Take Me Back, Jack!

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

I stopped and stared, listening to the incessant hum of buzzing insects. The air was thick with mosquitos and flies, swarming around my face, biting at the exposed flesh of my arms and legs. “Hello?” I croaked, “Hello, is anyone out there?” My mind struggled to produce an explanation for the candles presence but stalled in confusion. There was no pane left in the window. If the candle toppled in the breeze, it would drop into the overgrown brush that surrounded the cabin. The woods were dangerously dry that summer, and I began to envision an inferno blooming from the seed of that flickering flame. In good conscious, I could not leave the candle burning.

I stepped off the path, kicking through thorns and dodging low-hanging branches. Annoyance quickly replaced my initial unease. Some careless kids had probably been playing house, and forgotten to blow the candle out before running home for supper. But a fire would destroy more than just the old cabin. My own home was not far off. I flinched thinking of my younger sister and my parents burning to a crisp in their beds.`

Danny Thompson's family had been sitting down to supper when I left their house. My stomach churned in a hollow pang at the memory of buttery mashed potatoes, steaming corn-on-the-cob, and generous slices of homemade meatloaf. My mother would also be putting the finishing touches on our family’s supper, and beginning to wonder where I was.

A loud CRACK cut through the night. I whirled in a frantic circle, nearly losing my balance. “Who’s there?” I whimpered, but the darkness offered no reply. I had no light of my own and it was a longer walk to the window than I anticipated. Shadows moved in the darkness where patches of moonlight sifted down between thick clusters of leaves. Wind howled menacingly through the canopy above, as if the woods were trying to ward me away, but I’d gone too far to turn back. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I chickened out. I imagined tossing and turning in my bed, waiting for thick black smoke to start seeping into my room. Waiting to hear my mother screaming as she realized it was too late to escape.

The thundering whir of a helicopter interrupted my ruminations of fiery death, and a spot-light swept through the distance. The hair on the back on my neck stood on end. Something knocked loose in my memory. Why would a helicopter be combing the woods? Mr. Thompson had been watching the news as I left Danny’s house, and now my subconscious seized on the few words it had managed to absorb “…officials stated that the individual is to be considered extremely dangerous and capable of severe violence. Reports from the facility indicate that the prisoner has now been missing for more than 24 hours… State-wide man-hunt in progress… believed to be on foot… extremely dangerous and capable of severe violence.”

The woods lay in a sprawling mass that ebbed along the interstate and eventually connected with a correctional facility about twenty miles north of where I was standing. An unspeakable fear began to take shape in my mind. Local legends whispered of deranged killers being housed in that prison. What if…? Mrs. Thompson had shouted something as the screen-door slammed behind me, and her words came back to me then, “Be careful walking through the woods tonight!” I wanted to turn and run back to the path. Let the woods burn. I wanted to run straight home and into the safety of my mother’s arms. But I remained still. I told myself that I was being stupid, and paranoid. A few more steps would close the final distance between me and the window. I tried to peer through the opening and into the cabin, but only darkness lay beyond the small circle of light wisping from the candles wick. My shoes felt heavy like a pair of cinderblocks as I dragged myself forward.

The candle was close enough now that all I had to do was exhale with enough force and it would go out. I almost laughed with relief. How silly I was being. An escaped prisoner would still be on the run. Not lingering in the old cabin. I sucked in a breath and immediately blew it out. I blew like a five-year-old blusters over the candles on a birthday cake. The lingering smokiness of the extinguished flame smelled of triumph. I turned and carefully began to pick my way back to the safety of the dirt path. In no time at all I would be at home and thanking God no one had witnessed my severe case of scaredy-catitis. If anyone found out I’d almost been too afraid to step off the path and blow out a measly candle, I would die of embarrassment.

A piercing, vicious sound, sliced through the darkness. Blood rushed in my veins, making me dizzy, and forcing fat globs of sweat through my pores. The sound was laughter. A shrill and savage cackle that clawed its way into my ears and lapped a disgusting vibrato against the folds of my brain. My thoughts turned to mud, and my legs turned to jelly. I wanted to run, but I was paralyzed. I wanted to scream, and scream, and scream. Not for help - no, my capacity for rational thought was rendered momentarily defective - but to drown out the inhuman shrieking threatening to shatter my sanity.

As the laughter died off and became unpredictable bursts of jagged snickering, my paralysis eased into a full body tremor which set my teeth rattling furiously inside my skull. I tasted salt. With a jolt of pain, I realized that I’d bitten into my tongue, and warm blood was filling my mouth. I wrenched my mind from its daze and willed myself to look back at the cabin. A figure lurked in the frame of the darkened window. I strained my eyes until they threated to pop out of their sockets, but could only make out a shadow.

