Last Light

The night is thick with darkness. Nothing is illuminated by stars or lunation. It all just hangs in the density of its location. Senses are the only thing that helps you navigate seclusion’s landscape. Out here in the wilderness, no one can hear you scream. You exist for existence purpose alone. From time to time, she wonders what hers ever was or is.

The cabin sits nestled among the trees and rough terrain, a stranger even to itself. Though manmade, it seems so naturally situated, as if it had just popped up one day, like a weed among the flowers. A silo and small barn make up the rest of this organic property’s little commune. It is the only home she has ever known, and the only world.

Kristen Draughty, a mousy young woman of about twenty-two, sits at a small oak desk placed before the window. She holds a pen under the pretense of journaling, but it sits idle on the page as she stares longingly out the window instead.

“What I wouldn’t give for a glimmer,” she thinks to herself, “any sign of a road beyond this.”

The only witness to her nights in these woods is the moon, the only thing that can penetrate the bulk of her surroundings all at once. It sees and knows all, and like clockwork, comes round with the consistency of its cycle. She can count on its presence and its company when the nights are long and her loneliness gets the better of her. If she crosses her eyes, she can almost fool herself into thinking it looks back at her with the same attentive fondness. Like a wise old owl friend, whose rounds mimic the light of this celestial body, two beaming eyes of like-minded companionship in nocturnal condemnation.

But on nights like this, when it is new, it always feels a bit like betrayal. It is still there, but turned dark and uninviting. A sensation she recognizes all too well, the one that drapes your mind in a thick veil of its own captivity. You don’t recognize yourself in your actions and can hardly remember what has transpired until faced with the ramifications of a faith based exercise you might have lost.

It is a scary place to be. She doesn’t like it.

“Please come back, dear Luna, my friend.” She says to herself. “For there is no telling what this night may bring.”

Her days are long and have always been the same. A repetitive dance of meaningless motions. But all that is about to change. There is movement in this forest tonight. The rushed steps of someone’s blind approach.

“Gotta run! Gotta run! Gotta run!” This unholy anthem ponds its refrain in his frenzied mind, made wild by the survivalist instinct to get away.

He is the fox, and the hounds are on his trail. A thought he keeps in the forefront of his mind, hoping to keep the fevered motivation of the getaway. Any moment could mean freedom’s end. There is no map for his movement. No place to be. Guided only by the need for confusion, he moves for the sake of distance. Yet he has been running for so long.

Kristen notices the movement in the foliage. Time and season arouse suspicion gets her up from her seat, but there is no urgency in her step as she moves to open the door. Not even when she is promptly shoved back inside, by a body that slides itself through the half cracked opening only to slam it shut again, does she react with anything but calm appraisal.

The man is disheveled and his breath comes heavy. All he has with him are the clothes on his back, a pair of ripped jeans and tee shirt made dirty by whatever travel has brought him here. With his back to the door, he stands, the whites of his eyes large and popping as he presses his ear against wood, straining to hear through its thick girth.

Kristen wonders at his actions and takes a step forward to hear for herself, but the man jumps at her sudden movement and reveals a gun.

“Stop right there! Don’t move!”

Kristen blinks. “Can I help you?”

She is so unperturbed. He can’t help but feel disconcerted.

“You can… get in the chair.” He motions with his gun to the chair placed before the desk. She nods and proceeds in its direction. His eyes dart around the cabin in appraisal. A loft design. Each room opens into the other. There is no place to hide.

“You live alone?”

“No. I lived with my parents.” Kristen says with downcast eyes.

“Where are they now?”

“Gone.” she says in a small voice.

He nods, satisfied that they are the only two within miles of this hidden place.

“I’m gonna need supplies.”

“Well, you are more than welcome to anything here. There is also a barn and a cellar.”

“You have animals?”

“Once, but not anymore. The barn is used for storage.”

“You have bags, bottled water, previsions, ammunition?”

Kirsten nods.

“Good. Good.” He relaxes his gun a little and looks about the place. What are the odds he would come across such a nice hideaway?

“What’s your name?” Kristen asks.

“That’s not important.”

“I’m Kristen. Why were you running?”

“Even less important.” He tries to lean on the counter, but it’s no use. He is too restless.

“Where do you come from?”

He rolls his eyes. “Why would it even matter?”

Kirsten shrugs. She should be happy about the novelty of this diversion, but she can’t help wanting more from it still.

“Something has to.”

This intrigues him enough to settle his surveying gaze on the girl for a moment.

“What is this place to you?” He asks in a somewhat skeptical tone.

“All I have. All I’ve known.”

