“Behind every footprint, there trails a reaper. Not the grim reaper, though it is true that the pale horse rider stalks all those living until they can walk no more. No, this is a reaper of a different caliber. This creature carries no weapon, comes dressed in shadows, and moves without sound, though everyone knows its approach; the body churns in turmoil, and the mind wrings anxious hands as it feels the loom of the spectre coming forth. It does not snuff out life, not directly, but if one fails in the confrontation, their destiny may turn down a darker path. This is not a moral creature, nor is it a rational one; it exists. It simply is. It is the Reckoner.

Woe betide those who confront it in battle, for strength in arms will not avail them; it is strength of mind that can stand up to the faceless watcher. Woe betide the ones who look upon the gaze of the Reckoner.”

-Grimoire Arcanus, a small booklet found in Jumi’s carnival accoutrements

You’re awake. Good. How do you feel?

...Your head hurts? Sorry. I did my best, but it took me a while to get you to the hospital.

...What? Don’t you remember me? I’m Narra. I just saved your life. What do you mean you don’t remember?

...Well, I suppose I can tell you what happened. How much do you remember, then?

...Nothing? Then I’ll start at the beginning. Don’t worry, I’ll leave out the most traumatizing parts.

You really don’t remember me at all? You were the one who first introduced me to my partner, Jumi. A few years ago, I crashed your beach party because I was feeling lonely. I suppose I didn’t stand out much. I know I’m a bit… standoffish. That’s Jumi’s word. I keep to myself; I don’t trust alcohol and I didn’t want to get involved in the drinking, especially around the blazing bonfire in the secluded beach. Jumi found me hovering on the edge and welcomed me in with a smile, never wavering in her welcome against any of my attitude.

I don’t mean to overshare. I just… I feel like you should know this part.

For a long time, I have been alone. I… have been by choice, though until only recently I thought it was by fate. It’s a little disingenuous for me to say I believe in fate, because for everyone else, fate is something one puts their faith in. For them, fate is a concept, an abstract, a thought experiment. But for me, it’s a reality. It’s not something I merely believe in; for me to say I believe in fate is for you to say you believe in physics.

...This is a roundabout way of me telling you I can see the future.

...Well, no, not just like Jumi. Jumi pretends to see the future as a carnival act. I… I don’t pretend. I wish I was just pretending, because this curse has burdened me my whole damned life.

Sorry, I… It’s hard to rationalize all those years, wasting away, because when I looked at people I saw things no one else saw, just like you would notice their hair color or the shape of their eyes. I lived in a lighthouse for a long time, just myself, so I could avoid looking at people and seeing the way they would die. I could only talk to people through the internet, as long as I turned off everyone’s profile pictures, because even just an image of someone shows me things I don’t want to see. And it’s always a single line. The future, I mean. Most fictions you hear about seeing the future, there’s “multitudinous possibilities” and “endless potentiality,” but I’ll tell you right now, that’s not how it works for me. I’ll show you. You see that nurse over there? In less than a month, she’s going to die of a cocaine overdose in her ex-girlfriend’s house because she won’t want to use her ex’s phone to call for help for fear of antagonizing her. It’s a straight line from now to then. That older man over there, hooked up to oxygen, is suffering through kidney cancer. He won’t realize it’s cancer until it’ll become too painful to bear, and the doctors will tell him there’s little to be done, considering his age and the progression of the tumors, and his children won’t make it to his bedside in time before he passes on, alone and in pain. That woman kneeling beside her sister over there, she will live a life devoid of sensation, never finding love, never finding her dream career or even a dream at all, and will pass as an old woman, bitter and unfulfilled. A straight line, Kyle. No possible deviations. Everything I see always comes true.

...Sorry. I’m - I’m sorry. I can’t - I’m still not good at talking about this. Yeah, I’ll wait. I know it’s a lot to process. You don’t have to believe me yet, anyway.

...Oh, I can’t see your future yet. I used to, but I can’t right now. That’s… that’s important. There’s only one way I’ve found to change someone’s future, and that’s because there’s only one person whose future I’ve never been able to see.

It’s me. My own.

I’ve tried many times; looking into a mirror, taking pictures of myself, but I don’t see it in me. I’ve always thought I looked incredibly plain compared to everyone else, without that thread of future tagging along after me. I just thought for a while that seeing everyone else’s all the time took up too much space for me to see my own. But Jumi thought of something else. I told Jumi that I had no future, but Jumi saw it a completely different way.

