Jason's Folly

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Two teens crouched and hid in bushes just feet away.

“Francis, look!” Abiba squeezed my arm. The autumn leaves crunched as I shifted my weight on my heels to turn where she was pointing. “The old cabin has a light inside.”

“Those bastards are over here,” shouted a distant voice, “the dirt and leaves are all shifted. They went that way!”

“Crap.” I whispered. Abiba stopped talking and looked at me with wide eyes.

“C'mon, maybe that means the cabin is open.” I pulled Abiba from the bushes and pumped my legs to the lichen ridden door of the faux Native American-styled cabin.

Once inside, I took a deep breath and realized I gave myself a few scrapes on the knee running over. No matter; Abiba’s older brothers could track any hunt, but respected private property too much to bother an inhabited cabin in the dead of night. In that way, the candle had worked in our favor.

I looked for Abiba and saw her on her knees, the side of her face pressed into the water-warped planks on the floor.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I heard a bumping from under the floor.”

I rolled my eyes. “It could be anything: your brothers outside, a lousy pipe-”

“No, no, this thumping was angry, like something was punching up on the floor.”

I smiled and got up close to her and whispered, “Maybe it’s a nest of writhing rats!” To my disappointment, she was too focused to be scared.

Abiba gasped from a thought, "What if someone's down there?" she asked. She listened a moment longer, then shot her head up and gasped. "What if it's that boy? The one who went missing from school. He could be trapped in the crawlspace!"

“C’mon, that’s ridiculous.” I looked over and saw a half bath. “I’m going to wash my knee. You can stay here, just avoid the windows.”

Abiba pressed her ear back against the floor.

I stood up and walked to the faucet, twisting one of the knobs. No water came out; instead draped a black strand hanging from the faucet opening; something motivated me to tug it. I pinched it, feeling the cool, damp pipe air, and pulled.

The faucet vomited out wads of knotted black fiber and muck; the pipes vibrated violently. Adding to the clatter, I heard a raging, blunt banging from somewhere within the cabin. Among all the noise, I discerned someone calling my name.

“Abiba?” I raised my voice slightly. The cacophony stopped.

I walked into the foyer. Abiba was gone. My eyes raced from dark outline to dark outline, but none were the tall body with baggy clothes for which I searched. The thumping returned, echoing down a hall. I walked through into a larger room and saw two bodies face-to-face, their shadows oscillating from the candle’s single glow. Abiba? And someone else?

Fran ses

I heard a voice. So it was her. I tried to walk towards her but my legs became heavy, as if gravity increased. My stomach hurt. I smelled mold and dust.

“Abiba?”

The thumping returned and the cabin groaned. I turned my head up, slowly, against that gravity, but I did not see Abiba. I saw some man with arms locked against his body, spine straight, and just before him stood someone. Looking at her was difficult-my eyes throbbed with pain when I tried. Instead they centering down at my feet, where something emerged. I could not identify it but it drove my skin to pull back and up away. It grew: it was a mound of knotted, black fibers. I felt a restless need to escape. The mound ascended and I could not scream.

***

***

I cranked the gear into park, and the engine’s cough quieted a bit.

“Will it be long, Jason?” Sabine asked.

“Unfortunately, probably,” I replied, “but the rumors for this one are different.”

“As in, we’ll actually get paid?”

“That’s the spirit... get it?”

Sabine rolled her eyes.

“Remember, I pay you more than I pay myself!” I hefted myself out of the van. “Whenever that happens!”

I smirked a bit and adjusted my hat as I approached the ranger’s quarters; I could sense Head Ranger Hanz’s emphatic arm movements through the screen door. I eavesdropped on the conversation inside.

“Frances Cloutier: male, college-aged, in a relationship, disappeared, just like the rest of them. Abiba Haboob: no alibi, but also no rational way for her to commit murder and hide it, also like the rest of them.”

“‘No rational way?’” Hanz’s long arms hung in the air in disbelief.

“When questioned the women have no memory of what happened inside the cabin,” retorted the younger voice. “So what, chief, you’re going to tell me that every one of these girls overpowered her boyfriend and hid the body in a place trained dogs can’t find?”

