Guests

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Its flame swayed and flickered with a slow, measured rhythm like the weary chopping of dead wood in preparation for the indifferent cold of winter. The wind was a plaintive and hollow moan that passed through the southern oak trees and caused the shingles of the cabin roof to dance and clack, saying “over here.”

“This is the place,” announced a woman, short with blonde hair and sleeve tattoos and wearing a tank top, a determination in her voice. “How do you know for sure?” asked a lanky and broad-shouldered man with a ponytail and a scraggly beard, wearing thick glasses. “It’s not like there are any pictures of it,” he continued, adjusting the strap of his canvas travel sack. “I think it’s fairly safe to assume, at this point.” the woman assured him. “Plus, look - there’s the woodshed they said would be visible by the edge of the marsh,” she pressed on confidently. The couple traipsed through the bosky blackness towards the face of the cabin. The darkness of the night seemed eternal and relentless, with only the faintest refraction of moonlight around edges, like the unblinking and watchful eyes of a million reptiles.

“This way,” the wind hissed.

Neither of them paid any mind to the wind.

After wading through muck and monkey grass, they stood at the front door, splintered and overcome by a thin and pervasive film of white mold. A check in the wood betrayed the still-dancing light of the candle’s flame. “Should be a key under the mat,” the woman said, setting down her satchel. “Classic!” the man said, attempting to calm his nerves. In an instant, the candle light died out. The wind no longer moaned. They could hear the reptilian eyes of darkness blink simultaneously like countless slimy apertures stealing fragments of their souls.

CRACK.

The cabin door swung slowly on its hinges, opening up to an impossibly dark space. The inside was so quiet they could hear what sounded like the heartbeat of a tree, a deeply resonant and wooden sound like the rap of knuckles on a barrel of wine. The heartbeat seemed to reverberate throughout a space much larger than the cabin itself, and became louder and louder until the man and woman wondered whether or not it belonged to them. The thumping increased, aroused by the arrival, and as soon as they took their first step through the door, it stopped.

The wind let out a breath of relief.

“Can’t tell whether or not the door just unlocked itself or if the mushrooms are kicking in,” the man said after a shared moment of distended silence. “No…,” the woman exhaled, unaware she had been holding her breath. “I don’t think so, maybe a little bit, but the place is just super old, I doubt there are actually any locks at all, it’s so remote here,” she tried to assure him, and herself.

Without another word, they both clutched their bags, drew themselves up to full height, and continued into the cabin’s heart.

“I can’t see shit!” the man bawled, having stubbed his toe on something unidentifiable. “Hang on,” the woman said, digging into her pocket. She produced a tall blue and white flame from her zippo lighter. Two pairs of eyes quickly reflected the light of the flame. There was a photograph in an ornate frame, sitting on a small oval table across the room, where the candle had been. They both shuffled crabwise toward the picture, hoping not to hit anything in the darkness. The woman lit the candle once more and they stood shoulder to shoulder to examine the picture. A man and woman were posed together in a rigid stance like that old painting of the farmer and his wife. The man in the picture was tall and stolid and wearing a tweed jacket, and had seemingly no discernible features. The woman next to him was shorter, her hair in a tight bun and her eyes were dark and sunken in. She, too, appeared to not really have many facial features. The more that the couple attempted to latch onto the features of the man and woman in the photograph, the more the picture seemed to morph, the people in it becoming shapeless and indistinguishable.

“Old photographs creep me out,” the woman finally said, shaking off the eeriness of the picture like cobwebs. “Wonder if those were the owners,” the man pondered in a small voice. “Gotta be…,” the woman said, regaining some confidence, until she noticed a folded piece of paper just behind the picture frame. She picked it up, it was thick and worn to softness. She slowly unfolded it to reveal what appeared to be a list, written in exceptionally sharp and jagged, albeit attractive handwriting.

Keep the candle burning

Clean the silverware

Shovel in the shed

The couple stared at the list for what felt like minutes. The woman folded the list up and set it back down on the oval table. “Simple enough, I guess. Can check the candle off the list,” she said, turning to look at the rest of the cabin. It was a minimal sight to behold, even for cabin standards. There was a small kitchen with a wood-burning stove and a few small pots and pans hanging from hooks on the wall, a small but sturdy wooden table with two high-backed chairs next to a window, a whole black bearskin rug - with the head and all - and a small bedroom with a bedside table and what looked to be a bible or some other large book. No bathroom, there was supposedly an outhouse by the shed, and no comfortable furniture to speak of.