Because when I involve myself with someone else’s future, their future fades away. I can’t see it anymore, because I’m changing it.

Do you understand? Until now I’ve seen everyone’s destiny like a train barrelling down the tracks out of control, no points to turn, no brakes to reverse. Every plank has been laid on this track, every surprise already charted out. But now, I’ve realized the truth. The only real surprise left anymore is what I’m going to do. And if I involve myself in what other people do, I change their future.

I really need you to understand this, though I know it’s probably not as revelatory for you, hearing about this now. You haven’t felt this powerlessness - at least, not until last night.

Yes, the incident last night. It’s past time I told you about that.

“The Reckoner is above morals in the same way an animal or an artificial life is. Can one apply ethics to the fox that kills the rabbit? It has snuffed out an innocent life for a selfish reason. Yet selfishness is a forgivable vice when the literal self is at stake, something that mankind seems to have forgotten. The Reckoner approaches, and it does not burden itself with quaint arguments of fairness or readiness. It comes, it arrives, and it waits until you turn to face it.”

- Collection of Occult Philosophies, an unread book at the back of the Tukwila library

It was Jumi who saved your life.

We were texting each other when she brought you up and mentioned you were on your way to investigate a new house up for sale. When I told her I didn’t remember you, she sent me a picture of you - at your beach bonfire, incidentally. If she hadn’t sent that picture, Kyle, you would be dead, because that is what I saw - your death.

But it was the strangest death I’ve ever foreseen. I couldn’t see what killed you, only that it was going to happen in a matter of hours. I saw your body lying cold, a look of terror on your face. My best guess was that something scared you to death, gave you a heart attack, but since you didn’t really know what it was, neither did I.

However, what mattered was that I get to you at the new house and change your future. I may not have known you well, but Jumi did, and she could tell something was wrong when I texted her back. She gave me the address you were investigating and I drove out immediately.

I pulled up in front of the remote location and felt alarm bells going off already. Your car door was wide open, and I could see the keys in the ignition. Something had clearly caught your attention as you had driven up, and you must have rushed out of the car to run to the house. The house itself was something special, the kind of place I used to live in; large, modern, sophisticated, which seemed strange given how isolated it was from the main town. I had to drive up a winding wooded road to get to this house, and I had fully expected to find a rundown shack, but this was straight out of uptown.

I shut my door quietly, knowing that wouldn’t lock it either and not caring. I glanced at your picture on my phone. Your future was starting to fade from my sight - my mere presence, and intent to interfere, was already changing your path. I still can’t believe I hadn’t realized that sooner.

I approached the house slowly, watching the windows. The late evening was sending starbursts across the clouds, silver patterns that were reflected in the clean glass, and I couldn’t see inside - just grey slates from above, like the house was full of the empty void that was rapidly darkening over the trees.

...Jumi has made me poetic. I’d apologize, but it’s one of the things I love about the way she talks. Besides, seeing those reflections had an effect on me. I couldn’t see inside, and it was eerie how my sight was blocked by blinding brightness instead of shadows.

The door was ajar, and I saw your key still jammed into the lock. You had run into this house in a hurry, it was clear, but I still couldn’t tell why. I touched the doorknob, but I felt a vague uneasiness creeping over my skin. I had nothing to fear, as far as I knew, but I hesitated at the door nonetheless.

The sky had darkened another shade when I decided to listen to my instincts and look for a back door instead. I took your keys out of the lock and circled around, trying to get out of the blinding reflections to see inside the windows. My hopes were dashed as I peered inside, however; the shades were drawn at every entry.

I was very lucky to find the key to the back door - it wasn’t on your keychain, and I was poking through the flowerpots in the back when I noticed something glinting in the dirt. The backyard was oddly cluttered for its locale, with a rickety picnic bench and a greenhouse glazed with old plastic and condensation. Scattered plant pots here and there seemed too random for a house that was presenting itself as so urban and polished. The contrast unnerved me.

The door creaked, which again struck me as a surprise, but at that point I decided to suspend my disbelief and devote my faculties to locating you. The house was totally dark, the only light coming around the edges of the curtains drawn over each window, and that was fading fast. I took out my lighter from my purse - I don’t smoke but I have a friend who does, and always asks me for a light - and clicked the button on to send a flutter of glow through the stale air.

