An Atrocity of Oddities

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

It didn’t burn for long. Witnesses, and there were not many save for a few errant teenagers testing their boundaries in the forest that night, claim that the candle flickered for only a minute before being snuffed out. One girl claimed she saw a pair of thin, cracking lips beside it, blowing the flame out.

Word soon traveled through the small town that someone had taken up residence in the small cabin once again, despite the fact that it was a burnt down, ugly thing. Unmoved by gossip, the chief of police simply dismissed the claims when they came to his doorstep. So what if someone had moved in? The owners had died many years ago before they were able to transfer the deed to someone else, and he hadn’t found the time to file the lengthy paperwork that would seize the property for the town itself. Let the cabin rot out there in the woods. It made no difference to him.

The next night, the candlelight was spotted again, this time by a pair of young brothers who had tried their best to reach the high window where the candle rested. Standing atop the others shoulders, one of them had glanced into the window for a second before they toppled to the ground. He fractured his leg, and the next day he wore a cast to school, along with a bruise on his arm from where his mother had dragged him back to the house in anger. His peers surrounded him when he got to the classroom, begging to know what he had seen inside that window that had made him scramble back like that.

He didn’t say a word, and wouldn’t look anyone in the eye as he limped to his desk and got started on his work. Some claimed his mother had threatened him within an inch of his life if he pursued the house anymore, and that he was too scared to face her wrath to talk about it.

Jenny Singer believed differently. She knew he saw something that scared him so much he couldn’t talk about it.

She wanted to see it for herself.

Jenny didn’t have an angry mother who would stop her if she tried to see the cabin. Her mother was long gone, off to Hollywood when Jenny was still in diapers, claiming some destiny pulled her westward and away from her newborn. Jenny’s father had never quite been the same, but he was still a gentle man. He let her have the run of the house, and while some children would take advantage of that fact, Jenny thought it would be best if she were gentle with her father in return. They took care of one another. He would let her read his vintage collection of baseball cards, and she would take his shoes off when he drank too much and fell asleep on the couch. They had a good system working together, but Jenny knew she wouldn’t be able to stay away from the cabin.

Her father claimed that Jenny had something he called a “dangerous curiosity.” She couldn’t leave things good and alone when they didn’t make sense; she had to follow them to the very end. She didn’t like magicians, and she never believed in ghosts. Everything could be explained, and the things that couldn’t be infuriated her. The gossip circulating around the cabin had turned sinister, people claiming that a ghost had taken up residence in that old creaking home. She had gotten into a fight at school when that dumb boy Jackson had told her it was a demon who preyed on little girls like her. Jenny told him he was a liar, but her fist had swung of its own accord when he said that she would be next. Her father had a grim face when he picked her up early.

“What good is it to get into fights at school, Jen?’

“I’m sorry, dad. Jackson just gets me so riled up.”

He huffed a laugh, his presence warm beside her as they walked the path back to their home, the late Autumn wind chasing alongside them like a friend. A terrible winter had been predicted this year, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before they could no longer walk through the woods. “At your rate, you’re going to meet a lot of people who rile you up. But that doesn’t mean you can just go swinging at them when you feel like it.” He poked her in the side of the head. “You’ve got a good brain up there. Use that instead of your hands. People will always take you more seriously for it if you do.”

Jenny’s scowl only deepened, but she nodded anyways. Their feet crushed leaves as they walked, the sound echoing through the trees around them. The cabin loomed somewhere to their right, just out of sight, but Jenny could feel it watching them as they went. It took every inch of her already thinning willpower to keep from bolting towards it just to prove Jackson wrong.

“By the way, I saw that boy’s face. He’s gonna have a mighty big black eye tomorrow. Where’d you learn to hit like that?”

“Greasy Dan taught me.”

“The mechanic?”

“Mhmm. He said by the looks of it I’m gonna grow up to be pretty, and that it’s important for pretty girls to know how to handle stupid boys.”

Her dad rubbed the back of his neck. “Remind me to buy ol’ Grease a beer later.”

