Word count: 1200
The Burning
Another monotonous gray twilight deepened, thickening the shadows around diaphanous filaments that stretched from building to building, building to ground, spider webs covered in icicles of ash that became thick black ropes as the darkness built. The webs became nearly impossible to navigate at night, their growing period, as they crept through the streets. Thick, twisted trunks of them crawled through windows and doors, into homes hopefully long abandoned. The air hung thick, oscillating as though with a breath or a pulse. A storm was brewing.
In the midst of it, John padded down the street. Mouth and chin covered by a bandana, a shapeless hat slung low over his head, his jacket too large, he moved slowly, carrying two white plastic bags in one hand. He stepped carefully over thin filaments that covered the sidewalks in a sort of web. His ratty running shoes crunched softly on pieces of broken glass.
Once in the middle of his journey, he misstepped. He froze while the air and the webs silently pulsed around him. The plastic in his hand rustled lightly. A tremor ran through the air. And that was all. He resumed his slow way, plastic rustling, glass crunching, the soft sound of sneakers on pavement.
On the edge of the city stood a small church with webs growing up the sides like ivy. They coated the walls in a thick twining coat, except for the steeple, which thrust upward yet bare. The webs were growing, though. They would be up the steeple soon. The yard was covered in them, kudzu and soot, and filaments of them hung in the air.
In the deep distance, a faint orange glow lit the cloudy horizon. It was like daylight, except it never faded. He squinted into it. Had it come closer? Would it ever come closer? They said the fires, when once they came, burned for weeks, licking slowly along the endless spidery webs until all was dust and ashes...
After a few moments he took a deep breath of musty air, then shut the church door behind him.
Out of a confused jumble of old pews piled at the front of the sanctuary like a forgotten barricade, a dark head rose. Bryce, a young man in a ragged eclectic mashup of clothes that reminded one of a priest without the collar, came sliding across the room through the dim light of two camp lanterns.
“Thank heaven.”
John cast Bryce a quizzical look, and Bryce pointed.
Behind the confused mass of smashed pews and pulpit, once there stood a stained glass window that twisted light into brilliant streams of blue and purple. But now, where once colored and leaded glass tesselated through the figure of Christ on the cross, black filaments stretched through jagged holes. Pieces of colored glass made glistening islands in the dust on the floor.
Among the islands of colored glass in the dust sea, a single set of footprints and a fallen, cracked kitchen knife.
“When did--”
“Two hours ago,” Bryce said, relieving his friend of the grocery bags.
John let Bryce have them and studied the webs. He had seen them growing through the windows of the shops and municipal buildings, of course. But somehow, this was worse.
“We’ll have to make a fire.”
John stared at Bryce. “Don’t you know--”
“We have to risk it. Once the big fire gets here, we’ll have to deal with it anyway.”
He hesitated, and in the pause Bryce’s voice was flat and even. “You weren’t here to see it.”
Silence hung between them.
Initially, the orange glow on the horizon had bounded nearer every night. Now, they wondered if it would ever come to burn away the dark presence, to bring purification. And what if it never did? Perhaps the other had started in just such a way, two companions desperate not to let them wrap their tendrils around their lives…
Bryce held out his hand. “If you’re too afraid--”
With a final glance toward the ruined window, John took his firestarter from his pocket and bent to the tinder Bryce had laid for him. A tiny spark, a tiny flame. Maybe it would be too small to notice.
The tinder was very dry. It caught, spurted upward--
“Crap,” he said, and then they were upon it.
Thick, fibrous tentacles writhed out of the darkness, splintering wood, thumping as if feeling their way--the whiskers of a living organism. A deep stench followed, like death on the move. John nearly choked on it.
A long black fiber shot out of the darkness, the tip of a tentacle, into the fire before either man could shield it, and a harsh, shrieking groan shook the walls of the church that before had only been shaken in prayer.
Bryce dropped to the ground, sobbing out something that sounded like a prayer laced with profanity. Shards of colored glass rained down around both of them. A tiny ember from the fire--all that was left in a darkness alive with menace--floated down and winked out softly on the floor.
After that there was nothing but darkness alive with movement, harsh creaks and splintering wood and the occasional near-human groan. The world was made of the noise and movement, like sitting blindfolded in a pit of snakes as they hissed and slid around you. John covered his head with his arms and prayed.
Morning dawned gray and cobwebbed.
Sometime during the small hours, the webs had stopped growing, leaving John nearly encased in a bower of sooty fibers, tangled above his head. They filled the church, festooning from the vaulted ceilings and trailing through new cracks in the wall. The broken fragments of pews and pulpit were enmeshed in webbing.
Bryce was gone.
John slowly rubbed his head, afraid to breathe too deeply in the moist, rancid air. He was tired. So tired.
Time to move on, he told himself, without moving. He could not stay. He did not look up, afraid to look too closely at the webs. Afraid of what half-rotted abominations lurked there. An acrid taste lingered in his mouth.
When finally he stepped his way through the forest and stepped outside, the air was thick and heavy. Black fibers covered the churchyard and road like a mat. The air was full of a sharp, gritty scent. Smoke.
He looked up at the sky.
In the distance, the orange glow had grown stronger. A light breeze blew in.
The first flake fell as he stood in the doorway. Gray, glowing lightly, it grazed his nose and landed, sizzling, on the stunted grass. It glowed, went out.
Another fell, and then another--the air was full of them, tiny orange glimmers of light that materialized out of the murk and fell silently to the ground. The smoke smell grew overpowering. The orange glow was much stronger--almost blinding--and advancing.
The embers fell thick, fast, silent. Beneath them, the webs began to curl and buckle, writhing, creaking, shrieking. Like demons out of hell.
But the rain of embers kept coming. The man sank to his knees as tongues of flame sprang up around him, hissing, and drove back the dark. A single tear glistened on his cheek.
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