The previous owner talked frankly of the ghosts in the house when Ellen bought the place a few years ago. And while she experienced the odd perpetually cold spot in the house, or unexplained shadows, or movement out of the corner of her eye, her time with her ghosts could best be described as copacetic. The day she moved in she talked to them explaining she intended to share the house.

Maybe that did the trick. She’d never experienced anything “going bump” in the night and she also never felt alone in the house – in a good way; for her first house on her own after the divorce, she appreciated the company, even if she never actually saw them.

Until last night.

She sat bold upright in bed, torn from a sound sleep. There was a loud noise… she thought. But she wasn’t sure what could have made that no­—

BANG.

There it was! She looked at the clock. 1:35am. BANG! Again. It sounded like the chairs downstairs getting knocked over. BANG! That was it. But… who? And why?

Her bedroom door opened with a slam. The luminescent figure of an old woman floated in. Ellen knew her by feeling, even though she’d never seen her. She’d never seen her. Why now?

The woman looked at her and spoke clearly and concisely: “GET OUT!”

Startled as much by the roar of her words as she was by the unprecedented communication, Ellen did just as she was told. Leaping out of bed, she threw on the workout clothes she’d laid out for her morning gym trip, bolted past the ghost, down the stairs, past the knocked-over chairs grabbing her laptop and purse off the table, and threw open the door and hit the first step before she stopped.

In front of her the hillside across the street was a wall of flame rushing down towards her with the roar of a freight train. She immediately bolted to her car, turned the engine over and gunned it. Before she turned the corner, she looked back at the house. The fire rushed inevitably down the hill towards the house and Ellen saw the woman in the window upstairs watching her go.

This morning was an anxious rush as Jazz and I rushed to try to get her mom out of the mandatory evacuation zone in Rohnert Park. They downgraded the order by noon, and the immediate threat has faded for them. Now it’s Monday afternoon, and I’ve been crying off and on as pictures of the devastation of places I visit regularly have come in through Twitter, Facebook, the news… Already harrowing stories have come in about narrow escapes like the Safari West owner who defied evacuation and protected the exotic animals using hoses. Or the myriad tales of early morning knocks on the door and being told by CHP or sheriffs to leave RIGHT THEN, no time to even grab anything other than the clothes on their back. This story is in honor of everyone who experienced this very real fear and those who lost everything.