Whisper House Press

Scarlett’s Stove

by J. Neira

Scarlett shivered as she stepped out of her van. Grey clouds coated the sky and flakes of snow peppered her hair and drifted towards the ground. Gripping her tool kit, she traipsed to the door of the restaurant. Christmas music blared from down the street and colorful lights flashed and pulsed. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She rolled her eyes, knowing it was her family texting her, again, reminding her it’s Christmas Eve and she shouldn’t be working. But the money offered for this job was too good to pass up. She needed it.

She stood outside the restaurant, furrowing her brow. Darkness shrouded the interior. A scrap piece of paper had been taped to the door.

“No one can turn off the stove,” it read.

Scarlett expected the person who had hired her to arrive, but there was no sign of them. Distant laughter and clinking drinks reminded her people were busy celebrating the holiday.

She pursed her lips tried the door. That it was unlocked surprised her. Looking around, she got the sense no one had been here for a while. Chairs sat stacked atop tables. The only light in the place was from the dancing flames of the stove in the kitchen. Light stretched across the walls. But the place was empty.

Scarlett blocked her nose to the pungent smell of gas intermingled with congealed pasta sauce. She skirted the tables and crept into the kitchen, frowning at the fingers of blue and orange flames.

The kitchen plunged into view as she flicked the lights on. She opened the oven. Nothing inside apart from old charcoal and dust. Scarlett bent down. An array of blue, red, and black wires and cables fed through the floorboards, dropping into the basement below. Must be a pilot-light thing. Her jaw clenched, and she huffed in frustration, realizing she had to find her way under the stove, through the basement. She snatched her tool kit from the floor and trudged down the stairs. The floorboards creaked, and the whole space smelled of mold.

She submerged into the basement’s depths. Her face had flushed from the heat of the problem stove, and she was already sweating, so she pulled off her jacket to get to work in her tank top. She opened the power board and flicked off the power and turned a knob to kill the gas.

She headed back upstairs to re-evaluate the scene, but the stove still burned. Frowning, Scarlett grabbed her stool, trudged back down, and grunted as she reached for the blue cords tangled from the ceiling, yanking them from the outlet. Sparks flew.

Upstairs again, Scarlett found the stove continuing to burn.

“What the hell?” she muttered, leaning against the kitchen door, wiping sweat from her forehead.

The stove flames flickered as if mocking her.

Back in the basement, and by now perplexed, she pulled out her wire cutter. With another oof, she reached up and cut the red wires, then pulled them from the tangled web of other cords. She grabbed some replacements. As she connected the replacement wires to the power source, and then the back of the stove, she flinched. The Christmas carol from down the road increased in volume. The children screamed. Scarlett grimaced as their voices grated against her eardrums. She marched back upstairs to check if the stove had finally turned off. But of course, even that trick hadn’t worked.

“Fuck! Fucking stove! Arg!” She felt her cheeks flush again. Her usual tricks were not working. Hours stretched by. The stove refused to quit.

Scarlett didn’t give up. She rearranged plugs, circuits, and called the power company. Nothing worked.

Eventually, the sliver of the moon peeked out from the clouds. The carolers have finally left for home. Bar lights winked out. Only the colorful Christmas fairy lights twinkled in the square outside the restaurant. She checked her watch: midnight. She sighed, wiping the oil and charcoal from her hands with a cloth.

Clearing her mind with some deep breathing, she slumped back down into the basement. Her skin crawled. Her hair plucked up. An icy draft brushed past her. Loosened strands of her long hair, now haggard and tangled, tickled her nose. A shiver spider-walked down her spine. For a split second, Scarlett heard the children singing Carol of the Bells out of tune. Then the heat returned as if it had never left. So did the silence.

She shook her head. It was getting late. She was getting tired. But she wasn’t about to give up.

Grunts and groans crawled from her throat as she snipped more wires and flicked switches. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

The flames were angry, orange claws taunting her. She leaned forward against the kitchen wall, tapping her forehead against the plaster in frustration. A greasy, delicious smell wafted into her nose. She whirled around Her eyebrows furrowed.

She yanked open the door, and steam billowed from the oven. She jerked backwards and waved her hand to spread the vapor into oblivion. Her pulse quickened. A slice of pizza burned on the oven’s top rack. The cheese bubbled, a black spreading over the crust. Scarlett blinked.

It hadn’t been there when she arrived.

“Hello?” she called around the restaurant, glancing over her shoulder.

No one responded, of course. It was well past midnight. Had Scarlett locked the door? Some kids must’ve snuck in to prank her. She grabbed some oven mitts and carefully removed the pizza. Even with the mitts, a searing heat burned through the fabric and scorched her skin. She yelped. Her heart hammered. She flung the pizza, splattering melted cheese against the wall. Agonizingly, it slid, squelching onto the tile floor. Her eyes prickled with frustrated tears. Shewiped them away. Scarlett refused to cry over a stove.

Her eyes grew heavy, and her vision clouded as she continued working. The wind picked up outside, whispering against the restaurant windows. The silence outside was heavier. She could feel it in her ears.

