The Candle

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Maya’s family had owned the campgrounds for about 15 years, and she remembers being a little girl when the previous owners told her parents, “Stay away from the cabin in the woods, especially if the candle is lit.” They had always thought it was privately owned by someone, which is why it was set back in the woods, unlike the other cabins that surrounded the lake, until they finally looked at it and realized that no one was there. So this year they decided to clean it up and rent it out like the others.

Maya walked back to the registrar's cabin to find a group of friends, probably in their mid-20s, being helped by her mother. “Alright, you guys are all set, cabin number 30, it’s in the back on the left side.”

“Mom, you can’t rent that cabin,” Maya said, with a concerned look on her face. One of the girls in the group looked at her and felt uneasy about the way Maya was talking about the cabin they had just rented.

“Maya, excuse me, we have guests. You guys are all set. You can head out.” Maya’s mother encouraged.

“What, did we buy the spooky cabin package when we rented here?” One of the boys sneered as he picked up his bags and started with his gang to the cabin. Once they left, Maya informed her mother of the lit candle in the window, and reminded her of the warning the previous owners gave them all those years ago.

“Oh Maya, please, they probably just didn’t want us to rent it so they could keep it for themselves and sneak up here whenever they wanted. You were there when we went through and cleaned it out.” Her mother said. Maya was there and remembers having that awful, lingering feeling of someone watching her as they walked around the cabin. She walked away feeling frustrated by her mother's dismissal of her fears so quickly.

Maya returned to maintaining the campgrounds, cleaning up the cabins as other renters left, and picking up the trash that was always thrown on the beach. She could see the cabin in the woods from where she was and the candle still lit in the second-floor window, but as she watched, she noticed something else. Maya ran towards the cabin, and as she approached, she knocked anxiously on the door to alert the new inhabitants.

Angela, already on edge from the girl at the registrar cabin’s warning, nearly fainted when she heard the loud, intense knocking at the front door.

“Jesus, who is knocking already? We haven’t even opened our bags yet.” Chad said, clearly annoyed by the interruption. He swung the door open, nearly pulling it off of its old worn down hinges.

“Hey, little miss actress, you can end the charades. The haunted cabin bit isn’t a good look for you.”

“Please, I’m really sorry, but you can’t stay in this cabin, it isn’t safe. If you go back and talk to my mom, we can get you another one, no extra charge, that will be much more comfortable.”

“Are you kidding?” Chad responded, un—, “We paid extra to have the second floor and extra bedrooms. We are not moving.”

“Is everything okay?” Angela asked, even more on edge than before now. “Chad, she seems really concerned. Maybe we should listen to her.”

“Oh, come on, she probably just wants this cabin open so she can have her friends over and mess around all night. Listen, freak show, we aren’t leaving, and if you bother us again, I’m telling your mom and not paying for a single night we stay here.” with that, Chad slammed the door in Maya’s face and began gathering his things to go upstairs.

“Chad, you didn’t have to be so rude,” Marcia said, “She did look actually concerned. I don’t think she was messing around.”

“Yeah, Chad, maybe we should have listened to the bug-eyed psycho, seeing things in our window, girl.” Jason mocked.

“You guys are so rude.” Marcia snapped at them.

Angela began looking around the old cabin and couldn’t help but feel someone was watching them. Perhaps the girl was looking through one of the windows, she thought. What she didn’t think about, what none of them knew about, was the woman who lived there all those years ago, that still roams the house. None of them knew of her story, a lonely immigrant running away from the tragedy of her country, trying to start over.

When she moved to the country, she gave herself a new name, Rebecca, and began looking for jobs anywhere she could. Finally, she stumbled upon this house, this cabin in the woods. Back then, it was a beautiful, shining home to Mr. and Mrs. Handerson. The couple interviewed Rebecca for a maid position they were looking to fill, Mr.Handerson was usually traveling for work, and Mrs.Handerson wanted to begin a book club and felt maintaining the house would be too much on top of that. The Handersons welcomed Rebecca with open arms and even allowed her to live in the small room upstairs for free so she could do her early morning rituals. Each morning Rebecca would wake up, light her candle she always kept by the window, and get to work. Mrs.Handerson gave her the candle so her room would never be full of darkness. Rebecca did everything for the Handersons, made them breakfast, did their wash, cleaned their floors, and even bought the groceries from the store across town for them once a week. She quite enjoyed her time there and felt like she had a family in her new strange world.

