Please Wear Your Nametag at All Times...

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

“I can see it! I can see the candle!”

“What are you talking about Zoey?”

“There is a candle in the window!”

“You did that just to scare us, didn’t you?”

Maybe.

You all know the cabin has been abandoned, but do you know why?

“Ghosts?”

“It was built over an old well?”

“Dry rot?”

“Murder!”

It was built a little too close to the lake, and it got so moldy every year they just gave up trying to clean it out and abandoned it.

Sally, if you’re going to use your lanyard to hit Aracely, I’ll hold onto it for you. Just until the story is over.

“Lame.”

“I was so close! Does dry rot count as mold?”

“You said this was a scary story!”

You’re not scared?

“No!”

Oh? I’ll continue.

The candle drew a lot of attention, because the cabin was abandoned, as everyone knew. No one had been inside for years.

Well… let’s be honest, campers snuck into the abandoned cabin all the time. You still do. It’s practically tradition. If there is a dark and possibly dangerous space near a camp like this, someone will always be daring someone else to go inside for a thrill.

Even some of you have done it.

Don’t look so guilty. Like I said, it’s practically tradition. Even your Counselor Megan snuck in when she was a camper.

“Really?”

Of course.

Ava, take your lanyard out of the fire. You're supposed to wear your nametag at all times.

I’ll hold onto it until the story is over.

Where was I?

“Like, the very beginning? You haven’t even gotten to a scary part yet.”

Ah yes, there was a candle in the window of the abandoned cabin one night, even though no one was supposed to have been in there for years. No one knew who–or what–had put it there, but everyone was curious. The camp directors went out to investigate right away, but when they went inside the cabin, there was no candle.

Anyone outside could see it, flickering away on the windowsill, but inside the windowsill was empty. The whole cabin was empty, except for rusty bunk beds and a few rotting boxes of forgotten sports equipment and life jackets, moldy and useless.

The directors, not knowing what else to do, locked the door of the cabin and told all the counselors to keep the campers away until they figured out exactly what was going on.

So, obviously, as soon as their counselor had fallen asleep, the girls in the Cedar Cabin climbed quietly out of bed, got their flashlights and day packs, and made their way down to the cabin in the woods.

“We’re the Cedar Cabin!”

“That’s us!”

“This isn’t one of those stories where you stick us in it to make it scarier is it? Because those are so stupid.”

Oh no, this was years and years ago, even before Counselor Megan was a camper. These girls were called Molly, Addy, Kristie, and Sam.

“Fine.”

“Where is Megan, anyway?”

“She’s on break, dummy.”

Yes, your Counselor Megan will be back in a half hour or so. For now, we have the campfire, and the story.

So, the girls from Cedar Cabin snuck down to the cabin in the woods. The candle was there in the window, a long pale taper that didn’t burn down, didn’t even drip wax. It was set in a plain clay base, and flickered as if in a breeze.

They tried the door, but it was locked of course, so instead, they tried the window. There was no latch on the outside, but the girls were clever. Sam used her pocket knife, wedged between the window and its frame, to pry it open.

The girls were shocked to find that the candle, and even the inside of the cabin they could see through the window, swung open with the window itself. Like a picture in a frame. Beyond, there was no cabin at all, just a long, dark corridor with a faint gray light at the far, far end.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Shut up, Ava! It’s just getting good!”

“What is it?” Molly asked.

“It looks like a tunnel,” Addy said.

“But there can’t be a tunnel in a cabin,” Sam protested.

“Where does it go?” Kristie wondered.

It didn’t take long before the girls had convinced each other to climb through the open window and into the mysterious corridor. They huddled together, just inside, shining their flashlights into the pressing dark.

The air inside was cold–colder than a winter night. Wind blew against their faces, out of the tunnel that seemed to stretch on and on without end. There were no rusty bunk beds, no rotting boxes, just a bare floor and walls of packed dirt, with roots creeping through here and there.

“Maybe we should go back out, actually,” Kristie suggested, but Sam strode forward with her flashlight.

“Don’t be chicken,” she said.

Addy followed, then Molly, and finally–reluctantly–Kristie.

They had not gone far when Molly heard a sound behind them. Something like a slither, or a creep. The feeling of something stretching across the cold earthen floor with its claws outstretched.

Screaming, she turned around, shining her flashlight back down the corridor towards the open window. It was only a few paces away. There was nothing behind her at all.

Not even Kristie.

“Where’d she go?”

“Shut up, Sally, she’s going to tell us!”

Molly asked that very question.

“Where is she?” she exclaimed. The girls looked all around them, and Molly walked back to the window, but there was no sign of her.

“Probably run back to the cabin because she was scared,” Sam said.

The sound came, from behind them again, and the girls whirled around to look back down the corridor. Once again, there was nothing there, but the distant gray light didn’t seem quite as distant anymore. They could see it flicker a bit, like candlelight.

“What’s that thing at the end?” Addy asked, as the girls moved forward again. There was a distinct shape in the far off light, but it was just a bit too far to make out. They had barely taken three steps when there was a crumbling, squelching sound from behind them, and the girls reeled again, casting their lights back towards the window.

The window that was now very far away.

“How?” Molly asked, her voice shaking.

“The walls changed,” Addy noted. She drew a bright line along the wall beside them with her flashlight, and then the floor. Rather than packed dirt, everything was now cold black stone, shining faintly with damp. “Sam, are you–” she began, but when she turned around to look at Sam, she wasn’t there.

Instead, there was a narrow stone door, carved with beautiful swirling sigils. Each one guiding a delicate lace of white mycelium upwards, outwards, all along the walls where they met the door. Even under their feet.

"What's mycelium?"

"Shut up, Ava!"

