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We were glued to the flames as they continued their dance in the cold air The buzz of asp With treht it out of e It was my mother

"Those flames better burn out in the next ten minutes," I warned the at all ," Maxi away from his arm, and peered down at the candles They were a puddle of h the translucent wax and flame I could see the metal of the bottom of the holder itself The wax itself was on fire

Hoas that possible?

Al at once a terrible BOOM fil ed the house It sounded like the front door had slahts around us turned off

The flaed into darkness

Adanoise

Then a ROAR and rustle froht out in the hal way

Morbidly curious, we left the blackened kitchen, ether like a unit of one, and cautiously stepped out into the halThe front door ide open, the salt in front of it dancing as if caught up in an invisible wind, one that we couldn’t feel The salt floated and fel , then ept along the hardwood floors of the hal like an ethereal trail, past our feet, and inated

We fol owed it and I wasn’t surprised to see that in the living roo inferno At first it looked like soazing down at the flames, his back to us But it was only a trick of the eye because I blinked hard and there was no one there

"Who lit the fire?" Ada asked In her skinny fraht

"O r what?" I added, which didn’t help She swayed slightly and leaned against the doorfra in it," Maxi long strides across the Persian rug

"Be careful," I cal ed out warily

He paused in front of the fla very e I had just seen before Alnition now?

He grabbed the poker to the right of hiently jabbed it into the heart of the fiery beast

Ada and I watched him inquisitively as he pul ed the poker away and turned around to face us At the end of the poker, speared like a flapping fish, was a rectangular piece of paper

He walked over to us slowly, staring down at it with an expression of growing alarm

"What is it?" I asked

He careful y pul ed the paper, which was charred, ses, off the pointed end and flipped it around to show us

It was a photograph

Not just any photograph The last fah discolored from the fla behind the sitting roos crossed politely, s attentively It was a happy, cheery photo

Wel , it had been

Our eyes were scratched out and replaced with clean black circles

I snatched it fro sick to my stomach, a terrible knot of dread and dead butterflies

A hush of heavy silence fel on us as we took in what it n?

And hat, sent it?

I opened iant whoosh of wind cao, sain, and whipped the photo out ofcreak of the front door

And… A string of explicit Swedish sords fol owed by, "What on earth?"

My parents were houlp beside me

"Perry, Ada?" my dad cal ed out from around the corner

"What is this stuff? Why is it so dark in here?" ht of salt scattered everywhere

Suddenly the lights in the hal ent on We heard the click of the kitchen light next, and then they both ether

There was now enough light in the living rooraph around me and had no idea where it had been bloay to, but I supposed it wouldn’t have made much of a difference iftheir minds over the voodoo-like ured I’d have another thing to be scared of I looked at Ada and Maximus

"WelTime to face the music"

Like the unit we’d become to face the unknoalked out of the rooether

My parents were staring at the hast, while my mother’s face was a pinkish red