Distorted Madness

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. My breath caught in my throat, choking, erupting in a coughing fit. I gasped and leaned on my knees, studying the ghostly, pale flame that hovered behind the spider-cracked glass.

Someone had beaten me to it.

“Shit!” I wheezed and clutched at my side, blood weeping through my shirt once more. Abandoned, Adam promised. A safe place to hide. No one goes into the woods anymore. It’s basically forgotten. No one will think to look for you there. Sure, Adam, whatever you say. But my options shrank with the waxing night and the subtle threats echoing through the old forest.

Hacking subdued, I inspected my slickened palm, then pressed it back against the wound, gritting my teeth. No time to second guess. Time belonged to the living. Mine was oozing down my hip.

Readjusting the satchel on my shoulder, I sucked in a shallow breath and limped down the hill into the clearing where the cabin squatted. Bathed in the pale glow of the moon and dense gloom of the unwelcoming woods, it looked sickly, as though the forest vomited it out from its ancient branches and refused to grow too close. Choking vines strangled its sides, creeping their way up through the broken windows and around the cracked and crumbling bricks of the chimney stack. Dense shrubs and knee-high grass enveloped it, shrouding what must have been the path decades passed, slowly sucking it back into the gloom and shadows of the past. I took a shallow breath, the air cloying and heavy, suffocating.

My gaze drifted towards the candle, still hovering hypnotically in the upstairs window, casting a small, pale glow in the thickening dark. A beacon. An omen. Good or bad, I didn’t care. I needed a place to hide, to heal, and this served better than lying out in the open.

Fighting back another coughing fit, I crept towards the front window and peered through the foggy glass. Nothing but shadows. My hand quickly found the knife at my belt as I stalked towards the door. An ungodly creak shattered the stillness of the night as I nudged it open. So much for stealth. Senses alert, I paused, hearing nothing but the pounding drum in my chest, then slipped inside and shut the door behind me.

Inside, I could smell the rot, a tangible musk of decay and neglect. Whatever life once resided in these walls had long been leached away, time draining its very essence and leaving nothing but a gloomy husk of rotted wood and crumbling bricks. Ruined furniture caked with dust and grime hunkered around the main room-- a broken table, shattered chairs, a cracked pot in the web-strewn hearth. And looming in the far back corner, the stairs rose, pale light cascading down like a curled finger, beckoning. Challenging.

I moved closer across the carpet of broken glass. Crack. Crack. Crack. Cringing, my eyes flew towards the stairs. Still nothing. I relaxed the grip on my knife and breathed. Dust swirled and stuck in my throat, dry and choking. I coughed, my side shooting agony like red spears through my chest and back every time my body convulsed. Get it together.

Scouting the main floor, I found no one. Nothing. Not even a hint of any living thing passing through. No prints in the dust save my own. Perhaps Adam left the candle. He said he’d scouted the location, ensured it was safe. But the tense bunching in my shoulders and back refused to relax at the idea. Something felt…wrong.

My vision blurred, pain lancing through my side and into my chest. I staggered, braced against the banister, and willed myself not to puke my guts out. Woozy, I held my side and grunted, then slowly climbed the stairs.

The gloom of the cabin didn’t fade in the candle’s pale light, but grew, accentuated by the flickering glow. Pausing at the top of the stairs, I grimaced at the musty stench that permeated the room. Like the rest of the cabin, the loft stood barren aside from a single chair and full-length mirror. Decay claimed the rest eagerly. Cobwebs draped the corners and low ceiling. Vines grew through the cracked glass and rotted window casings. Mushrooms sprouted in the shadowed corners, the walls discolored by water damage and damp with mold.

Good enough.

I stumbled towards the chair and sat down hard, eyes darting towards the candle and the window. The vague thought of moving it flittered through my mind. Despite Adam’s reassurances, I had no desire to advertise my presence. I heaved a sigh, glanced down at the spreading stain across my torso, then reached for the candle.

