Natal

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. I can’t say with any certainty whether my late night foray up the porch stairs and through the long doorless entrance was a matter of mere curiosity or perhaps an ugly and well-hidden desire that I, too, might be swallowed up by the house like so many others had allegedly been. I wasn’t even entirely sure that the light in the window was anything more than an oddity at first, something curious yet entirely mundane like late season fireflies or a clinging patch of bioluminescent fungus.

I’m still not sure if it was even my choice to enter the cabin; I’ve come to accept the outcome regardless.

The one thing I would come to be sure about was that the flickering snatches of light did come from a candle. Just an old beeswax thing in a brass dish, with one of those little loops to hold it by. I picked up that candle and was prepared to stride unafraid through the house for the first time with all the carelessness of someone wandering the aisles of their preferred grocery store.

In the months before, I’d often jogged past the cabin during my early evening runs, an activity I’d come to tolerate if only for its ability to clear my head of anything about Joseph, the divorce. Our doctor had said that moving into a quieter area might give us a better chance. This meant a smaller local client pool, and a commute to clients in the city at all times of day and night, but for a while I’d truly thought we’d made the right decision. I was caught up in that feeling you sometimes get that something is just “right”. Any day I’d be calling my own doula, perhaps even my old mentor, to provide me with an anchor of spiritual support during the birth. Turned out that feeling wasn’t enough. Wouldn’t ever be. Not for me, and certainly not for Joseph.

So, my runs and the old cabin were some of the few constants in my life. It fascinated me how the cabin could look as good as it did. It wouldn’t grace the cover of a magazine by any means; the missing front door, the faded wood and chipped shingles, and the cracked windows saw to that. Couple that with the fact that the entire cabin had taken on an almost stony gray color from years of bleaching sunlight darting through the tree cover, and it wasn’t exactly a cozy looking place. Beyond that, it almost looked lived in. The roof was free of debris, the porch still standing tall and firm. I’d even asked around to see if someone was maintaining the place. That got me a few laughs. But no. The only people that went in that house were high school and college kids, and maybe “transient types”. Plenty of people had gone in, so I’d heard. Most even came out.

The ones that didn’t were whispered about in certain circles. The kind of circles that gather in schoolyards and dive bars, or the “New Age” section of the local bookstore. It was of most people’s opinion that those who had failed to sneak back in a bedroom window or wake up a dorm mate by drunkenly stumbling to bed at some horrendous hour had simply continued on past the house, what with the river being just a short jaunt away, and drowned. Nothing alive, dead, or inanimate of any interest was ever found in the house. The chain holding the door to the earthen basement shut remained intact, originally put in place out of fear that some adventurous young people would fall victim to a cave-in while exploring a dusty old hole in the ground.

Then you had those who believed otherwise, who believed that the house itself was, of course, haunted by its original and final tenant. Little was actually known about the woman who’d lived in the house. Her last name, Marlow, was certain. ‘and S. Marlow’ read the faded wooden plaque next to where the front door used to be, the initial preceding the “and” long obliterated by the scratches of some pointed instrument. Sarah was put forth, being a common first name at the time, but it could have been just about anything. She had been married for some period in her life. Those deep, carved gouges had been marred the plaque for as long as anyone could remember, a sign to most that the marriage hadn’t ended amicably or by way of any sort of widowing. That was where certainties ended. Local historians drew a blank on the Marlow cabin. One notorious town gossip had said that her great grandfather drunkenly told her the story of the scar that ran from his cheekbone to his upper lip; he’d gotten it after asking his own father if he knew anything about the lady who’d lived in the Marlow house, which got him little more than a sound of dismissal and a wave of the hand. After persisting, the only answer he got was the buckle end of his daddy’s belt.

Why the cabin was never demolished, I don’t know. What had once been a source of anger and anxiety for the town was now little more than a curiosity, an urban legend that clung to life only in the minds of the young, the kooky, and the curious.

Myself, now, as well.

The light of that candle was what finally drew me inside the cabin. In my little sphere of flickering light, I was able to discern that I was in what had once been the master bedroom. A beautiful four poster bed dominated the room. The posts were tall and relatively thin, carved simply out of a dark, fine-grained wood. Each one was capped with an ornamental leaf shape that came to a point a few feet below the ceilings. If drapes had ever been installed they were long ago rotted away or stolen, something I found unlikely due to the presence of what I could only surmise was the original bedspread. A thick wool blanket allowed only a handspan of linen sheets to peek through in front of canvas pillow cases that still appeared stuffed. I’d have thought the bed made that very day had it not for whatever coated it.