"I need to visualize it!"

Mycelium is the part of a fungus that exists underground.

"Like its roots?"

Not really, but close enough.

"Oh, my God, can we please get back to the story?"

Of course.

“Sam!” Molly shouted. Her voice echoed back at her, but there was no other reply.

Another crumbling, squelching sound, and the walls seemed to move away from each other, opening the space around them into a vast, dark cavern.

The girls threw themselves together, back to back, elbows interlocked, shining their lights up at the walls as they shifted and buckled, moving away from them. They knew then, right down in their bones, that they weren’t in the cabin anymore. They had never been in the cabin at all. This place was older, deeper, and far more dangerous than a dilapidated old cabin in the woods.

And there, in the dark, was a shape.

Something moved around them, slinking and slithering in the dark. Too far away to see, the beams of their flashlights reflecting off its wide, gleaming eyes.

The girls screamed. What else was there to do?

“Uh…do something?”

“Fight the monsters!”

“Run away!”

All easy to say when it is not you trapped in the dark with something beyond your imagining.

Molly managed to think of something.

“We need salt!” she cried.

“Why?” Addy demanded, fighting to cover as much space as she could with light.

“To make a circle, for keeping out demons and stuff!”

“Does that look like a demon to you?!”

“Yes!”

“I definitely don’t have salt!” Addy shouted in her rising panic.

“We need something!” Molly yelled back.

They parted, unslinging their little backpacks and digging through for anything that might work. A day pack at summer camp typically doesn’t come equipped for monsters though. They had no salt. They had no weapons.

“I have a slingshot!”

“Didn’t one of them have a pocket knife?”

Indeed, but Sam wasn't there anymore.

Addy and Molly knelt together in the dark, the walls retreating, the darkness expanding, and the icy air whirling around them like a storm. All the while, the slithering, skittering noise of the creature echoed around them, too fast and muddled for them to know exactly where it was. Addy’s fingers closed around a stub of sidewalk chalk, just as Molly was swept away from her into the dark, shrieking.

“Molly!” she cried, but the other girl was gone in an instant, and only the icy wind and slippery dark remained.

Scrambling, Addy used the chalk to draw a circle around herself on the damp stone floor, wearing the stub of chalk so low she scraped her thumbnail back. It was only chalk, not salt, yet the creature rebounded off the circle as if it were a solid barrier. Shrill cries of rage echoed off the cavernous walls as the creature darted around her, shapeless but for its terrible great eyes.

And as the walls continued to grow, that small square of moonlight that marked the cabin window grew smaller and smaller. Moving away.

“No…”

Addy huddled inside the chalk circle, watching that distant light–the only way out–shrink and dim.

She had to get there. She had to get out, but getting out meant leaving the circle, and whatever had come out of the dark to snatch her friends was still there. Its shrieks had quieted, but she could hear it breathing.

How to leave, without leaving the circle?

“Duh, she could just keep drawing more circles.”

“Yeah!”

There was not enough chalk.

“Could she run for it?”

It was too far. There was no way to tell how far. She would not make it.

“Could she use her lanyard?”

Yes, Aracely, she could. May I see that for a moment?

Thank you. This is lovely work. I like the tree pattern you chose.

“Thank you!”

You all put a lot of work into your lanyards. They’re very…pretty…

“Zoey has shooting stars on hers.”

Really? May I see?

“I forgot it at lunch.”

“You always forget!”

“It’ll be in the lost-and-found tomorrow.”

Yes, of course. Nothing to worry about.

“How is she supposed to use a lanyard to escape, anyway?”

“Because it makes a circle!”

It does make a circle, which this creature finds quite vexing.

“Why?”

I don’t know. It’s just one of those things I suppose, like cats sitting in boxes, or how bugs don’t like mint.

“She’s not really going to use a stupid lanyard to escape, is she?”

She did.

Campers at that time didn’t wear name tags like you do. They made lanyards as a craft, but not everyone had one. Addy did though. She had made it with her friends, weaving together dozens of threads of all colors into a long ribbon to wear around her neck with a wooden pendant on it.

Addy held that woven circle around her middle, and ran through the dark, stumbling and weeping, until she burst out into the moonlight, falling into the damp grass beneath the open window.

She ran back to the Cedar Cabin, screaming for help. She woke the whole camp, and led her counselor and the directors back to the cabin, but the window was closed, the candle gone, and the cabin empty.

Except for some rusted bunk beds and rotting boxes, of course.

“What about the other girls?”

They were not found.

“Not ever?”

No.

The remaining campers were sent home early. The police were called, and the families of the missing girls were notified. They searched the woods, dredged the lake, and found nothing.

For a while, it was believed that they’d run off as a joke. Then, it was thought they had been kidnapped. No one believed Addy. Some of the parents even accused her of doing something to their children.

Regardless of what anyone chose to believe, the girls were never found, and the camp was closed down for a number of years. It was wonderfully quiet and peaceful in the forest around the lake.

But the years passed, and people mostly forgot, and they were able to open the camp and bring children to the lake again. With certain precautions in place…

“Like early lights out?”

“And the safety patrol?”

“Campfire time while counselors have their break?”

“And having to wear stupid name tags all the time?”

Yes, weaving these special ribbons to wear around your neck became tradition too. Each year, before you do anything else, you all twist and tie a ring of protection around yourselves.

I’m sure they’ll burn though.

“Hey!”

“What are you doing?”

“I worked hard on that!”

“What’s…what’s wrong with your eyes?”

There is nothing wrong with my eyes, human child.

“Where’s Megan?”

“When did it get so dark?”

“I can’t see the cabin!”

Poor little children.

You’d think, for something so very important, they would have taught you better to keep those special ribbons around your neck.