One Cabin, One Crime, Several Times

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

We'd heard this same story over and over again growing up, especially around Halloween. Everyone in the town knew it by heart, and yet Marie just had to tell it again. It's her sleepover, so I'll let her have her moment, but I know I can't be the only one sitting at this campfire who wishes she would have chosen a story that isn't so tired out. The least she could do is tell the actual story of what happened in that cabin instead of the made-up haunted version of what happened afterwards.

I don't believe in ghosts, so maybe that's why I would rather hear the facts. A lady by the name of Lyllith lost her mind decades ago and murdered her husband and two children before killing herself inside the walls of that cabin. Somehow that isn't insane enough, so someone had to add in the make-believe part of how her spirit still lives there and will possess anyone who enters.

Marie finishes her story and I shove my face with another smore. It's officially dark outside and I think Lindsey may actually be a little spooked. She's wrapped up in her fuzzy blue blanket as if she is cold on an 80° night in July. Of course, she always has been the "scaredy cat" within the four of us. The complete opposite of Marie and Kate who obsess over anything horror related. However, while they both love the spooky things, only Marie truly buys into it. Kate likes watching scary movies and the idea of things like ghosts, spirits, demons, and even monsters, but like me, she doesn't for a second believe any of it is real.

"Ya know, we're only like three miles from the cabin", Kate points out.

Lindsey's face goes pale, "Nice to know", she responds.

It’s almost impossible to believe that any of us could have somehow been unaware of that information given that we’ve been camping here since we were kids. Then again, I can’t imagine Lindsey would still be willing to come here had she known. What’s even more amusing is that we’ve never even bothered going to find the cabin. I suppose it may have been due to the simple fact that this is the only time we’ve ever come here without our parents. We attempted last summer, but they quickly denied our request. To be completely honest, I’m not sure any of us are any more mature now then we were then. Sure, another year older and we’ve finally graduated, but I don’t think we’ve done much changing. Maybe they don’t actually think so either. Maybe they just know it’s time to let go. After all, we are all officially “adults” now.

“Let’s go”, Marie exclaims, “we HAVE to see it!”

“All the movies you’ve watched, and you’ve learned nothing?! You’d still be the first to die”, Lindsey objects.

“Nobody is going to die. It’s just a story. It isn’t real, but it is cool. I think we should do it”, Kate says.

Then, they all look to me to make the final decision. I almost want to say no for Lindsey’s sake. I can see the immense look of fear in her green eyes and she’s twirling her finger in her red curls in an attempt to calm her nerves. It’s Marie’s birthday though and I also don’t want to disappoint her. Not to mention my own curiosity. My reasoning is different from theirs. I’d simply like to see it because it's a crime scene. Lindsey will be fine, I’m sure. So, I place my vote and despite Lindsey continuing her own protest, we head out into the woods.

We walk, search, and turn around again and again for what seems like hours. Until finally we come up on the cabin. It’s covered in brush and vines, but still appears to stand well from what we can tell with the light of our flashlights. Obviously, there is no candle burning in any window. Kate pulls out her phone to check the time. We left the campsite at 9:00 and it's now almost midnight. As we stand together in the dark, the silence is broken with a rumble of thunder. Immediately the rain begins to fall and soak us all. We have two choices. Face the storm and try to figure out how to get back to our tents, or go inside the cabin. Then lightning cracks across the sky, sending us all running in synchrony to the porch. The old wood creaks a bit under our feet, but the covering over the porch is enough to keep the rain from wetting us further. Then comes the wind, and a big gust of it bursts open the door. We all jump, and then laugh at ourselves. Now we're standing in the doorway, looking in, unsure if we should enter. Lindsey surprises us all and makes the first steps inside. I'm next to follow and slowly behind me finally come the other two. The two who were so desperate to get here in the first place.

"Whatever may be in here, can't be as bad as that storm out there" Lindsey says. She seems brave in her words, but I know better.

I smile and say, "You got that right", trying to make her believe what she's saying. Kate and Marie nod in agreement, but the look on their faces leads me to believe they feel coming here was a mistake. We certainly didn't plan on being trapped here waiting out a storm.

