If These Walls Could Talk

The candle burned in the window of the living room, which had not been used for its named purpose in many years. Only dead things lived there now; the skeleton of an opossum, the severed head of a rabbit brought in by a cat the day before, and the bloating carcass of a raccoon. Countless insects as well, but those had lived and died in multitudes before the cabin had become what it was.

The candle had been lit by a young woman. As she sat by the window, the cabin was reminded of a girl who had lived there years before. Her name had been Elizabeth, and the cabin had seen her grow up. The molding at the threshold of the kitchen still bore the marks of different milestones the girl had marked as she hit new heights. The far wall, where the fireplace lay, had been scribbled on by Elizabeth as a child. The wall leading into the kitchen had had a hole knocked into it during a party she’d thrown before she moved away. Elizabeth had worn her brown hair in a long braid and this girl did as well.

Elizabeth had spent many nights at that same window, watching the woods outside as a fire blazed in the living room. There was no fire burning tonight, the fireplace had long since become a haven for nesting birds. But as the girl looked out the window, she had the same listless expression Elizabeth had often had when she watched the woods. As the unnamed girl watched the window, she did not realize the candle had dulled her night vision, because, outside the cabin's front window, something watched back.

The girl grew restless, and took a deep breath, steeling herself for whatever she’d come here to do. She blew out the candle, exchanging it for a flashlight, and walked through the living room.

First, she entered the kitchen, a room that the cabin had many fond memories in. Fights were not often had in the kitchen. Bad news was delivered in bedrooms or living rooms. The kitchen was for cooking, and coffee, and nights spent baking. One family had lived in the cabin only briefly. They had two young children, and the mother would often bake cookies and brownies and cupcakes, then send the children off to wherever they went during the day. The kitchen had been her favorite room.

Many quiet mornings were had in that kitchen. Numerous adults who’d inhabited the cabin throughout its long life would sit in that kitchen and drink their coffee as they watched the forest outside. The kitchen window was perhaps the most loved in the cabin. It overlooked the backyard, where the cabin's first owners had cleared the land to plant trees of their choice. The magenta Japanese maples, the weeping cherry tree that flowered so lovely in the spring, and the waxy magnolias. They’d planted a trellis with wisteria as well, which had since run rampant across the property. The years had bridged the gap between the old forest, and the new landscaping blended with the old. It was a lovely mix of the structure of the man-made world being taken back in by nature, much like the cabin itself.

The view had inspired all of the residents of the cabin at one point or another. But the girl in the kitchen could not see the view. Nor could she see that the beast lurking outside had moved to follow her, to peer at her with its many eyes from this window as well.

The girl did not find what she was looking for in the kitchen. She moved back out to the wood-paneled hallway, and into the first bedroom. The roof had collapsed in that room, so she did not venture very far in, but she looked as if she wanted to. She tested the spongy floor, which was wet from the open ceiling, and weighted down from the roof. She looked as if she might chance it, but a wet snap under her feet pulled her back. Then a wet snap from the other side of the room called her to attention.

She shone the flashlight on a pale hand that had pushed itself through the debris on the far wall. The girl stood there for a moment, staring, then as the hand was joined by not one, but two more, she took off.

She did not go outside and run to her car. They never did.

The cabin had become more than a cabin, but it could not act or move. It willed the girl to go outside, to leave, but she did not. She walked into the second bedroom, the one that had been the children’s bedroom of the last owner. Two twin boys had lived there, and the cabin’s memories of the boys giggling and playing and staying up late were slowly becoming outnumbered by the cabin's memories of screams and crying.

The beast with many hands had crawled its way through the debris. It never came in through the doors, perhaps because it could not. The beast crawled on its hands and knees, too tall to walk through the cabin. As it moved down the hallway the cabin felt it change shape, the eyes shifting over its body, and the number of hands never staying quite the same.

In the bedroom, the girl was shaking but did not move to hide. Only when the beast peered around the corner, and her light locked on its fleshy form did she look ready to act.

“Be not afraid, child.” The beast said as it hauled more of its bony body through the threshold of the door.

As the beast spoke, the girl seemed to sober to her surroundings. “What- what are you?” She asked it.

“I am half like you” The creature told her “And I am half something else. You would not understand,” he said through his human mouth, on a very inhuman face.

“Where am I?” She asked “What am I doing here? I- I don't even remember coming here. What is this place?”

The beast cut her questions off as it sloughed closer “I called you here, and you listened.” He said, “You are here for something very special.”

The girl shone her light on the beast’s body, taking in the arms and eyes on the surface, and the jagged skeleton protruding underneath it all. “I want to go home.” She said simply.

“That won’t happen.” The beast said. Its platitudes had not much improved in its visits to the cabin.

“What do you want?” She asked, looking around her, finally thinking about an exit. The spell the beast cast always seemed to fade when its victims were greeted with its hideous form. The cabin did not have any doors in that room. Though the walls were being covered in vines from the outside, and they worked every day to crumble through the brick, it would be many years before anything would be able to escape that room.