“Don’t touch,” a whispered voice hissed from the shadowed corner.

My blood froze, hand still hovering around the candle. I stared hard at the corner where the mirror stood, covered in cobwebs and glass fogged with age and dust. “Who’s there?” I whispered back, voice harsh and gravelly in my raw throat.

Silence responded, broken only by my ragged breathing. Time ticked by, indifferent to my racing pulse. Rising slowly, I clutched my side and limped towards the mirror, right hand gripping my knife, trembling. Poised to attack, I peered behind the mirror and glared at the empty shadows.

“Nothing,” I said aloud. “Shocking.” I sighed and stumbled back to the window. “I’m losing my damn mind. Gotta be the blood loss.” Glancing back at the corner, I grabbed the candle and pulled it from the window. Hot wax dripped onto my hand, burning. I cursed, then set it down on the floor to better shield the light.

For a moment, I simply stared at the flame, studying it intently. Just an ordinary candle. Rivulets of dried wax crusted the sides, creating new pathways for the hot liquid to follow down to the rusted plate of the candlestick. The yellow-white flame fluttered with every exhale, somewhat fragile in its dance atop the wick. Old and out of place, certainly, but nothing special.

Skeptical, I glanced back at the corner behind the mirror, trepidation slowly morphing into embarrassment. I needed sleep. But first, I needed to stop my side from bleeding down my pant leg.

With a groan, I sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of the candle. The chair felt far too rickety for a proper sewing job and I needed the light. Shrugging off the satchel, I set it down beside me and heaved a shaky breath. Now for the fun part. Slowly, I rolled up my shirt and sucked at my teeth, the fabric sticking to the blood and tugging at the inflamed skin. Hot, puckered, and angry, the wound looked worse than I initially suspected, but then again tromping through the woods and dense underbrush for hours on end will do that, won’t it? Stupid. The only word to describe how I got the cut in the first place. Arrogant, maybe.

Yeah, definitely arrogant. I got careless, lazy. After years of living on the run, I thought I could hide in plain sight. Small town, little-to-no news of the goings-on in the wider world. You’d think no one would have recognized me. I shook my head and grimaced at the memory of the soldier’s knife sliding across my ribs. Wrong. Very wrong. And in a little more time, dead wrong if I didn’t get the bleeding under control.

No time to reminisce. Fishing through my bag, I pulled out the first-aid kit I kept for days like this. My trusty fishhook, catgut, and flask of whiskey. Yanking the stopper with my teeth, I gulped down a mouthful, then poured a good amount on the wound, hissing against the fire in my gut and on my skin. Sterilizing the hook in the candle flame, I sloshed a bit of whiskey to finish her off, then set about the grim task of sewing myself back up.

The silence pressed in, the cabin’s rotting walls deafening the cacophony of the forest without. Only the occasional gentle pop of the wick and the patter of wax dripping down onto the floor broke that stillness. I didn’t mind the quiet, the solitude. In fact, I preferred it. Always had, even before…

I shook my head. Even alone, I hated to think about before. Better to let the past lie in its grave rather than dwell on it. The dead stay buried. Simple as that.

“Because you put them there.”

I froze, hook poised to set the last stitch, and searched the room. Emptiness met me, the shadows glaring back at the circle of light, hungry to consume it. “Adam?” I asked, feeling stupid even as I asked.

Silence.

Swallowing hard, I set the last stitch and tied it off, rolled my shirt back down, and exchanged my fish hook for a knife. I glanced down at the candle, then crawled towards the window and peeked over the edge, straining to see past the dust and grime and darkness.

Nothing.

I groaned and shook my head against the growing wooziness. “Sleep. I need sleep. It’s just a creepy, old cabin in the middle of the woods. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Crawling back into the candlelight, I sat back down and tried to get comfortable, then gazed full-on at my reflection in the mirror for the first time. With all the dirt and grime coated on the glass, I hadn’t noticed it before, but the reflection was… distorted. It was me, sure, but… wrong. My skin looked pale, waxen, and my expression menacing, with lips turned up in a strange sort of mocking smile. Grim eyes glared back at me from sunken sockets, hollow and black. And my hair and clothes seemed to flow around me as though suspended in water.

