Dare of Terror

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night a candle burned in the window. Shelly never passed up a dare. Consequently, going into the old, abandoned cabin, on a dare, was an easy choice. Although there was a broken window with a huge black spider eating a bug trapped in its web near where the candle burned, and the rotted porch roof threatened to collapse, she went up the steps and pushed on the ajar front door. A shaft of silvery moonlight filtered down through a hole in the roof, and a bat screeched as it flew past her and out the open door.

She swung around when the door slammed shut and locked despite the door knob laying on the floor. Pushing through her fright, she bolted toward the red candle and snatched it off the window sill. When a fire sparked to life in the stone fireplace, she dropped the candle, and it rolled across the floor.

"Damn it!" She said, going after it. She needed the two hundred dollars for rent and refused to let fear send her running back to her friends outside like a scared mouse. While retrieving the candle, she looked into the room it stopped by. An ice hook flew out from the center of a blood-soaked mattress on the floor and cut into the flesh below her shoulder. She dropped to her knees screaming. The pain was agonizing, and the chain the hook was attached to started to pull her toward the mattress where the upper half of a skinless person appeared and smiled evilly at her through sharp yellow, stained teeth.

Shelly's fingernails bent back and broke off as she clawed at the rough, wooden floorboards, and splinters embedded deep into her knees. When she was within reach of the phantasm's hands, he pressed her head between them and his black eyes stared into her blue ones. She couldn't breathe as she was pulled down through the pool of thick, warm blood that flowed into her mouth. She fell to the ground of a dimly lit tunnel gasping and spitting out blood.

Faint screams from further down the tunnel made chills run through her. A thick stone slab slid out from the wall, and the skinless phantasm grabbed her by the neck, lifted her off the ground, and dropped her onto the hot slab. Chains wrapped around her wrists and ankles. She struggled against them, but it was in vain as their hold on her tightened.

When two other stone slabs appeared on either side of her with writhing, charred bodies, she began banging her head against the slab in an attempt to give herself a concussion. The stone slab started to retract back into the wall, and all she could do was shut her eyes against the growing heat.

When she came to, she was looking down on her motionless, charred body from above it. She'd escaped one form of damnation for another, and unlike those in hell, she had thoughts and was pain-free. The phantasm grabbed at her feet, but its hands passed through her. She knew nothing about what a ghost could and couldn't do and bumped against the ceiling of the tunnel when she attempted to pass through it.

As the phantasm snarled at her from below, she moved down the tunnel not wanting to wait around for others to appear. She followed the skull-lined tunnel until she reached a wide opening where there was a large pool of boiling blood. Several burning bodies were screaming and thrashing about in an effort to escape their torture. When she made it to the other side, she began to sink into the wet, cold earth and then fell onto a frozen lake.

The fog was thick and swirled all around her. Looking down, she saw hundreds of bodies trying to claw through the ice in an attempt to escape the black eel-like creatures lashing and biting chunks of flesh from them. She tried to shut her eyes, but the sight of the faces with twisted, open mouths remained. She grew weary of the horror all around her, and let out a wail, but silence answered.

The fog cleared away from an area in front of her revealing a door. She walked around the door and then kicked it. It swung open, and on the other side of the threshold stood a forest. Deciding it looked better than watching and hearing agony, she passed through the doorway. When she turned back, the door was gone. However, the abandoned cabin stood a short distance away.

She retrieved the backpack she'd left against a tree before she had acted on the dare, and unzipped it. She squirted the lighter fluid all over the cabin then struck a match and dropped it to the soaked wood. Flames burst up, and she stood watching the fire consume the cabin. She remained hypnotized by the flames and willed the evil to be destroyed by them until a forest ranger and crew arrived. Not taking the chance of them seeing her, she fled into the woods.

When the fire was out, she returned to a pile of ashes, and the entrance to hell gapped like a black hole in space. Yellow, caution tape had been placed around the area to prevent hikers from injuring themselves. She crossed past the tape to the edge of the tunnel and stared into the darkness hoping to erase the horrors she witnessed below. However, the memories remained, and the ghost was the haunted one.