Devil's Gate

Devils Gate--Where's Tommy

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.

My mom was talking as she came closer to the campfire and sat in her favorite blue nylon chair that she always had with her in the back of the truck. It was funny she still used that old fold up chair. Because of her hip it was hard for her to get up out of it after sitting in it by many campfires we had all enjoyed over all of my 14 years. Then she took in a deep sigh-filled breath and said—

Oh not in the way, I am sure, that in your minds you are seeing a candle burning in a window in an abandoned cabin in the woods. Oh no, not at all. When I tell you that a candle burned in the window what I really mean is that a candle burned something into the window of that cabin--hidden deep in the woods. Woods that even when the sun was shining there were shadows dancing about the nooks and crannies of places that would change and all but disappear as the sun scooted across the sky darkened by the towering swaying trees that seemed full of water all the days of the year. Woods where swishing wings and hoots of unseen owls would come and go in the early mornings yes, but in the evenings those sounds vibrated off those same water filled swaying trees as the shadows grew with each passing cloud painted blue and black by moons over many months and years. Yes that was what I meant when I tell you about the candle, window and cabin in the woods…

I have seen the window. But before I tell you what I saw let me tell you how I came to see it.

And that’s how the story began that my mom told us that warm June summer night as we, my sister Kayla, brother, Sam and me, July, sat in our hooded sweatshirts and jeans around the warm spitting and sputtering of the cedar logs in the campfire. She was so intent that her voice barely carried across the heat rising from the flames. The aroma of flaming marshmallows was still lightly dancing in my nose as she continued.

Yesterday when we came out here to go camping you remember coming through Hercules Gap? The place in the road we took today to get up to this campsite where the rocks rose up on both sides and seemed to close in on both sides of our truck? Where the sun, even though it was high in the sky, didn’t seem to ever reach the ground? There isn’t much around here but sage brush and the creek for sure. Guess we are really out here all alone aren’t we? I do remember seeing a cabin on the hill as we hiked this afternoon. It looked abandoned and the windows were streaked and dirty. Didn’t look like anyone was living there now. We can check it out tomorrow if you want to…

We all nodded in unison to go see it the next day.

Anyway. When I was a teenager a bunch of us had a place like this Hercules Gap back home in Montana. We would meet up and go on the week-ends and park our cars and trucks backed up in a circle and have campfires and music and fun with laughing and dancing and all. The fire was the place we could all be together and there were places couples could go to be alone. It was called Devil’s Gate. The road was gravel, like the one we came up here on today. It wasn’t all that well traveled and had been used mostly by hunters to get to the high country in the fall and of course by teenagers for years and years. Even your grandparents, my mom and dad had stories about the fun they had with their friends when they were younger out at Devil’s Gate.

At the thought of granny and papa being kids, Sam, Kayla and I laughed. Mom smiled a far away distant smile. I remember thinking that these were the best times. At night with mom at the campfire after dad went to bed in the tent.

And yes beyond the narrow passage of Devil’s Gate there was an old cabin that held mystery. Stories go back about the cabin for who knows how long. One I remember hearing often and that I believe because I have heard it from my parents, told of a man who lived out there and nobody knew where he came from or how long he was there or what he did for work. Then this one year he just disappeared. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I remember someone saying the man was old as all get out and that cabin out at Devils Gate probably wasn’t the first place he squatted to live for free. Nobody ever remembered talking to him or even seeing him in town to get supplies. He was seen every now and then in the woods, alone. Just appearing sometimes out of nowhere. Until that one year he just disappeared. Leaving the cabin in the woods dark and empty.

It was summer, like it is now. Warm and a group of us kids were out in the Gate enjoying our kind of summer night life. Kind of like we are here above the Gap tonight. Not that this is anything like Devils Gate was. Well maybe it’s little bit like it was back then.

Music was playing that Friday night in June. Voices were loud and happily enjoying an early summer night under a half mooned sky of scattered clouds like you see out here tonight. Look up there, see the clouds outlined by the moonlight?

We all looked up at the dark sky and then looked back at mom.

Like someone has painted them with a long black oak handled pig bristled painter’s brush covered with something thick and dark and dripping. There were crickets chirping and a breeze blew lightly rustling the green leaves of the tall trees growing along the slow moving water in the creek. A creek that cut through the rocks that over too many years to count, made the deep cut of Devil’s Gate. And it was dark. Warm and dark but for the shadows made by the dim half moon light reflecting off the trees and rocks deep in the woods.