“I want to help.” The beast told her.

“Then let me leave.” The girl answered.

“I don’t want to help you.” The beast said “I want to help humanity.”

“I’m human,” The girl said

“Yes, you are.” The beast said “these eyes can see that, but these eyes see many things” The best rolled an eye out of his shoulder and down his arm, holding it up to her.

She stared at it, clasped in one of the creature's human hands. What she saw there, what any of them saw there, the cabin did not know.

As she gazed into the eye the beast said simply “I’m sorry.”

“No,” She said, but appeared to be gazing into the eye, not listening to the mouth “That’s not possible.”

“Come here, child.” The beast said, and the spell she’d been under seemed to come over her again. “It’s going to be better.”

The girl wiped a tear from her eye, and walked closer to the beast, stepping over the spongy floor. She noticed, strangely for the first time, the foul odor that seemed to fill the cabin. She wrinkled her nose and looked down, considering the floor. But that did not stop her from walking into the beast's open arms.

“There there,” The beast said as it held her. Then it placed its arms over her body, and brushed lightly on her hair “It will be done soon.” And with that, the beast's many arms constricted. The grip on her hair tightened into a grip on her skull, then escalated. In just a second the arms all spasmed closer to the beast's bony body, and the cabin heard a series of crunches and cracks as blood sprayed over the ceiling, and the floor, and the walls.

When the blood slowed, the creature loosened its grip on the girl's carcass. It carried her through the hallway, tracing over a trail that was already dustless and still red. It carried her outside, and to the cellar door.

It was a lovely night, warm and full of the sounds of insects singing. The girls would have appreciated the night if she'd still had ears with which to listen, or eyes to look up at the stars.

The beast threw open the storm door and gazed at its previous victims. It held what was left of the girl for just a moment and said “Your death will save many.” Before it threw her onto the pile of rotting carcasses.

The cabin wondered if she could hear the creature, after all, the cabin itself had not always been able to hear. But if she could, the beast's words were of little comfort to the wet, flimsy body on the pile of bones. The words were of little comfort to the cabin as well.

The girl's body would decay, maggots and worms getting there first. Then the rats and fungi as well. The spots on the carcass pile where new bodies did not land even grew spindly plants as they aged, straining for the light above.

The bodies decayed slower than the cabin but shared the same journey. As they piled up in the cellar, the cabin began to feel a kinship with them that gradually evolved into something tangible.

After the beast had been there for many years, the cabin began to feel things rising up from the cellar. Some went right through the cabin, and off to wherever it is that the intangible part of humans goes to. Others stayed, and over time their presence grew stronger. The cabin felt them moving through the walls, and hovering over the cellar, gazing at what they used to be. The longer the cabin was used as the strange creature's abattoir, the closer its bond with the beings became.

They began to communicate; the beings and the cabin. They did not use words, that was for the living. But their feelings, impulses, and memories flowed wordlessly between the spirits and the cabin. The cabin served to let the spirits better communicate between each other, the walls and blood-soaked floors serving as a conduit to let their thoughts flow over one another.

The cabin shared its memories of when it was simply a cabin. The spirits would get themselves lost in memories and show the cabin snippets of their lives. Many of them had had very brief existences. The cabin saw many first dances, first kisses, first bike rides, and oftentimes not much beyond that. The memories of the dead started to mingle, and those who had died so young met with those who had not. They saw weddings and funerals and jobs and college and all of the things they would never see in life.

The spirits who had been there the longest began to grow restless. Some left, but most who had chosen to stay would not go peacefully. They began to grow angry, and restless. They began to plot. And together with the cabin, they began to come up with a plan.

Between slaughters, when the creature was gone, they would practice. The spirits, and the spirit the cabin now possessed would test their strength. The most disgruntled among them lent the most strength. They moved tables, they shook the walls, they grabbed at books with ghostly appendages. They grew strong slowly, and they grew together; their desires, their memories, shared among them for so long. And the memories the cabin had of its inhabitants were shared among the rest.

As the spirits marshaled themselves, they grew restless during the slaughters, but the collective mind among them knew that they could not strike too soon. None of them understood why the beast had chosen this place as its nest, but they did not know if it was bound to it. If it was scared off, it might find another empty place to commit its terrible acts. They stayed silent as the beast dragged new victims across the hall. Some might venture to lend a hand on the victim's shoulders as they ventured through the cabin, for some small measure of comfort. And the spirits of the freshly killed, who chose to inhabit the cabin, were raised up out of the cellar by the cabin spirits.

Things went on this way for quite some time until, on a cold night in October, a boy walked into the cabin. The cabin was restless but unsure if it was strong enough yet to interfere. The boy had sandy hair and wore hospital scrubs. He was not dressed for an excursion to an abandoned cabin in the woods, but those who ventured there under the creature's spell rarely were.

