
Chapter 3
Embers in the Dark
The sun was bleeding out across the horizon by the time they split ways.
Maclan climbed back into his rusted Dodge Power Wagon, the driver’s side door creaking like it held a grudge. He waved without looking and pulled onto the narrow road that curved toward the center of Sableton’s Hollow — its silence swallowing him whole before his taillights even disappeared.
Baz and Silas stood still for a moment in the settling dust.
“You sure about this place?” Silas asked.
Baz nodded toward the rise ahead. “Old farmhouse. Bought it cheap off a survivalist who skipped town. No neighbors for a mile in any direction. Quiet. Off the grid.”
Silas gave a humorless chuckle. “Of course it is.”
They drove in silence, the kind that holds too many memories oozing from its cracks. The kind that wraps around your ribs and presses just enough to remind you what’s still broken inside. The wind whispered through mesquite and bone-dry grass, carrying with it the smell of creosote, old woodsmoke, and the unmistakable tang of something long rotted — like memory.
The farmhouse came into view — a long-neglected structure with a sagging porch and broken windows silhouetted against the burnt-orange sky. Shutters hung crooked like tired eyelids. A rusted weather vane spun half-heartedly on the roof, creaking with the wind. The whole place looked like it had once stood proud — then given up trying. There was a beauty in that surrender.
Silas hesitated on the porch, eyes locking on an old rocking chair tucked into the corner like a forgotten whisper. It took him back — back to humid afternoons where his grandmother would sit and hum while shelling peas into a metal bowl. That sound — the snap of pods, the rhythm of her tune — lived somewhere deep, under layers of dust and memory.
It reminded him of a time when his hands were clean and he wasn’t haunted. When life was slower, the world smaller, and salvation something simple — like Sunday dinners or a hug that lingered.
The place smelled like a hundred summers ago — hot wood, dust, and something feral. It tugged at him, but he couldn’t place why like a dream just out of reach. Maybe it was the stillness. Maybe it was the kind of silence that watched you back.
Baz killed the engine and hopped out, boots crunching on gravel like the snap of brittle bones. Silas followed, duffel still slung over his shoulder, his boots sinking slightly into the dry earth that gave under pressure but refused to crumble.
“Place needs a good exorcism,” he muttered, eyes tracing the blackened trim and the half-collapsed shed out back.
“Don’t worry,” Baz replied. “Already salted the windows and fed the ghosts. They like me.”
Inside, the air was musty with disuse and dry rot, thick with the scent of time and things forgotten. The floorboards groaned beneath their weight, like the house itself was reluctantly waking up. But the bones of the place were strong — old wood and stubborn nails, defiant in the face of decay.
Baz moved with purpose. She kicked a stuck door open with the ease of someone who knew where every creak and hazard lived. In the main room, she knelt by the hearth and started a fire with cedar and mesquite. The match struck with a hiss, and the dry kindling caught fast, flames blooming with the crackle of old secrets finally daring to speak. The fire cast long shadows that danced across peeling wallpaper and dust-choked furniture.
Silas set the duffel down and drifted into the tiny kitchen. His hand ran over the worn, smooth counters, familiar. The propane still worked. As he opened a cabinet, something caught his eye. Scratched faintly into the wood, just above the hinge: STAY IN LIGHT. He blinked. Looked again. Gone. Or maybe it was never there. He found a cast iron skillet, a sack of red potatoes speckled with dirt, and a half-used jar of cumin and smoked paprika. The smells grounded him. He didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. Cooking gave his thoughts a safe place to move, a rhythm that numbed the ache behind his ribs.
Baz dropped into an old armchair by the fire, watching him with a quiet that only old soldiers knew how to wear. “This feels familiar,” she said, her voice a rasp softened by memory.
He didn’t look back. “That’s what scares me.”
A long pause stretched between them. The fire snapped and popped, echoing like distant gunfire. Outside, the wind scratched at the walls, not unlike a dog wanting in, or a warning wanting out.
Silas peeled potatoes in silence, the blade whispering over skin like confession.
Baz closed her eyes for a moment. Let herself feel the heat of the fire, the soft creak of Silas moving, the delicate ache of being near someone who once made you feel whole — and now just made you feel.
Her thoughts drifted further back, to a dusty village tucked into a mountain valley, far from the maps that mattered. She remembered laughter — high, clear, and contagious. Children with sunburned faces and quick feet, chasing a soccer ball made of rags tied tight with twine. She’d been laughing too. Playing barefoot, cheering them on.
Then came the flash.
The sound didn’t register — not at first. Just light. Then absence. Then darkness.
She woke up a week later in a field hospital with no memory of who she was or why the pain behind her eyes felt like betrayal. The memories came back in pieces. Sharp, unkind pieces. And always at the worst times — in mirrors, in gunfire, in sleep.
She shifted in her chair, one hand reflexively brushing the scar on her face. That moment — that game — still felt more real than most of the years that followed.
“You ever think about who we used to be?” she asked quietly.
Silas paused. His hands stopped moving. He looked up, not at her, but into the flames.
“All the time.”
Baz leaned back, her face lit in flickers. “There were days… nights, especially… where I could still feel the weight of their eyes. The ones we left behind. Not the ones who shot first. The ones who prayed. Held photographs. Wore the wrong flag but believed the right things.”
Silas swallowed, voice low. “We made widows, Baz. We made orphans. And for what? Orders? God and country?”
“And now we come back to this,” she said. “A missing girl in a nowhere town. Like we’re trying to balance a scale that’s rusted through.”
He finally looked at her. His eyes were tired, but there was something steady in them — the kind of steadiness that comes after too much shaking. “The faces stay, don’t they?”
She nodded. “Permanently. Some I remember in dreams. Others just show up. Reflections. Crowds. I carry them all — like rooms in a house I can’t leave.”
Silas looked back at the fire, then added softly, “We were honorable, Baz. But so were they. Some of them, anyway. I still remember a boy, maybe twelve. Shielded his little sister with his own body. He never moved, not even when we raised our rifles. We just wore different uniforms. And maybe the only difference was who got to write the report afterward.”
The fire crackled louder, like it had something to say.
Baz whispered, “We don’t get to be who we were anymore. But maybe… maybe we can be something else. Something good.”
Silas didn’t answer.
Baz watched him for a moment, then asked, barely above a whisper, “Do you think God will forgive us for all we’ve done?”
Silas stopped. His shoulders rose, then fell with the weight of breath he didn’t want to take. He shook his head — slow, deliberate. No words followed. Just the scrape of the knife against potato skin.
That was answer enough.
Silas set the knife down, resting his palms against the edge of the counter. The firelight painted long shadows on the walls, flickering like the ghosts they refused to name.
“We’re hellbound,” he said finally, voice rough like gravel under tired boots. “This much I’m certain. But maybe… just maybe, we can do some good until that day.”
Baz leaned over and untied her boots slowly, and she wiggled her toes free with a soft grunt of relief. She stood the rifle against the wall beside her chair, not out of reach, but not in her lap. It was the closest she came to letting her guard down.
The fire popped loudly. From outside came the sound of a single dog’s howl — distant and raw, rising like a warning too late to matter. Then silence. The kind that dared you to move.
Baz looked toward the window, eyes narrowing. “You think she’s still alive? The Franklin girl.”
Silas paused. The blade hovered. He glanced at her, jaw tight. “I think someone wants us to remember what it feels like to lose one.”
The quiet returned. Not peace — just the kind of pause the sky takes before it screams.
And when Silas turned back to the skillet and resumed peeling, it wasn’t just the potatoes he was stripping down — it was himself, layer by layer, until something useful remained.
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