A tangle of strange growths coiled across the bed. I was reminded of veins peeking through the thin skin of one’s wrist; tendrils branched out and wandered and reconvened in a manner that suggested the organic. Smaller threads fed into larger ones, which dangled off the edges of the mattress and in turn flowed along the wooden floorboards and out the door. I hadn’t felt them underfoot at all, and as I reached out to press upon a thicker section of the growth I found that it was pliant and yielding, yet quick to bounce back into its original shape. Underneath its bruise-y yellow surface was a sense of hollowness, and I felt a flurry of the tiniest movements under my fingertips. I recoiled, bringing my hand quickly to my chest. There was the sensation of withdrawal, not dissimilar to the feeling one gets when removing a sliver of fiberglass from under the skin, and I watched a smattering of tiny, hairlike threads retreat within the surface my fingers had only just been touching.

Shudders ran the length of the growth to the edge of what the candle could show me and assuredly beyond, as the entirety of the cabin itself quivered. My ears popped and I felt a sudden surge of nausea as my equilibrium wavered. My heart started to thump away, and I felt much like one does when catching a stranger staring at them again and again in a public space. I stumbled, trying to find my balance. The candlelight tossed shadows and a rivulet of melted wax scalded my fingers. A long tendril of shadow rose from the floor. One of the threads, mycelial threads, my head whispered. The tip swayed at waist height.

Any drop of fear I had was flattened, the miraculous and sudden knowing I had of what I now recognized as a fungus pummeling fear into the shape of curiosity. We met slowly yet confidently. My free hand rose to greet the tendril halfway, and there was a susurration throughout the house as tiny fibers once again probed the tips of my fingers, withdrawing before the slim tongue of fungus wove its way through the creases of my palm. The tip came to rest in the hollow of my wrist just beneath the fleshy pad of my thumb. I could see it rise and fall steadily, bouncing with my pulse. It began to elongate, the tip stretching to form a point that was barely a glint in the light of the candle.

It entered me gently, and I saw.

Mail dropped into the letterbox which read ‘R. and S. Marlow’, addressed to a Mr. Robert Marlow and Mrs. Sloane Marlow.

Sloane Marlow, her belly firm and protruding ever so slightly, collecting the mail.

A prayer over dinner, led by Robert Marlow. Sloane’s belly grown larger still.

Sloane in the basement, among piles of root vegetables and sacks of grain, dipping her fingers into a stained mortar and pestle and rubbing her bare belly, even larger now. She chants, alien and soothing.

Robert, red-faced and wild eyed. Snatching Sloane’s arm away from her womb, throwing her against the wall.

Robert loading a large trunk onto a carriage as Sloane watches from the doorway, mouth set firmly and eyes hooded and defiant. One hand rests on her belly.

Sloane, again with the salve, again with the chanting.

Sloane struggling to make it up and down the basement stairs, pale and trembling.

A man fleeing down the porch steps of the cabin, vials of medicine and various instruments spilling out of his bag.

Two men standing watch with lanterns just outside the limits of the cabin’s porch. A primitive barrier of wood has been erected around the porch. The letterbox is dusty, the ‘R’ scratched out.

Gaunt, sweating, and pale, Sloane once again chants in her basement. The words are as queer as before, but drip with venom and spite. Her mouth is flecked with blood, her gums pale.

She lies nude on the earthen floor, taut and enormous. She empties a viscous, dark liquid from her mortar and pestle, and as it runs down from the zenith of her belly and soaks into the floor, the basement begins to murmur. Sloane Marlow releases a rattling, wet breath before lying still.

A group of men with cloth-wrapped faces stand in a circle around a dark, wet silhouette imprinted in the floor of the basement. At its center, a pit runs deep and lightless into the earth. Small threads of fungus creep from the edges of the cavity.

A bucket of mortar and a pile of tools rest on the floor next to the freshly sealed basement door. One of the men from the basement chains the door shut. Strands of fungus are already working their way through the mortar.

After days beyond number, after ground gained in infinitesimal distances, a single mycelial thread, so thin it makes a strand of hair seem a sturdy thing, breaks through the mortar.