There was too much space in the house. It’s odd to describe, but the furniture was arranged too close together, and the wide spaces were too far apart. This house was supposed to be offered for sale - one of the only things I knew about you was your job as a realtor - yet the arrangement of the rooms didn’t look natural at all. The hall was too long, too narrow. The walking space in the kitchen was too broad. The ceiling was too high. I somehow felt simultaneously exposed and claustrophobic.

All houses make odd noises, like creaks or settling groans, but I was hearing sounds that drew shudders down my spine. There was some rhythmic sensation, too low for the ears but present enough to be sensed, a low vibration that throbbed for a few seconds, fading, and rising once again. Creaks sounded slow and methodical, and I couldn’t help but imagine the sound a wooden eye would make in a grainy socket, pivoting around to face a new angle, regarding its intruder with weighted curiosity.

I hated that house, and I wanted nothing more than to leave, but you’re Jumi’s friend, and I couldn’t go back to her knowing I barely made it across the threshold before running like a coward. There are some times when I wish I could see my own future, to know when I will die, so I might have some security when faced with situations like this. If I knew I was going to die when I was forty, I shouldn’t have anything to fear until I reach that age, you see? If I knew I was going to fall off a building at age fifty-two, I shouldn’t fear walking into a strange house because I would know I would not die there. Useless speculation, however; if I could see my own future, none of this would matter.

I took a step forward and the floorboards didn’t creak, but I felt regard on me even so. I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin to meet that regard, though I knew not where it was coming from. I had no ill intentions toward what might live here, and I would not be cowed. I strode forward and down the hallway, where the strange vibrations were coming from.

I turned left down the first door and found immediately both you and the source of those vibrations. We were in a master bedroom, with a spectacular canopy bed in the center, surrounded by nightstands and vanities and all sorts of storage items - and again, the strange proportions were at play here. The bed was much too large, there was too much space in some places and too crowded in others. Perhaps it would not have been so sinister in the daylight, but all I had was the scant flicker of my lighter and the glow of your cell phone.

Because that was the source of the vibrations - Jumi was trying to call you, but you were in the center of the room, peering under the bed. You had frozen in place, staring underneath it, and I wondered how long you had been kneeling there in stupefaction.

I said your name, tentatively. We still didn’t know each other, and I would have been incredulous had you not been as uneasy in this house as I was. You stirred, and I saw a whip of motion before you turned to face me. I would guess now that you were whisking something into your coat pocket, though I had no idea at the time what that could have been. There were a few long seconds of staring, no recognition at all on your face, until I mentioned I was a friend of Jumi’s who came to check on you. I introduced myself and held out my hand to shake, but you didn’t even seem to notice it. Already there was something in your face, some nameless fear the house had instilled in you, and you seemed to be in a daze.

I repeated Jumi’s name and that caught your attention, finally realizing the phone was vibrating yet again. I was surprised we had service at all out there. You put her on speakerphone so she could hear both our voices and know we were safe, relatively. The signal was weak and neither of us could understand a word she was saying, but at least she heard both of our voices.

You seemed unsteady after the call, so I offered you my shoulder; but you shook your head and said you felt perfectly fine. You adjusted your tie and put some steel into your voice, saying it was unnecessary for me to come out so far, though you appreciated Jumi’s concern all the same. I won’t lie to you - that took some wind out of my sails. I knew there was something wrong with the house, and you had to know, yet you were putting on airs as though I was just an inconvenient hiccup in an otherwise mundane routine.

I narrowed my eyes at you, but again, you didn’t notice - you weren’t looking at me. I asked why you’d been looking under the bed, and you paused before answering that you were checking for rats and thankfully came up empty. I moved to take a look myself, and found nothing, as you said. You put on an indignant face, which I ignored. I was already put out by you lying to my face that I had no desire to begin an argument. You have to understand, my impression of you was sinking by the moment.

So when I asked what you were doing in this house, I’ll admit I asked it with considerably less politeness than I ought have. You were about to tell me that you were simply a real estate agent looking to price this home, or at least I assume that’s what you were going to say, when the last of the sun set outside. I felt a chill settle over the house, and some movement of the air whipped the lighter too hard and the light disappeared.