Then the shadow spoke.

The voice was muddled with bouts of hysterical laughter that clipped and mutated between coherence and lunacy. “…Hey! hey you found me!... oh no. Uh oh. Finders keepers, losers weepers! Are you here to take me back, jack? Are you here to take me back back back? uh oh. Well, you’ll have to come and get me! Or I’ll come get you! Do you wanna play? Oh yes, let’s play, oh god I need to play. Do you wanna hide? Better hide good, little doggy, I’m gonna find you! FIND YOU FIND YOU FIND YOU FIND YOU!” The shadow was screaming, screaming so loud I thought my head would split open, and all my spongey brains would go dribbling onto the dry and crunchy debris that covered the ground. I stood in slack-jawed disbelief with blood from my mangled tongue leaking out of my gaping mouth. I couldn’t blink, or breath, or think. A warm wetness flowed down my leg and pooled at my feet. I looked down in confusion and saw that I was pissing myself.

The shadow ceased its frenzied babbling and began to crawl out from the incomprehensibly blackness, out from that wretched window where usually there was nothing. Time slowed as my feeble mind latched onto a single, desperate thought. RUN. My arms pinwheeled and I shuffled back, tearing my eyes from the shadow that was advancing with alarming speed. I flailed awkwardly and managed to turn around without falling into a nest of thorns. Then I was moving, racing headlong through the darkness.

A ferocious rustle of leaves and snapping twigs hounded my flight. Trees blurred at the edge of my vision, the moon and the stars swirled above, and the insects droned on. Louder now than before. A deafening hum that chanted and praised to the glory of night. A voice that rippled with laughter and glee rose up behind me, “Run, little doggy! I’m gonna get you! Run, little doggy, run!”

The tree line broke and I stumbled onto the dirt path. I spun around and looked into the twisted mess of branches and quivering leaves, but the shadow was gone. I tore off in a dead sprint, pushing against the pain in my chest and the stitch in my side. I had escaped. And soon I was racing between houses, hopping chain-link fences, and cutting through my neighbor’s yards. I bounded onto the wooden porch behind my home and staggered clumsily into the back door. I jerked the handle and threw my shoulder forward, collapsing through the entrance and landing in a heap on the kitchen floor.

I let go of a ragged, feral sob. My parents sprang up from the table and scrambled to my side. My sister stared in wide eyed shock, a string of loose spaghetti dangling from her chin. “What happened? Jesus, what is it?” They kept repeating the same questions, but I couldn’t speak. I trembled and buried my face in their arms. Soon, my mother was spooning a syrupy liquid past my lips that drugged me into a dreamless sleep.

The next morning, crisp daylight streamed through my bedroom window, tickling and warming the skin of my cheek. A tightness formed in my chest as the events of the previous evening replayed in my head. I hauled myself out of bed and stepped into the living room, where my parents were speaking softly and wearing expressions of deep concern.

It was difficult to articulate the horror of my experience in the woods. “A shadow chased me… It was hiding in the old cabin…the escaped prisoner...” My parents exchanged skeptical glances, and I knew they believed I’d let my imagination get the better of me. Still, I listened while my father made a report to the police over the phone. Apparently, the prisoner had not yet been captured. But officials assumed he would be farther away by now. More likely a group of bored teenagers with nothing better to do than scare little kids.

That afternoon, Danny Thompson called asking if I was coming over to help finish the fort, and I told him no. My mother turned as I hung up the phone. “You sure you’re alright, sweetheart? I’ll drive you to Danny’s if you don’t want to walk through the woods.” There was a lump in my throat. I didn’t want to explain to Danny why my mother was dropping me off, and more than that I didn’t want to leave the safety of my own home. “No, it’s OK mom.”

Her eyes trailed after me as I walked out the front door. I crept down the side of the house, reaching the edge, and peering around the corner. The woods waited there. My bedroom was the first window on the backside of our house and a small irregular shape resting on the sill caught my eye. Something tucked into the corner of the frame. I walked over to investigate the object and noticed with a shudder that my curtains hung open, revealing a clear view of where I slept.

I reached out and picked up the candle resting in the corner of my window frame. The wax was soft in the afternoon heat, the wick was blackened – having recently been burned. A powerful nausea rolled around in my guts. Someone had drawn a crude smiley face in the dust and grime that accumulated on the window’s lower pane. The game was not over. I had not escaped. The shadow needed to play. Now every night I wait to hear the shriek of its laughter. I wait for the night when the shadow takes me in it’s cold embrace and whispers gleefully into my ear, “I found you, little doggy! You’re mine.”