No Man's Land

"The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.”

“Leastways that’s how it looked to me when I first saw it. This was a long while ago, back when I was still young and beating my own paths up and down the mountains and through thick wooded forests. It used to be a hobby of mine, finding places that weren’t on any maps, where the next living person was over a hundred miles away. I wouldn’t say I ever did it because it might could’ve been a dangerous thing to do, more that I liked to challenge myself to survive out in the wilderness without being able to count on anyone else for anything.”

“That and I’ve always had a streak of wanderlust in me. Sure it’s a mite bit tougher gettin’ around the wilderness without a map, but the payoff’s getting to see those things they don’t tell you about in the travel guides. When you’re out there exploring like that, it’s easy to think that nothing in the world’s seen what you’re seeing. I came across a lot of moments like that during those early meanderings of mine. A good amount of it, like the time I watched a flock of birds dance in the sky with a colony of cave bats at dusk, was amazing. Of course there are those other times, like when I came across a full grown elk with its belly speared through the top of a 60 foot black locust tree, that I can’t explain, and frankly don’t much care to think about.”

“But come end of the day, the pretty and the ugly of nature were always flip sides of the same coin to me. Neither good or bad, just different and worthy in their own way. Wouldn’t trade my memories of any of them for anything.”

“The cabin and the candle though, they’re different. Them I only ever saw once, and that ain’t a memory I was given a choice on keeping fresh.”

“I’d soon as trade every happy moment I’ve had on or off the trails if I could go back and turn myself around while there was still time.”

“See, for as much as I fancied myself some bigshot outdoorsman, this story’s got more than just one character to it. The hike that led me out to that cabin was one of the few times I’d ever set out into the woods with a partner beside me. In this case, it was my lady friend Cas. She and I’d met while working at the same store downtown, and after a few months of workplace flirtations and getting to know each other better outside of work, she’d asked if it would be alright if she joined me on my next outing. Of course I told her she could definitely come with.”

“To her credit, Cas did own a good pair of boots and loved being outside. Starting with a couple overnight camping trips spent with the Girl Scouts when she was little, Cas had never lost her love of camping, and was a regular at a few of the parks and reserves close to town. This though, was gonna be her first real trek out into the great unknown. I’d actually suggested starting off with something a little closer to the beaten path than where we ended up, but she shot that down real quick.”

“‘No,’ she said. ‘I wanna see what’s out there.’ So that’s what we did. Loaded up our things, piled into the car, drove for a few hours until the road ran out, put our packs on, and then started walking. Not too far from here, actually.”

“The plan was to spend about a week out in the wilderness. Three days spent venturing to a spot I’d heard rumors of from the Lost Boys, the hiking enthusiasts club I was a member of, and then three days more for the return trip. This being Cas’s maiden walkabout, we carried enough supplies with us for another three days just in case anything untoward happened, or if we felt like staying out there by ourselves for a little while longer.”

“It was only on looking back afterwards that I could have told you that something was off about the whole thing almost from the moment we started walking. On a normal hike, through terrain that you’re familiar with, or on trails that are well kept, you’ll be lucky to manage about 15 miles in a day. Where we were was neither, but I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that we must have topped at least 20 on each of those days we spent making our way deeper into the woods.”

“Honestly, it felt as if the land itself was eager to help us get further and further away from civilization, like it was smoothing our passage to make the going easier. Wherever I expected a bit of climbing, we ambled over gentle slopes instead. In place of the usual thickets and low hanging branches that would have forced us to search for another, more accessible route, glades of short grass dampened our boots with cool dew. During the days, the summer’s heat was blocked by the leaves shadowing us from overhead. Not a single cloud threatened us with rain in the evenings. Each night we slept to the sound of katydids chirruping around us.”

“By midday on our fourth day out, we at last came to our destination: a precipice in the middle of the wilderness, the last remnants of some prehistoric forest that had somehow petrified with all the trees standing straight up. From where we stood on its ledge, the red and tan stone face dropped a sheer 100 feet straight down before disappearing into the crowns of a lower forest that stretched out as far as we could see into the distant horizon. Staring out at that oddly organic rock, I imagined I was gazing upon the exposed side of a dreaming titan, its slumber undisturbed by the ages-long movement of the earth around it.”

“We spent the rest of the day there, enjoying the incredible view and tossing rocks out into the open air where they would fall and fall and fall before vanishing beneath the canopy below.”

