From The Shadows

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. It flickered in the darkness, casting a small halo of light around it. This is what caught Destiney Wollaran's eye through the rain. She and her boyfriend, Matt, stepped tenderly on blistered feet as they tried to avoid slipping on exposed tree roots.

The storm was a wild one; it had soaked the ground in seconds. Their sleeping gear would be useless if they paused to set up the tent. Hiking to shelter became the best option. But hours had passed, and the rain bore down. Destiney was overjoyed to see the tiny, weathered cabin appear through the trees.

"Look!" She turned to Matt behind her, pointing to the small clearing ahead.

"Oh, thank God." Relief spread across Matt's face as he leaned against a slick birch trunk.

The rain seemed to fall harder as they crossed the clearing. Destiney stepped carefully as she climbed the rotting stairs of the front porch. At last out of the rain, she and Matt stood next to each other and caught their breath.

Hiking a section of the Appalachian Trail had seemed fun when they started. That felt like forever ago. Now, she wondered what exactly they'd gotten themselves into.

"No one's here," Matt said. He was peering through the small, dusty window on the front door. There's a candle lit, but the place looks abandoned."

"Maybe it's a shelter signal from other thru-hikers?" Destiney moved next to him to take a look. Inside, the cabin was bare. No furniture, carpets, or blinds. Just the lone candle, flickering next to a pane of cobwebbed glass.

"Let's hope so," Matt said as he turned the handle on the door. It opened easily. "Cuz I am not going back out in that rain." Destiney laughed and they stepped inside, grateful to put a roof between them and the downpour.

"Sweet!" Matt said as Destiney latched the door behind them. "There's a fireplace and dry wood in here!" He threw his backpack on the dirty floor and began examining the woodpile, picking out the smallest pieces to use for kindling.

The cabin smelled like rotting leaves and dust with a tinge of dead mouse. It was small—only a kitchen and living room downstairs with a low-ceilinged loft visible beyond a narrow staircase.

Destiney lowered her bag and walked into the kitchen. A few plywood cabinets had been built into the far wall around a DIY washbasin sink. Curious, she opened one cabinet, then another. They were both empty. She tried a third and saw a flat object lying on the shelf inside. She picked it up and realized it was a large hunting knife covered in dark stains. Please let that be rust, she thought, dropping it on the plywood counter.

She went back to the other room and hoisted her backpack off the floor. As she stood up, she froze. She could have sworn she saw a person's shadow at the top of the stairs. Only for a second, like it disappeared deeper into the loft. "Hello?" she called out.

"What are you doing?" Matt asked from where he squatted on the floor in front of the fireplace. He had succeeded in getting a small flame started.

"Does this place give you a weird feeling?" Destiney glanced up at the loft again. Nothing. "Something about it just feels kind of... bad. And I think I found a bloody knife in the kitchen."

"Oh, well I wouldn't be surprised there," Matt said. "This is probably an old hunting cabin. Rednecks build these things all over the place. Some group of buddies probably used to come up here on weekends and gut their deer in the woods."

"I guess," Destiney said, but her pulse had quickened. She kneeled down on the floor beside Matt and let the heat warm her rain-pruned fingers. She glanced again in the direction of the loft. Shadows danced across the stairs in the firelight, but nothing that looked like a person. They'd been hiking forever and she was exhausted, she told herself. It'd be no wonder if her eyes had played tricks on her.

She unpacked her sleeping bag and she and Matt lay down by the fire. The wooden floor was hard, but she barely noticed. The sound of the crackling flames mixed with the rain pounding on the tin roof upstairs, and she fell asleep almost instantly.

***

Thud thud thud thud thud. Destiney's eyes shot open in the dark room. The fire had burned down in the grate; only the faint red glow of the last few embers remained. The candle, too, had burned itself out.

Thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud. A chill paralyzed Destiney in her sleeping bag. She realized the noise which had woken her was the sound of something moving quickly across the loft overhead. Thud thud thud thud thud. It moved from left to right, a sound strangely dense, yet rapid. It was unnaturally snappy for how solid it sounded. With each thud, Desitiney felt the impact in her chest, like something stomping through her very soul.

Matt was sound asleep beside her. She forced herself to pull one hand from the comfort of her sleeping bag to shake him awake. Thud thud thud thud thud, this time from right to left. Louder.

"Matt," Destiney whispered, shaking him. "Matt!"

"Mm, what? What?" Matt mumbled.

