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The Myling

Henrik's Plight

By Mordie LockePublished 2 years ago 8 min read
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The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.

Henrik usually didn't go close to the place when he went on these hunting trips. As an urban explorer, he feared no building. No broken down, dilapidated church. No creaky house with rotten floorboards. Henrik's subscribers had begged him to go to this cabin ever since he'd first found it. But something had always made him hesitate.

The woods were supposed to be full of activity. But around this cabin, it was dead silent. Birds didn't sing. Insects didn't cry, not even at night. An unnatural heaviness permeated the air in such a way that it made the hairs on the back of Henrik's neck and arms stand up on end. It was all centered around this one cabin. Unassuming, cold, isolated. Yet brimming with an aura that both terrified and inspired.

When his followers' demands could no longer be ignored, Henrik had made his way up to the cabin through its protective maze of woods. He'd been planning on getting close, maybe snapping a few pictures from the windows, and filming the perimeter. Just to say he'd done it, and leave again. He'd not planned at all to step a single foot inside. But as the silhouette of the single-roomed building came into view, he spotted the candle. An unassuming little thing, just like the building around it came off as. Every time Henrik thought about it. Unassuming. Simple. Humble. Little words that seemed to offset the other side of the aura the place gave off. Henrik hesitantly shuffled forward, step by step, leaves and twigs crunching underfoot as he got closer.

A candle had never been in the window before. Even when he'd ridden by as a child on his bicycle. He explained this to his followers as he got to the doorway, calling out a tentative, "Hallo?" into the dark of the cabin. No one answered. His camera's light seemed to barely penetrate the darkness of the building, getting no further than the light of the candle itself. The viewers on his live, despite every fiber of his being begging him not to go past the threshold, demanded he check the inside. Document. Henrik's arguments fell on deaf ears, drowned out by the typed words and line after line of dares and taunts.

Of course, Henrik didn't want to be a coward.

So he went inside, toeing over the rotten threshold.

He had to be wary of every step he took. The floorboards creaked and groaned, warning of their termite-ridden decay. Dust layered an inch thick on the floor and on the sheet-covered furniture, and for the first round through the whole of the room, his footsteps were the only ones there. Which he thought was odd. The candle was on the inside of the grubby window. How could it have gotten there without its owner leaving their own footsteps?

Something went off behind Henrik, making him jump out of his skin. It sounded almost like a sigh. Henrik searched all around him, but even asking his viewers if they'd heard anything got confused questions and demands to continue the investigation. The urban explorer tried to shake it off. He just needed to get back to the candle, and he would've done a full loop. He thought it to himself on repeat, wishing he could walk faster without risking falling through the floor. That's when he stopped.

Fingerprints. Small, tiny fingerprints. Like smears, on the window. Handprints, no bigger than a child’s. They were in the middle of nowhere. There wasn't even a village within walking distance nearby. Henrik heard himself accounting this out loud, but it felt odd. Like it wasn't really him that was saying it. But it was definitely his voice. He felt the vibration in his chest. Why did it sound so discordant?

It was his viewers that pointed it out.

Humming. A small child's voice, singing a song. Henrik sprang into action, calling out. "Hallo? . . . Hallo? Who's out there?"

"Help me."

Definitely a child’s voice. Henrik whirled around, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. The voice had come right from behind him. He searched left, right, and up with his camera light, his breath short and shaky. But he didn't see a single soul in its shaky beam. The cabin was empty. Henrik tilted his camera down, trying to get his breath back and compose himself. This was just a creepy cabin. There was nothing here. He was getting too worked up.

Again, it was his viewers that pointed it out. A chat exploding with expletives, all-caps words pointing out the footprints.

Henrik's heart stopped. Running through the dirt, overlapping his own, was the footpath of a small child. Barefoot, no shoes. In this weather? It was freezing out. Henrik again tried calling, his voice breaking as it shook. "Child? Hallo? Are you lost? Can I help you?"

A giggle. Right behind him. Passing by like someone was running just behind his back. He swore he heard footsteps. But when he whirled around, there was no one there. Instead, he saw a hole in the floorboards, broken outward. In the beam of his light, clearly visible from its hole, was a mound of dirt. Small, with a cross made of sticks and twine standing sentinel over it. A dirty bear peering up at him with one weathered button eye. Henrik whirled around and began to make his way out, shaking his head. Telling his followers that he didn't care how many of them unsubscribed, he was leaving. That was the last straw. He wasn't staying in a place like this.

A sudden weight pressed onto his back, and Henrik dropped his camera. Small fingers, ice cold, but strong; a vice-like grip of ice that pressed on his windpipe and made it hard to breathe. Henrik tried to fight off the weight, the grip of the hands— but he was no match. The lock of the cold fingers was like stone, and no matter how much he writhed, the weight didn't come off of his back. He heard a voice in his ear, then, cold lips almost brushing against the lobe.

"Take me to the cemetery."

A shudder ran down Henrik's spine. He tried to speak, but the grip on his throat tightened. He tried to explain that he didn't know the way, that he was just an explorer, that he hadn't meant to trespass. The weight on his back and the grip on his throat didn't lessen. Again, the small, child-like voice hissed its demand, angrier now. More insistent.

"Take me to the cemetery, so I can be properly buried."

Henrik didn't care, then. He started off, praying he was going the right way. He'd seen an odd place before, with the remnants of a gate and worn-down stones. He thought it'd been a rock garden. Maybe he'd been wrong. Whatever the case, he tried to take the widest strides he could. The faster he got this over with, the sooner he could run. The sooner he could leave and never come back to this place. The camera, the candle, the cabin— all forgotten.

The weight on his back began to increase. But he couldn't dislodge it. Heavier and heavier it became, the cold voice sending chills down Henrik's spine. The thing with the child's voice urged Henrik on. Even using his name. He could hardly breathe. The fingers on his neck made a noose, crafted of steel and ice. His voice wheezed in his ears, evidence of his struggle to get and keep his breath. His unwelcome passenger was unfazed.

Henrik began to recognize his surroundings. For a moment, hope glimmers in his mind. But the weight was getting heavier . . . And heavier . . . So heavy now that he was beginning to slow down. The thing— who hadn't stopped urging Henrik to hurry— noticed this, too. It began to scream, to cry, to curse and plead.

"Take me! Take me NOW!"

It didn't sound like a child anymore.

Henrik tried to run. Like a sheep being driven by rabid sheep dogs he scrambled over bracken and leaves, searching madly for the little fence that would mark the finish line. But the horrible, awful thing was so heavy that he was sinking into the ground. His boots collapsing into the earth and leaving grooves behind him. He was slower. Barely moving.

This angered his passenger all the more. It screeched and screamed, jumping up and down on his back in such a horrendous tantrum that Henrik thought his back would snap in two. Its iron grasp on his neck was so tight now he was seeing stars and spots flooding his vision. Despite his progress, despite his struggles, despite his fingers clawing the dirt for purchase to help drag himself along, Henrik only continued to sink.

It was up to his waist. Then his chest. Then his chin. He was gasping for air but hardly trying now. Just at the edge of his vision, he caught sight of a small, iron fence— twisted and rusted with age. But he could move no further. He'd sunk too deep.

Back at the cabin, Henrik's bewildered followers after seeing him set down his camera and take off into the night were unable to piece together the events that lead up to his strange behavior. Their discussion was interrupted by a far away scream, suddenly cut off short. Discussion exploded, calls to phone the police, figure out where the urban explorer had gone using an online map.

Yhe chat halted as two, small, pale, bare feet tiptoed into frame. They stood there, in full view, for a very long time— waiting, unmoving, until the stream abruptly ended.

Horror
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