“I believe we face something stranger than the tussles of adolescent love, gentlemen.”

I entered the station and angled my hat to cover my face in a cool way.

“Jason,” Hanz said, avoiding eye contact, “please leave and never come back.”

“And what would you do when you have a haunting in your midst?” I said, lowering myself on a creaking chair.

“Please don't break my chair.” Hanz’s head hung low.

“What is he talking about?” asked one of the rangers, indicating superb intelligence.

“Fifteen years ago, you had another string of missing people's cases.” I said.

“There was an avalanche!” Hanz shouted with the help of his arms. “And you brought that up two years ago when you thought the summer camp was haunted.”

“Gentlemen, you were right to rule out these victims’ girlfriends. Rather, we are dealing with another sort of danger.... Do you have a chalkboard I could use? Visuals really sell this.” I directed their focus to a board with directions on it while pocketing a pen from the desk.

“Absolutely not. Get out of here. Your ‘support’ is not welcome.” Hanz shooed me and then shifted to the group of five rangers. “I want you to investigate the area again, this time at night. Maybe some mountain lions strayed a little too far North this year.”

I opened my mouth to contribute some valuable insight, but two of the rangers, in surprising strength, grabbed me under my arms and shoved me out.

I faintly heard Sabine ask “Success?” from the inside of our van.

“I would say halfway there.” I fixed my hat, looking down at my hand, where I had written the coordinates of the rangers’ destination.

***

My neck hurt as my van rebounded from a pothole. The shuffling of an assortment of voodoo dolls, charms, and other wards continued for a few seconds as the van rocked along the earthen road. The rangers’ jeep which we were trailing could handle the cratered roads of Opapka State Park; we, in a commercial vehicle built for the maternal pavement of suburbia, did not have such luxury.

“I’m not getting any hits for ghosts in the area.” Sabine said, trying to get her voice over the rumbling of the van. “No murdered fiancés, haunted houses, ghost tours, rumors... nothing. And nothing on that clipping you found from the... Opapka Chronicler?”

“Opapka Crucible,” I corrected, handing the article to Sabine. It amounted to our only lead on the history of the cabin, though the text and photos had washed out from age. As she pinched the clipping, Sabine bit her lip: she uncovered something.

“I’ve seen this before.” Sabine finally muttered. “When I took photos of orbs as a teen, over time the definition would fade. I call it astro-laminar degradation.”

“Uh-huh.” I couldn’t analyze what Sabine said. The road began to wind. The dense wood meant I could only catch the rear lights of the jeep in moments at the right angle. “I think we’re dealing with something more serious than the orbs you saw as a kid.”

“... well I know how to undo it. You’ll thank me later.”

The forest opened up to a clearing, and the road straightened, though I couldn’t see the red lights any more. They must have gone far for that to happen. I pressed on the gas.

“My method worked. The photos are clear now!” Sabine’s voice squeaked.

The suspension rattled as we accelerated. I still could not see them at all.

“One picture is of a cabin and the other... a woman at the gallows... no, a girl. Wait, the pictures are printed over some text:”

‘My home, my cabin, shall never go dark...’”

The engine roared as I demanded more.

“‘So long as man possess his arrogance.’”

The cratered road tested my suspension.

“‘I will beckon them, unto them I hark.”

My eyelids hung heavy from monotony.

“‘Reduced to animal, as I ascend.”

Trees and rocks and road but nothing in sight ….

“‘Festering, squirming, begging, not the end!”

Wide open and dark, I turned on the beams.

“‘And his final sight is my candle’s dance.”

The jeep appeared! I braked suddenly, tires spitting pebbles and clay. We hit the jeep hard, exhaust and fumes filled the air. I felt my seat’s metal frame bump forward as Sabine’s body carried the momentum of the van.

I took deep breaths. My whole body pulsed in soreness. Almost falling to get out of the van, I looked back from where we came: only more woods and a sharply curving road. I did not see the clearing we drove through.