The friend who had sold them the psychedelic mushrooms had made a point to mention that, especially for first time users, items of personal significance as well as comfortable clothing or furniture would help to ensure that they maintain a positive experience. In each of their bags they packed ‘safe-place’ items. For the man, a hand-carved wooden bullfrog which closely mimicked the animal’s distinctive bellowing croak by running a stick along its knotted spine . The bullfrog was carved by his father when they were on one of their camping trips in the blue ridge mountains. It reminded him of mornings fishing for trout, and the still summer nights spent by the campfire listening to the rapturous croaks and the crackle of logs. The woman brought a crimson red knitted afghan with a diamond pattern and tassels on the short ends. She had knitted it in college when she had first become interested in sewing as a hobby. She had curled up within its mildly scratchy warmth after long nights of going to parties where she felt like an outsider, after days spent almost entirely in the library studying for exams, and after having her heart broken by young love.

Without saying a word to each other, their minds reached into their bags for these items as the inhospitable aura of the cabin crept into focus.

The woman strode over to the kitchen cabinets to look for any signs of commercial familiarity - some Campbell’s chicken noodle soup or some jolly green giant canned beans - anything that would suggest normalcy. She found no consolation, only a set of dingy drinking glasses and a few pieces of worn silver cutlery.

“Hey Max, can I be totally honest with you?” she asked, her voice wavering slightly.

“What’s up, Laura-love?” Max asked gently.

“I just…” Laura paused, a frog in her throat.

“Seriously, I want you to feel like you can be completely open with me. It’s all part of the experience,” Max urged.

Laura swallowed, “I have a bad feeling about this place… I don’t feel welcome here, there’s no warmth.” she said slowly, almost under her breath while still staring into the cupboard.

The drinking glasses appeared to be melting like candle wax. Laura could taste the warm metal of the forks and knives. Max wanted desperately to comfort her, but he felt so unsettled himself that he couldn’t think of what to do or say. Laura shot a glance at him, her face pale and dripping with dread. Max opened his mouth to say something, but his jaw locked up and he couldn’t make a sound, his throat felt thick.

“Don’t just stand there, say something!” Laura cried. Max’s stomach turned hot and it felt like his intestines were caught and churning in an industrial mixer. He looked into her eyes, they looked enlarged and black, like baleful orbs staring into his soul. He suddenly regained some feeling of control in his body and ran to the small sink behind Laura and began puking up bile. Laura hastily searched her satchel and pulled out her afghan, immediately throwing it around her entire head and clutching it closely. Max felt like the hell of vomiting had subsided. He turned the sink nozzle, which protested in metallic screams before releasing a stream of murky water. Max cupped some water in his hands and drank frantically. It tasted faintly of iron and dirt.

When Max brought his head up from the sink, he noticed another folded up piece of paper next to a grimy soap dish. With Laura quietly rocking under her blanket, Max grabbed the paper with his wet hands and opened it up to see the same sharp handwriting.

Keep the candle burning

Clean the silverware

Shovel in the shed

Max tossed the paper aside, he didn’t have the ability to think about mundane household chores. He looked at Laura, still rocking back and forth on the floor. He knelt down and awkwardly placed a hand on her shoulder. She jumped and pulled the blanket off of her head. They stared at each other, their faces both swelling and shrinking in fear.

“Are you okay?” Max asked uneasily.

“No, Max. I’m not.” Laura shot back, gritting her teeth.

“Things just got a little weird for a second, but we’ve got our safety items and I’m feeling better after that barf,” he half-heartedly chuckled, hoping to lighten the mood.

“They’re. NOT. Good. Enough,” Laura enunciated.

Max was frozen, he didn’t know what to do.

“I don’t think this is going to work at all…,” Laura said tremulously.

“We can leave whenever we want,” Max said.

“No. No no no - I mean us.” Laura was speaking with a soft rage. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while now and I was hoping this little experience would help us fix things, but… I think it just isn’t going to work,” she pressed.

Max’s body went cold. Laura’s words were like a hook into his stomach, twisting his organs. He had packed a bottle of their favorite pinot noir and figured that maybe some wine would help to ease the tension and encourage some sentimental bonding. He rummaged through his travel sack and found the brown paper bag with the bottle in it.

