Matches

The matches that Jud Crandall kept by his chair in the living room become the instrument by which Louis Creed sets fire to Jud's house after the murders of Jud and Rachel, serving as the final, deliberate act of destruction that closes the cycle of violence unleashed by the Micmac burying ground.

Location and Context

Jud Crandall kept his matches on top of his cigarettes, by the chair in his living room where he had kept his fruitless watch through the night. He had sat there smoking and drinking beer, waiting for Louis to come home, unaware that the resurrected Gage had already entered his house. The matches remained there after Jud was killed, a mundane object untouched by the horror that had unfolded in the kitchen.

Louis's Discovery and Use

After finding Jud's body and Rachel's body, and after killing the resurrected Gage with morphine injections, Louis Creed moved through the house in a state of shock. He found Jud's matches by the chair where the old man had kept his watch. Louis took them. At the front door, he tossed a lighted match back over his shoulder and stepped out. The blast of heat was immediate and savage, making the skin on his neck feel too small. He shut the door neatly and stood on the porch for a moment, watching the orange flickers behind Norma's curtains before stepping out.

The Fire

Louis had prepared the house for burning. He found five gallons of gasoline in Jud's garage, in a red can next to the Lawnboy. He began in the kitchen where Jud still lay under the Thanksgiving tablecloth, drenching it. He then moved into the living room with the can still upended, spraying amber gas over the rug, the sofa, the magazine rack, the chairs, and out into the downstairs hall and toward the back bedroom. The smell of gas was strong and rich. The fire spread rapidly. When Steve Masterton arrived later that morning, he saw billows of smoke from the Crandall house. People were running toward it. A man dashed up onto the porch, approached the front door, and then retreated; a moment later the glass pane in the center of the door blew out, and flames boiled through the opening. The would-be hero cried out that the house was going to be lost. The fire department was called, but the house was already consumed. The ashes were still hot when the police came that afternoon.

Narrative Significance

The matches, as an object, represent the final, deliberate act of destruction that closes the cycle of violence unleashed by the Micmac burying ground. Louis uses them not in a moment of madness but with a grim, methodical purpose: to destroy the house where his wife and his best friend were murdered by the thing that had once been his son. The fire is an act of cleansing, an attempt to erase the physical evidence of the horror, but also a recognition that what has been set in motion cannot be undone. The matches are the last tool Louis uses before he takes Rachel's body into the woods, and they mark the point of no return in his descent into the madness that the burying ground has cultivated.