The Bystander

A story by J. Aaron Courts

O’Malley, J. The Bystander. 2025, Private Collection.

The old woman died one night in her small, single-story stone-worked house two blocks from where Carson and his wife lived. They were asleep. Their home was near the top of a draw and on clear evenings, the calm bay, visible over much of the neighborhood, reflected stars and doubled the otherwise lightless sky. On those nights, he thought they lived in a postcard. His wife liked to leave the windows and doors to their balcony open during this time of the year, when a breeze could be counted on to move cool salty air up the hill and fill their room with the smell of the ocean.

The harsh scent of the old woman’s home aflame filled their room, and he opened his eyes. He thought he was much younger for a moment, then realized an orange glow illuminated the wall to his right, and he saw his wife’s dim shadow projected like the hill they lived on against a setting sun. He heard the crackling, but it was the smell which took him back, and he knew exactly what was happening. If someone had asked him then, how he knew which house was burning, or that the old woman was dead inside, he couldn’t have explained it, but he did, and she was, and he was certain, the way one is certain a lover, far away, has died. He just knew.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been nearby when someone burned to death. Years ago, in a small Southeast Texas town, his parents left for the weekend, and he had a party at his house when a strange glow, not unlike the orange one he saw now, filled the sky. The house on the corner of his street was on fire. Carson and his friends grabbed a few beers and sat in the ditch across the street to watch the firemen spray the home, by then, engulfed in flames so high and thick their skin grew hot and most of them left before their cans of beer began to sweat. But he stayed and watched the firemen work and looked at the wall of pine trees behind him when the heat was too intense. He thought the flashing lights against an evergreen backdrop would be something he’d remember for a long time. But it wasn’t the lights he remembered.

He thought he heard a scream. But a scream wasn’t possible. Not from within the inferno before him. Of that, he was certain. Besides, the firemen weren’t running into the home. They were walking with purpose, sure, but no one seemed frantic or even overly concerned. And there were other, louder noises—no one could be heard over them. The water blasted into the home. The trucks’ engines. The home cracking open and crumbling into, and onto, itself. Even the fire wined and bellowed in waves.

And yet, he had heard a scream. He was sure. He closed his eyes and listened harder but didn’t hear it again. He thought he should remember the moment, wanted to remember it, though he couldn’t say why. So, he memorized the sky—orange and yellow fading into blue and black. And he remembered the smells—burning wood and plastic and ash-choked steam. And though the scream would revisit him on occasion—in dreams and one waking moment in Iraq—one terrible moment—it was the glowing sky and the smell that would drag him back into the memory for the rest of his life.

His friends eventually returned to the party, leaving the extra beers they brought with him, and he sat in the ditch and drank them while the home burned, one after another, until they were all gone. There were two fire trucks, and several cop cars, and even an ambulance whose back was open and empty, but there weren’t any cars in the driveway or parked in the street. There weren’t any bystanders either, other than himself and his friends before they’d left. The family must have been gone too. On vacation or visiting someone, and he grew embarrassed at the realization that he knew what they didn’t. They would return to nothing.

He left the cans in the ditch and walked back to his house and the party and didn’t think about it again the rest of the night. The next day he cleaned empty cans and plastic cups from his house and yard. He saw broken glass and melted bottles in a pile of ashes that had been his own fire the night before and thought about his neighbors returning. What if they see the beer cans in the ditch?

He headed back down the street with a small plastic grocery bag to collect the cans and hoped the neighbors whose home had burned were still out of town.

He walked slowly and tried to make himself invisible against the line of trees that ran the length of his street. It seemed the entire neighborhood was outside, clumped in twos and threes where one property met another. Some drank coffee. Some had their arms crossed to stay the morning chill. One mother kept pushing a young boy behind her and even slapped him when he pushed past her to peek around their fence.

A lone fire truck was still parked in front of the burnt home, as were a few official vehicles he didn’t recall seeing the night before, including a fire marshal’s SUV and county emergency response truck. A cop was there too, and the men were gathered and stared at the smoldering remains while two firemen poked at the debris with a halligan. One of them lifted a barrier of yellow tape and walked to the group of men. The police tape was tied to a fence post and stretched through the front yard, where it was wrapped loosely around two crepe myrtle trees on either side of their pass. The site wasn’t completely cordoned by the yellow plastic barrier, but fluttering tape secured it enough. The fireman sat his helmet on the fire marshal’s hood and wiped his brow.