“Seeing Cas’s wonder at that break in the body of the forest is that last happy thing I can recall from that trip. Things started going wrong almost as soon as we had packed up the next morning and started heading back. It was small things at first: rocks slipping underfoot in spots that looked secure, and roots tripping us up no matter how careful we were to watch our steps. The same obstacles I had marveled at not encountering on our way in seemed now to crop up every other hour or so, causing us to lose more and more daylight as we searched for ways onward.”

“Facing such increasingly hostile odds, I think it may have been inevitable that one of us was going to take an injury sooner rather than later. I had a few years on Cas, most of them spent in backwoods like these, so when she ended up twisting her ankle, I chalked it up as nothing more than a matter of inexperience and bad luck. We bandaged her foot up as best we were able, but our pace slowed to a crawl as I helped her shuffle along the path we had come in on.”

“Or at least along what I thought had been our path. This was back before cell phones were a thing, not that you’d get great coverage out in the middle of nowhere. The only way we could navigate was by compass, milestones, and the sun. Accustomed to getting myself lost and then finding my way back out again, it still wasn’t long before I started to feel a creeping sense of concern come over me. Nothing we passed by looked familiar. The compass pointed north, but as the hours dragged on, that bit of information felt less and less useful to our predicament. I kept it to myself at the time, but I knew ever then that none of our steps were bringing us any closer to our car.”

“Night came on much sooner than I’d expected, and that’s about when things went from worrisome to worse.”

“Evening brought with it a chill that was at complete odds with the pleasant temperatures we had faced up until that point. No stranger to making fires for myself to fend off a brisk sunset, I set off to find us some firewood. But even after searching until twilight had sunken into the dark of night, the abundance of trees around us yielded nothing I could use to strike up a campfire."

“The same as on the other nights, our katydid friends continued to serenade us with their evening songs, but as Cas and I huddled together to share what warmth we could, we could hear that other things had added themselves to that nighttime chorus. Large things. My first thought was that maybe a pack of wolves or coyotes had caught our scent and were following us. But as I listened to those strange howls and cries, my heart beat a little faster. Whatever was making those awful sounds, I didn’t know what to call them.”

“I didn’t rest at all that night. Instead, I kept watch for eyes in the dark while Cas did her best to get some sleep. In the meantime, I attempted to peer through gaps in the tree cover so that I could pick out constellations that I could try and use to find our way back, like I was some sort of ancient mariner charting wine dark seas. In the end, it was no use. Even when I did find a spot that afforded a window onto the heavens, the skies that peered back at me were unfamiliar. The only light around us came from the glittering of stars I had never seen before.”

“Nothing ended up coming near enough to bother us that night, but between Cas’s limp and my exhaustion, we made even worse time the next day. The baying and keening of the distant animals had eased the further the sun had risen over the horizon, but in their place rustled the sounds of new things gliding through the undergrowth. Much too close for comfort, but always out of sight. It got to the point that we jumped every time a gust of wind blew past us.”

“By the end of our seventh day in the woods, I admitted to Cas that I had no idea where we were. The compass still pointed north, the Sun still moved from east to west, but to my eye, it all looked the same. An endless ceiling of green above, a carpet of tangled briars and snarled roots below. Mountain followed foothill and then back again. We might’ve been wandering around in circles for all I could tell. She took the news in grim humor, ‘That’s why we packed the extra food, right?’ she said.

“A week later, it ran out. The woods did not.”

“We held it together for as long as we could, but hunger and despair were taking their toll. Each night the whooping, snarling voices grew louder and closer. Thirst, anxiety, and lack of good sleep frayed our nerves until we reached a point where we could not, or would not hold our tempers back any longer. We shouted at each other. She blamed me for getting us lost, told me she never should have come out with me in the first place. I told her we’d have been back home already if she hadn’t been careless and gotten herself hurt, that she was only out here because she had asked me to let her come.”

“Afterwards, we trudged on in a brittle, uncomfortable silence, neither one of us willing to be the first to try chipping away at the ice that had formed between us. Even the hidden things that snuffed and brushed at the plants a stone’s throw away seemed to have been taken aback by our breakdown. Even so, our reprieve lasted only until sundown. The unsettling howling resumed, closer, more eager than ever.”

“Hearing them, tears welled up in my eyes. I remember looking over at Cas and saw twin streaks glinting down the sides of her face as well. Resignation had replaced the resentment welling between us. Whether that night, the next day, or sometime soon after, both of us knew that neither of us had much longer.”

“It was in that moment of hopelessness, tears stinging our eyes, with the sucking, panting sounds of our pursuers closing in, that Cas’s head perked up.”

