The Cabin in the Woods

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

It isn’t far from here, just a mile off the trail or so.

I know, I know. We don't go out there anymore.

Now, I'm going to tell you why.

The cabin in the woods was just one cabin of many back then. They all belonged to Camp Inspire. It was a summer camp that the kids in town went to every year, a chance to swim in the river and get dirty without getting scolded by their parents. Back home, the adults ran wild too, holding parties and painting the town red while the kids were away.

Everyone knew everyone, and everyone trusted everyone. It worked.

Each year, the kids went off, and the parents stayed behind. Every single child, from age five until thirteen attended the camp. The older kids were counselors. What happened at camp stayed at camp, and what happened in town was never spoken of. We always did it that way, and it always worked.

At least until the summer of 1989.

The summer that year was unusually hot, and the water levels were low. The parents in town knew that their kids would be coming back covered in bite marks and scowling, but they sent them off all the same. It was their summer break too in a way, their chance to cut loose and have fun.

The cabin in the woods was lucky #7, the one that was farthest from the counselors’ cabin.

In another town or at another camp, this would have been the cabin that everyone wanted. But, everyone here knew the way things worked. See, the counselors would always put the worst of the worst kids there, locking them up all summer with a padlock. They even painted it black as a mark of shame. By the end of camp, there would always be six kids or so assigned to it. Anyone who misbehaved. One summer had fourteen, if you can imagine.

They'd let them out for meals and things, of course. They weren't inhumane or anything. You could even earn your way out with good behavior.

Everyone went along with it because they knew that, to tell the truth to the adults would be to ruin the time when they had the most freedom each year, and what was the harm, after all? As long as you were kind, normal, and well-liked, you had nothing to fear.

But this summer wasn't normal, and the heat was hotter than sin.

For those sitting by the air conditioner in the mess hall or lounging in the lake, it was bearable, if only barely.

But by eight o'clock in the morning, Cabin #7 was stiflingly hot. When its three residents were returned after lunch, the heat rolled from the door when they opened it, falling across their faces like the putrid breath of a dragon.

But there were rules, and they were locked in all the same. Each of them vowed to earn their way out before the next day, knowing what misery would lie ahead.

It was an hour past dinner before anyone thought to check on them, and when they opened the door, the smell of rot poured from the doorway in a great flood. In the heat, they hadn't just died. They'd festered. Only took a few short hours for their bodies to swell until they were nearly bursting at the seams.

The camp was shut down, the place condemned, and the cabin and the tradition abandoned.

The town wrote it off, an unspeakable part of a blackened history that they all wanted to forget. It was a misery that hung between words, a fear that resurfaced on the day that each child was born.

But with each new generation, stories change. Fear recedes. People forget, if they ever really knew at all.

It took twenty-two years for someone in the town to venture back to that cabin. Twenty-two years for a girl and a boy to sneak off together, hoping for a little unsupervised freedom, the same freedom that got those other kids killed.

They slipped out with their headlamps, thinking they were safe because they had a few protein bars and some water, a blanket too.

They crept into Cabin #7 and lit that old candle hoping to set the mood.

In the glow of its light, they could see the abandoned belongings. Sleeping bags. Old wrappers. Water bottles that had emptied hours before the kids in Cabin #7 passed away.

And then they felt it, the heat.

It pulled at them, tearing the sweat from their pores and pressing against their organs. It pounded in their heads and poured down their sides. They ran for the door, but they couldn't get it open. It had been locked from the outside, just like it always was before.

They died of heatstroke in the middle of October, a chilly breeze just beyond their desperate grasp.

The younger ones thought that it was a freak accident, of course, but the older ones knew the truth.

Another young explorer died that year of the very same fate.

Every year, kids would venture out. Some of them would get lucky, and some of them wouldn't.

The ones that didn't all died the same.

So the townsfolk placed a ban, thinking themselves clever, but it didn't stop. Instead, they'd find kids dead in sheds and treehouses. Anything like a cabin, always the same sweaty, bloated story.

It took us a while, I'll give you that. We weren't open to such possibilities back then.

But then we realized that it only wanted a few, just a few kids each year. Three to be exact. One for each of the kids in the cabin that day. It doesn’t discriminate.

It doesn't care if you're a boy or a girl, or if you don't identify. It doesn't care if you're dating or friends. It doesn't even care if you're from here or not.

The cabin demands its sacrifice, that's all.

For years now we've fed it strangers that have been passing through, but this year came up short. No one's traveling, you see. Something about a pandemic, they say.

Thing is, the cabin still needs its sacrifice, and summer's coming to an end.