It was my father’s idea. He’d always been into the holidays, especially Christmas and Halloween, and he loved finding weird activities for us to spice up our normal festivities. He’d scour the internet for obscure customs for eggs at Easter or a homemade recipe for eggnog that took hours to make and tasted like ass.

Or, as he did last year, a Halloween bonfire ritual.

He didn’t tell us much about it ahead of time, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary. Me and Mom had been around long enough to be used to his bullshit—we knew it was better just to ride it out with as few questions as possible, as questioning or complaining never did anything but slow the whole process down. As for the twins, they were only ten and thought pretty much everything Dad did was awesome. That had nothing to do with the fact that he spoiled them constantly, while the main thing he gave me, his only son, was a hard time. No, nothing at all.

Still, I couldn’t bitch too much about the bonfire thing. Bonfires were cool, and as far as his holiday bullshit went, it didn’t take too much effort. We just had to light a big bonfire on Halloween night, and when the fire was out the next morning, we spread the ashes into a circle. Once the circle was made, we each picked a rock and put it inside the circle near the edge. Dad told us that we’d come back the next day and check on the rocks.

That’s where the details of it all got a bit more fuzzy. When Mom asked why we were doing any of this, he just shrugged. Said he’d been skimming through different Halloween customs online, and this one was something about telling your fortune over the next year. He’d laughed. Said his main goal had been to have a bonfire on Halloween, but if we wanted, he could always track down exactly what the stones were supposed to mean.

I shot Mom a look and we both started shaking our heads. She smiled at him. “No, that’s okay, honey. The bonfire was fun either way.”

That seemed to satisfy Dad at the time, and it wasn’t until the next afternoon that he came in from the yard, his expression worried and tense. The rest of us were all in the living room watching some dumb show on t.v. at the time, and when he walked in and turned off the show, the twins started to do their spoiled baby whine. He shot them a hard look and told them to be quiet, and I sat up. Whatever this was, it was serious.

“What’s the matter?” My mother tried to keep her voice light, but she still sounded concerned. My father gave her a slight smile and a shrug.

“Nothing, it’s nothing.Just...who took the stones from the bonfire circle?” He glanced at each of us in turn as he spoke, his face drawn and pale.

“What stones? Oh, you mean the ones…”

He cut her off, his tone harsher now. “Yes, Martha, the stones we put in yesterday morning. I just thought about it, and when I went to go check, they were all gone. So I want to know who took them.”

My mother frowned at him. “Why would anyone take those rocks? Couldn’t they have just rolled away or gotten moved away by the wind?”

Dad was already shaking his head. “We built that fire on a level spot, and there hasn’t been much wind the last few days. Definitely not enough to blow our rocks out of the ash circle.” He turned his gaze back to me. “So who moved the rocks?”

I met and held his gaze, though I could hear blood thrumming in my ears. “Not me. I thought it was dumb to begin with. I mean, the bonfire was cool, but I never knew what the point of the rocks even was.”

Staring at me a moment longer, he finally shifted to the twins. “Girls? Did you take the rocks we put out there?”

“No, Daddy,” they said in unison.

“John, what’s this about? What’s the big deal?”

“Martha, did you take them?”

Mom rolled her eyes. “No, of course not. But what does it matter? Why are you upset about some rocks anyway?”

He seemed on the edge of some decision then. Perhaps an internal weighing of whether he should say more or let it drop. After a couple of seconds, he forced another small smile. “Nah, it’s nothing. Just dumb Halloween stuff, right? What do we want for dinner?”

That was the last we talked about it as a family, and after a couple of days I forgot about it. The next few months were a pretty good time for all of us, and that following summer I was busy getting everything ready for moving into a college dorm for the first time. I was going to miss being close to my family and high school friends sure, but there was also this nervous excitement when I looked into the unknowable future that lay before me. I was online looking at places I might want to get a job near the campus when my father called me. I could barely make out anything he was saying because he was crying so hard.

Mom had been carrying the girls to dance class when they got t-boned by a logging truck. They were all dead before the first sirens got there.

I almost deferred on school. Told Dad I could start a semester later without it being a big deal if he wanted me to stay around a few more months. He told me no in that hollow way he always spoke now, words echoing out like musical notes from a mechanical organ with no hand or heart to guide them. Even then, as I wracked my brain for some way to make things better, I never thought about the bonfire or the stones. Not until my Dad begged me to come home this past weekend.

He’d been growing more anxious and strange the last couple of times we talked on the phone, and I’d been planning on going home for my fall break in a few days anyway, so I didn’t seem the harm in skipping my last couple of classes and heading back early.

I knew something was wrong as soon as I pulled into the driveway. The grass was overgrown and there was trash piled up on the side porch. And when I tried to get in the front door, my key still worked, but the door wouldn’t budge. Knocking and calling for him to open up, I heard him undo three more locks before he cracked the door and peered out at me with red-rimmed eyes. I could smell alcohol on his breath, and when he swung the door wide and swept me up in a bear hug, the stale sweat stink of him nearly took my breath away. Hugging him back at first, I finally pulled away and walked past him inside.

The house was not filthy, but it was messy and cluttered with filled trash bags. Walking further in, I saw several empty beer cans in the living room and harder stuff on the half of the kitchen table I could make out from there. Dad seemed to pick up on my worried look as he patted my shoulder.

“Sorry. Been meaning to clean up more. I thought you were coming on Saturday.”

I frowned at him. “Dad, it is Saturday. How…have you been going to work? Going out at all?”