Carson squatted on the edge of the ditch and was picking up the beer cans when the homeowners returned. They must have been informed about the fire somehow because their tires screeched when their minivan turned into the neighborhood and again into their driveway. The wife opened the passenger door before the vehicle even stopped and collapsed to her knees in the wet grass near one of the crepe myrtles and wailed. The man—her husband—tried to pick up the distraught woman but soon simply crouched and hugged her—squeezed her. She rocked back and forth like a caged animal and almost knocked him backwards. He was saying something to her, but Carson couldn’t make it out.

He couldn’t stand the sounds she made. The same fireman that had just walked away from the ashes started for them but hesitated then turned back. The husband didn’t notice the fireman, but he did notice Carson. His head was pressed to his wife’s, and he kept speaking in her ear, but he was looking at Carson. When he stood with the plastic bag, half filled with empty beer cans, the man’s eyes trailed from the bag to lock on Carson’s, and a chill ran over his body.

He froze for a moment, then turned and began walking back to his home. The aluminum cans clattered, and he began to jog back. He had an irrational thought as he ran back to his house; maybe people would think he had started the fire. But there were dozens of people at the party who knew better and would say he didn’t, and he was sure the investigators would discover a bad outlet, or faulty appliance had started the fire or some other unfortunate but common cause. Still, in the short distance to his house, he began to feel different. Worse. Heavier. Stained.

He hadn’t done anything wrong—at least not anything to cause the fire or harm anyone—but he didn’t think he’d done anything right either.

Days later, he overheard his mother talking on the phone, explaining what had happened to someone who’d recognized the name of their street in the news and called to gossip.

“I don’t think they know how it started,” she said. “Yeah. It’s awful.” There was a pause while the other person spoke. “I know,” she continued, “that poor family. That poor, poor girl.” His stomach turned. “She was asleep,” she said. “At least the good Lord let her pass in her sleep.”

He walked outside dizzy and heard her say the word smoke as the door closed behind him. He could still smell the burned ruins and knew the girl was part of the smell. And he knew she hadn’t died in her sleep. He’d heard her scream.

He was ashamed of leaving the cans, and locking eyes with the man was terrible, but it wasn’t those things that settled in his gut as he ran home the morning after the fire, so many years ago. What settled in his gut then was a realization that both he and the man—the father of the dead girl—knew he sat there, drinking beer, while the girl was burned to death. What had been embarrassment, and then shame, became lead-heavy guilt, and he would remember that too, along with the glow and smell, forever.

He was standing on the balcony in his boxers, silhouetted by the flames of their neighbor’s home, when his wife woke. She started to put a blanket over his shoulders, but it wasn’t cold, so she left it on the bed.

“Babe, what’s going on? What’s that smell?”

“The house is on fire,” he said. “She’s in there.”

“What?” She looked ahead into the postcard view that was glowing brighter and brighter with each passing moment. “Oh God,” she said.

“She’s in the house,” he whispered. His eyes were closed and his nostrils flared as he breathed in the familiar scent.

“Who’s in the house?” she said. He looked at her. “Babe­,” she said. “You’re shaking.”

“The old woman,” he said. “The one who gave the kids the little magnets. She’s in there. I know it.”

“How could you know that? She’s got a tiny place. I’m sure they got her­—”

“I know it,” he said interrupting her. The stars which would have lit the sky on a night so clear were outshone by the flames.

“Should we do something?” she asked.

“There’s nothing to do,” he said. “She’s already dead.”

His wife spoke a quick prayer, so soft it couldn’t be heard.

Months later, seasonal rains had come and gone and cleaned the burnt-out place thoroughly. Only remnants remained: charred stone of three walls, some broken glass on the ground, and the thickest beam, black and brittle leaning against the back wall. Weeds had begun to reclaim the lot and within a year or two, only the absence of trees would seem odd. Even the smell had blown away by then. But he wouldn’t know if the lot was paved, porcelain slick or a burgeoning wood, because he avoided it altogether.

Carson walked through the neighborhood a lot. His wife teased that he was a “talker-not-walker,” and it wasn’t uncommon for him to end a phone call and discover he was blocks away from his house. It helped him think, and he enjoyed the neighborhood, largely. He walked to his favorite izakaya. He walked to a small pastry shop on the edge of the neighborhood to get his wife and kids tiny, delicate fruit covered cakes. He walked his daughter to her bus stop several downhill blocks away and longer routes still, all over the neighborhood, whenever the kids piled into their umbrella strollers.

