The walls started sweating.
Arkive Entry #003: The return of Matchjaw and the Blackstone Apartment Fires
I should’ve known something was wrong, when the walls started sweating.
My fiancé and I both worked for LIMX - you know, the company that puts the coolant in your air conditioner, gaming PCs. We make hot things cold.
They offered us a corporate unit at Blackstone Terrace. Premium spot. I was able to move in with Luke, just a week after we got engaged.
It was supposed to be the start of something special.
But within a few days of moving in… the heat started.
Not your normal hot Pennsylvania summer heat. Not the A/C’s broken again heat.
But a stranger one. It was a heat within the walls.
I remember the night I felt it for the first time. Luke and I had just finished a rerun of one of our favorite shows and he was asleep on the couch again.
He leaned on me.
Normally I’d love that. But I felt sick - stuffed - like I had been wrapped in a suffocating blanket. His skin felt sticky and raw, like it wanted to keep me there, rooted in place.
So I got up, thinking the summer heat had got to me. But that wasn’t it.
I learned on the wall - and that’s when I felt it.
Droplets of sweat slowly rolling down beneath the wallpaper. Something was wrong.
I called maintenance. But they said it was just the way the building handled seasonal airflow. “Standard summer cycle,” they said.
“Just wait, it’ll get better once the A/C kicks in.”
Bullshit.
It only got worse.
Every night, just a little hotter.
Door handles? Warm to the touch.
The vents? Carried a faint warm breath.
We both thought, finally this was as bad as it could get. That we had hit the peak.
But then came the melting.
It started out small. The plastic on the window latch. The slow warping of the coffee pot handle. The little plastic circle inside the microwave getting stuck in place.
We tried fans. Which worked for awhile, until they too started to droop like their plastic blades were caught crying.
Finally. The night it happened… Luke was visiting his family. Glad to have a break from it all. But I was stuck with work. And stuck here.
Like a frog in the slowly boiling pot.
I woke up, barely able to breath. I tried my phone. It wouldn’t work, said it needed to cool down before I could make a call.
I checked the wall, it was soaked through - wet from tears of the melting plastic and paper.
It stuck to my hand like a thick paste. So I ran to wash it off.
I scrubbed and scrubbed but my hand was stained a sickly phosphorous green.
That was it. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was going to fix it myself. I had to.
So I decided to go to the boiler room.
The hallway outside my apartment was empty, but the walls rippled, like the insides of an intestine. And I was there… being digested by the heat.
The elevators were down. Big surprise.
I took the stairs. Each step felt worse than the last. Until finally, I was there.
The boiler room rattled with the ancient steam powered machinery, glowing orange at every possible seam.
And there, in the dark center of the room, lit only by the fire’s mechanical breath…
Was him.
He wore a long, fire-black coat. The kind firefighters wore in the early 1900s. His broken helmet hid most of his face - except for that smile.
It was so wide. Wider than a smile should ever be. Teeth plucked from the jaws of the Cheshire Cat. No eyes. Just a void of smoke where skin should be.
His hands were on the pipes - and they glowed, cracking, smoldering, leaking molten fire into the corroded interiors of the old pipes.
He whispered something - hoarse, hollow - carried to my ears like the smoke.
His grin curled even further, bending into a half moon.
“Run.”
The room erupted.
Flames burst out of every seam.
I ran.
Tried to pull the fire alarm. But it was melted.
The extinguisher? Shattered, hissing its useless white foam.
I ran with everything left in me, as the building warped and crumbled behind me.
I made it. Bursting through the exit and gasping for breath and glanced behind me.
He was there. Alone.
No flames touched him. Not an ounce of fear. Just a shadow against the flame.
He raised a gloved hand.
And waved goodbye before the building collapsed around him.
The place I so briefly called home, had burned into ashes. No one else made it out.
It was later that I remembered hearing a story once, back when I was a kid.
“Matchjaw” the other kids called him.
Said there was a man who worked in the phosphorus factory there.
He barely survived an accident - burned so badly he hid in a vat just to escape.
They thought he died, but he didn’t. He took the fire chief’s coat and burned down the entire town.
Ashford, PA.
One of the most devastating disasters in Pennsylvania history but you’ll never find anything on the town or the fire.
You won’t find the town.
I don’t know why, but somehow…
I think this one will be the same.
Case marked: UNRESOLVED
Threat Data:
• Class: ANTARES (Spectral Entity)
• Suggested Action: Extermination
(Additional observation needed. Thermal signature exceeds current containment limits.)
