Light in the Dark

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. It was such a small thing, insignificant to the darkness surrounding it. What could one candle hope to accomplish, awash in the black seas of infinity? What could it illuminate here, in this dank, decrepit dump? Dust? Decay?

The light could have shown any of these things to Sarah, and she would have been ecstatic. At least, so long as it showed her just these things. Solemn solitude may have been its own horror genre, but it was preferred to the potential of company out here in these woods. All that should have lived out here were squirrels, deer, foxes, and maybe the odd bear. Finding a cabin so far from the rest of civilization and nearly as far from the hiking trail she’d lost sent a chill down her spine.

Still, despite this rooted reticence, she had no better option. Night had fallen, and she was miles away from the nearest campground or ranger station. At least in here, the walls would shelter her from the winds, and the roof would shield her from the still-falling snow. And she’d been lucky enough to find that candle, so she had some light.

She was confident that the snow obscuring her trail would be melted by the following afternoon and that she would be able to return to her car by tomorrow night. Then she could drive home and laugh with her friends about how scary the whole situation had been. The best stories were the scary ones, after all.

Now that she was armed with a candle, she was given a glimpse inside the forgotten cottage that would be her home tonight. The walls were decorated with cracked frames, faded photos of happier times hidden inside. The living room held no TV of any kind, just a linen armchair and a bookcase, surprisingly empty. Her fingers dragged along the chair, staining them with dust and dirt.

The kitchen was separated by a wide, open doorway, which had clearly not been used much even when someone lived here. A single cast-iron pan hung on the wall next to the gas stove, which did not work after a curious turn of the dial. The counter was layered with dirt, dust, and old stains of blood drops, hopefully from cutting meat and nothing else.

Down the short hallway were three doors, one open and two closed. Sarah’s heart felt heavy as she entered the open doorway, slipping inside the bedroom of this meager residence. Above the bed was the mounted head of a doe. A certain terror was frozen on the doe’s face, almost as if it was alive when its head was put on the wall. Sarah had never seen the point of using a once-living creature as a trophy. For food? That was necessary; that was survival. But taking the head off of something you killed, dismembering it, filling it with plaster, and putting it on display just felt… disrespectful? She couldn’t understand it.

The bed itself had been unmade for years. The blanket, marked with the telltale burns of a cigarette, was strewn about as if whoever lived here had gotten up in a hurry. The sheets, once white, were stained yellow and brown. A certain staleness hung in the air, a bitter odor that made standing here more and more unbearable by the second. Sarah was sure that when the time came for her to sleep, this bed would be the last thing she would sleep on.

An old dresser, carved from oak, was sitting opposite the bed to her left. She didn’t dare open the drawers, afraid of whatever creepy crawlies that could have been dwelling within. But there was a mirror there, encrusted with dirt and blurred. The candlelight reflected her face back at her and a bit of the room beyond, but only just. Something lurched within her stomach when she looked closer. In the reflection, besides the bed, stood the shadow of a man that reached the ceiling.

She spun around, holding out the candle in a vain attempt to defend herself from the shape. There was nothing, and no one, there. It had to have been a trick of the light, stretching her own shadow across the room. There was no other explanation.

Her heart was still racing as she shut the bedroom door behind her on her way out. The door on the other side of the hall gave way with a firm doorknob twist, creaking as it slowly revealed what lay inside. It was the bathroom. A sink was to her left, and beside it was the toilet. Neither had been cleaned since this place was vacated, that was certain. And the latter was utterly devoid of water, perhaps for the better. But where she’d expected to be hit with the foul odor of old plumbing, a different smell assaulted her. The tub at the other end of the room, stained with mud on the sides, was stained with something far more concerning inside it.

“Blood,” she gasped. More blood than could ever be explained away. Enough for someone to drown in. It smelled like death. She gagged.

Sarah didn’t care about the third door anymore. Where it led was none of her business. She never should have come in here in the first place.

She bolted into the living room. A panicked glance through the window revealed that the snowing had stopped. It would still be cold, but if she used the knowledge of this terrible place as motivation, reaching some semblance of civilization by morning was within her grasp. Sure, she hadn’t slept, but that didn’t matter. She could make it. The human body was capable of that much, right?

She decided to leave the candle behind. The flame wouldn’t survive in the wind. And so she snuffed the candlelight, setting it back where she found it. She swung open the door, hoping to leave this strange place behind her.