He liked the landscaped lawns, the bonsais, and seeing his neighbors outside working in their yards. He liked that the old ladies rubbed his daughter’s blonde hair and that the old men would give her flowers or his son a fresh orange or starfruit from their trees. It seemed everyone had a garden, and narrow walkways made narrower with plants, and his children loved to gift small, propagated aloe vera plants they’d grown to the elderly neighbors. They’d given one to the old woman who’d died too, but they never passed the burned house now. Even his walking calls took him, subconsciously, out his front door and away from where she burned. He didn’t think about it much. Not at all, really, and yet his body shunned the place as though it refused to allow itself to be walked near it.

This went on for more than a year until one morning Stan, who rented the house on the corner and the only other American in the neighborhood, asked if he’d heard they were going to clear the lot where the old woman had died.

“I assumed it’d already been,” he said.

“Nope. There’s not much left,” Stan said, “Weeds are the only thing keeping what’s left from falling down. You really haven’t seen it?” Carson shook his head slightly. “You’re always walking the kids around. I, I assumed—”

“We haven’t gone that way.”

“Huh. Well, anyway,” Stan said, “I guess the family, or estate, or whatever, sold the lot. A developer’s going to build some sort of apartment complex there. That’s what my neighbor says, anyway. Everything’s going up, up, up these days.” Stan nudged his shoulder before continuing, “and not just the price. It’s going to be one skinny ass building. Hope it don’t mess up my view.”

Carson nodded. He couldn’t explain why, but the guilt he’d felt years before crept back into his chest. He told himself once again that he hadn’t done anything wrong, but somewhere, not too deep, the same thought echoed as before—he hadn’t done anything right either.

“What’s right?” he said aloud.

“Huh?” Stan asked, but he didn’t answer.

That night, he tucked his kids into bed and kissed them. His wife was sitting on the couch with a glass of wine when he came downstairs. She’d poured him one too and it was beside the open bottle on the coffee table. She grabbed his glass and held it out.

“Long day,” she said and smiled at him.

“Mine too,” and he smiled back.

They drank the wine and talked about each other’s day, the kids at school, the new guy at his wife’s office on base she didn’t expect would last long. But in the back of his mind, the old woman’s house lingered, and the guilt began to pulse like a detached organ, struggling to find connective tissue. He slumped further into the couch and looked out the window.

“They’re going to clear the lot where the house—where the old woman died.”

“Talk about from outta left field,” she said. “What made you think of that?”

“I was speaking with Stan earlier and he told me. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Okay. What about it?”

“I don’t know exactly,” he said and finished his glass of wine. She leaned forward to pour him another, and he nodded. “Karii. You know we haven’t been by the house since it happened.”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” she said, “but I guess you’re right.”

“I think I’m going to stop by there.” He finished his wine with a large swallow and stood.

“And do what?” she asked. “There’s nothing there, right? And the poor woman. I mean, she died there. It’s a little weird, don’t you think?”

“Maybe, but I feel like I gotta go.” He looked over his wife’s head and out the large sliding windows that opened into the back yard and in the direction of the burnt house. “I never told you but—” He reached down and took the glass from her hand and drank it too, then refilled it and handed it back. She almost smirked but could tell he was serious. “I never told you about—” He paused again and looked at her.

“Are you okay, babe?” Her eyes were on his.

“Yeah. It’s nothing. I, I’ll tell you later.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead, then turned toward the door and small cabinet where they kept their shoes.

“Wait. You’re going tonight?” She untucked a leg and sat up straight. “It’s pretty late, don’t you think?”

“I’ll be right back. I just need to go by for a minute.”

“Babe, it’s—” She began to stand up, and he held his hand out and smiled.

“Seriously. It’s no big deal,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” He slipped on his old running shoes. “I love you. Be back soon.”

“Okay,” she said, “but hurry. Before I drink all this wine and fall asleep, alone in bed.”

“Aye, aye,” he said and feigned a quick salute.

The sky was dark but clear, the stars shining. He could see the Big Dipper. Same as on the night the fire killed the old woman. Now that he thought about it, same as the night he’d watched the home burn with the girl inside—heard the girl inside. The wind carried fresh salt air from the bay that extended into the ocean below and made a cool breeze on an otherwise still night. Insects sang to other insects and tree frogs croaked along the banks of a small stream that wound down the draw. All of them grew silent as he approached, then sang again as he’d passed. The moon was a sliver and high so what shadows were created were very small and close to the feet of their objects.