Jackson did have an enormous shiner the next day at school, and his talk of the cabin quieted down for a time. The light in the cabin’s window still lit up and went out after a minute each night, and though no one had seen or heard from who was living there, the interest began to dissipate.

But even a well thrown punch can’t silence death.

At first, it was only animals. The squirrels on people’s doorsteps were grotesque, always cut clean in half with what seemed to be a very exact knife, but it was still nothing to drum up worry. Their town had no shortage of hunters, and while no one confessed to it, most just assumed someone was making sure everyone had something to eat for the upcoming winter. It had been a while since anyone in this town starved from a bad winter, but a few years ago it wasn’t uncommon to find silent houses after a deep storm. After a few instances, it became custom to check on each family before snow to make sure they had enough to eat. People took care of one another in small towns; this was not out of the ordinary.

But the town began to stink when the birds began dying beneath the rafters of homes. Despite their best efforts, no one could get them out from their final hiding places. The birds rotted where they lay, the smell permeating their dreams and festering them into nightmares. Jenny and her father groaned when a crow found his way into their chimney and got stuck, wedged in too good and tight for anyone to reach him. Jenny wept when she listened to that crow call out for help. Her dad held her hand as they waited for it to pass.

That weekend, most of the dogs in town went rabid and had to be shot, and the next, a lone bear wandered out of the forest and died five steps from the town hospital. Children ran in circles around it, never having seen one up close before, until their parents yanked them away. The chief was called in to help remove it, and he couldn’t ignore the bead of sweat that formed underneath his hat as he took the beast in. His town, once quiet and quaint, was becoming an atrocity of oddities before his eyes. Multiple inquiries about the situation had come to his office, but he never had an answer for them. All fingers pointed to the cabin; the strange happenings began when that candle got lit for the first time, and it didn’t go unnoticed. He wasn’t a believer in ghosts himself, but he knew it had come to the point where he had to make a trip into the woods to see what it was all about.

Jenny intercepted him on his way in.

“Are you going to see the cabin, sir?” She asked, her too-big school pants flouncing about her legs as she kept pace with him.

“Don’t you have school to get to, young lady?”

“We got the morning off cause Miss Hayworth’s cat got sick. She had to find a sub.” Sad for the cat, but perfect timing for Jenny. She had heard the Chief was going to investigate today.

He only grunted in response, his flashlight and gun swinging from his belt.

“Can I come with you?”

“Absolutely not,” he replied, gazing down at the thin wisp of a girl. “Where’s your dad?”

Her shoulders rose and fell. “Working, I suppose. He does that a lot. But he wouldn’t mind if I came with you. He knows I can fight.”

“Yes, I heard about your little brawl in the school yard the other day. But I’m afraid I won’t be needing your protection.” He waved his hand in her direction, cutting off her protests. “Get to school, now. Miss Hayworth doesn’t need to deal with a sick cat and a missing student. Get.”

She pouted but obeyed, kicking up dust as she went. She kept her eyes trained on the line of trees, half hoping she could get a glimpse of the cabin before she arrived at school, but it was no such luck. The school day started off with a pop quiz, and soon she found herself lost in her work and only occasionally thinking of the cabin in the woods.

The day was darkening when she made her way home. She sent up a quick prayer of thanks when there were no rotting squirrels on her doorstep, but her gratefulness died down when she noticed her father’s face from where he sat at the table, clutching a beer in his white knuckled hands.

“What’s wrong?” She tossed her books to the floor and approached, wary of the haunted look her father cast her way.

His dark eyes trailed to hers slowly, looking at her as if in a dream.

She waved a hand in his face impatiently. “Dad?”

He blinked, and raised his beer to his lips. After a long swig, he finally spoke. “The chief of police died today.”

Her heart gave one long, slow thump in her chest. The chair squeaked as she pulled it out and sat next to her father. “What happened?”

His fingers picked at the label on his drink. “He didn’t come back from the woods after checking on the cabin. They searched high and low, even sent a few into the cabin itself but couldn’t find him. Folks claimed that it was empty, that it didn’t even look like anyone was living there. But when they came back to town, the chief was on his own front porch, propped up in his rocking chair. He was-” He trailed off, his eyes darting over her.