“Hey Laura-love, how about a little wine to change gears?” Max asked, trying to sound jovial. “I got us that one from Macedon, our favorite.”

Laura said nothing, only stared at him.

Max went to the cabinets and grabbed two of the drinking glasses, which were stained and milky looking. He brought them over to the wooden table and began pouring the wine. It came out thick like blood. He stared at the glasses, the wine seemed to be alive, undulating like a pond. He handed Laura her glass and asked her to sit at the table with him. She slowly stood up and took one of the high backed chairs, staring into her glass.

“Cheers to an…interesting adventure,” Max held out his glass in the middle of the table.

Laura drank all of her wine, ignoring Max’s toast and then slammed the glass down.

Max was silent. Laura’s eyes went from looking large and sad to animalistic and piercing. The air was still between them, only the sounds of Laura’s increasingly heavier breathing and the wooden heartbeat of the cabin swelling in unison.

“It’s your favorite wine. Not mine. I never said it was my favorite.” Laura spat.

“What are you talking about? What’s going on? You’re worrying me,” Max panted.

Laura threw her back into the chair, exhausted. “You don’t know anything about me, and you don’t care enough to learn. I don’t even like wine that much,” she was getting louder.

“What do you mean I don’t know you? I thought you loved this wine when we had it at that restaurant?” Max’s heart was beating through his chest, thumping in his ears.

“No. I said it was ok, you are the one who loved it. Also, for someone who steamrolls other people, you are a weak man,” Laura felt the words flowing from her like they weren’t her own. She felt both scared and relieved as she was speaking. She felt the high of the mushrooms intensifying. The interior of the cabin was breathing and illuminating, excited by the catharsis.

At first, Max felt himself spiraling into a vortex inside himself, but then a surge of energy hit his gut. His jaw muscles were flexing, he swigged his wine in one gulp and launched the glass across the cabin, hitting the candle and knocking it over. The flame died and plunged them into a hateful blackness.

“House rules, gotta keep the candle lit, MAX!” Laura shouted.

Max let out a deranged shout and pushed the table into Laura, who fell out of her chair and brought the table down with her. Commotion filled the cabin as Laura tried to get back up and Max stomped awkwardly through the dark, trying to make his way back to the candle.

There was a loud crash.

The cabin was silent.

“Max?” Laura called out. “Max, do you have a lighter?

There was no answer.

“What the hell are you doing? Did you stub your toe again?” she tried.

Silence persisted.

Laura was clumsily trying to get back up, the table had crushed her hip.

There was a scraping noise, like claws.

Laura shoved her hand into her pocket and felt around for the zippo lighter. She fumbled around with it until she got a good hold on it.

Flick - nothing.

Flick, flick.

She produced a flame. She held the lighter out in front of her and saw that the candle was on the floor in front of the oval table. Max was nowhere in sight. Laura walked carefully over to the candle, listening for Max. She picked up the candle and lit the wick. She set it back down in its holster on the table. She stood still. The candle had resumed its rhythmic sway, and the heartbeat had stopped drumming in her ears. Her mouth tasted strange, like raw meat or warm blood. She heard a creak in the wood.

A blackbear stood at the doorway to the bedroom.

Laura locked eyes with it and heard its claws against the floorboards. She held her breath, her ears began to hum. Its eyes were empty and murderous, and it was moving in an unnatural and menacing way.

The bear charged her, snarling. It almost sounded like Max was yelling from another room. Laura’s peripheral vision was lost. She sprinted back to the kitchen and looked around desperately for a knife or a blunt object. She could hear the bear turning over the chair, the other wine glass breaking. In a frenzied panic, Laura grabbed a large dessert fork from the cupboard and gripped it so tightly that she felt it become part of her body. She could taste the warm metal again.

In the strobe effect of the candle light and shadows, Laura could hear Max’s voice, he was screaming, but didn’t sound like he was in pain. The bear ran up to her and stood on two feet, raising its arms to slash her. Laura felt something come over her. She let out a guttural shriek as she stabbed the bear in its neck. Once at first, but she couldn’t stop herself, she wanted to make it out of this night alive. She kept stabbing and stabbing until the bear fell to the floor with a sickening thud.

Laura went to prod the bear with her foot.

A gurgling sound.

Max rolled out from underneath the bearskin rug, his hand struggling to apply pressure to his neck. He stared at Laura, his eyes like dying stars.