The boy's nametag was the first hint. It read Thomas. There were a million Thomas and Tommy's in the world, and the spirits all began to think of the Thomas's they’d known in their lives. Knowing the name of this boy endeared him just that bit more to the spirits, it made his looming death more personal. But there was something about this specific boy that the cabin found special. The cabin realized what it was when the boy stepped into the slaughter room. He looked at it with eyes that had gazed upon the room before. The spirits too began to recognize the boy from the memories the cabin had shared with them. This was Tommy, the boy who’d shared this room with his brother. The boy who’d stayed up late into the night talking and giggling. He’d had sleepovers in that room. He’d sat at a desk in the corner doing homework and drawing and gazing at the woods outside his window. He’d filled the room with countless good memories, and now the room was going to be splattered with his insides.

The cabin, and the spirits who’d grown with it, into it, would not stand for that.

The creature rolled one of its eyes out to present to Tommy, and it showed him horrors. The Cabin had caught glimpses over the years from spirits of what the beast held in its eyes. The spirits did not like to dwell, but there was little privacy between a haunted place and its ghosts.

The cabin had seen what it had come to understand as predictions. The girl who’d reminded the cabin so much of Elizabeth had seen her car swerve to avoid a rabbit, and in doing so she’d hit a family in the opposite lane. Three children burned to death in the ensuing fire, and the girl was made to watch.

A girl who’d come here in a bathing suit one night in December had shared her vision with the cabin. She’d been at work, in scrubs like Tommy. She was a surgeon. She’d seen herself saving a man’s life, performing a touch-and-go heart transplant. She pulled it off, but only just. And that man left with a new heart, but the same dark desires he’d come in with. He killed five women before he was caught, and the girl was made to watch each one.

The cabin and its inhabitants came to understand the creature's motive, to a degree. But it was not right. Why not kill the man who killed the women? If he could see events unfolding, why not try to influence them in a different way? Perhaps the creature was not prophet at all, and it only wanted to show its victims something awful before it ended them. Or perhaps it enjoyed playing God. But speculating on the motives of some monstrosity was not something that the cabin and its haunts spent much time dwelling on. And even if the creature was something cursed with seeing into the future, whatever it was trying to prevent did not seem to justify the carnage it left behind.

Tommy had finished watching whatever the eye showed him. He seemed more sober than the others “I would never do that!” He yelled, coming out of his stupor quickly, violently. He swung his flashlight at the beast, and it stopped the blow effortlessly with one of its many hands.

But now, the cabin had hands too. They reached up from the floorboards, and out of the walls, long ghostly arms forcing themselves back into the world. The beast craned its bony neck to look down, perhaps able to see into the realm of spirits with its strange and numerous eyes. Whatever it saw, or did not see. It did not exhibit emotion on the slab that was its face.

The beast was blocking the doorway, so Tommy looked for a different way out. The far corner, the one that had been inhabited by old wisteria vines, was beginning to crumble near the top. He grabbed a grimy old chair and went to test the walls.

The beast was struggling against the ghostly hands, forcing them away with his own. They poked at his eyes and grabbed his bony appendages. But still, they were not strong enough, the beast was slipping away.

Tommy was beating at the wall, and it was not working. The spirits quickly decided on a change of strategy.

Enough held onto the beast to keep it in place, and the rest moved to the wall. They moved together, pulling at the bricks and working their way between the decaying cabin walls, and the cabin willed them to it. The wall crumbled, and Tommy leaped out without a look back. He sprinted away, and the spirits turned their attention back to the beast.

They had it pinned again, but it wasn’t enough. But the cabin knew what had to be done Wordlessly, it told the spirits to do what they had done to the wall. The cabin was going down, but it was going to take the beast with it.

The spirits pulled at support beams and loose spots on the still-standing roof. They yanked the creature back into the living room, slowly pulling it down the hallway that so many bloody bodies had been dragged down.

The spirits worked at the cabin until finally, the roof began to crack and groan. It fell all at once, one section dragging the rest down, and the walls with it. The beast was half something monstrous, but it was still half-human. When the cabin fell, the beast cracked and splattered just like its victims had.

But the spirits had to be sure. One of them had an idea that quickly rippled through the group. It was met with revulsion, and fear, and disgust, but they knew what had to be done.

Sinking into the floor, the spirits ventured into the only part left of the cabin; the cellar. They looked at the pile of bones and decay, many of them for the first time since they’d died. Slowly, they ventured in to find where they had come from.

Upstairs, the beast was twitching, and many of its eyes were opening again. It was changed now, broken, but not dead yet.

The bodies, reanimated by their lost souls, made their way through the rubble. They were made of bones and skin and decayed clothes and they were fragile, but there were many of them.

With bloody and crumbling hands they grabbed the beast. The ones who no longer had hands bent broken bones together to pull at the beast's body. Together, they carried him to the cellar.

They dug to the bottom of the carcass pile, all the way to the dirt, and there they placed him. Then they crawled over top, burying him under his victims who had been denied the same courtesy. And with that, the pressure of the fallen roof exceeded what the floor could hold, and the cabin crumbled over top of it all, so that the dead, the beast that had put them there, and the cabin that had been witness, all rested together at last.