Before I let myself process the inconsistency, I raced around the van and yanked open the back doors. Sabine’s head leaned against the back of my seat, giving a pained smile signaling consciousness.

“You alright?”

She gave a weak thumb up.

“Can I leave you here for a bit?”

She nodded and smirked, aware of her hurt state.

I grabbed a flashlight, and went to investigate the jeep.

It was abandoned but the engine was still running. They left the high beams on too. The doors hung out as far as the hinges allowed. I pointed the spotlight of the flashlight to the interior. The rangers left plenty of equipment, in disarray no less. Even if the crash caused a little maelstrom inside, responsible rangers wouldn’t have left the doors wide open for wildlife to pick at the rations….

I smiled and breathed a bit of air out my nose, “Wildlife like me.” I picked up a trail bar and ate it.

Abundant, the light from the undamaged high beams of the jeep carved shadows deep into woods, tapering to nothingness. A calculus began in my mind, weighing the costs and rewards for pursuing deeper into the woods. Sabine would be alone, and to be frank the route here had not been direct and obvious. However—

Jaya seh

All thought stopped as I heard a voice, distant, and feminine.

Sehh

I pumped my legs and the rest of my body fell into a dash, leaving the vehicles for the origin of the voice: within the forest

Yey suh

Deep within.

Soon I was beyond the cradle of the vehicles’ lights. But the voice kept saying “jaya” and “seh” and “suh.” My mind raced at this opportunity: audible phenomena! Typically, one could only detect such with ghost hunting equipment. To think I was possibly making direct contact!

The mud and loess transitioned to soft grass as I entered a clearing in the forest. The moonlight returned. In the center of the clearing stood a cabin: I knew the voice had come from inside. I entered and clutched a Tibetan charm I had in my pocket.

As my fingers wrapped the charm, I heard a riotous thumping down a hall. Was it a poltergeist? Excited, I opened the door at the end of the halfway. There stood five figures, the rangers; they appeared frozen.

“Is everything... okay?” I asked, breaking the silence.

Silence resumed. The rangers’ faces appeared strained.

I excused myself as I put my fingers to the pulse of one ranger. It was low. I identified it immediately: sleep paralysis, a classic paranormal event! Admittedly, more in the vein of alien abductions, but in the world of high strangeness there are no borders. I took kosher salt, herbs, and charms from my various pockets and got to work cleansing the place.

***

After that night, Hanz conceded defeat and agreed I should do whatever to cleanse the cabin. On the soonest full moon, we drove my van to the cabin. Sabine, injured from the crash, had to stay researching at home. I checked in with her.

“I’m sorry I can’t come, Jason, but my doctor says my neck isn’t up for a night without a bed, even if it's a haunted cabin.” Sabine stated over the phone.

“Shoot Sabine, I’m so sorry. I should have recognized we were in a spacetime dilation, but I was relying on my crappy spectrometer to alert me. Never rely on tech over your senses!”

“Go down this bend.” Hanz interrupted my token of wisdom. The path to the cabin was far tamer this time.

“Anyway, I’ll keep looking into the newspaper article we found. I’m actually on a roll, so I’ll call you back when I stumble on something. I’ll be with you in spirit!” She hung up.

“What’s this article about? Keep left here.” Hanz asked.

“Oh, the other night Sabine found a clipping about the cabin. She found it mentioned with some woman getting hanged.”

“She was a young girl.” Hanz turned to his right and looked into the forest.

“You know about it?”

“ … merge into the uphill trail. We’re going into the highlands. Yes, I know about it. Frankly, I’ve kept some old stories from you to keep you away. Turn on your high beams.”

My van illuminated the sloped path into the forest, shadows stretching long and thin.

“This is long ago. I was a child. Injury and years of bodily wear from forestry had made the men of Opapka dependent on early pensions from the logging company. Naturally, the company declared bankruptcy by the time I grew old enough to carry an ax, so there was absolutely nothing left for anyone-here’s a bend coming up, slow down and then press the gas for when it gets steep.”

I did so.