Out of instinct, I reached up towards my cheek and held my breath. The reflection didn’t follow. “What the hell?”

“Murderer,” the dead lips hissed.

I scrambled backward, nearly kicking over the candle in the process. The distortion’s smile grew, lips tight and cracking, but remained motionless otherwise. Calming my rapid pulse, I tightened the grip on my knife and crawled back into the ring of light. “What is this? Some kind of fever dream?” I pressed the back of my palm against my forehead. “Maybe.”

But when I pulled my hand back down, my gaze locked on the puckered rash that formed where the wax had fallen. Boils pin-pricked my skin, the flesh red and irritated. Disgusted, I scratched at it, grunting against the stinging pain that pricked across my skin. “What the-”

“It’s your fault. You should have listened.”

Perplexed, I stared at the strange vision, disturbed by its perpetual, derisive smile. I continued scratching. “This isn’t happening. I’m losing it. None of this is real.”

The distortion cocked its head to the side. “Is that what you told Mikel and all the others you shoved into an early grave?”

Anger flashed at the accusation, subduing the rising fear and guilt bubbling in my chest. “What would you know?” I snarled back at my distorted reflection.

It gurgled, laughing at me. “Muuuurderer,” it sang. “Thiiiieeeefff. Always running, always hiding. Nothing but a coward!”

“I am not!” I shouted back. The rash on my hand burned hotter, the sensation spreading up my arm as I itched. “Shit!”

The distortion’s grin broadened, black hair swirling around its face like smoke. “Liar.”

“Shut up! You don’t know anything!”

Like lightning, the distortion lunged forward and slammed its hands against the glass. I jumped back, tearing a few stitches. “’Come back, Dez!’” it mocked. Its voice rose in pitch until it screamed with a familiar voice I’d buried long ago, pounding its fist against the glass. “’Please, it’s getting hotter. Open the door, Dez! Dez, open the damn door!’”

Clapping my hands against my ears, I scrambled to my feet and bolted for the stairs. Only the stairs were gone, swallowed up by the rotting floorboards. I skidded and fell backward to avoid slamming into the opposite wall. Behind me, the mirror cackled.

Panic clawed at my throat. Pain lanced across my chest and my head swam, pressure building as the room began to close in around me. My skin tingled and burned, a hundred thousand fire ants crawling up my arm and over my shoulder and back. My fingernails raked across my skin over and over, vainly trying to claw away the spreading rot. I had to get out.

In a moment of clarity, I remembered my knife and looked back at the window. Steeling myself, I darted towards it, kicking the candle in the process, and plunged the blade through the glass. The knife punched a hole through the pane, drawing a triumphant smile across my face, but when I pulled it back to strike again, the glass reformed, pouring into the hole like liquid.

“No!” I screamed, stabbing at the window again and again until my hand, aching and bloody from a hundred tiny cuts, could hold onto the knife no longer.

Defeated, I slumped below the window, the knife skittering across the floor as it fell from my limp fingers. My skin was on fire. My ribs hot and pulsated from the reopened wound as blood oozed freely again. I felt weak, numb even to the debilitating panic that commanded me to move. Dismayed, I touched the crimson stain, sticky and warm. I stared hollowly at my hands, my arms. Like the rot in the walls, a blackened corruption replaced the sickly rash, sapping the energy from my body, draining everything I had left.

I closed my eyes and blinked back helpless tears. Guilt racked my brain, the last vestiges of a desperate soul seeking redemption for a life not well lived. Because the distortion spoke the truth. I was weak, cowardly, a murderer and a liar, and a thief. Had I done the right thing, had I just tried a little harder to open the door, maybe, just maybe, things would have been different.