Careful to not touch the jumping flames, she dragged the oven out from against the wall. When she did, the oven door slammed shut. She yelped from the sudden snapping noise and slipped on the grease pool she had revealed under the stove. Her hand flew out, catching her fall, before landing with a harsh crack. Pain exploded in her wrist. Her back screamed. She examined her wrist and winced. It might not be broken, but the pain ricocheted up her forearm. Her tears transformed into anger—rage. She grabbed a stewpot from the counter and hurled it across the room, growling. The pot slammed into the wall, crashed to the floor, and rolled once.

She groaned and rubbed her eyes until she saw stars and bright colors. When she drew herself back to reality, the oven door creaked back open. Slowly. As if invisible hands were inching it open.

Something small twitched in the fire. Hairy digits, each an inch long, peeked out, and hugged the edge of the oven. Scarlett froze, and squinted.  Then, out crawled a spider. Its eight hairy legs pitter-pattered down the side of the oven and along the floor. “Huh?!” she gasped. Color drained from her face. An icy draft oozed from the flaming oven.

What the hell?

It was as if the burning pizza had been a blip in her imagination. Yet, there lay the charred slice, a puddle of solidifying cheese.

How on earth did the spider survive such a scorching environment?

She peered at the spider. It paused as though staring right back at her. Scarlett could count its eight eyes on a body much larger than any spider she’d ever seen before. The eyes—pools of oblivion. She stared too long, and the spider flinched. She jumped back.

Then the oven made a strange noise. A tick, tick, tick. It came from the inside. No louder than a clock. The spider twitched with every tick. Scarlett scrambled to her feet, her heart thundering and her mouth agape. She gripped the doorframe and watched as if stuck in a trance. The spider danced to the ticking until the sound stopped and the creature collapsed, apparently dead.

And yet, the stove still burned.

Scarlett gave her head a shake, convinced the exhaustion was causing her to hallucinate.

She slumped back downstairs. Her eyes glazed over as she laid her tools out on the bench and frowned at the mess of wires before her. She blew out her cheeks.

Try everything again. Slowly.

Her footsteps echoed as she climbed onto her stepladder and pulled every wire out again, including the new ones. The restaurant plunged into absolute darkness when she shut off the main power again. A scream bubbled in the back of her throat. 

Scarlett knew in her gut nothing was going to work. But still: Once more finding the orange \flames billowing like scarecrows in the wind, she let out a scream—a pitchy, groaning yell. She cursed the stove anew.

A shadow shifted behind the oven, and Scarlett startled. Half a moment later,  she’d convinced herself it was the shadows of the flames.

Scarlett clenched her fists. Her breathing was heavy and sweat dribbled down her temple as the rage coursed through her veins, flushing hot in her cheeks. Muttering to herself like a mad person, she marched out of the restaurant, grabbing the sledgehammer from her van. She was too enraged to notice the swirling snow, the singing wind, and the liquid night sky. The sledgehammer’s head screeched as she dragged it along the floor, through the restaurant, and into the kitchen. But she didn’t even grimace.

Scarlett mustered every ounce of her strength and swung the sledgehammer. “UMPH!” The stove protested as metal smashed into metal.

Scarlett hit it again.

And again. And again.

She growled. “FUCK!”  The crashes of the blade against the metal reverberated off the walls. Her yells and the crashing and cracking of material built to a roaring, ear-splitting crescendo.

At last, the adrenaline dissipated. She dropped the sledgehammer and her shoulders drooped. Her watch struck three a.m. as she slid to the floor against the wall and dropped her head into her hands.

A Christmas carol echoed. A high-pitched, tinny noise. Her hairs stood on end, and she held her breath. The music was coming from inside the oven.

Her pulse again ricocheted through her ears, blood pounding, and her pupils dilated.

Something was very wrong.

The oven tremored as if someone were shaking the contraption. The metal shelves and the interior fan rattled.

Scarlett screamed. Her heart clubbed against her ribs, and every instinct told her to run. But her feet were concrete. She remained rooted to the spot.

All the while, the Christmas carol floated from inside the oven.

Finally, the oven stilled. The door snapped open.

A strangled scream tore from Scarlett’s throat as a human hand reached out from inside the oven. The stubby, bony fingers were calloused and scratched. But they were the hands of a child. Christmas tree lights tangled around their fingers, pulsating. “What the-?” Scarlett gasped, and a giggle escaped from the person emerging from the oven. It was a playful giggle. It was a girl, wearing a torn, ragged Christmas dress. She wore a dirty Santa hat. Her lips curled into a grin. But her eyes glinted with nothingness and hunger .

A scream caught in Scarlett’s throat as the girl reached out to Scarlett. She flinched back, not trusting her.

But something about this girl pulled her in. She grabbed the girl’s hand.

The girl was singing Carol of the Bells. Then the creature’s skin melted away, like wax from a candlestick, and the scream she’d been holding ripped from Scarlett’s throat. A shadow—demon who had disguised itself as the girl—oozed from the melted mess and swathed her whole.

Scarlett’s scream dropped. She collapsed to the floor.

The stove, at last, ceased burning.

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J. Neira is the child of a Mexican immigrant, who now lives a glorious hicklib life in Minnesota. They are a cozy horror author. They are a slush reader at Graveside Press, as well as an author at Graveside Press and West Avenue Publishing. They were a semi-finalist for the 2024 Iridescence Awards and are the author of Raven’s Dream. Their novel, The Haunting of Lola Barrera, will be coming soon from Graveside Press.