“The men became disgruntled, and pathetic. Women took the brunt of it. Fathers turned to drinking. Mothers and wives tried to get work, but that roused jealousy among their husbands. I’ll admit, I too partook in that venom that bled through Opapka, and I would chase girls out of town for having pretty hair…. You’ll need to slow down from here on out.”

The gravel road turned to soft dirt.

“It was a crime to oppose fathers and men. Until the disappearances and men going under.”

“I’m sorry, what do you mean by that?”

“Anyway, you’ll need to stop here. The dirt turns to a sort of clay that will trap a vehicle like this.”

I slowed the van to a stop. “Well, you can keep telling your story, Hanz.” I was stunned at what he had shared, or rather, that he shared.

“We need to take your supplies to the cabin on foot. We need to start now.”

Hanz was done sharing, it seemed.

***

I took the last handful of salt to complete the floor sigil. Standing up, I appreciated my work on the room. I recited 77 verses of the Bible. I sprinkled my sleeping bag with rosemary oil. I had Ojibwe dream catchers, prayer bowls, a Mani wheel, and a Voodoo grigri at the ready. It was not appropriation, I thought to myself, because I needed them. At the center of the room, channeling all that energy, was the Great Seal of the Archangel Michael, with a diameter of approximately 1/3,000,000 the size of Venus (give or take, Seraphim are not picky). It was tricky, working solely under the light of a few electric lanterns and flashlights, but my years of paranormal experience allowed me to craft the most astrally secure spot in the state.

“I will leave you to it, then.” Hanz turned away. I went to see him out through the hall. Hanz continued, “I will come back in the late morning, in case the witch wakes up late.”

“That’ll do, Hanz. That’ll do,” I replied, keeping the comedic momentum going.

I watched Hanz walk into the forest toward distant headlights, his figure getting harder and harder to discern from the canvas of black hues of the forest night. Now, the spirits have only me for company.

I settled back into the cabin living room, the control room for this operation, where I found the paralyzed rangers. I sat on my sleeping bag and read, but discomfort led me to tread over the same paragraph repeatedly. Picking up the bag, I saw a small mound on the floor, no bigger than a silver dollar: a bump of dark, straight fibers, perhaps a growth on the wood; a mold maybe. I moved my sleeping bag away from it.

I decided I should press Hanz further for details on his story. I passed my arm back for my phone to feel already vibrating. Sabine was calling.

“... Yello?” I answered.

“Hey Jason, I found more about the witch.”

“Oh, did we settle on it being a witch?” I put down my book.

“Yves Santiago. 14. She would be the youngest case of capital punishment in the state, were it a legal ruling.”

“Hold on, I think I need to relight my sage.” The musk and dust of the cabin bothered me.

“Officials accused Yves of the deaths of her brother and his five friends, though their bodies remained lost.”

“I’m going to put you on speaker.” I set my phone down and grabbed a lighter.

“I found her testimony through a public records request. She claimed the boys threatened to cut her hair off, so she ran up to a cabin to hide. The boys found her, though.”

“Ran? This cabin is 40 miles from Opapka’s limits. It must have taken a young girl days to get here by running.”

“Right? She said it took her days! She said she collapsed when she got inside the cabin. But the sheriff’s testimonies consistently said it was a short hike from town.”

I clicked the lighter, but the sage would not light.

“The sheriff who found her, Jay Sonderburg, did report seeing figures standing still in the cabin, but upon entering only found Yves. When asked where the boys went, she simply said ‘Down.’ He said he couldn’t make sense of that answer, and asked her who took them away, and she said ‘It was me, but I was not myself. And I came up and took them. I heard a voice that said I would not have to be afraid of bad men anymore.’”

After a score of attempts, I slammed the lighter onto the table in frustration. “It won’t light at all!”

Sabine said nothing, but betrayed disappointment in her tone. “What won’t?”

“This sage!”

“Didn’t you say the sage was a weak strain since we had to switch from organic sage? How much of a difference does it make? And did you hear what I found?”

“It smells in here!”

Sabine said nothing again.

“Look, I’m sorry, I don’t want to take any chances tonight. This is real. I know you haven’t experienced that before—”

“I have experienced real hauntings before! Just not with you!”