Again the feeling of something being withdrawn. The strand pulsed gently as it fell back to the floor. Stretching again, the end of the thread made gentle contact with another, larger segment which began to throb in turn. The message, to me, was clear.

Follow.

Snaking across floors and twisting along walls, the mottled threads touched and pulsed like relay racers bearing me through the cabin. I saw little, my flickering circle of light serving only to illuminate the twisting threads as they bid me down the stairs to the first level, and then down the basement stairs.

Another small tendril rose from the floor. Swaying, it began to make its way to the thick chain across the basement door. Touching a link just a few joints away from the padlock, it creeped its way through the chain.

I was reminded of time lapse videos of creeping plants; the thread moved slowly and smoothly, with a clear purpose. Instead of seeking sunlight, it glided and twisted its way to the keyhole of the lock. After a few moments, something clicked. The thread went taut and trembled. The lock popped open and dangled from its shackle, and the tendril withdrew.

I unhooked the shackle and let the weight of the padlock pull out the chain. I noticed tiny little marks, like worm tracks, crisscrossing their way through the grime and rust of the padlock’s face. They looked old. The basement door was resistant after collecting decades of rust on its hinges, but I was able to get it open enough to squeeze through sideways.

Just beyond the door, dozens of dusty jars on simple wooden shelves faintly glittered yellow and orange in a short hallway. The neat rows gave the place a sense of ceremony and order, as if one was walking down the aisle between the pews of a church. When the basement opened up, it opened up to the same bare, earthen floor I had been shown. Where there were once piles of root vegetables there were now only haphazard tangles of fungus. It covered the walls, the floor, appearing as if a great blast of air had thrown them all towards the basement door. As they wound towards the center of the basement they branched less and less, turning into around a dozen stalks the thickness of my wrist that sprang in tangles from the hole in the earth. Kneeling to peer into the blackness, nothing was revealed save the walls of the pit disappearing into the void.

Ribbed all the way down with fungus and shining wetly in the candlelight, the pit exuded a constant draft of moist air thick with a miasma of something between damp leaves and yeast. A hint, too, of something dead. I extended my hand and found the walls slick to the touch, almost velvety, yet belying a certain strength.

There was something else too. A wet, slippery sound like meat sliding across a butcher’s counter. The walls of the pit contracted, shuddered and–

Footsteps, voices.

One voice, male by the sound of it, said something which prompted a laugh from another individual. Footsteps thudded and as I moved carefully to the hall at the base of the stairs I could see a dusty shaft of light flit briefly across the top of the staircase. I shrank back reflexively and felt my shoulder collide with one of the shelves; glass rattled and shook.

Almost immediately the beam of light returned to the doorway at the top of the stairs. More words were exchanged by the trespassers. Slowly, the cone of light began to grow brighter and wider.

Looking back, it would have been a simple matter for me to call out. Just making my presence known would have likely been enough to send them hot-heeled out of the cabin, spreading a fresh tale of hauntings and high strangeness through the town. Instead, I blew out my candle and retreated into the sable damp of the basement.

I crouched and nestled myself into a corner. I could hear the chaotic, tussling whisper of the fungus shifting and rolling across itself as the sound of footfalls grew closer. Words became clear.

“Dude, the door’s open. The forum said it was chained shut.”

“That thread was like a year old. I’m sure plenty of people have been in and out of here since then.”

“If there’s, like, hobos or tweakers or something here man, we should just go. I don’t want to get stabbed or fuckin’ robbed or whatever. There’s gotta be a better place to take them.”

“Naw, bro. Fear gets adrenaline going, makes girls wanna be, like, close to you and stuff. Trust me, we’ll just make sure nobody is squatting here or anything and when we bring Natalie and Erika here tomorrow, oh man”--the voice chuckled excitedly–”we’re gonna get it.”

Flashlight beams swept the floor, and I shrank further into the corner. The beams of the flashlights made it impossible to distinguish any features of either figure as their flashlight beams fell over the pit in the ground.

“Oh dude, fuckin’ gross, that’s totally some bum’s toilet.”

“Aren’t all toilets technically for bums?”

One of the flashlight beams jerked briefly across my face, and there was a soft thud. I slid quickly down the wall and onto my heels.

“Ouch, bro, come on that was totally funny–”

“Shut the fuck up. I saw something.”

A circle of light darted to the wall above my head. I cowered closer to the floor.

“Oh come on bro, you saw something? Bullshit.”

