The first thing people noticed about Thomas Harrison’s candles was the scent.

It wasn’t floral, nor herbal, nor anything so pedestrian as vanilla or spice. His shop, tucked between a shuttered tailor and a locksmith no one ever saw open, carried a fragrance that clung to the back of the throat; thick, intimate, almost sweet. Customers struggled to name it.

“Something… familiar,” they would murmur.

Mr Harrison would only smile.

He worked exclusively at night. Through the warped glass of his storefront window, a passersby sometimes glimpsed him bent over a wide iron pot, sleeves rolled high, his thin arms glistening in the amber light. The vat simmered slowly, patiently. He stirred with a wooden paddle worn smooth from long use.

The source of his finest material lay beneath the shop. The cellar door was hidden under a rug depicting a pale tree. Maple? Birchwood? Beneath it, stone steps spiraled down into a room much larger than the building suggested. Hooks lined the beams overhead. Heavy tables stood in neat rows. Blocks of pale substance rested on trays, carefully trimmed and sorted like butcher’s cuts.

Mr Harrison believed in sustainability.

He read the obituaries each morning with his cup of tea, circling names. The lonely. The unclaimed. Those whose funerals would be sparsely attended. He had arrangements, quiet ones, with certain men who asked no questions so long as the envelopes were thick.

The process required patience.

He would render the harvest slowly, humming to himself as it softened and surrendered to heat. Impurities rose to the surface. He skimmed them away with reverence. What remained was smooth, luminous, almost pearlescent when cooled.

Perfect for molding.

He prided himself on the texture. Animal fat smoked too harshly. Beeswax lacked depth. But this? This burned with a steady, unwavering flame. And the scent it released when lit was extraordinary. Warm. Comforting. Like skin after a bath. Like an embrace.

His best-selling line was called Remembrance.

Each candle bore a small handwritten label tied with twine. No two were exactly alike.

Some customers swore the candles made them dream vividly of people they had lost. Others claimed to feel watched while the flame flickered, as if something in the room had grown attentive.

One evening, a young woman entered the shop just before closing. She said she was looking for something special, something that would make her apartment feel less empty.

Mr Harrison studied her carefully. The healthy glow of her cheeks. The pulse fluttering gently at her throat.

He selected a candle from beneath the counter. “This one,” he said softly. “My finest blend.”

She lifted it to her nose and inhaled deeply.

For a moment, her expression shifted… confusion first, then a strange recognition. Her brow furrowed.

“It smells like…” she began.

But she couldn’t finish.

Because somewhere beneath the shop, under the floorboards and stone, a muffled knock sounded from the cellar door.

Just once.

Mr Harrison’s smile did not falter.

“The building settles,” he said gently. “Old foundations.”

The flame in the nearest candle stretched tall and thin, guttering toward her as if drawn by breath.

She hesitated only a second longer before reaching for her purse.

After all, the scent was comforting.

He watched her carefully place her paper-wrapped purchase into her handbag.

She looked up at him and smiled. The glow of her cheeks reflecting a rosy warmth in the soft candlelight.

She turned to leave.

Mr Harrison watched her shapely form head to the front door.

He was always in need of fresh inspiration.

She lit it the moment she arrived home, setting it carefully on the small table by the sofa, as if placing a guest in the room. The wick caught quickly. The flame rose tall and steady, its light unusually soft, as though filtered through skin.

Within minutes, the scent began to bloom.

Not overpowering. Never that. It spread gently, its breath warming the corners of the flat that had always felt too large for one person. The familiar hollowness behind her ribs loosened. She slipped off her coat, then her shoes, then sank onto the sofa with a long exhale she hadn’t realized she was holding.

“It’s nice,” she murmured aloud, though no one was there to hear it.

The candle answered only with a faint, contented crackle.

She watched the flame for a while, its movements oddly attentive, as if responding to the rhythm of her breathing. When she leaned forward, it leaned too. When she shifted back, it shortened and steadied. She laughed once at herself, embarrassed by the thought.

