Anglerfish

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. However, it’s presumptuous to call something abandoned just because you don’t see people around. You know, this old trail the cabin sits on used to be a busy wagon road. Things were so easy back then. All kinds of people passed by daily and many of them would stop for directions, lodging, or a simple chat to distract them from their long journey. Now that the dirt path is used sparingly by people on foot for seemingly recreational purposes, things have become more and more difficult.

These days, most passerby stop to admire the old wooden structure that glares darkly through the break in the trees, but seldom do they approach. They take a swift photo, and as quickly as a squirrel skittering up a tree trunk, they’re on their way once more; down the trail that cuts through this massive forest. Leaving the area where the cabin rests in its lazy, rolling blanket of fog which never seems to unfurl, even on the brightest of days.

And so, I must as always, do my best.

A dim candle sparks to life in the dusty old window each night. In the complete darkness of this forest, the small flame becomes a beacon and guides those from their trail onto a new one – toward the cabin.

A young man wearing a backpack pauses on the well-trodden path. Bugs and frogs sing a chorus as a chilly breeze bends the tree limbs toward him like arms reaching out, causing the early autumn leaves to rattle together in a chaotic hiss. He’s a solo hiker looking to bed down soon and one who has walked this trail before. Never once noticing life within the creaking, old accumulation of rotted planks, yet here he was, seeing a small light. He wondered briefly if it was another hiker who was exploring the antiquated homestead or perhaps a group of kids testing their courage in the dark of night. Either way, it was certainly odd to light a candle in the window, especially if you wanted to creep around an old cabin after nightfall and not draw attention to yourself.

“Hello?” he called out, unsure if he should even bother. He had to admit, he was curious about the place. He’d always meant to check out the cabin - being the lover of urban exploration that he was - but never seemed to be able to get a group of friends together to make the trek to this distant locale. Lots of people are hesitant to explore a derelict building tucked away in the wooded mountains so far from civilization that if you were to get hurt, you’d be kissing rescue goodbye. Yet here he was with his chance to enter that very cabin with the comforting knowledge that there were other people around.

He took that first cautious step off the compacted dirt of the main path and worked his way through the semi-apparent - but mostly overgrown - path to the cabin’s covered front porch. Up close he could see just how tired and old it was. The roof of the porch slouched to the left side due to a rotted post. He stood still, listening for noise from within the darkness of the building. The wooden door that sat dead center of the front wall was ajar just enough to see the abyss beyond. In the window to the right side of the porch, the small flame winked and danced.

He stared and listened, pupils as wide as they could go to try to afford him some sight in the pitch-black night.

Wait a minute… Where were the crickets and frogs? The young hiker turned his head from side to side, hoping his ears would pick up the familiar sound that had nearly drowned out his own breathing as he made his way here in the first place. Was it when he called out? Was it possible to scare all the wildlife into silence by shouting? He shivered but felt relieved as the wind howled through the trees, causing the leaves to rustle but letting him know his ears worked fine. It whistled through various cracks and holes in the cabin’s exterior, as if almost beckoning him.

“Hello?” he said, more quietly than he meant. The cabin seemed to creak in response. Or was it the massive trees that enveloped it? The sound surrounded him.

Creeeeeeeak. Crack. Clack. Crick. Creeeak.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, he stole the last few steps up to the porch and set foot on the sagging floor boards which had been exposed to the elements for the last century or two. Admiring the wilted property that refused to crumble, he approached the door. A quick glance back to that window - the one with the burning candle - there it flickered, a teasing flare.

The door provided no resistance as he gently pushed it open with his knuckles. It was eerily silent, which unsettled the man. He had expected the door to chitter open with all the fanfare of splintering wood.

“Is there anyone in here? I don’t want to scare you. Just making sure you hear me… I saw the candle and thought there might be people here.”

Nothing but silence answered him. The interior of the cabin was darker than the surrounding woods. To him, it felt as though the air itself had changed. It was hot, heavy, and almost soggy. His eyes could not adjust further to the murk, so he pulled a small flashlight from his pocket.

The compact but adequate beam lit up his dull surroundings as dust motes flowed like glimmering curtains on the air. He stood in the only small room on the ground floor of the two-story cabin. The same aged wood on the floors, walls, and ceiling blending it all together in one monotone gray palette. Directly in front of him was a rectangular table once used for eating the food that had been prepared in the hearth at the back of the room. To his left was a dainty rocking chair thick with grime. He pondered briefly how long the chair would hold up under him if he were daring enough to trust it. Behind the chair, ten or so feet, was an equally treacherous-looking, narrow staircase on which the darkness of the top floor bled down onto.

