The Curtains Were Blowing But The Window Was Latched Shut

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

“How strange”, I mused out loud to my husband, who was reading next to the fireplace, slowly moving back and forth in the rocking chair. Making a slow and steady creaking sound that was comforting to me. He didn’t reply, so immersed into his book I don’t think he even heard me. I didn’t bother to repeat, transfixed by the strange sight of the candle.

We rented this cabin every year, since I was a child. The abandoned cabin across the way was in more distress and decay as the years went by.

“Could it be squatters or lost hikers?”

The more I looked at the candle the more unsettled I felt. There had been so many unsettling things happening today. Small things that I could logically brush away but for some reason, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

Before the feeling of panic could settle in I looked away and shook it off. Releasing a loud sigh, I walked to the door to check the locks and bolt. I knew I locked it but I checked anyway. Then moved on to check all of the windows were shut and locked.

Last, I opened the door to the attic to check on our children. Cassie and Joseph, our miracle babies. When marrying Liam at the late age of 35, we started trying for children immediately. We tried for four years before using the fertility treatments that finally provided us with our twins. Now our five year old's are asleep peacefully in their side by side twin beds. I let out a breath of relief. I checked their windows and picked up the toys they left on the ground.

Satisfied I went back down stairs. As I was walking towards the living room the hair on the back of my neck stood up. A tickling sensation entered my throat. I wanted to release the spooky feeling by laughing or screaming but I held my breath. Standing just behind the entry way I listened to the rocking chair moving much faster than the usual slow creaking. It sounded loud and aggressive. I wanted to run in but I felt like I was trapped in molasses. I slowly and silently walked into the room. My eyes immediately darted to where my husband had been reading.

The chair was moving back and forth, the book was on the floor and a cold wind had filled the room.

My husband wasn’t in the room. My heart racing, I looked towards the window for the source of the wind. The curtains were blowing but the window was still latched shut.

My brain screamed at me to do something. To grab the firearm, to call 911, to get the children and leave, something, anything.

Instead, I slowly walked to the window, my breath catching in my throat, blood rushing my ears. I looked through the window to the cabin across the way. The candle was still flickering in the window. Then I saw something else. Just a flash but it was enough to make my heart skip a beat. A small handprint, a child's handprint, was on the window next to the candle. And it was blood red.

“I used to hate camping too,” I said to my teenagers.

“We get it Mom” groaned Cassie. “You were a teenager a million years ago and you understand us.” She smirked at her sarcasm.

I ignored her remark and looked at my son who was being more quiet than normal. “Are you okay Joseph?”

He shrugged his shoulders in his oversize black hoodie. I stared at him a little longer before continuing, “I don’t think you two remember the trip that summer but strange things had been happening the entire day. For instance, Your dad and I got up at 4 AM to start piling our stuff and you in the car.

We both remember it. Putting our bags in the car, helping you two get your clothes and buckled into the back seat. We were off before the sun started to rise. I know that because any later, we would have seen it.

The deer that had run out into the road, ever so fast. Liam swerved to avoid the deer, sending us into oncoming traffic. In a single heartbeat I knew the seriousness of the oncoming collision and in the next I accepted my fate.

Joseph cleared his throat, “I don’t remember this.”

“What do you remember, Joseph? You’ve been very contemplative.”

“I do remember our room in the cabin. Just across the hallway from yours. Cassie spent the first night with you guys, I was proud that I was sleeping in my own bed.

That night I remember waking up, straight out of a dream. My eyes opened wide and alert. I looked towards my open door and saw a large, dark figure standing in the doorway. There was no movement or sound from the shadowy man. He just stood and stared. I gathered all the courage I had and got out of bed. I ran towards the door, slowing down cautiously as I drew closer to the figure. I flattened myself to the side of the door and squeezed past him. As soon as I was through, I ran across the small hallway and through the doorway to yours and Dad’s room. I jumped into bed and pulled the blanket over my head.

I dared to peak over the blanket and I saw the figure once again, filling the entryway of the bedroom. Dad, he was like, half asleep. He mumbled something about needing to pee. I didn’t have the words to explain what I was seeing. So I just watched in horror as my Dad walked to the door, to the dark figure.”