But she had not left it behind at all. Opening the front door only took her to the same living room, mirrored precisely like the one before. The only difference she could see horrified her beyond the impossibility of what just happened. The candle she set on the windowsill was gone.

Shaking from the cold and the fear, she reached into her pocket and fumbled for her lighter. It flipped open, igniting with a flame even meeker than the candle she had just moments ago. It was such a small thing, insignificant to the darkness surrounding it. What could such flickering respite hope to accomplish, awash in the black seas of infinity? What could it illuminate here, in this dark, deteriorated dwelling? Dread? Death?

She could barely see anything. Her eyes, opened wide, revealed only fantastical phantasms lingering in the shadows beyond her vision. The darkness enveloped her like smoke, choking her with panic. All sense of logic and reason had been burned away in one terrifying moment. This didn’t make sense. None of this made sense. If she were a woman of God, perhaps now would have been the time to pray. But she was not and had no words left to say, for there were none that could ever hope to describe the confusion and calamity that beset her.

Sarah grabbed the knob, trying to open it again. It turned, but the door didn’t move. She pushed and pulled and pushed again, but it was to no avail. The window wouldn’t budge either, not even with her elbow slamming against it. The impact sent shockwaves across her arm but hadn’t even left a scratch on the glass.

Her eyes swelled with tears of frustration, of fear. What was this trap? What was this hell?

She wracked her brain for anything, squeezing it dry for the barest drop of something worthwhile. All that came from it was a memory of something she had once deemed so insignificant.

“The pan!”

Sarah rushed into the kitchen, the light of her lighter guiding her hand towards the cast-iron skillet on the wall. She pulled it from the nail that hung it there, hefting its weight in her one free hand. It had to be heavy enough to break the glass. It had to be.

She spun around, hoping to test that theory out all over that damned window. But she did not get very far before she froze in place. Her heart had displaced itself from her chest, lodging itself in her throat. An alien wave of cold air washed over her, turning the sweat of fear on her skin to ice of horror. What stood before her now was no trick of the light, no illusion that she could explain away.

Standing in the center of the living room was the silhouette of a man. His head reached the ceiling above. His arms and legs were far too long to belong to a human and far too thin. And even if her light was dim, it should have been enough to gather the faintest glimmer of detail from the shape. But whatever terrible thing stood before her was devoid of any such trait. It was a void. A black hole devouring all light surrounding it. Darker than pitch blackness. Entropy made manifest. Terror given form.

She had already exhausted every opportunity to run. Instinct made her fingers tighten around the handle of the pan. Her subconscious made the decision for her. She charged, swinging the skillet at the groin of the shape. And though she made contact, the shadow was not amused or pained. One of its long, spindly arms swatted at her. It struck with the force of a hurricane. She was flying, soaring down the hall and through the third doorway. She crashed down a flight of steps, the wood splintering at the sheer force of her landing. The shape stood in that open doorway, somehow visible in how dark it was. It did not pursue her. Its arm simply stretched towards the knob of the door, slamming it shut. The dark had swallowed her whole.

She buried her face into the sleeve of her jacket, sobbing. Her ribs felt like they were on fire. Her head throbbed, and her scalp felt tight like it was crushing her skull. Every second that passed was another second the pain grew, from awful to terrible to excruciating. Only now did she realize that her body had gone numb at the impact, the shock protecting her from the worst of it.

But she could not afford to slow down because of this agony. She would have to use it as a reminder that she was still alive despite the horrors she was suffering. Despite her body’s protests, she stood, placing her free hand against the wall to steady herself. The frying pan hung limply from the other hand, much heavier than before. Only now did she realize that she was still holding onto it, and that her lighter was missing.

But now that she was standing, her eyes free from her sleeve, she saw the faint glow of something further in the basement. It was a green glow, like phosphorous lined the walls. The emerald light shone from something on the floor that she could scarcely believe.

It was a sigil. Circles, lines, and shapes were made divine by the eerie glow it emitted. Sarah did not recognize it from anywhere. It was no pentagram or any other seal of evil that she knew. No horror or anguish overcame her. Staring into the geometrical perfection before her actually brought an uneasy sense of comfort, like the warming calm of a crackling fireplace or a gentle breeze on a warm summer’s day. There was a peace that came from the unknown, inviting her to stand within the glow. Just another inch. Just another. She dropped the skillet to the ground and reached, ever gingerly, for her salvation from the darkness. Its divine grace filled her every cell to the brim with its incandescence. Reason had not entered into the grand equation she was presented with. All that mattered was the sigil. It was far greater than she ever could be.