"There's something upstairs." She tried to keep her voice quiet, but panic was rising in her chest.

Thud thud thud thud thud, left to right again.

"What the fuck is that?" Matt seemed to be asking himself as much as Destiney.

"I don't know," she whispered.

Thud thud thud—it stopped at the top of the stairs. Silence.

Thud. Destiney's lungs spasmed in her chest. It was on the first stair. Thud. The second stair. She wanted to move but no limb of her body would respond to her brain's frantic signals to get up and run out of the cabin.

Thud. A dark figure emerged on the staircase. Destiney thought it was a man at first, but no. It had the shape of a man, but it was a black void, somehow darker than the room around it. Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

The figure reached the bottom of the stairs and stood motionless. Destiney now realized the rain had stopped, and the silence was maddening. Thud. It jerked toward where she and Matt lay in the center of the room.

Still unable to move her, she began to hyperventilate. Beside her, Matt started screaming. She thought it was out of fear, but then she saw that he was folded in on himself in his sleeping bag. He was writhing in pain.

"Aghhhhh! Aghhhhh!" He held his hand up and, even in the dim light of the fire coals, she could see something dark dripping from it. Blood, she realized.

Thud.

"Aghhhhh!" He doubled over in pain again. Then his body went limp. She could see that blood was now running from his mouth. He convulsed weakly on the floor beside her as her own tears blurred his face.

Thud.

Thud.

The figure was standing right in front of her now. Overwhelmed with terror, Destiney felt her mind slipping away from consciousness. The room faded around her, and she passed out.

***

"Oh my god! Oh, she's coming around!" The room Destiney woke up in was painfully bright. As her eyes adjusted to the fluorescent lights above her, she saw her mother's face at her bedside.

"Mom?" She felt weak and disoriented. Tears were falling off her mother's cheeks.

"Yes, Des. Yes, it's me." Her mother held her hand and kissed it in her own. Destiney noticed a heart rate monitor clamped to her index finger, the attached machine beeping idly in a corner. She was in the hospital, she realized.

For a moment, she couldn't recall why she was there. Then, like an abruptly remembered nightmare, everything came flooding back. The storm on the trail, the cabin, the figure, Matt. The beeping of the nearby machine quickened. A nurse rushed into the room with a syringe.

"Matt?" Destiney felt lightheaded and breathless. "Did someone help Matt?"

Her mother exchanged a worried look with the nurse. "Des, I... I'm sorry, honey." Destiney shook with sobs. "I'm sorry, honey," her mother said, "but, who is Matt?"

"What?" Destiney looked into her mother's face. It was all concern and confusion. "Matt! My boyfriend, Matt! We went hiking together. Something... something attacked us in the woods, in that cabin!"

"Honey," her mother's voice was soft and gentle. "I don't know how it feels... what you've been through..." She held Destiney's hand firmly, as if to keep her from slipping away. "You didn't go hiking with anyone named Matt." She took a deep breath.

"A few months ago, two boys at your university came to campus one day. They went to the political science building while you were in class, and they opened fire in the building. Honey, they shot over thirty students and seven professors."

Destiney's mind went blank. Then she heard it. Thud thud thud thud thud. Heavy, and sharp. A semi-automatic handgun. She'd never heard one before that day, but she'd known what it was immediately.

The classroom around her had erupted into chaos. A few students in the front of the room threw open the door and tried to run for the exit. Thud thud thud.

Destiney ran to the narrow cupboard in the corner of the room. Her professor usually hung his jacket there. It was so tight she could barely breathe, but she forced herself in. The door wouldn't shut all the way with her inside; she could see part of the classroom through the remaining narrow gap.

Students locked the classroom door. They pressed themselves up against walls, under the professor's desk, anywhere they could. Thud. The shots were louder, closer. Thud.

Then silence. The silence was unbearable.

Suddenly the door flew inward and there were flashes of light. A figure dressed head to toe in black aimed and fired around the room until his gun was empty. Destiney watched, unable to move, as he stood over one of her wounded classmates and pulled a large hunting knife from his belt loop. She closed her eyes and tried not to make a sound.

When she opened her eyes, the figure was gone. The student, a guy whose name she didn't know, died on the floor less than a yard away from her. She couldn't see anything but his face—Matt's face—burned into her mind.

The nurse injected the syringe into Destiney's IV. She felt herself drift away from reality again, and she wondered if, this time, she could stay in the nightmare.