The one with the flashlight pointed into the corner gave an exasperated noise of protest. “Right there, in the corner for just a second. Swear.”

“There’s nobody here dude, look.”

The second flashlight beam dazzled me as it hit me full in the face.

Both the boys began to scream, and the flashlight beams zipped frantically through the air. I felt air rush past my face and one of the flashlights fell to the ground spinning, illuminating a dark haired boy in a high school letter jacket twisting and wailing as he was dragged across the floor.

His fingers left shallow furrows in the basement floor, and I was intrigued to see that one of the larger tendrils of fungus had wound its way up his leg and was dragging him towards the center of the room. Gone was the trepidation and gracefulness of the smaller tendril I had interacted with; this tendril was dragging a grown boy across the floor as if he were a little more than an empty sack.

His leg was pulled into the pit before he stopped with a sudden jerk and a cry of pain. His free leg lay outstretched in front of him, bobbing up and down as the fungus jerked and attempted to further drag him into the abyss.

I darted forward and snatched up the flashlight, frantically brandishing it around the basement to try and find the other boy. From the darkness came a wet crack and a horrid, keening scream that rapidly faded away.

I couldn’t let the other boy get away. Sloane Marlow had committed no crime beyond doing what she thought was best for her unborn child; whatever this fungus was, it was her progeny as much as the baby would have been. If this boy escaped alive the cabin would be condemned or quarantined, the fate of the wondrous fungus within left to the hands of either municipal extermination or scientific prodding and bureaucracy.

I sprinted to the base of the stairs. Another tendril was whizzing past my feet, backwards towards the pit. The sound of desperate struggle filled the stairway before the other boy was whipped down the stairs, his head bouncing on each step as he was pulled to his fate. I sidestepped quickly as he was pulled past me.

We locked eyes for the briefest moment. I wish I could say that in that split second I saw the animal fear in the boy’s eyes, the fleeting moment of intimate human-to-human contact that moves people to kindness, even selflessness. All I saw was the same look that the doctor had as he fled the cabin, leaving Sloane to waste away pregnant and alone. I followed the boy with my own flashlight beam to the best of my availability.

He clutched a small knife in his free hand, his other arm pinned to his side by the fungus. He swung wildly and connected with the fungus, and swung again. Part of the tendril continued slithering into the hole while the rest of it was thrown and shaken off wildly by the boy as he sat up. He got to his feet and looked at me.

I don’t think he would have hurt me. I believe he may have even thought that I was in as much trouble as he was. He opened his mouth to say something.

Before he could speak, the tip of one of the fungal arms came whipping through the air and struck him on the side of the head. As the boy fell to the ground more arms came into sight, their ends knotting and forming bulbous ends that were brought down onto the prone form of the boy.

I shut off the flashlight. Flat thuds became wet slaps and finally cracks, punctuated first by grunts and then weak shrieks of pain. Again came the sound of dragging. I waited a moment, and flipped the switch on the flashlight.

The other boy was gone. Thin arcs of spattered blood laced their way across the basement floor, and a broad smear led to the pit.

I stood still a moment. My head was reeling. Those boys had brought it on themselves. This place was special, sacred. Couldn’t they see that? Even now the basement began to shudder and whisper, speaking not with words but with something far more primeval and arcane. What strength there was in this place, what magic. This was the feeling of assisting a client times a thousand, a true feeling of being part of something beautiful and meaningful.

I walked in a daze towards the pit as it began to belch forth a thin, clear liquid. It sprayed across my face as I fell to my knees, tasting of blood and sweat and game meat. I peered into the pit, a smile splitting my face as the ribbed walls of the pit began to contract and quiver. Something tickled my mind, and the alien chant I had heard Sloane uttering spilled from my lips. As the pit began to widen, the contractions coming quicker and stronger now, I scooted myself away from the edge before throwing myself to the floor in supplication, arms outstretched and ever-moving lips brushing the dirt. The ground beneath me shook and heaved.

There was one great, final shudder. A shape erupted forth from the pit. My flashlight briefly illuminated countless unblinking eyes, a mass of sinuous and many-jointed limbs. The last thing I saw before I felt a familiar pressure at my wrist just below the thumb was a jagged slash of a mouth filled with crowded, hooked teeth.

Soon the town, maybe even the world, would know what it meant to be part of something bigger than oneself. I knew, because I was shown.