“He was what?”

He sighed. “Jenny, you don’t need to hear this kind of stuff. It’s not right for a girl your age.”

She reached out and placed a hand on his forearm. “I can handle it, dad. I turn twelve in a month. I’m practically an adult.”

A smile graced his lips for a second, but he shook his head anyways. “Let’s make dinner. It’s been a long day, and I need to eat something.”

She couldn’t get the information out of her father, no matter how much she pried. She went to bed grumpy and unsatisfied, her eyes watching the darkness at her window, wondering what evil thing might pass by.

The next day at school, though, she got what she wanted. Macy’s family lived next door to the chief, and her parents couldn’t hide him from her view when she came home that afternoon.

He had been cut in half. Just like the squirrels.

They didn’t go back to school the next day, as a full investigation had been launched into the chief’s death. The police from the neighboring town came to help, and their chief was a much gruffer and sturdier man. Surely this one seemed more indestructible. Still, he and his team found nothing, the cabin as empty as the day its previous occupants had left it. How had the chief been killed? And how did he make it all the way back to his cabin?

Who, or what, put him there?

Jenny had hoped that at least some evidence would surface from the investigation, something to put an end to all of the insane rumors. She even found herself hoping they would catch some kind of psychotic killer on the loose, just to get the town to stop discussing ghosts and demons. But the weeks went by and no one discovered anything. Children were forbidden to wander into the woods, even if they weren’t close to the cabin, for fear of being next. The investigation wound down, the police went back to their town, and the chief was buried in a plot next to his deceased wife. Jenny laid daisies by his headstone with the other girls from school.

It was difficult to mourn with the stench of death still taking up all the oxygen.

The death didn’t end there. When Jackson turned up on his own porch, shoes still muddy from his trek out into the woods and his glassy eyes gazing up at the blue sky, discussions of burning down the cabin began.

The townspeople clung to the idea that whoever was in that cabin was the cause of all their problems. They thrived on the idea, foaming at the mouth for it. They couldn’t stand the idea that whoever had killed two of their own was getting away with it, and the theories ran rampant. No one was brave enough to go to the cabin alone anymore when it was clear that it was a death sentence. But any time a group formed and climbed into the woods, the cabin lay empty, bare to everything but the candle in the window, still charred from its minute of burning.

Jenny’s father joined a group to visit the cabin. She sat on her porch the entire time he was gone, hugging her knees to her chest. Macy’s mother had come to sit with her while he was gone, insisting that she was not allowed to be alone at a time like this. The annoying woman had been humming all evening, knitting something pastel for the baby that grew inside of her. Jenny didn’t mean to dislike the woman so much; she just found every mother to be a stranger. An unwelcome stranger. She cried out in relief when she caught sight of her father’s boots rounding the corner, his lips pressed into a grim line.

He tucked Jenny in for a hug as his own eyes met Macy’s mother’s.

“Did you find anything?” She asked, her hands finally stilling on those needles.

Her father gave a short shake of his head. “Nothing. It was just like the others said: not a damn thing lives in that cabin. Stinks to high heaven inside, though.”

The mother grimaced and stood, patting her swollen belly as she did so. “Well, I should be getting home now. Supper won’t make itself.”

He offered to walk her home, giving Jenny a stern look to stay in place. He would only be gone a minute, and she was well aware of that fact.

She was also aware that she could get far enough away in less time than that.

The small pack she had filled with essentials- an apple, a pen, a flashlight, and a piece of chewing gum- was stashed under her bed. She shouldered it and darted from her house, cringing at the crunch of gravel underneath her feet giving away her location.

She had to see the cabin herself. It had begun to haunt her in ways she had never conceived before; nightmares, daydreams, dead birds in her chimney. She had to prove that there was nothing abnormal about the cabin so that the people could get on with their lives and find the real killer. The cabin was just holding them back.