However, as time went on, she began noticing a different side of Mr.Handerson. He started coming home more frequently, and so started drinking more frequently as well. Rebecca watched some nights as Mr.Handerson drank himself to a fool and beat Mrs.Handerson for no good reason that she could find. The drinking became heavier, and so did the beatings, until one night, Mrs.Handerson could take it no longer, and left. Consequently, that only left Rebecca for Mr.Handerson to turn his aggression towards. Rebecca tried to avoid it, staying in her room as long as she could, or going to the grocery store in the afternoon, hoping Mr.Handerson would be passed out by the time she got back, but those moments of peace were so far and few between. Bruises began to paint Rebecca’s body; some nights, she could barely lay down because she was so sore.

One night, Rebecca couldn’t take it anymore. As Mr.Handerson was beating her in the kitchen, she finally fought back. She kicked, scratched, and screamed for her life. This only increased Mr.Handerson’s aggression, and as if he had unleashed an animal inside him, he grabbed the knife off the kitchen counter and began smashing the top of Rebecca’s head with it. As Rebecca lay on the floor, taking in her last breaths, still conscious enough to be aware of what was happening, Mr.Handerson took her last piece of dignity.

Mr.Handerson buried the body in the backyard of his cabin home and thought nothing more of it. He hired a new maid, and his cycle began all over again. But this maid's misery ended much quicker than Rebecca’s. About a week after the beats, the new maid came home from the grocery store; she noticed it was pleasantly quiet, and though she wondered where Mr.Handerson was, she dare not go looking for him. The peace was overwhelming, and as she finished putting the groceries away, she couldn’t help but go looking. She crept to the back of the house where Mr.Handerson’s office was, his usual drinking spot. As she opened the door, she saw the top of his head peeking out from his lounge chair. She thought about closing the door and acting like she never saw him, but something called her to do otherwise.

“Mr.Handerson, do you need anything?” The maid asked quietly. Mr.Handerson remained motionless. Once again the maid thought she might as well leave him be and enjoy the peace, but something felt off in the room. She walked towards him with feather-like steps. As she came around the oak desk to his chair, she could finally see why Mr.Handerson wasn’t answering her. Her hands clapped her mouth so as not to let her scream escape, in fear that what she saw was only a dream, and she may still actually wake him. She fell to her knees in terror and crawled out the door, finally gathering the strength to lift herself to her feet at the stairs. She ran out of the house to find anyone who could help.

Mr.Handerson was sitting in his chair, blood still spilling from his head, staining the purple and green bruises that now covered his body. Perhaps it was a coincidence that those bruises matched the ones that painted Rebecca's body; perhaps not. Perhaps it was a coincidence that Mr.Handerson’s head was sliced in the exact same way Rebecca’s did; perhaps not.

“Boo!” Chad jumped from behind the closet door in the downstairs bedroom. Marcia and Angela screamed, nearly hitting the door back into his face.

“Hey, watch it!” Chad yelled back, kicking the door, so it hit Marcia’s arm.

“Chad, watch it! That really hurt.” Angela inspected her arm as Marcia scolded Chad.

“Oh, stop being a baby, you guys suck.” Chad walked past the girls as if nothing had happened. They began picking rooms and unpacking. As they wandered upstairs, they found a hall that led down to the third bedroom. Chad went to open it and found it locked.

“Hey, what the hell? Why is this locked?” He began throwing his shoulder into it.

“Chad knock it off, you might break that door, and then we’ll have to pay for it.” Angela reasoned. But Chad didn’t listen. He didn’t care if he broke the door down, they paid for a three-bedroom cabin, and door or not, that’s what they were going to get. He only stopped when he finally realized the door would not budge.

“This is bullshit. We paid good money for this cabin! I’m calling up that psycho’s mom and complaining.” Angela placed her hand gingerly on Chad’s shoulder, trying to calm him down.

