, she was gone when I returned, her home vacant but for the portrait I had painted of her. That portrait remained in its place above the mantel, but for these sixty years since, her house has remained empty of “life”.

“They” say that the house is haunted. “They” say that the distraught painter did what he did directly in front of that portrait so that she might see what he did, and so that he could see her as well. They say that he lit the candle sitting on the mantel, tied his rope to the crystal chandelier, and kicked away the velvet footstool those many years ago. Rumor has it that his bones lie there yet on the floor beneath the chandelier, lying just as they fell, one by one, as the flesh freed them from its moldering grip.

There is always some truth in the stories, and the rumors. “They” are not always wrong. It is true that the flesh has withered. It is true that the bones have piled, but some sort of life remains amongst the remains, some flame from the heart, some spark from the soul, something that remembers, and smolders, and sees her face in the dim candlelight, even as it sways from the end of its rope.