The trees loomed before her, slowing her run to a jog, then to a halt all together. The line of darkness cast by the canopy was almost tangible, and her hand felt like it moved through a thick fog when she jutted it forward. If she was quick she could make it home before it was completely dark. She likely had an hour at best; plenty of time to get there and back. But was it enough time to prove the cabin’s innocence?

It would have to be. She forced herself forwards, the trees swallowing her up as she went. The forest inside was quiet, but not silent. Birds called to one another from adjacent branches. Squirrels, alive and well, darted through the undergrowth. She spotted a fox, quick and cunning and bright despite the shadows, watching her from beneath a bush. She was reminded that despite the recent horrors, the forest had always been a home to her. Her childhood had been weaned in the shade of these trees, and she found a new resolve growing within her with every step. Her home would not be taken from her by some old, wooden cabin. She would see to it today.

Despite her newfound courage, the cabin drew her breath away when she crested the hill.

It was just as it had been the last time she saw it. Her breath curled like smoke in the chilled air as she stepped closer, the windows before her dark and untouched, the walls licked with the remnants of flames. It looked like an ordinary home to her, but despite her best efforts, the stories began to creep back into her mind. She thought of Jackson, once annoying and loud, now laying cold in a grave three plots down from the chief, telling her that a demon lived here. How could he have known that? He couldn’t, she reminded herself. He made it up.

And yet, she found herself unable to look into that window, for fear that something would be looking back.

She was in front of the porch now, a small thing that was no more than an enlarged step off the small length of stairs. She placed a hesitant foot on the bottom plank and nearly jumped out of her own skin as it gave a loud creak at her weight. A small laugh bubbled out of her. The fear was making her silly. She stepped forward with her other foot and stood fully on the step.

The candle lit up in the window.

A fear like nothing she had ever known before took her in that moment. She was rational, and logical, and terrified out of her mind as she locked eyes with that flickering flame.

Her father’s words came to her mind.

You’ve got a good brain up there. Use that instead of your hands. People will always take you more seriously for it if you do.

She knew that whatever was lighting that candle was no less human than she was. If she didn’t face it, no one would.

Her feet climbed the last few steps, the candle watching her like an eye as she stepped onto the front porch. She considered walking in, but instead, she knocked.

And she waited.

A slow, dragging sound thumped from the other side of the door. Before her mind could even process her fear, the door opened in, revealing dim light and swirling dust motes that made the shadows seem alive.

“Hello?” She called, unable to think of what else to say.

The door only opened wider.

She inhaled a deep gulp of air and stepped inside, shivering as she crossed the threshold.

It was a simple, one-room cabin, with no furniture save for a table pushed against the back wall. Her eyes started from the right and scanned over, seeing nothing at first.

She looked at the candle, and someone stood before it.

“Hello,” the woman replied, her voice thick with disuse.

Jenny simply stared. The woman-if she could be called that- stood pressed into the corner. Her dress hung limply off her skeletal form, her ribs peeking through the moth-eaten holes in the fabric. Her hair was nothing more than a handful of whispering strands, curling out from her gray, dilapidated skin. Her lips were gone, and her teeth were too white in her gaping jaw.

Where her eyes should have been were only sunken pits. Yet still, they watched her.

In the seconds that she had seen the woman, she began to contemplate how quickly she could escape. Now, as she began to turn to run, the door slammed shut behind her.

“Don’t be afraid,” the woman crooned, stepping forward on rattling joints. The smell of her foul breath ensnared the room, and it took all Jenny could do not to retch onto the wooden floor. “I see you have come for my help.”

“Help?” She barely recognized her own voice with such terror reverberating through it. She didn’t understand what she was seeing; this woman wasn’t possible. By the looks of her body, she was well past the decomposing stage of a corpse. It went against… everything, and yet still, here she stood.

“That is why you came, isn’t it?” Now that her voice had warmed up she sounded sweet and kind, completely incongruous with her appearance.

Jenny was already shaking her head, pressed back against the door. How could she get out? Her head swiveled on her neck, desperate to find some kind of escape route, but her eyes kept snaring on the lit candle.