The darkness changes people. It strips away some yoke that most people are burdened with and leaves them with fear, a primal fear that no animal, not even mankind, can escape. In the hush, I heard your breathing accelerate, though I could also hear you trying to hide it. I asked you if the power was on and you said in an unsteady voice that it should have been but it had gone out while you were in this room. I clicked the lighter a few times, but my hand was shaking too much and I asked if you had a flashlight. You told me no and I heard a few thumps, your heavy footsteps taking you to the wall to steady yourself.

...I see the look on your face, and I realize I have to pause this story. Look, Kyle. You don’t remember any of this, you can’t tell me I’m wrong, and I’ll admit that I may have been projecting some things you weren’t intending. There are some things I want you to take away from this story, Kyle, and one of them is this exact thing - sometimes, the thought really doesn’t matter. Only the action matters.

...Here, I’ll get you some water. How much of this is coming back? Any? Some? It was plenty visceral for me, and we’ve only started. Do you feel better? Are you ready to keep going?

“Destiny is a grand word, a regal yet presumptuous word, but rarely does it invoke a sense of dread. Only when one ponders the meaning of destiny might they feel a shiver, for the concept itself truly seems to terrify the rational.

Destiny is one’s life, laid out before them. Their future, their goals, their potential, their achievements yet to come - or possibly their lack thereof.

But what do you do with such a grand, regal, presumptuous word when one’s own destiny is something mundane, something average or dull? What does one do if one’s destiny is to waste away in squalor, in stagnation, never changing, never growing beyond an inconsequential little niche?

Then, destiny yet retains its dreadful weight, for that mundanity is the rotting carcass of one who has stood against the Reckoner - and lost.

For nothing can greater move a warrior’s heart than seeing the worn battlefield haunted by a carrion crow on the other side of their sword.”

-The Decisions of the Moirai, an ancient Greek text consumed by the fire of Alexandria

I finally managed to click the lighter on, and the orange flame leaped at our eyes like a physical attack out of that oppressive darkness.

There was no electricity on in that oddly modern forest house. No lights, no heat, and night had arrived. We were both shivering, though you had your suit and I had my hoodie.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

I mumbled that it was late, and you agreed, your voice quivering the slightest bit. I indicated that I would lead with my lighter and stepped towards the door.

Seeing the hallway, I stopped short. When I had entered the room, I had taken the first door on my left, so the hallway back to the kitchen should have been on my right. But the long hallway stretched down to my left.

I felt you stop behind me as well, and your frozen posture told me you had realized the same. I felt the air tremble as you started to shake, and that air stretched tense like an overstressed violin string as you tried to suppress it. You asked what I was stopping for, and I have to admit, in that moment I hated you.

I said I was a little turned around and looked to my left. I couldn’t see the kitchen down the hall in the wan glow of the lighter. To the right, I saw a door up against the wall and what looked like a closet opening across the hall.

Something had changed, and I knew that meant the rules had changed as well. I wouldn’t have admitted it in the moment, but part of me knew that we wouldn’t get out of that house so easily. I wanted so desperately to race down that hallway towards what should be the kitchen and explode out the back door into the disorganized backyard, but something held me back, something telling me that the hallway to my left was now something different - something dangerous.

It was that moment you chose to ask, obnoxiously loudly, what I was waiting for. The abrupt question cut through the silence and nearly made me scream. You pushed past me a little and glanced down both ends of the hallway. I think the kitchen is down this way, you said as you pointed to the left.

You started down, but I told you to wait.

You stopped, probably because I wasn’t following you with the only light source. You asked what the matter was, and to your credit, you didn’t sound impatient, only concerned.

I said we must have been turned around, because that wasn’t the right way to the back door. You protested, but I stopped listening. I pointed my lighter in the direction of the two doors and edged towards them, unwillingly. My logic was in shambles, but my instincts, which had been pulling me in the right direction so far, was telling me not to go down that hallway, and that left only these two options.

I moved towards the door set at the end of the hall and heard you scramble to keep up as the light moved away. You started to protest again, but I cut you off with a glare - I know I’m good at glares, they work on everyone except Jumi - and placed my hand on the doorknob. Slowly, I turned it as to not make any noise, and pushed the door open.