He gave me a wan smile and shrugged. “I have, sure. Just less lately. I can do a lot of my work from here, and they understand…bereavement leave they call it.”

I nodded. “Okay, I mean that’s good. But…you don’t look so hot.”

He’d turned and relocked the front door. A chain and two more deadbolts on top of what had already been there. Keeping his back turned, I saw his shoulders slump. “I know how it looks. I’ve just been going through a real hard time. I…I feel like I’m somehow responsible for what happened to your Mom and the girls.” When he finally did turn, his face looked haunted. “And lately, the more I think about it, the more afraid I am that the same kind of thing is going to happen to me and you, crazy as that sounds.”

Sitting my bag down, I stared at him. “Dad, that is fucking crazy. That was the stupid truck driver’s fault. Not yours. What’re you talking about?”

Tears springing to his eyes, he looked up at the ceiling. “That bonfire. That damned bonfire game with the rocks and all. Me and my stupid bullshit. I didn’t think there was anything to it, of course. Half forgot about it after we did the rocks.” His lip began to tremble. “But when I did remember and I went out and looked…when the rocks had all disappeared…I looked it up again, right there in the yard before I came inside. Remember me coming in and asking you all about the rocks being missing?”

I nodded slowly, my stomach beginning to twist in on itself. “Yeah, sure. I do. But listen, I…”

“Well, I looked back up what that whole thing was. I’d been wrong. It wasn’t just a way to seeing your future for the year. It was…oh God…It was supposed to warn you if you were going to die in the next year.”

“Dad, just let…”

He raised his hand and kept going. “No, I’ve kept this a secret for a year, and it’s been eating me up, especially since…this summer. I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want you to hate me or think I was crazy, but I have to say it. The…the website said that it was an old ritual, and that if a person’s stone was damaged or disappeared by the next day, that meant they’d die before the next Halloween. And…” Dad buried his face in his hands as he began to slide down the wall to the floor. “And I don’t know if it just predicted it or if it caused it, but they died! And if it did cause it, then I caused it, didn’t I?” He snuffled wetly into his palm. “And if that’s true, what’s to keep it from taking you or me?”

The hall felt like it was spinning, and my knees were shaky and weak as I knelt down next to him. “Dad, that’s not the way the world works. It was just some silly superstition. And the stones didn’t just disappear. It was my fault.”

He looked up at me, eyes still streaming. “What’re you saying? You’re just lying to make me feel better. I appreciate it, but it doesn’t…”

I grabbed his arm and gave it a squeeze as I softly interrupted him. “No. Come out back and I’ll... I’ll see if I can show you.”

Helping him to his feet, I took him out the back and across the yard to the toolshed. Heart in my throat, I looked between the back of the shed and the small propane tank that fed gas to the heater and oven in the house. At first I thought it was gone, but then I saw it, tucked further back in the shadows underneath the tank, but still there. Sucking in a breath, I reached in and pulled out a small shoebox that had once held Jenna or Jasmine’s ice skates. Turning toward my father, I opened it up and showed him the stones inside.

“I took them. I did it later the same day we put them out. At the time I thought it was going to be a funny prank or something, but then when you came in and acted mad about it…I guess I got scared. I played dumb, and then I forgot about it after. I…” I felt tears springing to my eyes. “Jesus, I’m so sorry. I had no idea you’d been obsessing about this the entire time.”

Dad looked in the box and then up to me. “This…this isn’t right.”

I shook my head. “It is. There’s no magic. Just bad fucking luck and a kid who was too dumb to see what his Dad was going through. I’m so sorry.”

He looked at the stones again. “No, we’re still not safe. Not until we can find…”

Sighing, I pushed past him. I needed to end this now, and maybe reversing what I did was the only way to really convince him that everything was…well, if not okay, at least not going to get any worse. “Fine then. I’ll put them back where I found them, okay?”

I could still see the sooty edge of the ring of ash in spots, even after all this time. Was that strange? Wouldn’t it have washed away a long time ago? Or the grass grown back there already? No, I was letting him infect me with his weird crazy grief. This needed to be over.

“You’re not listening to me. That’s…”

Stepping over into the circle, I dumped the stones back out onto the ground. As I looked back up, I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice. This was all my fault, after all. “See? They’re back. We’re fine. And they’re just rocks anyway. None of this actually means…”

“There’s only four.”

He wasn’t looking at me now, but down at my feet, and as I followed his gaze, I felt my tongue grow thick. He was right. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there had been five stones when I took them. One for each of us. Now one of them was missing. Forcing a smile, I looked back up at him.

“Dad, it still doesn’t…”

The day split in two as a thunderclap sent me hurtling twenty feet back until I finally slid to a stop on the far side of the ash circle. Eyes watering and ears ringing, I looked around for what had happened. That’s when I saw my father, somehow still standing.

What was left of him, at least. When the propane tank blew, a foot-long shard of metal had cut him nearly in half between his neck and right shoulder before missing me and burying itself deep into a far garden wall. He stood there staring at me as he peeled apart like a wilting flower, and then he just toppled over dead onto the ground.

I wanted to scream, but my chest hurt too much. Gasping and coughing, I slowly got my breath back enough to let out a small wheezing wail as I crawled my way forward. I stretched out one trembling hand and grasped one of the rocks I’d dumped out so casually before, gripping it now as though my life depended on it. It was a pointed chunk of dark granite, and I remembered picking it as my rock the year before clearly.

Letting out a weak sob, I crawled to put my rock in the center of the ash circle, far away from the uncertainty that lay beyond its edge and nestled close to where the bonfire’s light had once lived.

And where, just maybe, I could still live too.