He approached what was once the front yard of the house. There’d been a small wire fence there. It had been the sort to keep the old woman’s fat hens, too lazy to hop over it, pecking around her yard. The fence was gone, but he stood a few feet from where it had been out of respect for a woman who was dead, and the property that belonged to someone else now.

Of the three partial walls that remained, the front wall was most complete. It had crumbled from the top left to the bottom right, so it made a triangle of sorts with a complete, paneless window to the left of a large opening where the door had been and not much to the right. Even in the darkness, he could see a burnt ridge beam leaning against the half-back wall.

All the interior structures and furnishings were gone except for the beam. Grass and weeds carpeted the floor, and he thought about the slash and burn technique he read about in grade school. He closed his eyes and tried to recall what the house had looked like before the fire. Images flashed in his mind. He opened his eyes, and they remained, like a projection and an overlay. He could see what was left of the old woman’s house, but also the two-story home from his street years ago, engulfed itself, in flames.

He felt the heat and stepped back, shielding his eyes. He sensed someone behind him and almost expected to see his teenage self, sitting across the street, drinking beer, entertained, but there was no one. He felt like he was falling, or rather, like the ground had fallen beneath him and he was suspended, hovering above an endless chasm.

He squeezed his eyes and dragged his right foot back an inch and pressed it onto the road to make sure the ground was, in fact, still there. When he closed his eyes, the memory of the fire—the overlay—was gone. Everything was back as it should be—not should, but as it was—and he exhaled a large breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

The hair on the back of his neck began to lie down and then, as if he was standing in water and had touched a hot wire, needles pricked him all over.

He saw the woman through the square opening in the front wall where the window used to be.

She was charred and stood motionless. There was no fire, no heat, no flickering rays. The sky was still dark, but she was there, short and naked, all need for modesty burned away, and he could smell the fire. He could smell her.

She opened her mouth, and a scream—her scream—forced him to knees. He held both hands over his ears and rocked. For a moment, he wished his wife were there to help him to his feet like the man had helped his wife years before. No, tried, he thought, but he was the one rocking now, and was glad his wife wasn’t there. He was glad she was at home with their daughter and son, safe from this memory or whatever it was.

The sound and smell became unbearable, and he yelled for her to stop. He climbed to his feet and yelled again, this time speaking directly to her, but when he did a naked girl stepped beside the old woman, and his stomach lurched.

“I’m sorry! There was nothing I could do!” He couldn’t breathe. The smell burned his nose and made him gag.

A familiar orange glow began to fill the sky. He thought he was going to be consumed by fire—an invisible flame—emanating from the remains of the old woman’s house. But when he looked beyond the old woman and girl, both standing mouth agape, still screaming, it was dark behind them. It was dark all around them.

He heard crackling and looked to the right, then back to the old woman’s house and the girl’s that surrounded it, then behind himself. There was no fire. He hated his neighborhood then, hated all the stone buildings that echoed like an empty chamber. Hated how limited the views were, surrounded by tightly packed homes and winding streets. And then he thought about the view from his balcony. Thought about standing on his balcony with his wife. There was only one direction the light could be coming from.

He turned toward his house up the hill and saw the orange glow fill the space above it and erase all the stars and the sliver-moon. He wasn’t suspended any more. He was falling. Before he ran toward his house, he looked at the old woman and the girl one last time. I hate you both. I didn’t hurt you!

As he ran away from the old woman’s burnt house, he heard dissonant screams from somewhere ahead. Was that a woman? A Girl? A boy? It might have been all three. He couldn’t tell.

He ran all the way back to his house. Flames poured from the second-floor windows and splashed on the balcony where he’d stood with his wife and watched the old woman’s house burn. The roof was on fire and part of it collapsed. Smoke billowed from every opening and squeezed between the closed front door and its frame. He screamed for his wife and kids but none of them answered and burst through the front door with his shoulder. He turned his head from the flames but pressed into them and beyond.

Across the street, an old woman and a girl stood unseen, mouth’s closed and silent, baked and burnt, and watched as he disappeared. A teenage boy walked up and sat on the curb in front of them. His face was bright from the firelight. He sat there, another bystander, drinking a glass bottle until it was empty, then set it down and walked back home.