Mad Malachi

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. It started when a full moon fell on Halloween and burned until Saint Walpurgis Night, when a new moon painted the sky black and the candle extinguished itself. The next Halloween, and every Halloween afterward, the cycle would begin anew.

During these six months, the cabin remained abandoned—everyone still swears it to this day. No cars parked in the drive, no person entering or exiting the cabin, no shadows or figures crossing the windows. Of course, few ever came close enough to make out what exactly was in there. Those who did never left the woods the same. Wide eyes staring straight through anyone who talked to them; robotic, emotionless speech; an appetite for raw, bloody meat. Only one person did not return in this state: Malachi Bodkin. He returned much worse.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Mad Malachi. He was tried for murder a few years back, got off thanks to a plea of insanity. Now, he sits in the maximum-security mental facility a few towns south of here, muttering to himself about “stopping them” and bringing his brother back.

I talked to him not long after he was sent to the hospital. Everyone warned me he was dangerous, but as I sat across from him at that table, I couldn’t see a hint of murderous rage or insanity in his eyes—yet.

I became fascinated with Mad Malachi, and he came to trust me. After a week of daily visits, he paused in the middle of our chess game, looked up at me, and said in the gravest whisper that he could muster, “Do you want to know what happened out in those woods?”

That’s when I saw it, the first flicker of a madman’s gaze in his eyes, but I ignored my instinct. I had to know what happened; everyone did. The entire town pretends to know what went down and why Malachi snapped, but this would be coming from a first-hand source. The first-hand source.

“That cabin is cursed,” he began, leaning back and folding his arms over his emaciated torso. “I wish Aodhe and I never went there.”

“Aodhe, your brother?”

He nodded. “We were using one of those stupid apps that gives you suggestions on unusual places to explore in your area. What can I say? We were bored, and getting drunk just didn’t have the same appeal that night as it usually does. Besides, everyone knew the candle in the window was just a myth.”

“Of course.”

He snorted. “Myth, my arse. There’s something effed up about that place, and it took my brother.”

“What do you mean, it took him?”

Malachi unfolded his arms and leaned over the table, his face inches from mine.

It was Easter weekend, and Malachi and Aodhe would have done anything to avoid their three sisters and their numerous children. A friend on Facebook had recommended they try Choose My Adventure. They knew the rumors about users of adventure apps finding bodies and ghosts, but they paid them no heed. It wasn’t even the same app.

When Choose My Adventure gave them the coordinates, the brothers didn’t recognize them as the location of the cabin. As their GPS beeped, indicating that they had reached their destination, it was almost sundown. They stepped into the clearing and found the cabin, solitary and certain to fall at any moment. Even before dark, the candle flickered in the window.

Malachi wanted to avoid the cabin. He had thought that the rumors about the candle were just that, rumors, but seeing it for himself made him wonder. His brother, though, thought that there must be a rational explanation for it. Someone had to be coming to that cabin, no matter what people said…no matter what happened to the others who had checked the cabin before them. Malachi didn’t want to look like a wuss in front of his big brother, so he reluctantly followed along.

They walked slowly to the cabin. Malachi barely dared to breathe. He wished he could silence his throbbing heart and cursed himself when he couldn’t. As they got closer, details of the cabin grew clearer: broken windows, termite holes, mold growing from the cracks in the logs of the cabin’s walls. When they were almost upon it, Malachi could even make out spiderwebs.

The floor creaked beneath Aodhe’s more massive weight as he climbed the steps to the porch. Each sound caused Malachi to flinch, but he trailed closely behind. By the time they reached the door, Malachi was certain he was going to pass out, his breathing had become so shallow and his heart beat so painfully against his chest. Aodhe reached for the handgun concealed against his pants-covered leg. Malachi did the same. Aodhe indicated for Malachi to be quiet, then grabbed the doorknob. The door opened with a screech. As one, the brothers crept inside and were soon confronted by the sight of…

Nothing. They saw nothing out of the ordinary, save for the lone candle standing vigil in the window. They exchanged confused looks before walking further into the cabin. Everything was as though it had been abandoned just yesterday: chairs pushed in at the dining room table, a stack of logs sitting by the fireplace, even a copy of The Faerie Queen on the coffee table with not a speck of dust on it. Malachi had a hard time believing that this place—this immaculate one-room cabin—could have been the cause of so many people in town going insane. If it had not been for its exterior, he wouldn’t have believed it had ever been abandoned.

