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Within the amber embrace of ancient cedar, cold LED lights reverberated from wall to wall, appearing to charge the wooden logs of the cabin with warm energy, so that the golden light of the room seemed to emanate directly from the wood itself.

Virginia Dyer stood quietly at the window, the early evening sun streaming in as she watched the untidy road which led to the cabin. She felt like a sailor’s wife searching the horizon.

Malcolm had not reached out to them, and although his silence was part of the plan, it still unnerved Virginia. That “the plan” was based on the warnings of a six year old girl did not help.

“Goodbye daddy.” Sonya had said, with tears in her bright green eyes. Sonya was always a mature child, far beyond her years. An ‘old soul’, as Malcolm was fond of saying.

Malcolm had leaned in and picked her up and hugged her close, and in his arms she was the smallest little person imaginable. “I’ll see you soon blinchik. It’s just for a couple of days.”

But Sonya was not consoled. Virginia watched the diminutive girl hug her father as fiercely as her little arms were able, and when Malcolm put her down his shoulder was darkened by tears. Sonya wiped her eyes and said, “No Daddy, it will be a very long time.” Then she grabbed her small frog backpack as though it was a shotgun and walked toward the apartment door as if she were headed to the barn to put down the family dog.

It would have been cute if Sonya were any other child. But Sonya was Sonya, and Virginia and Malcolm were afraid.

The original plan, Sonya’s original plan, was that they all leave together, immediately. But Malcolm insisted on staying behind another 48 hours in case there was a last minute problem with the algal grow he’d left with a subordinate. It was only Malcolm’s trust in Sonya, her insistence that he not go back to the farm, that pulled him away from the grow to begin with, but even her dire predictions could not seperate him completely from his work.

“Tens of thousands of people rely on that crop Virginia,” Malcolm had said, “I can’t disappear completely without knowing it’s stabilized. Two more days and then I’ll meet you out there.”

That was five days ago. Malcolm was supposed to catch a train and arrive by cab. Instead, there Virginia stood nervously, staring out the window, waiting, as Sonya played in the backyard.

Virginia took a deep breath in a fruitless effort to banish the sensation of lurking tragedy. She knew this feeling, she was sure of it, though she’d only felt it once before, when her mother had a stroke and collapsed, unable to call anyone, and Virginia, compelled by an illogical instinct, took the 4 hour drive right to her house, and found her there, on death’s door.

This feeling was the same – a dance with panic around the idea of a person in trouble – then her mother, and now Malcolm.

Right then Sonya came running in from the backyard wearing the look of preturnatural seriousness her teachers found so disconcerting. “It’s almost time.”

Virginia swung around at the sound of the small girl’s voice, her heart racing. She hadn’t heard Sonya’s bare feet on the carpet. “You scared me honey.”

Sonya seemed to be looking at something, but in front of her was only a bare wall of logs. Yet her eyes tracked the invisible object as though she could see it clearly. “They’re almost here.”

Sonya’s gaze fell on the front door just as Virginia heard the car’s wheels on the gravel. Looking out the window, seeing a cab, Virginia swung the door open and raced outside.

“Mommy!” Sonya raced to the front door, but did not step out, instead leaning her face around the door frame just enough to watch.

As Virginia ran toward the cab, she made eye contact with the driver. Technically the cab would be entirely automatic, but state law still required a human operator.

Through the front windshield the man’s eyes were pleading, filled with abject terror. Behind him, there was dark movement in the backseat, and then the driver’s head was gone and the front windshield was covered in a uniform layer of blood so bright it looked like red ink.

Virginia slid to a stop in the gravel and screamed. The door to the cab began to open as Virginia scrambled back toward the cabin, tripping in the process, her feet scraping uselessly in the small pebbles.

A foot came out of the car first, then another, then the most delicate, pale hands peeking out from an all black ensemble, black trench, black hoodie. The figure looked ill at ease in the sun, its malformed face revealed starkly for the world to see.

Virginia caught a glimpse of its disfigured face, the tongueless maw of a mouth, skin like melted rubber, eyes burning rage and constant pain.

The Girl.

