Evan Mallory
speaker
161 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Evan Mallory’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I held my multi-tool like a charm that could fend off fire. Just before dawn the footsteps stopped. Silence settled so suddenly my ears rang. Then something pressed against the tent wall directly over my heart. A hard, irregular shape, smaller than a fist yet impossibly hot. Nylon sizzled. I jerked away, stuffing my sleeping bag into the corner.
The object slid down the outside and thumped to the ground with a sound like wet ash falling. Through the thin fabric a faint red glow pulsed. I forced myself to unzip the door. Outside lay a child's sneaker, or what remained of one, canvas mostly burned away, rubber warped and cracked. The toe melted into a bleak grin. Inside the blackened sole, numbers blistered through the char.
One-nine-eight-six. As I stared, a single ember flared in the hollow toe, then winked out, leaving the shoe cold and silent. The sun crested the ridge, but Deadman's Draw stayed dim, as if light itself feared to linger. I packed in minutes, every motion punctuated by the thought hammering in my skull. The fire was following me, and it had just shown me the year it first learned my name.
I ran until my lungs tasted like copper, and the heat behind me faded to the faint rustle of cooling ash. At a bend in the hollow the trees gave way to a rutted service road, slick with last night's rain. Dawn had not truly broken, only a dim pewter glow seeped through the clouds, but steam already curled from the gravel in lazy spirals.
The farther I hiked, the more the air smelled of wet cinders and something sweeter, like pine pitch boiling on a stove. An hour later I saw it, a farmhouse crouched at the road's end, nothing left but black ribs of framing and a stubborn stone chimney that leaked grey vapour. The porch roof had collapsed.
charred rafters lay like snapped wings across the stoop heat still bled from the wreckage shimmering in waves that bent the world behind it out of shape i wanted to skirt the place entirely but my legs buckled at the sight of a black and white cruiser nosed into the weeds county emblem flaking from the door emergency lights cold i staggered closer
With a hiss, the driver's window rolled down, and a woman in a tan uniform leaned out, exhaustion etched in the creases around her eyes. "'You all right, sir?' Her badge read Riddle. The name fit the morning. Words tangled in my throat, but I managed. "'Something's after me. It's... it's on fire, and it walks.'
Sheriff Ada Riddle studied me for a heartbeat too long, then popped the passenger door." Get in. We'll talk where there's water between us and the ruins. The vinyl seat scorched my palms with residual heat, too hot for fabric untouched by flame. We rolled forward thirty yards and stopped beside a rusted stock trough half full of rainwater. Steam coiled from the hood where my gloves had landed.
House went up four nights ago, she said, watching the ruins in her side mirror. Neighbors smelled burning bacon at 3 a.m. and fire brigade found the family huddled near that back door. Father, mother, teenage boy, no accelerant, no wiring fault, just combustion. Her gaze flicked to the blistered streak across my pack. You saw someone. Saw him, heard him. He followed me down Devil's Ladder.
She rubbed the bridge of her nose. I was 12 that year. Three hikers burned to death in a cabin off Green Cove Road. Volunteer rescue found only footprints burned into the floor. Case went cold. Folks blame a vagrant who died in his own chimney fire that winter. Swear his spirit brands anyone intruding on these ridges. She laughed once, brittle. I never put stock in ghost stories until this week.
She flicked the dash cam on, just in case, and handed me a lukewarm canteen. I drank in ragged gulps. The instant metal touched my lips, a hot wind whooshed across the field, curling smoke skyward. From the treeline beyond the house a shape unfolded, taller than before, every joint glowing deeper, as if stoked to white heat. The temperature inside the cruiser jumped.
Plastic on the steering wheel softened. The entity stepped onto the lane. Grass beneath its feet withered to gray stalks that burst into wisps of flame and died. Its gaze locked on me through the windshield. The cruiser's engine ticked, metal expanding. Sheriff Riddle threw the vehicle into reverse, but the tires only hissed on melting tar.
She cursed, then bolted out, grabbed a canvas fire blanket from the trunk, and hurled it at the apparition.
the fabric unfurled mid-air like a sail striking the creature's shoulders for an instant the flames dimmed the form flickered edges swimming i staggered after her yanked a half barrel off its stand and tipped a torrent of cold rainwater across the lane steam roared upward enveloping us in scalding fog
Through the cloud I heard the entity howl, wood exploding in a kiln, and felt the wash of heat surge, then ebb, as if something vital had been banked. When the steam cleared, the blanket lay smoldering atop a dark, man-shaped smear on the asphalt. No figure, only a circle of char so black it ate the morning light. The sheriff exhaled a shaky breath.
let's hope that buys us some time we drove two miles felt like 20 engine knocking from overheated oil at sparrow gap ranger station she guided the cruiser beneath a corrugated overhang and killed the ignition rangers emerged radios already alive with chatter about flare-ups on the ridge grass fires that vanished ada ordered them to fetch extinguishers and wet sheets inside the cramped office i scrubbed soot off my hands
Skin sloughed away in tender pink sheets, and beneath it new blisters rose, perfect ovals mirroring the burned fingerprints left on my tent. I wrapped them in gauze, but heat seeped through, a pulse that matched my own heart. Through the window, I saw Ada lean against her cruiser's hood.
Where my palms had braced earlier, a black handprint still glowed, faint threads of smoke curling upward like incense. A ranger aimed the hose, but water broke around an invisible shield. Droplets hissed and slid off, unable to touch the scorch mark. The sheriff met my eyes across the lot, and in her expression was the hollow certainty that what we'd faced had not been defeated, only delayed.
A gust of wind carried the smell of fresh smoke from somewhere higher on the mountain. The radio crackled. Control, we've got a new hotspot flaring above Buzzard Rock. Looks like a column. Ada's shoulders sagged. I felt the heat blooming under my bandages, traveling cheek to collarbone, as if mapping the path of fire yet to come.
Somewhere out in the timber, a slow, deliberate footstep crunched across charcoal, and I realized the entity was already moving again, patient, methodical, unhurried, taking the long way down the mountain to find me.
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