It did not creak, and I saw therein a study of sorts. Mortared stone bricked around a fireplace on one end, and bookshelves and desks lined the other side. I say desks, but really there was only one huge desk, too large for any practical use, as though someone had glued other desks together to increase its surface area. This massive desk was in a state of disarray, with drawers leaning out, papers scrapped all over, and a large splatter of ink across one page. A lamp sat peering over these papers, but the lightbulb had been removed.

I growled as you pushed past me again, but realized quickly that it had been out of disorientation rather than impatience. You moved, dreamlike, towards the huge desk, and pulled out the chair to sit down. I moved next to you to see your face and I saw that same stupefaction I had witnessed in the bedroom, a look of stunned shock that logic cannot explain. You were staring at the ink-soaked paper, and I craned my neck over your shoulder to see what it was. From what I could tell, it looked like a bill, sent by some company called ErollCoan.

...What’s the matter? Who’s that company? I don’t mean to pry, but you had such a strong reaction to it, and you were in no state to tell me anything at the time.

...Oh. I… I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your loss. I can help you, if you want. I’ve had my own bad experiences paying funeral costs without collection getting involved.

...It was just an offer. Sorry.

Anyway… um. You reacted much the same way back in the house, when I moved closer to read the obscured text. Your hand shot out and crumpled the paper violently, and it had been so ink-soaked that blackness spurted out from between your fingers. I shielded my face with my hand, but spots ended up on your face. I asked what that was about, but you didn’t answer, didn’t even look at me. It wasn’t anger or hatred on your face, which was what I was afraid of; it was a look of utter defeat. Crushing that bill would do nothing to remove this axe over your head.

Ink ended up all over, on the desk, the little lamp, and on the spines of some of the books. I raised my light to look those over, and had to raise it a little higher - the ceiling was tall again, though in this case I realized a specific reason for it. There was an attic-like alcove at the top, reachable by a ladder set into the wall.

I told you I was going to look up there, but you still didn’t respond. If I had to guess, you were trying to set yourself straight once again, trying to make sense of all these pieces you were cracking into. I don’t know why you felt the need to put up a front, I really don’t, but you needed time to put it all back together.

I approached the ladder and turned back once to see if you were reacting to the disappearance of the light, but when I saw nothing out of you, I began climbing.

I reached the top to find a small alcove beneath the triangular roof, with squat bookshelves and a rocking chair in the center of the space. The area looked almost quaint, though the light threw the shadows in sharp contrast, but the heavily drawn curtains caught my eye. I approached the window and reached out to push the shades back.

The forest night was dense and murky. The heavy sunset clouds had become equally heavy midnight covers, with nary a star to be seen and only a pearly white smudge where the moon must have been. I could barely make out the silhouette of our cars below, your door still open, mine parked at a strange angle. No tremor of wind caught the branches, no living being stirred the grass. I could have been looking down at a painting, a caricature of the outside, drawn by a being with darkened vision and some eerie sense of the abstract.

My breath fogged the glass and I wiped it off, slowly as to keep from squeaking. When I took my hand away, I saw the beginnings of movement in the tops of the nearest trees, limbs lifting and hovering near the window. I suddenly felt watched.

I couldn’t move. I wouldn’t. I felt lightheaded with a sudden burst of fear. I had to move slowly, so slowly, to avoid some eye whose alertness I had roused. My half-raised fist retreated down, towards the corner of the curtain. It was probably less than a minute between then and the curtain, but it felt like ages, interminably long seconds as I searched for whatever was searching for me.

My hand brushed the curtain and I resisted the urge to slam the drapes closed. Instead they started to glide, inch by inch, to cover the window again, and I felt a moment of relief.

Through the branches of the moving trees, the darkness swelled. I saw no eyes, but I saw that darkness approach out of the shadow of the trees, and my heart stopped.

I whipped the curtains closed and fell back, hiding behind a wall as though it would reach a hand through the little window. I clinked the lighter closed and almost immediately regretted the motion as complete darkness fell once again across my vision.

Nothing happened.

Slowly, the tension drained out of my muscles, though my heart was still galloping in my chest. I gritted my eyes shut and dug my nails into the wood of the bookcase, frustrated. What the hell was happening here? What was I doing here in this creepy fucking forest, chasing after a near-complete stranger who walked into a creepy fucking house? I should just leave, now, down that hallway and out the door. Who was I kidding here? What was I trying to prove?