“‘What’s that’?, she asked, pointing into the gloom. Her voice was little more than a sob in the dark.”

“I looked toward where her finger was trembling, and I saw it too. A single light was shining between the trunks just a little ways away.”

“‘That’s firelight!’ Cas shouted. “Oh thank God! Oh thank you!”

“Even though it was almost pitch black out, she bolted upright and hobbled as fast as her lamed foot could take her. Every bit as hungry for deliverance, I followed her, cautious not to lose my own footing this close to safety while danger prowled nearer and nearer. At the same time, however, I was careful not to let too much hope rekindle within me for fear that whatever we were seeing was something other than a sign of civilization.”

“So now you know how we happened upon the cabin. Old and abandoned, with that single candle glowing in the window. Even from a distance, with branches and bushes blocking a clear view of it, the thing didn’t look like much. I had seen hunters’ shacks that would have seemed like palaces by comparison. All the same, given our circumstances, it appeared to us as nothing less than a place of absolute succor, a point of stability erected by humanity to keep the hungry dark at bay.”

“But as we cleared the edge of the treeline and entered into the small glade surrounding the cabin, something apart from the oncoming shrieks behind us caused the hair on my arms and neck to stand up so quickly that I almost stumbled over myself for how fast I came to a stop. Whatever those things were that had been chasing us, I had resolved to myself that when the time came, I would fight them tooth and nail. They would find no easy meal in me.”

“What stood before me though, was something else entirely. An instinct akin to fear, primal yet buried deep and unwaking within me until that moment, plowed into my thoughts. Had it not been for Cas, running full tilt toward it despite her ankle, that imperative would have driven me to flee. To run away as fast and as far as I could. It didn’t matter what was approaching behind me; a violent death in the jaws of our nightly tormentors was a perfectly correct alternative to coming even a single step closer to that cabin.”

“‘Cas, hold on!’ I called out, but whether she heard me or not, she kept sprinting forward. Unable to force myself any further into the glade, I instead tried to take in what it was we’d stumbled onto, to make sense of the primordial alarm that had overtaken me. As I did so, I knew in my core that this was not a place meant for us. Not just Cas and I, but you and everyone else as well. It had not been built by human hands, and humans were not welcome to visit or even view it. My simply being in its presence was a violation of a commandment set in place long before the first of us had had the audacity to stand upon two feet.”

“Ignoring my need to run as best I could, I tried to focus on the cabin’s more prosaic details, as if by reducing it to its parts, I could lessen its hold on my mind. I could not bring my eyes to gaze upon it, so I noted other nearby things instead. The first thing I realized was that the sounds of the world around us had gone quiet. No longer did any unseen horrors bay for my blood. But then, neither did the comforting chirrup of the katydids intrude upon the silence of the glade.”

“I think what I recognized next was the air itself. In place of the uncomfortable cold that had chilled us for most of our nights in the trackless wild, what wafted across my skin then were warm breezes that carried with them the smell of rot and decay. It took several moments for it to dawn on me that they were pulsing in and out with a rhythm as steady as my own breaths.”

“In the time it took me to come to that realization and draw the obvious, awful conclusion they promised, Cas had made it to where the thing’s front door should have been. ‘Cas, stop!’ I shouted, and as I did, I swear that the flame of the candle moved, its attention drawn away from Cas by my hollering.”

“I can’t tell you exactly what it was we ran into that night, but I’ve replayed that memory so many times in my head since then that I’ve lost count. In doing so, I think I’ve at least come to know a little about it.”

“See, you can tell it’s watching you by the way the flame flickers. Or rather, by how it doesn’t. From a distance, like where we were when Cas first spotted it, all you’ll see is a light that’s warm and steady. A glow that promises respite. But if you decide to get closer, like Cas was able to, try and pay attention to that light. You’ll see that the candle isn’t burning. No, what you’ll see, as I saw that night, is something that only looks like fire.”

“You’ll see that it actually licks out toward you, like a group of tiny little hands trying to suss out what you’ll feel like. A hundred tiny tongues all stretching toward you for a taste. You might also notice, as I did, that the red and tan wood of the cabin doesn’t look like it’s from any tree that’s lived for the past hundred thousand years.”

“And if you’ve traveled to that precipice I told you about earlier, you might even come away with the notion that its petrified grains look an awful lot like fossilized skin.”

“Cas though, she didn’t see any of that. I still don’t know what compelled her to run toward it the way she did. Maybe the same primordial drive that screamed at me to get away from there did the opposite to her. Whatever the case, I saw her pause for a second at the empty doorway to announce herself before she walked right on in.”