“You mean to tell me you have never left this cabin? This…” He motions around with the nose of his weapon. “Place?”

“I can’t leave.”

He can’t help but laugh at her response, though out of defense perhaps of what it provokes in him.

“Can’t is an excuse,” He says. “It’s not a reason.”

“Motivation to rebel?”

As she says this, her eyes come to his. They look at him in a way he has never experienced before. It is not penetrating, but disarmingly vacant, and with such detached accuracy, she seems to size him up and discard him in the same glance.

“Or…” He says, before he can think, “to stay.”

“Why don’t I show you around?”

…

A floor panel in the center of the kitchen opens to a trapdoor with a steep ladder staircase that takes you into the pitted bowels of a stone box. The claustrophobic cellar, where potatoes hang from the ceiling in mesh sacks, root vegetables and canned goods take up mason stock on a handmade shelf, and a variety of herbs dry, adding a spicy thickness to the cool air of this square space with yet another door at the bottom of its steps.

“That is the freezer.” She says, revealing a key she holds in her palm. “It’s locked.”

An icy shiver runs up the man’s spine, causing his neck to twitch upon contact with his brain like a short circuit.

“Why does it need to be locked?” He asks, turning to find she is no longer there.

As though there was a fire at his heels, he charges up the ladder with great urgency. He does not want to be left down there alone, and jumps into the kitchen as if something could still pull him back down.

“That was stupid! Did you forget?” He shakes his gun at her, then wipes the cold sweat that has gathered from his temples.

“Sorry,” she toes the ground in shame. “I just… I don’t like it down there.”

He nods in understanding, but tries to keep a stern expression.

“Just don’t let it happen again. What about the barn?”

…

With lantern extended, Kristen leads the man across the lawn to the barn. The light is unnecessary. She could make her way even in the blackest of nights. It just seemed hospitable. Equally, however, he feels little need for the light. Since he had entered this enclave of humanity, there had been a glow about the night. It is what drew him its way. A light at the end of the tunnel.

The air is sharp and hits the skin like electric daggers. He did not feel it so much when he was running, but now it just reminds him of that dark hole and ominous door. Too bad he didn’t think to grab a coat on the way out. “Gotta get out!” was the only thing on his mind.

“You have any more of your father’s old clothes?” He asks, to which Kristen nods and hands him the lantern to fetch him a shirt.

Now alone, he could really take in the place, built among the spindly trees like the wreck of some lost civilization. Which one came first, he wondered as he opened the chipping barn doors.

Instantly, something strikes at his face, flying at him like a bat out of hell!

He recoils in reaction, arm held high to protect his eyes from further scolding. Yet after his flinch, nothing else stirs. There is silence. There is night. He peaks through his fingers. Holds the lantern in a shaky grip before him to find its flaming illumination come bouncing back at him, reflecting off of a shovel stored upside down.

He laughs. “What has gotten into you?” Yet still can’t shake the fact that he swears it was two glowing eyes he saw. Usually nothing fazed him. Are these the nerves of a man on the run?

He needed a break. A moment to think over everything he had done so that he could figure out where to go from here. As it was, this place had little going for it. What tools there were had been scattered and left to rust and rot in piles of weathered forgottenness. It was confusing to him how anyone could be this well stocked yet this ill prepared.

He wondered about the girl. She was young, and from her looks to her behavior, stunted. What goes through parents’ minds, thinking they can spare the child what was done to them by hiding them away or, worse, beating it out of them? We will never save ourselves by protecting our ignorance… or by running from our problems.

With a long sigh at his own hypocrisy, he pulls a bale of hay over to take a seat, but reveals a dark puddle. What the bale hadn’t absorbed was mostly dry now. Sunk into the wood it now marred the surface of, but still obvious.

The echo of his heart’s fast rhythm now deafened his ears with its intense bass. His breath came shallow as a pit as dark as the cellar hit his stomach. There was no telling what this was, but it was red. Dark red. And at the corner of the hay there was what looked to be a gathering of hair… human hair.

“How’s it going?”

He jumps at the sound of her voice, turning in weak defense to find her close before him, holding a shirt of blue and red-checkered squares. Though he clumsily attempts to hide what he has seen, she looks beyond him to the stain.

“Oh.” she says and then walks past him. “Do you see it?”

Mouth moves but he cannot bring words to its motion. She looks over her shoulder with a smile, of all things.

“Like the moon.” She points to the shovel and its reflection, like two fiery eyes. “Owl eyes.”