Laura was flexing every muscle in her body. Her mouth was shut so tight she felt like she was pushing her teeth back into her gums. Her heart was beating so fast she was becoming lightheaded.

“Oh my god! Shit! What…what have I done?! MAX!” she choked. Her voice didn’t sound like her own. She began to sob a wretched and inconsolable howl.

She could hear the wooden heartbeat of the cabin, distinct from her own. It was slower, calmer, almost sanative. Laura felt her own heartbeat beginning to abate. Soon, hers had matched that of the cabin. A bizarrely calm silence fell over her.

The shutters of the roof clacked delicately.

“The list,” the wind said with soothing sibilance.

Laura wiped the tears, snot, and blood from her face. “The list?” she asked, her voice hoarse and thick with emotional wear.

The wind said nothing more.

Somewhere outside the cabin, there was a light knocking sound. Laura forced herself not to look down at Max’s body as she stepped over him and made her way to the oval table where she had first seen the list. She looked at the photograph once more. The man and woman were gone and all that remained was a picture of the cabin, clearly at an earlier point in time, as it looked to be in better shape. Laura retrieved the list from behind it and looked at it once more.

Keep the candle burning

Clean the silverware

Shovel in the shed

Laura felt herself sobering up. She scoffed at the list and set it back down on the table. She was also starting to feel the gravity of the situation at hand, and decided to make a move and bail from the cabin. It would be one hell of a trek to get back through unfamiliar woods and back to the car, and she knew to her core that she may never recover from the trauma of killing Max, but the alternative was far more grim.

With a deep and sharp inhale, Laura stuffed her afghan back into her satchel, claimed the car keys out of its front pocket and made her way to the front door of the cabin. She made sure not to look at Max’s body, she knew she couldn’t handle it. She felt a mood that was difficult to define, a sense of thrilling relief at the prospect of escaping a horrific experience infused with a steady undercurrent of existential dread. She pushed these thoughts out of her mind and reached for the doorknob.

Locked. The door wouldn’t budge.

Laura shot frustrated air through her nostrils. “What the…?” she muttered. She pulled and twisted the knob as if she were playing a furious high-stakes game of Bop-It. Nothing. She groaned and then made her way to the back door.

Locked. It didn’t move an inch.

“Fuck!” Laura punched the door and screamed. She threw herself against the door a few times, then slumped down with her back against it. Hot tears were welling up in her eyes and blurring her vision.

“The list,” the wind insisted.

Laura realized that the list had appeared in her clenched fist. The cabin’s heartbeat became apparent once more and seemed to lull Laura’s own into a steady pulse, a selvage to the seams of her spirit. She opened the list and read aloud to herself.

“Keep the candle burning. Clean the silverware. Shovel in the shed,” she pushed each sentence out in its own breath and kept repeating the words like a mantra.

“Keep the candle burning. Clean the silverware. Shovel in the shed.”

Everything clicked into place in Laura’s mind. She knew what she had to do. The candle danced triumphantly as Laura picked it up and marched into the kitchen. She looked down at Max’s body, half cloaked by the bearskin rug. His neck was shredded and gored from the fork wounds, his eyes still open but devoid of life. Laura set down the candle and picked the fork up out of a pool of blood. She washed it off with the murky water from the sink and placed it back in the cupboard with the others.

“Clean the silverware.” She said to nobody.

Click. The sound of a latch or a lock came from the back door. Laura picked the candle back up and walked to the back door. She placed her hand on the knob and it turned with ease and opened into a clearing in the woods. She saw the woodshed at the edge of a marsh, its door opening and closing gently in the night breeze. Before, Laura might have thought the woodshed had a sinister appearance, but she no longer feared the cabin or its surroundings. She felt strangely at home. She entered the woodshed, offering the candle light to the interior. There was a workbench, a stool, a few buckets and little else. In the corner across from the workbench she saw a five-foot long shovel.

“Shovel in the shed.” said a voice that didn’t sound quite like her own.