The dead stay buried. The past stays locked in its grave. Just like all the lives I put in theirs.

“Murderer,” the mirror hissed again.

“Shut up,” I snapped weakly, focusing on the mirror’s surface. Only the reflection was gone, the glass empty except for the grime and dirt that stained its once perfect face.

Blinking against my rapidly fading vision, I searched the shadows for the distortion again and found it standing inches from me, hair and clothes now dripping around it like rainfall, cloaked in shadow and mist. Before I could react, it pressed its cold, wet finger to my lips, while its mocking smile swallowed me whole, and the candle finally guttered out.

***

Adam whistled while he walked, a happy tune his gran sang so often in his youth. God, how he hated her! Her shrieking voice and violent tempered rages. He’d never felt more satisfied than when he smiled down at her corpse lying in her coffin. But the song always stuck in his head, the only part of her he cared to keep with him.

The trail veered sharply left, then opened into a small clearing where the cabin lingered like a cancerous growth lodged deep in the heart of the woods. He always hated this place, avoided it as best he could, but Dez had been desperate and he’d run out of options. Abandoned, yes. Hard to reach, yes. But creepy as all hell. Something about it screamed unnatural. He’d often contemplated simply burning it down. Even brought snacks for the show, but never could bring himself to light the flame.

Adam stopped whistling and stared back at the ugly face of the cabin, frowning. He could see Dez’s tracks, faint as they were after three days and nights, but no Dez. While Adam hadn’t expected a warm welcome, he’d at least hoped for a helping hand to relieve the burden of supplies from his weary shoulders. “Dez?” he called, adjusting the pack strapped loosely over to his back. “It’s me, Adam. I’ve got your goodies.”

No one answered. Hell, he’d have to go inside.

With a groan and a shrug, Adam trudged his way up the path and through the door. He knocked hard, then nudged it open and went inside. “Dez?” He dropped the bag unceremoniously on the floor and coughed, dust fighting over the stench to clog his nose first. “God, what is that smell?”

Never the one to turn tail and run, even when it was good for him, Adam searched through the cabin. He found nothing but dirt and decay, exactly what he’d expected to find in this woodland hellhole. Leaning on the banister, Adam peered up the stairs towards the loft and sputtered. “Dez?” he called again, nose plugged. He stomped slowly up the stairs, each one creaking loudly under his weight. “You up here?”

The gloom of the loft enveloped him, the light from the small single window spearing through the shadows. Adam pinched his nose and gagged, the smell stronger here. He blinked, letting his eyes adjust, then scanned the loft. Immediately, he turned around and vomited, finding Dez propped against the floor beneath the window.

After a moment of self-preparation, Adam forced himself to look. Her skin looked waxy and pale, covered in a black rot that mirrored the corruption growing on every wall. Her eyes were gone, nothing more than black, hollow holes that drilled straight into his nightmares. Mushrooms sprouted from her torso, her mouth, while the cabin seemed to absorb her, pulling her body into it and making her a part of its decay.

He swallowed down another tide of sickness and braved a step closer, studying the body with a growing fascination. He’d liked her despite the glaring character flaws- being a wanted murderer and all that. But he liked to think he knew things about Dez the rest of the world simply ignored. She’d been a kid in the wrong place at the wrong time, and, unfortunately, people got hurt. Well, to be more specific, they died, burned in the old church when Dez couldn’t get the door open. And then the fire spread, burning across the village and taking many other lives with it. And just like any other horrified kid caught amid a grave mistake, she ran. Adam understood that. He’d lived it himself and found a kindred soul.

Too bad.

“Ah, Dez,” he said sadly, shaking his head as he squatted down in front of her. “Look at you. What the hell’s gone and done this to you, eh?”

Shaking his head, Adam sighed and rose back to his feet. As he turned to leave, he paused, his gaze caught by his own distorted reflection in the mirror as it smiled back at him.