There is still furniture in the cabin. A blood stained, plaid, cloth couch sits in the living room. There are two side tables at each end, both holding a small white lamp. The lamp to the right of the couch is missing its shade and a dusty, broken bulb is still in it. To the other side of us is the kitchen. It's a small kitchen, with a table and only two chairs taking up most of the space. Aside from the mass loads of settled dust, it appears spotless, showing no signs of what happened here all those years ago. Directly in front of us is the small staircase and it hosts what appears to be more blood stains. Shining the flashlight up the staircase, we can see only a closed door, possibly leading to a bedroom or maybe the bathroom.

Another gust of wind comes and forces the door closed this time. The noise from the slam startles us, we all jump a bit, but Lindsey darts for the kitchen. I suppose if you’re going to go further into the cabin, the kitchen would be your safest bet. Her curiosity must outweigh her fear because she walks towards the cabinets opening them up just enough to shine her light and take a peek.

“There’s still dishes in here. Everything is like they left it”, she says casually as if Lyllith and her family just decided to move and start over one day. I, too, decide to step into the kitchen and explore. We’re going to be stuck here a while, might as well check the place out. Kate and Marie go the opposite direction and into the living room. I warn them not to touch anything.

A few minutes pass and Kate says, “Let’s see upstairs”.

We all nod in agreement and head up the creaky steps, trying to avoid the stained spots. We reach the door and Marie swings it open. A bedroom, just as I had guessed. There were two twin beds that must have belonged to the girls. Both beds were made as if nothing awful had ever happened in there. There was a doll lying on the bed on the right side of the room. The window was cracked open and the wind was blowing rain inside. The room smells of death and dust. I feel the need to close the window, but I’m frozen. Lindsey, who is supposed to be the baby, struts right up to it and attempts to close it, but the window won’t budge. Lightning strikes outside again and lights up the room for just a second and we can see the blood splatters on the walls. The stairs behind us begin to creak again, but we’re all standing in the same spot. We turn slowly towards the noise and shine our lights down the stairway. We see nothing, but the noise continues for a second, all the way up to the top step. It’s enough to make us all head towards the window, which slams shut behind us. It’s enough to send us all running, but still wanting to avoid the unexplained creaking, we turn left down the hall and step into another bedroom.

A queen size metal frame bed with a bare, worn-out mattress sits in the middle of the room. The mattress is full of dried blood and my body shivers with the thought of past events. I look down to see I’m standing on blood stained carpet and notice what appears to be a spot of blood on my tennis shoes. I quickly push the thought away and convince myself it must be a spot of kool aid. Decades old blood can not leak onto my shoes.

“Look, the candle”, Kate exclaims!

Surely enough, there is a candle sitting in the windowsill, but it doesn’t appear to have been lit in years. The rest of the room is bare, not even a nightstand or dresser. The door to the closet is standing open and full of old timey men’s and women’s clothing.

“Screw the storm”, Lindsey says, “We need to get out of here!”

Before any of us have time to agree, a flicker appears at the window. The candle now burns, despite no one around to light it. For a moment, we stare at the candle, questioning everything, all of us coming to the realization that the aftermath story of the cabin may not be so make believe after all.

Maire finally breaks the silence, “Yes, please, LET’S GO!”

We all head back down the stairs in a single file line with Lindsey in the lead. She pulls at the front door, and like the window before, it doesn’t budge.

“Oh come on Lindsey! Open the door”, shouts Kate.

“It won’t move, you do it”, Lindsey snaps back.

Kate moves past me on the stairs and pushes all of her body weight against the cabin door. Again, it doesn’t budge. Lindsey adds her weight as well, and still nothing.

“Help us”, Kate demands.

I walk towards the door and quickly realize Marie is no longer following in behind me. I turn to find her. I shine the light up the stairs, but she isn’t there. Then a scream emerges from one of the rooms and my instinct is to help her, so I rush toward the noise. I find Marie in the child's room, lying on one of the beds, nestled under the dusty old covers, and she appears to be sleeping, but her breathing is rapid and stressed. I call to her with no response. I approach her and shake her shoulders, trying to snap her out of whatever spell she's in. "Marie needs help", I shout! I can hear them rushing up the steps. In synchrony they ask, "What's wrong with her?"