Just a candle.

Still, the flat felt less empty.

She found herself speaking again without meaning to. About her day. About the way the supermarket cashier had mistaken her for someone else. About the message she’d almost sent to someone she’d promised not to contact again.

Her voice sounded clearer in the room, as though cushioned by the warm scent. The silence no longer pressed in from the walls. It listened.

Hours slipped by. The flame did not gutter once.

That night, she dreamed vividly.

Not in fragments, not in the hazy way dreams usually dissolved at waking. These dreams were sharp, deliberate. She stood in familiar places: her childhood hallway, the kitchen table of a flat she’d left years ago, a bus stop where she had once waited in the rain beside someone whose face she couldn’t quite see.

There was always another presence with her. Close. Patient. Watching not with malice, but with a quiet, unwavering interest.

When she woke, the scent still clung faintly to her pillow.

She told herself it was only because she had left the candle burning too long. She told herself she wouldn’t do that again.

She lit it again that evening.

And the next.

And the next.

Each time, the flame behaved with the same gentle attentiveness. Each time, the dreams returned more vividly. Once, she woke certain that someone had been sitting at the edge of her bed, the mattress still faintly indented beside her thigh.

She did not check. She did not want to break the feeling.

Instead, she began to speak to the candle more often.

It felt rude not to.

—

Across town, Mr Harrison read the morning paper with his usual care.

He circled three names that day. One elderly. One middle-aged. One young, recently moved to the city, listed with no family in attendance.

He paused at that third obituary longer than the others.

Then, with a small frown, he folded the paper again.

There was something… unusual about the blend he had sold the previous evening. The rendering had been particularly smooth. The scent, especially refined. It lingered on his sleeves still, faint but insistent, despite repeated washing.

He did not dislike this.

Still, it was curious.

He rose, crossed the shop floor, and knelt to lift the rug with the pale tree. The cellar air met him at once: cool, mineral, threaded with the low, steady smell of his work. The hooks were empty. The tables clean. The newest blocks sat resting on their trays, pale and orderly.

He descended halfway down the steps and listened.

Silence.

No knocking.

He waited a moment longer, just in case. Then he nodded to himself and returned upstairs, reassured.

The process, after all, was complete. Once rendered and molded, the material held no agency. No will. Only memory, perhaps — and even that, he believed, softened and diffused in the flame.

That was the beauty of it.

Transformation.

—

That evening, the young woman noticed something new.

The candle seemed to be burning faster than before.

Not dramatically. Just enough that she found herself studying it more closely, measuring the shrinking curve of wax against the rim of the glass jar. The scent was stronger tonight, richer, as though the room itself had begun to exhale.

She moved it closer to her while she read.

The flame leaned toward her.

She froze, watching.

It straightened at once, perfectly still, as if nothing had happened at all.

She laughed nervously, but did not move it back.

“Don’t be silly,” she told herself.

Still, when she went to bed, she left the candle burning again.

Just a little longer.

—

Near midnight, she woke abruptly.

Not from a dream this time, but from a sound.

A soft, deliberate knock from somewhere inside the flat.

She lay very still, listening.

The scent in the room had grown thick, almost tangible. She felt no fear, only a deep, drowsy curiosity.

The knock came again.

Once.

Then silence.

Her eyes drifted toward the living room doorway, where the candle’s light flickered low and golden along the floorboards, stretching like fingers toward the bedroom threshold.

She told herself it was the building settling. Old foundations. Pipes cooling in the walls.

The explanation soothed her immediately.

Of course it was.

She sank back into the pillow, breathing in the scent that now felt utterly familiar, as though it had always belonged to her life, her rooms, her skin.

In the shop across town, Mr Harrison stirred awake in his chair for no clear reason.

He listened to the quiet around him, brow furrowed, as if trying to catch a sound that had already faded.

Then he turned back toward the counter, where a fresh sheet of labels waited beside the twine.

He picked one up and hesitated before writing.

For the first time in many years, he found himself unsure what name to give the next candle.

And now he knew.