Trees outside groaned and swayed as a forceful gust blew outside. A stampede of thumps came from beneath the floor.

“Jason? Are you listening?” Sabine asked.

“Did you hear that? I have to go. Sorry for being an ass.”

“Sure. Fine, I’ll let you know if I find anything else.”

She hung up.

Something heavy and wooden hit the floor. My eyes instinctually looked to my first line of defense: a heavy crucifix I had placed above the door. It lay cracked on the ground. I slowly lifted it, keeping attune to my senses for any paranormal foul play. This could be anything, or nothing; a failed screw, or the first strike of a poltergeist. I chose not to investigate further, assuming the paranormal. I preferred to stay wary.

I returned to my sleeping bag, the safety of the center of the sigil, and sat down to meditate. Emptying my mind proved difficult, however. With the story Hanz refused to complete, the fight with Sabine, and the fallen crucifix, there was much to mull over. Also, my butt hurt. I picked up the bag to move it and noticed that peculiar bump on the floor again. I thought I moved the bag, but perhaps the thumping slid it back. The mound seemed larger now, the size of my fist. I moved the bag again, keeping within the sigil.

Ten minutes into a good sesh of Vipassana meditation, I heard tires brake on the dirt outside. I got up to the window facing the sound and saw Hanz in my van parked outside. I rushed slightly outside, perhaps betraying a trace of fear and want for company.

“It’s not good practice to leave a visitor in the woods at night, even with shelter.” Hanz said. “The devil himself could be here and I would feel guilty not being there to remind you to douse your campfire. I’m sticking with you for the night.”

“Hanz,” I said, “I couldn’t be happier. I realized that all the prep work I did would make this the most spiritually secure location we could stay in, even with the devil himself.”

“Well, if we will be so safe, then maybe you can tell me some ghost stories so I feel properly scared.”

“My friend, if I hadn’t heard those words come out of your mouth myself, I wouldn’t believe you just said that.”

I walked Hanz through the cabin into the living room and began to describe my setup.

“I glossed over the details before, but since we have all night, I may as well explain the nitty gritty here.” I picked up an unglazed clay amulet. “This is a grigri, of Caribbean origin. Unlike other amulets, I’ve found it a useful ward even without wearing it—”

Hanz made a guttural sound, and I looked up to see him crawling into my sleeping bag. I walked to put my palm on his upper back and he vomited. Being the personable guy I am, I gave a hearty laugh and patted Hanz’s back.

But at the same moment I looked down. The sleeping bag now laid directly on the sigil, and Hanz had neutralized the salt outline of the center symbols. My stomach sank. At this moment, we became vulnerable. No charm or nicknack could compare to a proper sigil of an archangel.

“Hanz, can you sit over there? I need to clean this up now.”

“Jason, I do not feel good.” Hanz squirmed, disturbing the sigil again.

“I am not joking.” My voice trembled. “I need to fix this or things will get bad fast for us.”

I heard the wind cry outside and the cabin creaked. The floor tremored. But among the susurrus and snapping branches outside, I discerned a voice.

Yey seh

Something in me told me I needed to go to it, the voice. I stepped over Hanz, ignored the sigil, and tread cautiously into the cabin hall.

Zyay sehm

Murmuring, calling, the voice directed me as if it were a finger demanding to come hither.

Jeay somne

The gale began again and the front door struggled to keep shut. I reached for the knob.

Jay somn

Jaysomn

Jaysomn!

The voice surrounded me. I shut my eyes as if preparing to dive and open the door. The gust blew the knob from my hands and whipped the door against the wall. I ran out.

“Jason!”

It was Sabine. I wanted to say so many things, personal and accusative, but her presence shocked me. It made no sense.

“Jason, I found more about the witch.”

I could not speak a complete word.

“It turned out that Jay Sonderburg got too personal with the case. He went to investigate it himself, namely by staying in the cabin alone. Eventually, he believed he heard Yves talk in the cabin. People dismissed it as the wind. Apparently the wind speed on this mountain can get quite intense.”