The woman nodded, a piece of her hair falling off and fluttering to the ground as she did so. “Most people are nervous when they come to me. You must be hungry, too.” The woman began to walk, not towards Jenny, much to her relief, but towards the table. She hadn’t noticed it upon entering the cabin, but the table gleamed with silver as the woman shifted out of the candlelight. Wickedly curved blades lay atop its surface, and as she ran her bony fingertip over the white handles, a horrible scratching noise filled her ears.

Jenny’s heart lurched at the sight of the blades, but she forced herself to focus. Use your head, she chanted to herself in her mind, forcing her thoughts to work. Her hand inched towards the doorknob behind her, but it wouldn’t budge. Locked. Her heartbeat hitched up another notch as she considered her options.

The woman kept up her monologue as Jenny descended into panic.

“We live in an unreasonably cold place, you know. You don’t look all that old. Have you seen the terrible winters we can have? By the plumpness of your skin I would assume not. You don’t look as though you’ve ever been buried in your own home, the door blocked by sheets of ice, forced to slowly starve as the days moved on and on.”

The window. Jenny’s eyes caught on the candle once again, and she let it become a beacon.

“Once people caught on to the terrible snow storms that plagued our land, they realized it was necessary to stock up on food. To hoard it, cultivate it. I had many brothers, and we would send them out every morning in the autumn, as soon as the leaves turned red. They would come back with game for everyone to hold until the winter. They would take it to everyone in town, so much so that we became known for feeding the people. They would line up at our doorstep each evening, waiting for their share. Once they saw our candle light up in the window, they knew we had meat.”

She tested a small step to the left, relieved when the floor didn’t creak beneath her. She prayed the woman would keep her unseeing eyes trained on the knives as she inched slowly along the wall.

“But one autumn, the animals fled. We never found out why, but no one had meat for the winter. We hoped they would return, but the snow found us before they did, and no one had anything to eat. We could hear our neighbors screaming, even with all the snow in between us. My own sister died in my arms. We wouldn’t be able to bury her for a long time.”

Jenny barely processed the woman’s words, the candle still so far out of her reach.

“But then,” the woman said, a laugh in her voice, “my father remembered that meat, no matter where it comes from, is meat.”

This made Jenny pause. She processed the words. “You… ate her?”

The woman turned, a smile on her horrible face. “I felt full for the first time in weeks. But when the snow melted away, and the town learned of what we did, they locked us in our own home, this home, and burned it to the ground. They killed us, as if we hadn’t been their salvation just a few weeks before.”

Jenny’s stomach turned at the thought, bile rising in her throat. The woman’s appearance made sense now: the scars and holes all over her were not just from starvation, but from burns.

A voice pierced through the silence.

“Jenny!”

“Jenny,” the woman said. “What a pretty name. Is that your father looking for you?”

The voices rose, joined by others. Her town, just outside these walls, come to save her. She heard someone pounding on the front door.

The woman dragged a knife over the countertop, palming it. “When a harsh winter is on its way, I return to this house, lighting a candle in the window for anyone who needs food. I left those animals on your doorsteps. I made sure you all had food to eat.”

“But the people? Why did you kill them?” Jenny asked, backing up towards the candle.

The woman laughed, a bubbling, gurgling noise. “Meat is meat, after all.”

The woman lunged, the point of the knife tipped towards Jenny’s heart.

Jenny lunged too, crying out as her hand met the hot metal that housed the still burning candle, but held tight as she turned and flung it onto the woman.

She went up in flames immediately, screaming as she was caught from head to toe in searing fire. Jenny wasted no time in throwing her elbow against the window, shattering it completely as the glass fell away into the night.

“Jenny!” Someone called from below. A sob escaped her throat as she recognized her father’s voice. Without hesitation, she stepped into the window sill and flung herself outward, her father’s arms catching her before she could hit the ground.

She felt hands all around her, people from town checking her over to make sure she was unharmed, but they paused as the woman’s screams filled the forest. All eyes were on the cabin as it began to smoke, catching fire just as it once did before.

They kept their vigil as Jenny relayed the story to them, the scent of burning flesh filling the air.

They stayed until the last ember went out, and the first snowflake of the season fell from the sky.