All of a sudden Marie’s eyes open and her breathing begins to slow. She raises up, her eyes wide, looks around the room, and then quickly jumps out of the bed. "She died right here. Her mother killed her here. Then she picked up her daughter's lifeless body, placed it on the floor, unmade and remade this bed, then sat the doll on the pillow. I saw the whole thing", she says. We all ask question after question about how she got back in the room, how and why she was in the bed, but Marie doesn't remember any of it. She's hysterically crying, she's obviously petrified, but more than that, she's upset about what she's seen and how real it seemed. We all go back downstairs and try the door again, but give up after a few minutes. It's pointless. So, we gather in the kitchen, the only room in the house that isn't a crime scene and discuss new ideas on how to get out of this God forsaken place. All of our phones are dead, so calling for help isn't an option. The only realistic idea is to attempt getting out of a window. Busting them out would be quicker, but somehow seems disrespectful, so we agree to at least attempt raising them first. We start with the kitchen windows and have no luck, and then move to the living room. Kate and I head to the far end and use all of our strength only to once again fail. Marie also has no luck. Lindsey stayed behind in the kitchen, still trying those windows even though we all knew it wasn't going to work.

Upon returning to the kitchen to decide whether anyone was brave enough to go back upstairs, what a surprise, Lindsey wasn't there.

"She's in the parent's room. That's where the other child died. It's her turn to see", says Marie. As crazy as she sounds, it's hard to doubt her after what she herself had experienced, so we head for the room, and we find her there. Unlike Marie, she doesn't appear to be sleeping, but she certainly is out of it. Lindsey is at the foot of the bed, whispering "Dad, wake up", and she's crying. I want to go to her, to stop whatever is going on, but my body won't let me. No one else attempts to get any closer to her either. I suppose, we've all somehow came to the understanding that the only way to end this, is to let it play out.

Lindsey crawls onto the bed and screams once she makes it to the headboard and then her body goes limp and collapses into the blood-stained mattress.

"I think it's done now", says Marie. Kate turns and walks out the door, then heads down the stairs. I'm irritated at the fact that she didn't stay up here to make sure Lindsey was going to wake up and be okay. I focus my attention on her still body, I can tell she's breathing, so I wait for her to wake. Then another scream lets loose. Kate this time, and I realize she wasn't being inconsiderate, it was just her turn. It's awful to say, but I felt a bit of relief that it was her and not me who was chosen to play the last part. This whole thing would soon be over and we'd be free to go. The victims had a story to tell and someone had to bear witness. We were the unlucky ones, but no way was I so unlucky that Lyllith too, would have to share her story, leaving me to be the one to see it.

The scream brought Lindsey out of unconsciousness and we all three made our way to the living room. Kate was slumped over the couch, eyes closed, and the same rapid, stressed breathing that Marie had experienced only a little while ago. Her body falls from the couch to the floor, and as she hits, another scream lets loose. Shortly after, she wakes up. I race to the door, just knowing that it will open this time.. It doesn't. The batteries on my flashlight must have died because everything goes black.

I wake up in the only room we had previously left unexplored, the bathroom. I'm in the bathtub and my clothes are soaked with both blood and water. I don't know how I got here, but I'm all alone. I jump to my feet and call out to my friends. No one answers. There's sunlight coming in from the tiny window behind me. There's dry blood splatter on the mirror in front of me. I step out of the tub and go to walk out of the bathroom door, but as I reach for the doorknob, I have this flashback of what happened to Marie, except it's as if she's telling me the story, like I can actually hear her voice, but in the flashback, she's just a child. A child I don't recognize. The whole scene plays out in front of me.

Finally, it stops. Now I'm standing in the children's room again. Just like waking in the tub, I don't know how I got here. I see Marie. Her lifeless body laid beside the bed in a pool of fresh blood. The bed is still neatly made, everything else looks the same, but I'm holding the doll. I drop it on the floor and run out screaming. I can't remember doing this, yet I know that I did. I turn around at the front door, which is now open, and go back upstairs. I have to peek into the parent's bedroom, make sure my other friends aren't in there.

Lindsey is lying face down on the bed, puddled in blood. Suddenly, it hits me that I don't know exactly what happened to her. I have a feeling I did it. Just like I killed Marie. Lindsey never had the chance to tell us what she saw though, or what she experienced while she was out of it. I go to her body. It's already cold. When I touch her, I get another flashback. This time though, it doesn't seem like my own memory at all. I’m coming out of the child’s bedroom and entering into the room I’m in now. Lindsey is standing at the end of the bed, just as she was last night, but she’s a child, just as Marie had been. I reach for her, and she climbs on the bed. At which point I hit her over the head with something. I snap back into real time and immediately fall to my knees. I feel this overwhelming guilt and I begin to cry heavily. Coming to this cabin was a mistake. There wasn’t a ghost here, but there was a monster and that monster was me.

