October Sons

Chapter Three: What He Saw in the Flames

Jesse remembered the fire in fragments.

The kitchen had been quiet. Pork fat hissed in the pan. Their mother hummed a lullaby that never had words. Caleb sat cross-legged on the floor, dragging a red crayon across the linoleum in slow, deliberate circles.

Then the flame bloomed.

It didn’t spread like fire should. It reached. It curled up the curtains like fingers, climbed the walls like it knew where to go. Jesse froze. Caleb didn’t move. Their mother turned toward the blaze, and her face—already blistering—twisted into something that wasn’t pain.

It was recognition.

She opened her mouth, but what came out wasn’t a scream. It was a voice Jesse didn’t recognize. Low. Wet. Ancient. It spoke through her like she was a doorway, not a person.

Their father burst in from the garage, eyes wide, face pale. He didn’t shout. Didn’t run. He just stared—at the symbols burning into the ceiling, at the way the flames danced like they were listening, at the way his wife’s mouth moved like it wasn’t hers.

Then he whispered, “It’s awake.”

The fire was put out. The damage was contained. Their mother survived—but she never came back. She stopped speaking. Stopped blinking. She rocked in silence, carving symbols into wood, humming songs that didn’t belong to this world.

Their father packed a bag that night. No goodbye. No explanation. Just gone.

Jesse found the note a few days later, buried in the drawer beneath the sink. It was written in frantic, uneven handwriting, the ink smudged like it had been gripped too hard:

“It chose her. It’s coming for the boys next.”

He read it once. Then again. Then again.

And tonight, after watching Caleb sleepwalk into the woods with blood on his socks and symbols carved into his chest, Jesse unfolded the note again—his thumb tracing the letters, his breath shallow.

He read it again.

As if this time, it might finally tell him what it meant.