Owls, it must have been barn owls. He nods and turns to settle his inner debate, to find a body hanging from the rafters by its ankles. Inside out, the blood that drips from the form makes a new puddle, the same shape and density as the other.

A deer! Of course, they hunt!

“Did you do this?” He asks and she nods. “Impressive.”

“Killing another living creature is never impressive. It’s just what we tell ourselves is necessary.”

There was a far off gravity to her words that made him almost as uncomfortable as the freezer in the cellar. It was time to go back to the house.

…

Like a good girl, Kristen had gathered everything he asked her for and now sat at the table as he packed it all neatly together. There was something about her that made him feel compelled to know more, engaging him in a way that felt coerced. Obligated by need instead of desire.

“Why not leave?” He asked.

As if he had woken her, her eyes shot up to his from their distant gaze across the room in heated defense.

“I can’t.” She said breathlessly.

“Leave it. Leave it!” His mind screamed, but he could not obey.

“Why?” He asked, to which her expression dropped. She seemed so lost in her answer, looking about the room as though she were asking every piece of furniture to provide her reasoning.

“Look, I get it. I was trapped, too. No way out, so I ran.”

She nodded, mouth smiling, but eyes panicked.

“Bodies leave us, but minds never can.”

Slowly, his head shook back and forth as he pulled away from her direction.

“We run… but not away.” She continued, standing now, moving towards him.

In his recession, he did not take into consideration the trap door. They had left it open and now his left foot pulled him back, thinking it was solid ground. Upon impact, he feels a snap, then the rush of footsteps as she shoves him the rest of the way into the pit.

…

He must have hit his head. The air is colder now and slaps him with the realization of his whereabouts. He gasps awake. The cellar! No… the freezer!

In spasms, he breathes. He can’t see a thing and blindly gropes the air for some help, feeling a hand. He grabs the hand, but that is all there is… a human hand connected to nothing. Exhales no longer happen. Every inhale is like a knife to his lungs. It is freezing, but he is burning up. Again, he cannot help the need despite his want to run, to die, to hide. So cold, so stiff, and so lifeless. A Halloween prop, the bone sticks, jaggedly sawed from its connective tissue. Fluid no longer spilling from its cavity. How long has it laid in this icy tomb?

Still, it lingers in his grip. Is it not his duty to comfort its remains? Wouldn’t he wish the same in return? Oh, God… How long before this is him?

Were they alive when she did this?

The silence is deafening. The cold, all-consuming. His fingers twitch and stutter along the slim wrist, then something falls to the floor. Metallic in its descent. He bends down, feeling for it, till, at last, he finds a key! The key to the cellar door!

His ecstatic brow falls in a grimace. This is why it is kept locked. Gently, he places the arm back on the ground and feels a weight on his back as he bends down. His gun. She had forgotten to take his gun.

He is in the pit once more, but the door is shut. The floorboards creak in the kitchen above him. She is coming.

The steps are getting closer. The voices now…

Voices?

The gravity of the situation is becoming palpable. He swallows against the reality of what he might be forced to do in order to survive.

Cautiously, he moves up the ladder. There is movement, now further away. He lifts it just enough so he can peer over the edge of the floorboards.

Two people stand at the table, baffled by the layout of supplies gathered. A man and a woman, who, from what he can make out, appear to be the rugged sort of mountain folk you do not want to meet in the dark. Their hair is gray and matted, their skin practically tanned hide, made thick by the elements they so unabashedly spat in the face of. They speak from the gnarled wreckage of their tobacco laden throats, sounding like the trucker static you pick up on baby monitors, grunting to one another in a savage language only Sasquatch could make out.

Where is Kristen? He wonders as he ducks back into his hole. When, moving to go back down the ladder, he feels the sharp stab of the key he holds in his palm… the key she held in her palm… how did the key get in the freezer?

Suddenly, the pit is illuminated with light from above.

“Who the hell are you?”

The man pulls him up and out of the pit as if he were a simple sack of potatoes and throws into the chair where Kristen had been sitting.

“I… I…” He stutters but cannot find the words. Not when his eyes adjust to the man’s shirt. Blue and red-checkered squares. The image his mind flashes puts the pieces together. The hair. Why did he not register the color at the time? And the eyes, the reflection with no source. The illuminated night despite the darkness. The key… the… body.

“That’s why she couldn’t leave.”

In an instant, the look that passes between the couple is one of sheer guilt and the intrinsic need to survive.

…

If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?

The lone cabin is illuminated with the blast of a round of gunshots, whose echo reverberates off the cavernous mountains of its enclosure. It is the first and the last true light of this onyx night, for any others roused by its clamorous incandescence are now free to fly away.