Virginia felt the invasion in her mind, as if a worm had crawled in through her ear and began to yell. She fought to stand and burst into a sprint, but an invisible force grabbed at her feet and dragged her back through the gravel face down.

Where is the girl?

Virginia’s face was a mass of dust and blood by the time she stopped. She craned her neck up off the ground and looked back at the house, seeing the stoop from the strange low angle, and catching a glimpse of the small head sticking out from the door frame, auburn hair lifting in a slight breeze, eyes glued to her mother’s ordeal.

The same invisible force flipped Virginia over until she was looking up at the source of her torment, its horrible face silhouetted by the lowering sun.

Where is she?

A scraping began in Virginia’s head, a psychic fingernail picking at a mental scab, just teasing at it, a burning itch in her mind. “She isn’t here.”

The figure let out a physically audible moan, wet and enraged. Without another thought or request, the figure reached out a slim, graceful finger and pointed it at Virginia’s forehead.

“Stop!”

The scratching in Virginia’s mind subsided. The dark figure looked up toward the house, frozen in place. Virginia sat up with great effort and turned around to see Sonya, all 3 feet of her, standing defiantly at the bottom of the stairs.

“Sonya! Run!” Virginia screamed, although she knew it was no use. But Sonya did not run, instead she stood her ground and stared fearlessly at the dark figure.

“You did bad things. You’re a bad person!”
The dirt around Sonya’s feet began to vibrate, almost imperceptively. A vein in her forehead bulged.

The dark figure seemed frozen, almost lost. A long silence passed, Virginia watching, working her way to her feet.

After a time, Sonya spoke again, “That isn’t fair!” She yelled at the dark figure and Virginia realized they were speaking in the silence, conversing with one another in their minds alone.

Virginia was on her knees, her gaze switching back and forth between the two of them, Sonya impossibly small and brave, the figure shaken and hunched over.

But then she saw the dark figure stand up straight and take on an air of resolve. Slowly, the figure raised both its hands into the air, and Virginia knew, somehow, that those hands were the most dangerous of weapons, and they were aimed at her daughter.

With a guttural yell, Virginia got her right foot underneath her and used it to propel herself bodily into the dark figure, diving forward and catching it unawares beneath the waist. The two of them tumbled to the ground and Sonya ran towards the bundle of arms and legs yelling for Virginia.

Virginia punched at the monstrosity, tearing at it with her nails, trying with all her might to kill the terrible creature with her bare hands, sure it had killed Malcolm, certain it sought to kill her daughter. Virginia was on top of the figure now, pummelling it mercilessly with her fists.

Then a thought came unbidden into Virginia’s head, its source unclear, but its message unequivocal. Through a veil of raked skin and blood, a morass of old and news scars, the figure’s tormented face looked up at Virginia, and their eyes met. Virginia stopped fighting even as the traveller unleashed a final, mindless rage.

With a flick of its fingers Virginia flew high into the air, faster than a diving hawk. She impacted on the side of the log cabin with devastating effect, her broken body falling to the ground, lifeless.

Both Sonya and the dark figure looked on towards the house, both blinking through tears.

Its rage spent, memories came flooding back, and the dark figure saw everything, the arc of its life, clear and unbreakable as a diamond bridge.

Sonya turned slowly around, her brain awash in raw psychic rage, an energy new to the world emanating from her pores, coursing through her, uncontrollable, barely contained by her human form.

The dark figure tried to speak, to send a message by mind or by voice. The wet sound of its ruined mouth went unheard, and the remorseful begging of its mind unheeded, as a whirlwind of power began to surround Sonya. Motes of pure energy swirled around the small girl and where the energy intersected with the dark figure, bits of it vaporized into nothingness. First its fleshy nose and malformed face, bits of clothes and skin. The storm of power grew until the dark figure was bombarded by it, cut into searing ribbons, the ribbons into particles, the particles reduced to a pile of bone and ash.

Still raging, the psychic conflagration became an unbroken shell of light, bright and hot. It expanded and inflated, the child who was once called Sonya in its center, wailing in rage, until the ancient cedar of the log cabin began to glow, hot as embers, and burst into flames.

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