“Chad, it’s not a big deal. We’ll just use the two bedrooms downstairs; I don’t think Jason and Marcia will mind sharing.” Chad threw his shoulder into Angela, knocking her into the wall and onto the wooden floor that barely held her up. Chad paid no mind to Angela’s stumble and walked downstairs to open up the bottle of whiskey he and Jason stole from his father’s liquor cabinet. Angela sat for a minute, wondering why she allowed Chad to push her around like this. He wasn’t like this when they first started dating. As she pulled herself to her feet, she felt a cool breeze blow past her, shuffling her hair as it did.

‘That’s funny,’ Angela thought to herself. ‘I didn’t think this place had AC.’

As the night went on, Angela and Marcia tried to enjoy themselves. But Jason and Chad only got drunker and more handsy. Finally, Angela had, had enough. She pushed Chad off, and due to his intoxicated state, he landed much harder than she anticipated. As he stood up and looked back at her, she realized she had made a mistake. She could feel the pique radiating off of him.

“Chad, please, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to push you like that. I just don’t want you all over me anymore. You’re making me uncomfortable.” With one swift motion, Chad stood over Angela as her body slammed to the floor. Marcia could be heard screaming for him to stop and for Jason to get off of her, but Angela could barely see what was in front of her. It wouldn’t be until weeks later that Angel and Marcia would find out that they both heard the whisper of a woman neither of them knew. A silent voice that Marcia and Angela would never know, that all of them heard simultaneously, “That’s enough.”

Maya woke with an overwhelming feeling of nausea. She convinced herself it was from her father’s cooking last night, and the meatloaf did seem a little underdone. She went through her morning ritual, showered, brushed her tooth, and braided her hair before going to the campground to begin her daily maintenance chores. As she made her rounds, she couldn’t help but continue to look at the cabin in the woods, there was something different about it today, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

‘The candle,’ she thought, ‘It isn’t lit anymore.’ The thought made her stomach turn even more than it already was, and she knew something was wrong. She made her way towards the cabin once more, unfazed by the berate she received yesterday from the boys who now inhabited it. She stood on the porch for a moment, unsure what she would say to them today and why she was bothering them again. She almost turned back, but something compelled her to knock. Just once, if no one answered, she would go. As the sound of her knock echoed through the wooden cabin, no sound returned. She was about off the porch when she heard the creak of the front door open, she turned, prepared for the boy that answered yesterday to make more sny remarks, but nothing came. The silence was almost painful to Maya’s ears. She pushed the door open the rest of the way and clasped her mouth with her hands. She closed her eyes and willed herself to wake up from the nightmare she had walked into, but nothing happened. When she opened them again, the bodies of the two boys were still there with purple and green spots painting their bodies and blood pooling on the hardwood floor by their heads. As Maya took in the full gory picture in front of her, a whisper licked her ear. She twitched her head, feeling the cold air go into it but not hearing the words that followed. Then the sound of a rattling door crept into her ear, but it wasn’t from downstairs. She looked up the staircase into the dark, unlit hall, again hearing that rattling and the muffled sounds that were indistinguishable. As if bewitched, she wandered up the stairs towards the rattling sound, only to find the door at the end of the hall closed as it's always been. She walked towards it and pressed her ear against it. Her hands began to shake, and her heart fluttered with anticipation. She knocked once, as she did on the front door, and in response, the door knocked erratically back. Maya jumped backward, about to turn and run out of the house when she heard those muffled noises again.

‘It couldn’t be . . .’ she thought to herself.

She turned the doorknob, and the two girls that had been with the now mangled lifeless boys that lay downstairs fell out in hysterics. Screaming and crying, incomprehensible.

“Where is she?!” one of them finally screeched out.

“Who?” Maya asked.

“The maid! Is she gone? Where are Jason and Chad? She locked us in here, and we could hear screaming and what sounded like . . .” She couldn’t finish her sentence; her cries overtook her words without care. Was Maya to tell them what she saw downstairs? Perhaps it was a coincidence that Chad and Jason had died in the same manner that Mr.Handerson did; perhaps not.