Working by a cooperation of candle and moonlight, Laura dug a deep hole. She wasn’t sure how long it had taken, but she didn't feel exhausted whatsoever, in fact she felt rejuvenated. When she returned to the kitchen she had a thought. Though she didn’t ever see much of a future with Max, and things certainly soured between them that night, he wasn’t such a bad person that he didn’t deserve a respectful burial. Laura went into the bedroom and pulled the comforter from the mattress and laid it out on the middle of the floor. She pulled the bearskin rug off of Max’s body and dragged him by his feet onto the comforter. She thought about how many cultures of the world bury their dead with meaningful belongings, and she thought that was a fine sentiment. She fetched Max’s travel sack and dug through it, eventually fishing out the carved wooden frog she knew he had packed, though she didn’t know why. She placed it into Max’s still-warm and bloody hands and placed them in the center of his chest before rolling him up in the comforter and dragging him out back. Pulling a body by the legs is one thing, but Laura knew she wasn’t strong enough to lower Max into the grave, so she pushed his hips with her foot and he rolled into the pit.

She buried him.

The wind sighed contentedly.

The shingles of the cabin clacked like chimes.

The eyes of darkness closed in reverence.

Laura stood with one foot on the shovel, staring up into the night. She felt a sense of accomplishment, like she had endured a countervailing of fate and was emboldened by the experience. She gazed at the cabin, dark on the inside but the exterior seemed to glow with an odd beauty. Laura felt as though the cabin missed the light of the candle so she went back inside.

She set the candle back on the oval table next to the photograph. She no longer felt compelled to leave. She felt a kind of ownership and responsibility, and perhaps even an affinity. She went into the bedroom to look for a linen closet, but there was none. She looked at the stripped bed. “That doesn’t look right,” she thought. She retrieved her crimson afghan blanket and laid it down neatly over the mattress and stepped back to appreciate her work.

She sat on the bed and pulled the list out of her pocket.

“Keep the candle burning. Check.”

“Clean the silverware. Check.”

“Shovel in the shed. Check.”

She thought it would be appropriate to add one more item to the list. She wished she had a pen. Just then, she looked over at the bedside table at the big black book that sat upon it. There was an old jade green fountain pen resting on top of it. Laura touched it to her tongue and pressed it to the page and, to her pleasant surprise, it wrote. She used the black book to bare down while she made her addition to the list.

Make up the bed.

She blew on the paper to dry the ink and folded it back up to put into her pocket. She felt a deep curiosity about the black book. She picked it up and wiped the dust off the cover. There were no words on either the front or back. She opened it up and stared at the page.

GUEST BOOK

Laura held the pen, an auspice of newfound purpose, and wrote the first entry.

Laura & Max.

~

The sun was almost completely set and the woods were blanketed with a thick hazy twilight. A couple were making their way around a fallen tree covered in turkey tail mushrooms. “I think I see the cabin!” A man exclaimed, looking at his wife with an ear-to-ear smile. “I think you’re right!” she said. “Good timing, too. It’s about to get dark out,” she continued.

“Key is under the mat,” the woman said. Just as the man bent down to turn the mat, the door cracked open. “Well nevermind then,” the man laughed and pushed open the door. “Sure smells like a cabin,” the woman said, scrunching her face. They walked around idly the way people do in a new space, looking up at the rafters and at the kitchen and small table, until they noticed an oval table with a framed picture, a candle, and a black book. They both looked at the photograph. It was a man and a woman standing beside each other. The man was a bit lanky with long hair tied into a ponytail and he was wearing glasses. The woman beside him was shorter, with blonde hair and unrecognizable tattoos. Both of their eyes looked black and empty, and their faces didn’t really have any definition. They seemed to become more blurred and forgotten with every passing second the couple looked at the picture.

“I always think it’s weird to see pictures of strangers when you stay at a place,” The man said.

“What do we have here?” the woman said rhetorically as she picked up the black book. She opened it and a folded up piece of paper slid out. The man picked it up and opened it.

Keep the candle burning

Clean the silverware

Shovel in the shed

Make up the bed

The man read the list aloud. “O…kay. Weird list.” he said to himself.

Suddenly the door slammed shut. Nightfall was upon them. In the stillness of the cabin they could hear a faint wooden heartbeat. Knuckles on a barrel.

“Stay,” said the wind.

“Hey, can I get one of those matches?” the woman asked, wrapping herself up in a red blanket she found in the bedroom. The man dug a small matchbox out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her. She struck a match and lit the candle, holding it close to her chest. They both felt a tingle in their spines, and steadied their breath in the candlelit quietude of the cabin. There was a noise, at first it seemed to be coming from outside, but it also sounded like it was inside the cabin. They listened closely as the call of a bullfrog devoured the silence.

The flame of the candle went out.