Then Aodhe found the mirror. An old-fashioned floor-length mirror, it had a frame of solid gold so well shined that it could have glowed even without the candle. The closer the brothers got to the mirror, the more warped the glass within it became, a blue light swirling beneath its surface as the glass itself seemed to breathe. It was so beautiful and out of place, almost inviting despite the disturbing life it seemed to hold. Aodhe stretched his hand out and touched the glass with his fingertips. They slid straight through. Malachi’s breath caught in his throat as Aodhe pushed his fingers in up to the third knuckle. He grabbed Aodhe’s arm in an attempt to stop him, but Aodhe continued to put his hand through the semi-liquid material. Then his arm. His face. Soon, Aodhe was stepping through the mirror, pulling a panicking Malachi in along with him.

Once on the other side, they didn’t get a chance to observe their surroundings before long, clawed fingers wrapped around their arms and yanked them apart. Malachi tried in vain to turn and face his attackers, but one slashed him across the eye and took the bleeding man to a nearby fire. Malachi could hear Aodhe screaming, but the blood from the scratches blinded him. He cursed whatever held him captive in Gaelic. His captors froze. He could hear them muttering something in Gaelic, but all he could make out was the hissing of “He speaks the mother tongue. We cannot have him.”

As soon as the creatures released him, Malachi wiped the blood from his eyes and looked around. He knelt before a campfire in the middle of a dark forest. Not a drop of light from the stars or moon leaked through the thick canopy above him. Next to him knelt other people like him—people he recognized. Three of the townsfolk who had left the cabin insane were lined up before him, gaunt, covered in scratches and bruises, and wearing raggedy, torn forms of the clothes they had on the same days they entered the cabin. They shook in fear and never took their eyes off of whatever creatures stood behind him. Malachi, though, could not rip his eyes away from what hung above them.

On hooks attached to a rope dangled parts of human bodies in various phases of skinning. There were complete limbs, even an entire torso, and there were also bits of flesh that could not be identified. Some had bites taken out of them. Acidic bile rose in Malachi’s throat as he realized that these must have been the remaining townsfolk he had not yet seen.

At this revelation, he whipped his head around, searching this way and that for his brother. Then he saw him. Humanoids with large, pointed ears, the sharpest teeth Malachi had ever seen, and enormous butterfly-like wings dragged Aodhe to a log with an ax stuck in it. Dark spots filled Malachi’s vision. All he could think before passing out from fear was how none of this could be real, none of it. Just before the darkness consumed him, he watched as the beings forced Aodhe to place his head on the log and raised the ax into the air.

When Malachi awoke, he was back in the cabin, Aodhe lying beside him. But this was not Aodhe. It moved to stand as Malachi did, but its movements were stiff and unnatural, as though testing out this form for the first time. It faced him, but its eyes stared straight through him. Malachi tried to tell it that they should leave, but its only response—emotionless, almost robotic—was “You have nothing to fear here, Brother.”

Aodhe never called Malachi “brother.” He thought it was stupid to call someone other than your elders by their familial relationship to you. In an instant, Malachi’s mind traveled back to when they were children and their máthair mhór, or grandmother, told them stories about a group of fae known as the changelings.

Malachi acted without hesitation. He rushed to the fireplace and grabbed the fire poker, knowing only iron could hurt the fae. The changeling charged him, and Malachi swung. The fire poker hit the changeling in the face, causing it to scream and leaving behind a large, third-degree burn. Malachi struck it again, this time burning the back of its head. The creature fell to its hands and knees, momentarily disoriented. Malachi took his chance and rammed the sharp end of the fire poker through the changeling’s heart. With the most horrific, high-pitched cry Malachi had ever heard, the fae fell completely to the ground. It twitched after Malachi ripped the fire poker out of its body. Malachi raised the fire poker again, but the being did not move.

Heaving and forcing back tears and vomit, Malachi stared down at the body. He told himself repeatedly that it was not his brother, that he had not killed Aodhe, but deep down, he could not convince himself.

With a shovel he found in the hall closet, Malachi buried the fake Aodhe behind the cabin, near the tree line. Tears finally streamed down his cheeks. Quickly, sadness morphed into anger. This thing had taken his brother’s place. Others had taken the place of other townsfolk. Many of those same townsfolk had been butchered. Aodhe—no, Malachi refused to believe it. Aodhe was still alive back there, he just knew it.

When he returned to the cabin, the mirror was gone. He tore up the entire building searching for it, but it was as though the mirror had never existed. That candle, though, that candle still flickered in the window, taunting him. Beckoning others to its trap. Suddenly, Malachi knew what he had to do. He had to kill the other changelings, find the mirror, and get back his brother. Then, together, they would discover a way to destroy the candle and its cabin.

~ ~ ~

Malachi succeeded in killing ten of the changelings with the same fire poker he used on fake Aodhe. It was those brutal murders that landed him in the mental ward. Still, three remain out there, somewhere, masquerading as humans and surviving on raw…meat. And still, the cabin stands, its candle continuing its annual cycle. So, if you ever wander into these woods and stumble upon the abandoned cabin with the lone candle in its window, walk away. In that forest, there be fairies.