“Don’t,” a voice wheezed ahead of her.

The shock of another’s words shook her from her trance. She stepped back, mortified at the source of that frail, pitiful voice.

It was man, or what remained of one — flesh clinging to the bone, belly shrunken to the spine, little more than a skeleton wrapped in thin skin — bound to the wall by some invisible force. His eyes glimmered with the glow of the rune but not much else. He should not have been alive. He couldn’t have been. But Sarah had seen enough of the impossible tonight to not dare challenge it aloud. Far more pertinent questions needed to be asked.

“What the hell is going on here?” she demanded. “What is that thing upstairs? Why can’t I leave?”

The poor sod struggled to lick his lips; it was apparent that he had not spoken in ages. “This is a gate.”

She stared down at the sigil. It seemed to glow brighter in response.

“To where?” she asked.

“Somewhere else.”

She squinted. “What kind of answer is that?”

“I do not have one better.”

Theories on what he meant or how this was possible flooded her mind. Was she dreaming? If she was, this was the most prolonged nightmare she ever had. And the most lucid, too.

“What do you know then? How can I get out of here?”

He may have been trying to laugh, but all the corpse of a man could muster was a slight baring of his mangled fangs. “If I knew that, I would not be here. Every fear is manifested here. Yours have ensnared you.”

“Why shouldn’t I use this gate, then? What if it’s my only way out?”

“Not all of you can pass through.”

The room began to spin ever so slowly. It made her sick. The fire in her ribs now swelled in her gut. “If you want to help me, tell me something that can get me out of here!”

He didn’t seem phased. “That creature you saw upstairs? That’s what the gate didn’t allow to pass when my husband used it. What you’re looking at now… that’s what the gate spit back up when I used it.”

She backed away further. What the hell was this thing? Why did it have to be her that found it? Why did she even go hiking out here in these damned woods? Her chest heaved with the weight of cruel fate.

“What happened to you two?” she asked.

The living cadaver looked longingly into the shadows. “He was a hunter. I had a garden out back. One day he came back with an animal I’d never seen before. It bit him. He kept saying it was fine. He drained its blood in our tub. I yelled at him. He ignored me.” No tears escaped the man’s eyes. None could.

“I found him down here, drawing the symbols with its blood. The blood started to glow green. He fell into the floor, and all that came back was his shadow. His cruelty. His rage. I chased him inside. This was my reward.”

A chill whisper echoed in her ears. Liiiiiiiies.

She tried to ignore it. It just had to be the seal trying to get in her head. “So this is a gate to somewhere else, some other universe?”

“I don’t know. I get flashes every now and then. We’re on a beach somewhere. I’m younger. He’s happier. It’s all that’s kept me sane.”

She nodded. “If it’s a gate, we have to close it.”

The sigil did not respond kindly to such words. Its light filled the room with sinister energy, akin to the moment before lightning strikes with the wrath of God. She could look nowhere without seeing it. Even closing her eyes proved fruitless. It began to speak to her now. Countering the lies of its victim with the truth of celestial divinity.

“Don’t listen to it!” the fiend bellowed. “Get out of here! Run!”

Instinct was what made her fingers drift towards her escape. It was the subconscious that made the decision for her. She took one step, then another, back towards the gate that she had so falsely believed to be evil. It did not manifest her fears. It directed her to where she was meant to go. These were not the cruel machinations of fate. It was the gentle hand of destiny.

Some small part of her, locked inside, was screaming. But she could not hear her. All that mattered now was the gate and what awaited her on the other side.

* * *

She awoke in a daze. Above her, the watchful head of the doe looked on, warding off the nightmares of the night before. And what strange dreams they were, gone like leaves in the wind!

An echo lingered, but it was not just a sound. Darkness. A frail woman. She was helpless. Crying. Screaming. Alone.

But that wasn’t her. She was brought here to this place of perfection, not her. The bed was a cloud of comfort. Coffee was brewing in the kitchen, and the sun was peeking past the curtains. It was going to be a beautiful day, and no nightmare, no matter how persistent, could follow her here. She was free. She was home.