Those moments in that alcove were long moments of defeat. In trying to follow my instincts and learn what was strange about this house, I had learned nothing and only caused more distress. I felt less like a good person looking out for the friend of a friend and more like a caged fool, banging on unyielding glass while large eyes looked on at my futile progress. Maybe there were no rules here.

I can’t help but wonder now if you were thinking some similar thoughts, sitting where I’d left you in the darkness, waiting for me to descend the ladder to light your way out. I never heard you call out to me during my time up in that alcove. I wonder what the darkness changed in you.

I couldn’t restart the lighter until I’d retreated down the ladder again, so I moved carefully to avoid bumping into the rocking chair and began feeling my way down. Despite my frustration and my doubts, I still kept my moves silent and slow, not wanting to cause any sudden sounds in my blindness. When I at last clicked on the lighter, I saw you with your head in your hands, your chair’s back to the desk.

I called to you softly, and it took a minute for you to respond. What I saw when you lifted your head from your hands truly frightened me, in a different way than whatever I had seen in that alcove. The facade was back, something close resembling it, but it was a piecemeal job. You were frozen in a casual, half-lidded expression, as though you were trying to look bored, but to my eyes you looked barraged, you looked ready to cave in some hollow within yourself.

I helped you out of your chair. You didn’t notice.

Number of deaths per year in the United States alone: two million, eight hundred thousand

Heart disease: six hundred forty-seven thousand

Cancer: six hundred thousand

Alzheimer’s disease: one hundred twenty thousand

Intentional self-harm: forty-seven thousand

All meet the Reckoner. Many are beaten. Those who are meet another Reaper.

-Entry from Narra’s diary, circa age three

The hallway stretched before us.

I felt you shift behind me and I knew you still clutched that ink-blotched paper, maybe patting something in your pocket you had picked up from under the bed. I didn’t ask.

The door was still on the wrong side of the hallway.

I felt a great frustration welling up in me at this house. What the hell did it want us to do?

There was a closet door to my right. Feeling that there was no other option, I turned to open it.

That was when you snapped. Behind me, you yelled to ask what the holdup was. I turned to see you glaring at me in open anger. You accused me of leading us everywhere for no reason, and I couldn’t even answer. Any kind of holding it together you had put in place had broken so quickly. You started shouting at me, screaming at me, saying I must have led us into that room on purpose, I must have known what you would have seen on that desk.

I couldn’t speak. I wanted to refute something, to offer some proper reason why I had turned into the study rather than go down the hallway, other than the one I knew you wouldn’t accept, that the house was twisting us around, that there was something inside that would be very dangerous for us to see.

You know, now I realize why you were so angry. I have the benefit of hindsight to see it was a stress reaction. If you had tried to talk with me up in the alcove, I would have spoken with as much venom as you were in that moment. As it was, I was numb, I was tired, I was confused, and I had no idea why you were suddenly turning on me.

With no words from either of us, just anger from you and impotence from me, I turned to the closet and opened the door.

I saw a vibrant red coat inside an instant before I heard violent swearing from you. I turned just in time for you to reach out and snatch the lighter out of my hands. You screamed at me to stop it, and I saw you were staring at the coat as well as me, backing away as though it and I were both predators, stalking you before your very eyes.

You shouted that we had to leave, and I felt the very ground beneath my feet shudder as you rocked the foundations with your words. You said there was nothing wrong, no stupid hauntings, no visions from the past, you just wanted to go home and forget everything. And then without another word, you turned and sprinted down the hall, taking the light with you.

In the middle of the long, distended hallway, I felt naked, exposed. Spine tingling, I threw myself into the closet and closed the door. Complete darkness surrounded me. I could feel the coats pressing against me like a suspicious crowd and I cowered, the coats too large for human size. I flinched, leaning back against the walls, and couldn’t hold back a whimper, until I finally slid down to a sitting position, the bottoms of the coats brushing the top of my head.

There was no point in closing my eyes in that absolute darkness but I did anyway, seeking the meager privacy behind my eyelids. I felt the red coat in particular, its sleeve brushing down the back of my head. I had no idea what that red coat meant, who it belonged to, what it had done to make you panic so suddenly, so viscerally. I had no idea what the bill had been on the desk. I had no idea what you had found under the bed.

You can’t even tell me now, since not even you can remember.