He swung his light around to the right side of the room as he stepped further inside, the front door silently swinging back to its original position behind him. Looking to that side of the room he realized, with sweat budding on his flesh, that he stared at nothing. Not just nothing, but an emptiness so unnatural that he felt the visceral gut-punch you experience when you know you’ve seen something you shouldn’t. Rapidly spinning and shining his light from wall to wall, he realized with growing confusion, there were no windows.

“But there are definitely windows on the outside…!”

Each wall of the ground floor showed the same solid wood planks, betraying no evidence of there ever being windows. His light came to rest on the wall where, from the outside, there should be a window with a lit candle.

“Screw this!” he muttered under his breath as he turned to the door. When his vision focused on a blank wall, he swiveled around in a frantic effort to locate his egress. He thought he had mostly kept the entrance to his back, but perhaps he got turned around.

Breathing heavily, he shined his light on all four walls in terror. The door was gone, much like the windows and the candle. A swirling darkness crept into his peripheral vision as his mind tried to desperately home in on an answer for what he was seeing.

“HELLOOOOO!?” he shouted, no longer caring if he scared anyone who might be sharing this hellish prison with him.

With no other option available to him, he rushed to the staircase. He tested out the first step with trepidation, fearing the entire thing would collapse. It was solid, so he tested the second one. It was firm and secure. With his newfound purchase on his only available exit, he bounded upward, his flashlight beam bobbing wildly.

As soon as his boots landed on the floor above, the echo that rang out, accompanied by a putrid odor, made him reel in nauseous delirium. It was as if he had entered a massive underground cavern where decomposing corpses were stockpiled. The space was blacker than the inside of a coffin and with walls so far away that he couldn’t tell if they even existed. His flashlight shed no light on even a single vertical surface.

Looking back down, he saw that the floor was alive with flesh-like vines that undulated with a heavy squelching. The hole he climbed through from the staircase was quickly swallowed by their indecipherable quantity as they wove themselves back together.

With his senses in overdrive, he spun and spun, shining that small light around, searching for anything or anyone.

“HEEEEELLLP!” he screamed. He repeated it over and over until his throat began to sting, but still he kept howling.

After hours, or was it days? - when his flashlight finally began to die, he decided to turn it off until he really needed it, so that he might conserve what little battery power was left. Now in total and complete darkness, he had no way of knowing which direction he was going in relation to where he had started. The living, curdled flooring made walking an immense task and he fell quite often as he wandered in one straight direction, desperate to feel a wall, a pillar, or anything really.

The sensory deprivation provided by the situation gave him the sense that he was out of space and time. Stumbling through a vast knobby, bulging plane of existence outside our dimension.

He’s almost there. Just a little further…

Finally, he feels a tepid, wet wall. It makes a slapping echo as he pats it, sobbing in relief. Drool, snot, and tears stripping his face of any semblance of a sane person. He turns on his flashlight once more to get a good look at this seemingly fortuitous discovery – only to be greeted with a bilious gray wall made of slick tissue like that on the inside of a cheek.

Suddenly, closing in from all around him, comes the thundering rush of the meat and sinew that forms the colossal, contracting expanse. It squeezes in like an iron vise upon his small body and then slows its assault to relish in a sluggish torture. The young man is now wedged firmly inside the maw of this primordial yet timelessly infinite entity, as a paradoxical riot takes over his mind. He struggles to breathe, and his ribs contract, while the voidal creature seizing him becomes tighter and tighter. He cannot tell where is up or down and his consciousness is quickly becoming an ephemeral deluge of hysteria and madness.

There is no more room for him to expand his chest to take in a breath. Every inch of his body burns, either for oxygen or respite from the anguish he feels as the offending muscle contracts and starts popping his bones. He breaks like a mouse in the grasp of a giant. His last fading thoughts are of how he had been so stupidly curious of that damned candle. How it had lured him into the yawning gullet of an incomprehensible horror the likes of which would twist the minds of any who laid eyes upon it.

There is no more struggle from him. His light is snuffed out.

I simply light the candle in the window once more… and wait for my next curious guest.