The Kiss I Never Gave

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. I was out for a walk that night. I needed to get out of the house. We had been arguing and I didn’t want to say some of the things that were running through my head.

So I walked down into the woods behind the barn and just kept walking. It was dark before I decided to turn around, and that’s when I noticed it, up ahead at the bottom of the hill.

I saw the light in the cabin. At first, I thought it was a trick of the dying sunset, the last of the sunlight reflected through the window. But as I got closer, I could see that it was a candle in the window, burning bright.

What would you do?

Would you turn around?

Would you run away?

Would you call for help?

No. I didn’t do anything like that. I was already mad from the argument, and I wasn’t about to let some squatter settle into my cabin on my land. No way. I did not run. I quickened my pace and walked straight to the cabin.

I hadn’t set foot in the cabin in years, but I knew every inch of it. When I was a kid, it was my refuge. When I needed to escape my father’s rage, I would run down behind the barn and I wouldn’t stop running until I reached the other side of the cabin’s door. It was my safe space. Now it belonged to me. And damned if I was going to let some asshole mess it up.

So yes. I walked faster. Then I ran a little. Then twenty feet from the door, I stopped. I remembered about the cabin. It had been my safe space all those years ago because no one else ever went there.

There was something about my great-grandfather that nobody ever talked about, but it had to do with that cabin. There, in the dark, that memory stopped me in my tracks.

In the gathering dark of the forest near the cabin, I forgot all about my fight, I forgot all about my anger at a potential squatter, and I remembered a story that had been on the edge of my mind all these years. I stopped and hid behind a tree. I verified that the light was indeed a candle, and I slipped into memory.

I remembered back to when I was a young boy. I don’t know how old I was. Old enough to remember. Maybe six? My great-grandfather was still alive then, living in a nursing home. My dad would take us to see him. He was so wrinkled and he smelled funny like pipe tobacco and sickness. I remember being scared to touch him, but my father would force us all to kiss him when we left. I would get up close, but never actually kiss him. I remember his crooked smile. It seemed he was looking right into me like he knew that I had faked my kiss.

Later, as an adult, I learned from my aunt that my great-grandfather was not a good person. He had a rage in him, and it came out in cruel ways. She told me that she stayed away from him when he had that look in his eye. I learned that back when he was young, children would go missing in his town.

Although he was never tied to the disappearances, my aunt told me that remembers playing in the cabin as a child and finding odd bits of fabric or toys that she didn’t recognize. As a child, she never put it together. But later, as a teen, she saw how his gaze would linger on the children after a church service or at a ball game. She never went back to the cabin.

My aunt told me that something was wrong with our family. She had seen so much pain in her life. She looked me in the eye and told me that she thought we were cursed because of what her grandfather had done to those children.

I don’t know why I thought of that story at that moment, as I was hiding behind the tree. Maybe something seemed different about the light from that candle. Maybe I sensed something. But at that moment I thought about all the pain that had gone through my family.

It was one tragedy after another.

My uncle died at the age of twelve when a cave collapsed on top of him. And in all of my father’s other siblings’ families, a child had died young. Cancer, car accident, pneumonia, drowning. I remember every funeral. The photos of the smiling child and the legion of grieving friends and family.

It never occurred to me that my own family had not lost a child. My siblings and I had all grown into adults and most of us had children of our own. It had never occurred to me until my aunt told me about the curse.

At the time, it seemed that my family was the exception that proved her story of a curse was false. How could there be a curse? There is no such thing as curses. It was just our bad luck.

But there in the dark, behind the tree, I smelled a familiar smell. The slightest whiff brought me right back to that nursing home. It was pipe tobacco and sickness. My heart started racing. My stomach churned. I turned to look, and next to the window with the burning candle, I could see that the door was open.

Was it open before? I couldn’t remember.

I wanted to run. But my feet felt like they were nailed to the ground. It was like in a dream, when you want to run but you can’t move. Only this was very real.

I looked again at the cabin. Did I hear something? Yes. It sounded like footsteps in the dry fall leaves.

Swoosh. Swoosh. Swoosh.

Where was it coming from? I looked all around. Then I heard a distinct sound. The striking of a match. I heard the crackle of a fire being kindled in a pipe and caught the distinct smell of pipe tobacco smoke. He was standing right in front of me, with his pipe in his hand and a crooked smile on his face.

His voice came through strong and clear, like a young man.

“Andy, I’ve been waiting for you. Come here and give me that kiss.”