Just then, I heard the door whip shut from the wind. It slammed with fury, and ricocheted back onto the wall, splintering. I turned back to face the cabin, but Sabine gripped me by the shoulders and made me face her.

“She was afraid of the dark so he would put a candle on the window for her. Soon he stayed there all the time. People began to disappear, and it turned out he would lead them to the cabin to show her to them. He always chose men. She always chose men.”

“Sabine, I need to get back to the cabin.”

“Go under the cabin Jason.”

“What did you say?”

An avalanche of crashes came from the cabin, clay and glass shattering. I thought the entire cabin collapsed. I broke from Sabine’s grasp and sprinted into the cabin. Inside, everything laid in ruins. Pages of books laid strewn across the room, ripped from the spines. The chaos destroyed the amulets and charms, the chains which held them completely broken. The sigil, before still recognizable after Hanz’s sickness, was merely salt spread throughout the room. Nothing remained.

I could not find Hanz at all, and, to think of it, his vomit from before was gone from the floor too. Perhaps swept up in whatever happened. Regardless, tonight was a bust.

I sped out of the cabin, calling to Sabine. “Ok, change of plans. I don’t know how you got here Sabine, but we need to leave now.”

I saw no one outside. Just the torn up earth where my van once was.

I needed to go. I could run. I could remember the path. It was dark, but to be far from here was to be safe.

Jay somn

I heard it from behind me. Hearing the voice, again, I realized running was foolish: I was too far from town. I did not at all remember the way; Hanz guided me. The forest was too dark. I felt it would be far safer in the cabin.

Jay somn

I could go back inside. I could suture the amulets. The pages of my tomes, ripped, were still readable. I could try lighting the sage again. I stepped onto the porch of the cabin.

Jay son

I could even fix the sigil. I didn’t have enough salt to start over, but maybe I could push some of it back into place. I stepped over the splintered remains of the door on the floor.

Jay son

I am safe. I am above this spirit, this witch. My charms and preparations do not compare to my internal karmic energy. I stepped into the living room, surrounded by my neutralized equipment, standing over the center of the sigil.

I noticed a calm. The gales quieted. Chirps and calls began, signaling the early dawn. For a moment, I believed in my survival.

Then, I felt a weight upon me, a gravity, pulling me at the arms and chin. My legs became attached to the floorboards. A pull forced my chin down to my chest, aligning my eyes on the fibrous mound on the floor.

The cabin smelled again, that odor of age and dust, of decaying wood and stagnant places. It came from that mound. My eyes, struggling to focus, saw the mound grow, out and then up, reaching the span of my hand. It grew closer until I realized they were not fibers, but black hairs, draped at the sides.

Activity struck me, as if I snapped from a dream. The realization that I stood again within the cabin horrified me, and I felt primal pulses in my muscles calling for flight. The mound, the head, ascended closer to me, up to my hip. I twitched and spurred. From my deepest being I begged to go away, driven by the knowledge of being totally trapped by this psychic predator.

My hands, unable to move beyond slight finger twitches, stretched for a small cross in my pocket. It was close, close enough for a touch. I overcame every instinct of panic to focus on reaching for that object of faith. The head had now reached my chest; where the hair parted I could see a pale, unliving face devoid of warmth.

I remembered then what Sabine said, that the boys from the cabin were pulled down, pulled under. I imagined my body pressed against the countless other victims beneath, kicking and punching and gnashing at the floorboards above as another soul joined them in this witch’s demesne.

I stretched my fingers to the point of pain and touched my cross.

The head continued to ascend. I did not want it. I wanted anything but that head to come any closer. Its scalp soon pressed against my face, and I had to breathe in through her matted and rank hair.

I then saw what little of the room remained in my perception beyond the witch’s head moving up. The witch was pulling me down. My body stressed and twitched and pumped at any chance of escape, but my higher mind, above instinct, knew my fate. And as she pushed my body into the floorboards, and the bodies under the floorboards roared at yet another inhabitant, a light entered my vision. My final sight: the false warmth of a candle emerging at that decrepit window.