I have to find Kate. The door is wide open, someone had to escape and she’s all that’s left. I have to tell her how sorry I am. I rush downstairs and check out the living room to make sure she isn’t there. I feel as much relief as the guilt will let me when I don’t see her. There is fresh blood on the couch though and once again I suffer another flashback. Kate is running down the stairs, trying to get away from me. Once we enter into the living room, I pick up the lamp and hit her over the head with it. She falls to the couch and blood runs from her head. She’s still conscious, but she’s weak. She attempts to stand, but falls to the floor. I don’t know what happened next. My vision or whatever it is ended there.

I exit the cabin and immediately notice the trail of blood. I follow it until it disappears, but there’s no other sign of Kate. So, I make my way through the woods in hopes of finding the campsite. I walk forever, but finally stumble upon it.

“Beth! Bethany! You’re okay”, Kate cries out as she runs in my direction.

I fall into her arms and mutter out my apologizies. I can’t control the crying.

“I killed them! I killed Marie! And Lindsey! They’re dead Kate, and I tried to do the same to you! Why aren’t you scared?”

Kate hugs me tighter and begins to cry too. Then she says, “They’re not dead Beth. They’re just... frozen. I have to tell you something, but I don’t know how.”

“They ARE dead! I saw them,”, I argue.

Kate then explains that she made it out of the cabin because she figured out the puzzle. She's managed to come up with this crazy idea that she could have saved them. That she can still save them. For a moment I'm ready to dismiss everything she is saying, but I change my mind because less than 24 hours ago, I wouldn't have believed any of last night's events to be possible. So I just listen, quietly as she goes on.

"Everyone who enters that cabin faces the same fate as those who died there. First the victims are picked out of the group. Each one assigned to represent one character or another. I was chosen as the father and husband because I was meant to be the protector. Lindsey and Marie were chosen as the children because they were the most vulnerable, the easiest to scare, and the quickest to buy into the whole thing. They had the imagination of children, the ability to believe anything was possible. The only thing I haven't figured out is why you were chosen as Lyllith. It doesn't matter though. It's like a game and there can either be three survivors or only one. Lyllith's husband could have saved them all had he removed his wife from the equation", she stops for a second to breathe and I interrupt while I have the chance.

"But how do we save them?" I ask.

Kate begins to cry again, "I have to stop you before the game is over."

I don't need an explanation as to what she means by that. I have to die. In order to right Lyllith's wrongs, I have to die and save my friends. Kate goes on to say if she doesn't end the game, if we don't go back and finish out the storyline one way or another, Lyllith will take over my mind again and I will not stop until there is only one left. It's a battle of the dead, working their issues out through the living. A father who regrets not saving his children and a bitter wife who wants to prove he couldn't.

I won't pretend I'm eager to let Kate take my life, but I don't want to live it anyway if I have to live it knowing I'm responsible for taking my friends.

"Okay, let's go back. Just make it quick and when it's done, promise me you'll get them out of there and none of you will EVER come back", I say.

Kate looks at me as if I'm crazy, as if she isn't the one who just said what had to be done. "I can't just kill my best friend! Of course I want to save them Beth, but I… I can't do it", she cries.

"I'll do it then. You can wait here and when it's over, they'll find you and you can all go home", I express.

"It won't work. They're already dead. You were meant to figure out everyone's role before the game actually began. When there was only one left, you were meant to figure out it'd be you taking the place of Lyllith. You would have had to stop it BEFORE it started", she responds.

Now my only option is to force Kate to do the very thing I refuse to live with doing. So, I tell her how I'm ready and that it'll be okay and that I forgive her. Eventually I manage to convince her, and we head back to the cabin. I hand her a large knife from the kitchen and offer words of encouragement before closing my eyes. For a while I stand there, patiently waiting on the end, my end. Then I open my eyes to see Kate had sat the knife down and she's whimpering uncontrollably. I start to tell her again how it's okay and how she HAS to do this, but then I lose control of my own actions. I'm reaching for the knife. This has gone on too long and Lyllith is tired of waiting. She's trying to fight her way back in and she's winning. Hateful words spew out of my mouth, "I knew you couldn't do it. You're too weak!"

Kate's tears dry up quickly at the realization of what's going on. She beats me to the knife. "I'm so sorry Beth", she says. Everything goes black. It's over. I use my last moments to celebrate our win as my breathing slows. I'm too weak to congratulate her. I feel the blood leaving my body and…