When Even the Moon Hides

“The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. A bead of melted wax dripped slowly down the candle shaft, rolled off the candleholder’s edge, and landed on the open book, startling the boy from his reading. He’d read the passage dozens of times, you see, but was no less captivated than he’d been the first time—”

“Sounds like a nerd.”

“Shut up, Randy.”

“Ahem. The boy was different. He didn’t care much for school, nor for sports, nor art, nor music. He didn’t like girls, nor did he like boys. In fact, he didn’t care much for people at all. He was quite singularly focused, you see, on the wonders of the night sky. So much so, that when he stumbled across this particular book in the Astronomy shelves of the library, he didn’t care that it truly belonged in mythology. Or perhaps, horror. He took it home, and devoured it. It was captivating, you see, because it described a moonless night—”

“Like tonight?”

“Randy, shut up. Let him tell the story.”

“—A moonless night, like that very night. The stars aligning just so, so that their gravity creates a pull in a particular spot. Like a line cast in water, hooking the horrors below. Dragging them to the surface. The boy had found that particular spot, there, in that cabin. And so he waited there, reading by the light of a candle, the dusty floorboards creaking beneath him as he shifted to turn a page. He’d memorized the words by then, but he traced his finger along the line as he read aloud.

‘On the darkest night, when the sky is black

When even the moon hides

When Antares alone shines over a shack

And the Earth and the Planets align

The sky will call and The Earth will crack

Erupting—'

“And before the boy could read another word, it started. A whirring sound, faint at first, but growing steadily louder, louder, until it was deafening. It was as though the sound itself began to separate the floorboards, tugging them apart slowly, slowly… and then the boards burst apart, twisted roots erupting from beneath the earth, flinging dirt and worms and bits of animal skeletons across the cabin. The boy screamed, blood spurting from his forehead as a jagged bone sliced his skin, but it was only just beginning. The entire world was turning inside out, centuries, millennia of rotten earth. It was raining horrors in the cabin, until the force of it blew off the tin roof, exploded the wooden walls, disintegrated the cabin, leaving nothing but the stone chimney. The boy wanted to run, but the pull had grabbed him, too, and he was trapped at the epicenter of it all, there where the cabin had stood. So he held his arms over his face, trying to protect himself from the storm of metal and stones and wood and bones, and then molten rock and burning lava as the pull kept drawing from deeper and deeper. It was as though Hell itself had been pulled from beneath the earth.”

“With Hell, came the demons. The dead. Ruined carcasses, rising from the Earth, howling in pain, in misery, demanding vengeance for their suffering. There would be no escaping. And so as the volcano of fire and rock and death exploded around him, as decayed hands from wasted corpses reached for the boy, pulling him… he clung to the stone chimney.

“Then, in a sudden whoosh, the sound stopped. Everything dropped, covering the ground in a repulsive blanket of bodies and debris. The boy had survived, but he was still stuck, unable to move from that spot by the chimney. So he never did.”

“That’s it? That's the end of the story?”

“Randy, that’s not polite.”

The stranger tipped his hat, as the whirring sound began. Faint, at first.

“It’s not a story, children. It’s a warning.”