“‘Cas, come back!’ I tried again, but she didn’t answer. Didn’t seem to hear me at all. She moved through the cabin’s insides for a few more moments. The candlelight, maybe satisfied that I would make no move toward it, returned to following her every step.”

“I was staring at the back of her head, doing my best to keep my sight of the cabin unfocused, when it all disappeared.”

“No more firelight. No more cabin. No more Cas. In their place, a sound like wet wood slowly cracking over a knee receded into the distance. The warm breezes stopped, but for a moment the air pulled at me with such force that it dragged me forward several steps, as if it had been abruptly ripped away and needed something, anything to fill the sudden void.

“‘Cas?’ I called out. But she didn’t answer. I stood for several moments, shouting out her name and receiving nothing in response before I noticed that I no longer felt the soul-deep dread that had prevented me from running to her. Freed from the compulsion, I fumbled about in the darkness, inching toward where the cabin had been, my concern for Cas stronger than my fear for myself. But when I had about reached the last spot I had seen her, I nearly toppled headfirst into a hole that, as I looked at it in the strange starlight, appeared to be about as wide around as the cabin had been. Not knowing what else to do, I crept to the lip of the rim and peered down.”

“The putrid smell from before, now overpowering, was the first thing to meet me. The second, I have a harder time putting to words.”

“The cabin-sized hole wasn’t just some crater in the ground. No. It was more like a tunnel, plunging down and down for as far as I could see, and likely for a very long distance farther than that. And all up and down the length of that insane shaft were hundreds, maybe thousands of pinpricks of candlelight. And beside each one were what appeared to be the fronts of buildings. Some looked like cabins, some did not. Some looked like they were meant for humans.”

“The majority did not.”

“And from the faces of those soil-submerged dwellings, I could see bones had been worked right into the foundations of each. Unable to comprehend or process what I was looking at, I stared into that firelit abyss right up until, as one, each and every one of those tiny lights turned and looked back up at me.”

“I am not ashamed to say that when I saw that, I ran. I didn’t care that it was night and I couldn’t see. I didn’t care that Cas had just been taken into that sinkhole and was possibly still alive screaming somewhere in the earth under my feet. I ran, and I didn’t stop until at some point fatigue overcame me and I went careening down a hill that landed me straight onto the pavement of a winding mountain road.”

“I got picked up by a park ranger going about his rounds the next morning. I knew that no one would believe me if I explained what I had truly seen, so instead I told him that Cas and I had gotten lost and that a bear had attacked us in the night. A search party was brought in to comb through the woods for the next few days, but no one ever found anything. No cabin, no hole in the ground. No Cas.”

“So what did we see that night? What was it that’s kept me from wandering more than a dozen yards into the brush ever since?”

“I wish I could tell you.”

“I’ve looked for explanations ever since. Newspaper articles from the area mention people disappearing from time to time, but it’s hard getting an eyewitness account from a vanished person. Campfire tales and folklore though, handed down from mothers and fathers to their kids, or like I’m doing with you right now, those’ve gotten me a bit closer, I think.”

“Ask any of the locals around here about the oss esca, and I wager you’ll get some hard stares and be told to lower your voice. No one knows exactly what that thing is out there, but every one of them’s damn sure that what’s out there is something. Something that doesn’t just make its home in the woods, but might well be the woods, and the ground beneath the woods, and the creatures, big and small, living within the woods.”

“Why’d it wait so long to have us for its dinner? Best guess I’ve got is that it’s the same as what hunters say when they’re out hunting deer. If they’re gonna eat it, they try and make sure to take the beast down in one shot, preferably without it knowing it’s being hunted at all, otherwise the dying creature’s fear will spoil the flavor of the meat.”

“But then, I have to ask: if terror ruins the taste, does that mean that satisfaction and relief heighten it? Does it put its prey through trials such as Cas and I faced simply for a sweeter feast? What flavor might it enjoy when its prey, hounded for weeks by dry stream beds, steep hills, and nothing to forage upon, at last finds its long sought safety in an abandoned cabin with a warm candle waiting for them? And if so, why then was I spared? Did it appraise me in those moments I stood in terror of it and find me wanting? Or is it merely waiting for me to age, so that one day it can enjoy me like a fine wine?”

“Since I shall never return to that dark heart of the wood in my life, I fear I shall never know the answers to any of these questions. I pray only that its interest in me, as well as in you and all of humanity ends the moment each of us at last returns to the earth from which we came.”