Chills crept along my arms, alarmed that my children had ever been in such unknown danger. Cassie seemed to share my alarm. Gone was the smirking teen as she said, “I remember something too. I remember a lot of laughing in our room that wasn’t from Joe and me. Laughing and playing. I didn’t really think of it as odd at the time and forgot it.”

“That’s right, Cassie. I recall, on the second night of our stay. Dad and I told you two to put toys away and go to bed numerous times. After the third cry to play a little longer, you finally cleaned the room and went to sleep.

Some twenty minutes later I heard you playing and laughing again. I opened the door to the stairs and yelled at you to get to bed.

The play and laughter continued, as if you hadn’t even heard me.

I was struck with such a sense of deja vu at that moment. My own parents used to yell at us to stop making noise and go to bed. Yet, I was already in bed.

“The deja vu unlocked another memory for me, one where I too, saw a dark figure in the entryway of my bedroom. I was too frozen with fear to flee to my parents room. I just stared and he stared back until I was transported, it seemed, to another cabin. I was looking through a different pair of eyes. Another child, but I still had my own thoughts and perspective to what the child was experiencing.

The child was focused on an older woman, his mother. Mother was mumbling hypnotic words under her breath as she placed a lit candle in the kitchen window. She turned to the child and spoke clearly “As long as this candle burns, we are bound here. No matter what happens, we will stay together. Your father won’t take you from me. Ever. Just don’t let this candle get blown out, okay?”

The boy nodded and clung to his mom. She picked him up and carried him to his bed and where she sang him to sleep.

The boy jolted awake, it felt like only a moment later, but the darkness suggested it had been hours. Someone was banging on the door outside. A man's voice carried through, begging to be let in.

“Mary, please!’ the voice panicked. “I need to know that Rowan is okay.”

Rowan got up quietly to peek through the crack of his door.

Where he saw his mother by the candle at the window. Intently focused on it. She shook her head out of her trance and yelled, “You can’t have him, you can’t take him from me. I won’t ever let that happen”

The mans voice cried, “Mary I don’t want to do that, please open the door!” He began to pound on the door with his fists, “Mary, you’re paranoid and sick. Please let me help you.”

Mom didn’t reply. She opened one of the cupboards and took out some kind of powder that she then poured into two glasses.

“Cassie, Joseph.” They shook their heads a little, realizing how tense they had been listening to the story.

“This is how I knew what to do, when I saw your father was gone from his rocking chair. The dark figure, he gave me the key to ending the haunting. Do you understand?”

Cassie’s eyes widened. Joe nodded slowly and answered, “You have to blow out the candle.”

“That’s right. Little Rowan watched his mother rush over to him with the glasses. She got down at his level and said very sweetly, “Rowan, you have to drink this for Mommy. It will make the bad man go away and then we can be safe forever.”

The man's desperate voice intensified and then became distant as Rowan drank the glass’s contents. Then everything became distant and far away.

I woke up in my own bed and looked through my own eyes. No scary figure to be seen.

Remembering that gave me deep chills and I was instantly worried for my children. I heard the laughter upstairs again so I rushed up and there you both were. Sleeping soundly in your beds. The toys were picked up, windows shut.

I considered going home at that point. But I had this awful feeling that we wouldn’t make it out alive. If something was underfoot, I had to see it through. I wasn’t just given the key to ending this haunting, I was given an ultimatum.

“Mom, there’s just one thing I don’t understand.” Cassie asked, “How come I don’t remember a crash? You said we went into oncoming traffic on the way to the cabin. How could any of this happen if there was a crash?”

I nodded solemnly, “We did go into oncoming traffic. But we didn’t crash. Suddenly, we were back on the right side of the road and there was no deer and no traffic. We were just cruising along and the sun was already up. The clock said 7 AM. There was no noticeable shift, we didn’t swerve back to the right side and we never saw the sun come up.

We didn’t even speak about it but we looked into each other's eyes knowing we experienced something, but not exactly what. We lost two hours. I didn’t even know how to process what happened. Did we change timelines or enter a parallel reality?

I didn’t know then but I think it had to do with that cabin. Some energy wanted something from me and it seemed there was no way out”.

Cassie spoke up, “Joe? What did the figure do to Dad? When you saw it as a kid.”