One couple, Tommy and Kate, had a fight that afternoon but both of them were out there at the fire that night. Tommy rode out from town with Sam and Cory in Sam’s blue pick up and Kate caught a ride with—actually I don’t remember who she came with. It was like that sometimes. We just all piled in somebody’s car and rode around until at some point we seemed to go somewhere and just be kids. Anyway, Tommy and Kate seemed to ignore each other until Tommy tried to talk to Kate. He touched her shoulder out of the dark and she jumped and let out a little girl shriek. She turned and Tommy looked at her, he seemed dark and lost. He asked her to go on a walk with him. She was still not in a ‘make-up’ mood yet so she told him to take a hike. And that was just what he did. He turned around and stomped and scuffed off down the road, traveling on foot through the back side of Hercules Gap, towards where the cabin stood.

Mom looked up the hill towards where she said the cabin was that she saw earlier that day. The far off look on her face was still and the firelight gave her skin a yellowish tint. Her soft face was as still as I had ever seen it and I remember a shiver started inside my old tennis shoes at the tips of my toes and jiggled up my body. All the way to my face where even my eye lids and cheeks quivered.

It was probably around eleven that night when everything changed. The wind stopped and the crickets stopped and it seemed like even the fire grew quiet. The music stopped and we all stood, silent. Then out of the darkness a low growl came down the hill side from the direction of the cabin. Low and deep and with a growing desperation it came closer and closer. No other sound but that gurgling sound and with it a single word.

“Burning.” Growling. Gurgling. “Burrrning.” Closer and louder. “Burrrrrrning.”

The fire was low. We stood like we were statues. Nobody could or would move. The air turned cold, really cold but there was not one breath of air, no breeze. Just cold air surrounded us. Then the cabin on the hill lit up like lightening in the sky and the window…

Mom looked up the hill again and pointed.

I can see it like it was right there! The window had turned a glowing red and there was that sound. There was that gurgling and now a higher pitched sound that sounded like someone way off from that direction saying one word. “BURNING! BURRRRRNING!” And the window in the cabin glowed brighter and brighter. There were—

Then she pointed up the hill with a finger that didn’t seem to be hers. It was crooked and old and pointed towards something that she could see like it was happening right then, that summer night. And each of us, Kayla, Sam and I looked up the hillside too to see what was there. Quickly mom drew her finger back into her chest for a second and then held her hands up like she was warming them from the fire. But she wasn’t warming her hands. She was holding them out in front of her, palms towards the fire.

I saw.

I think I saw what looked like…

No! There’s no doubt. I did, I really did see it.

There were hand prints, two hand prints burnt into the glass of the window of the abandoned cabin. Melted into the dirty glass of that window. Almost like someone was trying to get out the window.

Words choked in her throat. I could feel her dry words trying to escape her mouth and she went white as she drew back and looked soulfully at her hands. As our campfire fire started to flutter with blue flames licking up the side of the last cedar log. Like last gasps of life, mom went on.

All of a sudden like we were one mass of kids, we all seemed to fall over each other trying to get to and into the ten or more cars and trucks parked around the campfire. People were scrambling to dive into the beds of trucks and throw themselves in windows of cars that were all thankfully rolled down for the summer night ride out to Devils Gate. Dust flew as vehicles started and sped down back towards town on the graveled road. There was hollering and some garbled screams. Instantly it was like all the people were trying to escape the night… Out run what none of us could see but we all knew, knew that there-was-something-out-there.

I don’t remember much of the first part of the trip back to town except there was talk above talk and gibbering all at once. Then about half way back to town it got quiet and someone, I think it had to be this guy, Ben, who was tightly squeezed in the back seat, farted. That seemed to break the fear. Well that and the smell-—like when your dad lets go of gas at the dinner table.

The three of us kids laughed and all pinched up noses and let out ragged breaths about dad and his farts. Then mom took another deep breath and said,

In the car we all nervously laughed at how silly it was to be scared of that place we had been going to for years and that we all loved to go on the weekends.

The next day though we discovered with the rest of town that Tommy was nowhere to be found… He didn’t make it back to town. Sherriff Miller, his deputies and a few men from town went out to look for him. They returned late in the afternoon. They didn’t find any sign of Tommy or any sign of the old man from the cabin. Neither of them was never seen again. But the search party did bring back the window. Just the window. With the two hand prints melted in the glass. We all saw it but we never ever talked of it again. I heard sometime later that the men of town went back and destroyed the cabin.

You know what? Now that I think about it. That window, with the hands melted in the glass, was a window just about the same size and looked like the one in the cabin up on the hill that I saw today. And I thought I saw a man in the woods going towards that cabin. He was very old and looked at me, like, well, kind of like, like he knew me.

I swear just as mom said “he knew me” a mass of cold air surrounded our campfire. Not a breath of air moved and everything in the woods grew quiet and it got darker as the moon slipped behind some of those blue black clouds that were painted in the sky with shiny, black as ink edges. And off in the distance I thought I could see a flicker of a candle in a window.

And a twig snapped somewhere out in the deep dark inky woods.

And mom jumped in her chair, pointed out into the darkness and whispered, “LOOK! THERE!”