I knew, as I thought to myself in that coat closet, that whatever was happening here was not of my volition, but yours. I am not casting blame or fault upon you - I am acknowledging that whatever ghosts were haunting this horrible house, they were your ghosts, and I was merely an unlucky observer. I found myself again confronting the question, much more seriously this time - what was I doing here? Why did I come?

I didn’t know you. I don’t know how well Jumi knows you, either. I don’t think she would have blamed me for running away, even if it had meant leaving you behind. A part of me was even reasonably certain that I could leave if I left without you.

Something in my pocket was digging into my hip and I pulled out my phone. I was surprised to see it still had some meager battery left, though the 1% icon told me it wouldn’t be for very long. I turned it on to find my text conversation with Jumi. Your picture was still on the screen. As I watched, your future faded back into view. I saw you, still dead on the floor.

I had done nothing, or as close to nothing as to be negligible. Just because a single butterfly can cause a hurricane doesn’t mean every struggle of wings will lead to a storm. I was hiding in a closet in a haunted house, having done nothing.

And I hate to say it, but that was the spark that lit me back awake. I knew I could do more than nothing. The one thing I knew for a fact was that I had the ability to change the futures I saw. It was not for nothing that I had come out to that house, hiding in a coat closet. There was still something I could do here that I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise.

I wish I could say it was concern for your welfare that sat me up, sent me climbing back to my feet in the crowded closet, and pulling the red coat down from its hook. I wish I could say I remembered you, alone, facing whatever was waiting for us out in the darkness of the house. But it wasn’t altruism that brought me out of that coat closet. It was stubbornness and personal pride. It was the knowledge that I had to make a difference, now, or else I would have made no difference at all.

I heard a moan down the hallway and didn’t recognize it, though I was certain it could have come out of no other throat but yours. I didn’t feel afraid, though. Or perhaps I felt afraid, but I ignored it with that supreme stubbornness. I walked down the hallway.

You were in the middle of the absurdly large, badly-proportioned living room. There was no furniture in it now, just empty space. The walls were leaning in, and I heard a strange sound, like a shovel pressing down into dirt. You were cringing on the ground, tears falling down your face and hands, rocking back and forth. I knew you were trying to avoid looking at the thing in front of you.

The thing in front of you… I can’t describe it. I’m not sure I’d want to, even if I had fully seen it. I saw a bend in the air. I saw darkness beneath tree limbs. I saw a face, but it didn’t exist. There was something there, but there was nothing there. I… I can’t describe it.

It was a figure, like a silhouette, but it was also a darkness, like a lengthening shadow off a long sunset that fades into night. I felt it gathering beneath the arms of the red coat I had decided to wear. It thought I was part of it. It felt like spiderwebs, multiplying beside my ribs, under my elbows, beneath my spine.

I approached you. I placed my hand on your back. I felt your heart stamping, stampeding, adrenaline flooding a cavern too small to take all that energy, and I knew you were going to die. Your weak heart was ready to burst, your body too focused on self-preservation to realize it was destroying itself. I felt the spiderwebs reach out for you. I saw them curling about your ears, stroking the back of your hands.

I crouched, putting my hands on your shoulders. I whispered your name. I don’t know if I used my own voice. You looked up. You couldn’t see the red coat. You knew it was the red coat. The lighter was clutched in your hand so tight, the metal casing had a dent.

I put a hand on your heart. I told you to take a breath. I told you the creature wasn’t here to hurt you. Whatever else it was here for, it wasn’t going to hurt you. I said it again and again until you finally inhaled through your nose. The sound drew the leaning walls in even further.

I put my hands on your cheeks. I wanted you to listen to me, focus on me and not the creature or you would panic again. I said you had to do something. I had no idea what you had to do. I had no idea what I was saying. I said you know what you have to do. And then I presented the red coat to you.

You looked at the red fabric for a long, full moment. There were spiderwebs in your hair and under your fingernails. There’s something you have to do, I said again, more urgently. I kept asking, what is it? You know what you have to do, so what is it?

I saw the moment in your eyes when you came to some realization. You laid the coat on the floor, gently, so gently. With some difficulty, you stood, the weight of the spiderwebs pulling you down. You dug into one pocket and pulled out the crushed bill and dropped it on the coat. You dug into the other pocket and pulled out a locket, without a chain, and dropped it as well.