Joe replied, “Well Dad had gotten up to pee and I swear he was half asleep. I don’t think he’d even remember but he also slid sideways through the door. He didn’t walk straight through the door, he turned his body sideways like I had. Nothing happened from there. Dad made it back and we fell asleep.”

I continued my story, “The same couldn’t be said when he went missing from his chair. When I saw the candle and the bloody handprint, I knew what I had to do. I left you two with a prayer and ran to the door. There was nothing that I could use to protect myself from ghosts and curses other than my own wit.

I ran to the cabin across the way, to the front door. I tried to open it but it locked shut. The wood was rotten and deteriorating yet, I could not open it.

The wind picked up and on it carried a desperate voice begging to see his son. I ran to the window with the candle and through a rock at it. It should have shattered but it bounced off like it was made from bullet proof glass.

I ran around the whole cabin trying to find some kind of opening. Minutes dragged by and I started to panic. It’s this kind of moment that I would rely on my husband. But this time he needed me, so I had to calm myself down. I took some deep breaths and focused on my center. I can calm down. I can solve this. I kept breathing and found within a string of energy that tugged my core towards the back of the cabin. I focused my attention on it and followed, uncovering a basement door in the ground.

I pulled open the rotting door and went into the dark. I couldn’t see a thing but this string of energy. There was no turning back. So I trusted it and kept going. I found the stairs leading up. As I took the first step up I heard yelling. A yell I knew only from the time that Liam fell off of our roof and broke his arm.

“Liam is hurt, I have to get to him”

I raced up the stairs and into the kitchen of the cabin. I frantically looked around but there was nothing. No Liam, no more sound of pain or crying. In fact, I couldn’t even hear the wind outside, it was totally silent.

I looked at the window with the candle and charged towards it. Just short of it I stopped. The string of energy had gone dark and troubled, I knew I mustn't move anymore forward. I took a step back and bumped into something solid.

My stomach leapt into my heart and I whipped around. Before me was a haggard woman with a glass of water in her hand. She opened her mouth and her voice came out like a high pitched wail, “Leave. Leave the candle, leave the cabin. Take your children and be free of the man who would take them from you.”

I steadied myself. Trying to subtly look around and see if I could sense where Liam was. Voice shaking, I said, “Please. He is a good man, a good father and husband. Let me take him too.”

The woman wailed deeper, “Drink this glass of water and I will free you all.”

I swallowed the spit in my mouth, hard. I took a steadying breath and accepted the cold glass from her. It felt like dread.

I lifted it towards my mouth and just as I was supposed to tip it back and drink I instead slammed it across her face. She bent her head into her hands, screaming her pain into them. Now I could see behind her was the little boy, Rowan. He was shaking and crying.

I could waste no time. I turned around and took the last step to the candle. I sucked a breath of air that got stuck in my throat as I felt my hair being ripped back. I fell down and the woman was on top of me. Death took no weight from her. I was pinned as she rained down her attack, scratching me with her nails and biting at me with her deteriorated teeth.

When I thought all was lost I felt her weight pulled off of me. “Liam!” I screamed in relief. He had pulled her off of me and the old witch was now fighting him. “Hurry!” he yelled. “Get out of here!”

I jumped up and moved back to the candle, nearly tripping over Rowan who was now standing in front of it. I didn’t want to hurt a little boy, even if I knew he was not as real as my own children. A cursed ghost. But there was no need. He just looked up at me and stepped aside. I sucked in another breath of air and blew everything I had towards the candle.

The light flickered out. The sound of fighting behind me stopped. I looked at Rowan and he was smiling. He hugged my leg. He walked away, towards the door, becoming more transparent with every step. He opened the door and filling the entryway was a dark figure. The figure reached out a hand and the Rowan took it with his own. They both disappeared completely.

Cassie and Joe both breathed sighs of relief. The perfect time to get a false sense of security. My husband jumped out from behind them with a loud roar. Cassie and Joe both screamed. Cassie cried, “Dad! You asshole!”

I laughed and slapped my leg. My husband’s laughter was deep and playful. Cassie and Joe started laughing too, releasing the adrenaline. I looked at my husband's eyes, grateful that I would be falling asleep next to my partner tonight.