It was only then you tilted your head to look at the creature.

I don’t know whose face you saw there. I don’t know who looked back at you. I don’t know if it was you. I don’t know if it was someone you loved.

You looked down at the lighter in your hand. You clicked it open.

And then, Kyle, my friend, you hesitated.

You held the flame open, you had your pile at your feet, you had this creature standing over you, you had spiderwebs spinning you a cocoon, but my friend, you halted, you froze. You couldn’t do it. I knew as soon as I saw you stiffen that you wouldn’t, you didn’t have it in you. It was too soon, it was late, it was unfair. I don’t know your ghosts. I don’t know why you stopped.

But you clicked the lighter closed, turned on your heel, and ran as though for your life towards the front door.

I don’t know what happened next. I heard a thump, a yelp, and a thud. I felt the air release something, like a sigh or a dissolve, and I felt the spiderwebs melt away from my body. I was still in utter blackness, but I followed the noises I had heard until I nearly tripped over you. My best guess is you ran into the door, thinking it would be unlocked, or maybe you misjudged where the front door would be. Or maybe you knew exactly where it was and threw your head as hard as you could against the nearest hard surface. You were covered in spiderwebs.

It took a long time for me to get you out of the house then - the front door was indeed locked, and I had completely forgotten about the keys in my pocket. I wandered in the house for a long while, exploring with my hands, trying to call an ambulance with my phone until it ran out of charge, trying to call with your phone but it wouldn’t turn on, trying to understand why the walls seemed so long, why the floors seemed to slope no matter where I went, why the furniture kept moving when I wasn’t in the room. I clicked the lighter over and over again, but no flame came forth.

And then finally in despair I curled up against a wall on my side and felt the keys poking into my hip. I pulled them out, unlocked the door, and got us out into my car where I drove you to the hospital as the sun rose.

You’re caught up now, friend. I’ve told you all I can of the night we had. I wish you hadn’t forgotten. I think it must be important for you, and the way I’ve told it, with so many details missing, is so inferior to what the incident must have meant to you.

I spent the night away from you to look into your future again. I saw you living, confused, but ultimately unchanged by your time in the house. I saw you spending your days in realty, a business you don’t care about and that doesn’t treat you well. I saw you obsessing over your perceived faults, drawn so inward that one day, three years from now, you’d walk absently into traffic, the light not having turned red when you expected. I saved your life. I gave you three extra years of mundanity.

But that was what I saw before I told you all this.

I still don’t know what it was that made you leap from your car, keys still in ignition, to rush into a house in the middle of the woods. I don’t know what you saw. I don’t know what you hoped to do. I wonder if you saw the same as me. I wonder if you saw both possibilities, and you made a choice.

Kyle, you are Jumi’s friend, maybe my friend, and you have another choice before you. I’ve told you a fantastical tale, it’s true. I’ve told you a tale about yourself that flouts your sense of logic, triggers your skepticism, a tale that, if not untrue, is at least unfinished because it came from my eyes and not yours. I’ve given you a tale of two futures, one short, and one three years long.

You have a choice to hear my story and believe it, or to ignore it and dismiss it.

And you have a choice to accept these futures I’ve offered to you, or to reject them and build a new one.

...You left these at the house. Here’s my lighter. I refueled it before coming to visit you. If you decide to, I bet you can sneak these to the outside and burn them before you get found.

It’s a little thing. It might do nothing. It might be an empty gesture of hope that will ultimately mean nothing. It’s up to you to decide if hope is worth the risk.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to talk to that nurse to see if she can schedule a biopsy for that old man, so she won’t have time to call her ex tonight. I might sit with the woman and her sister and talk to them, keep them company.

There’s little else I can do to change the course of causality, but at this point, I’ve learned that even the slightest deviation can turn a course down a radically different path.

Think about it, Kyle. Despite my visions, no future is truly charted. I’m beginning to see that now. Maybe you can too.

The Reckoner is not a moral being. It has no sense of right or wrong, just or unjust. It comes to embody a crossroad, a challenge, a great weight that may burden or break. Most often, break.

It is the face of fate. It comes to all, sometimes more than once.

It has another name, however, one that only the most optimistic - the greatest of fools, but also the greatest legends of time - ever name it by.

Opportunity.

-Note scrawled in the margins of a hotel Bible, a page before the book of Revelation