You

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. You decide to approach, because no matter how many horror movies you watch you never learn, do you? Curiosity has always won out over self-preservation in your mind; that’s why you were always the kid that stuck their hand in the blacked-out mystery box at educational exhibits. When presented with such a tempting thing as an abandoned cabin, how could you resist?

Even the mangled receptionist at the cozy but remote resort you’re staying at suggesting in a fire-crackle voice that this place is best avoided wasn’t enough to deter you. As soon as you saw it in that YouTube video, “Top 10 Haunted Places Anyone Can Visit,” you knew you had to see it for yourself. It drew you in, the image of that decrepit little cabin.

Something about it’s faded redwood door tilted on its frame beckoned you to open it. Ivy smothered a large portion of the exterior, and it was sort of beautiful for all that it was in crumbling shambles. You imagined the way shafts of light must strike through the holes in the roof like spears of heaven; you imagined you would find a holy sanctum within those moldy timbers. Surely the candle that would light itself tonight was merely a sign from God that you were correct.

The prospect of that sacred flame entices you. How desirous you are of its heat, how ashamed you are of your utter unworthiness to behold it. Feel how your own inadequacy burns you, how it commands the very blood within you to flood into your face and chest. Feel how it begs that blood to drown you in repentance for existing. How dare you think your mortal eyes may behold such divinity?

But you are human, a creature of arrogance that revels in shameful acts and secretly wants nothing more than to defile its surroundings. A creature that so wishes for significance in the face of its utter smallness that it would leave its mark even in unnumbered corpses and immeasurable misery. Vile.

So you approach that holy sanctum without any regard for what is proper, without even the barest of offerings, and expect to face no consequences. You do not know what dwells here, mortal. Holy beings have long deserted this shrine, all that remains are their putrid castings.

The last vestige of purity here was unmade by the acts that have since taken place between these walls. If you find malevolent spirits here, know this: it was by your own poisonous hand that they were invited in. When you saw sign of their presence here you were already too close. Still, you should have turned and run. Your soul should have stuttered when you saw that burning wick; the resonance of fear through the immaterial substance of your being should have been warning enough. But you did not listen.

Now they dwell in you, little moth.

In their effort to dominate your vessel they will gleefully release your inhibitions one by one as Pandora once unlatched the locks on her box. Unfettered, you will use your own hands against all who near you; you will undo them as your darkest self has always wanted. Every frightful repulsive bloodcurdling thought that even momentarily flits across your mind will become a maddening compulsion.

But you will still exist. In the corner of your own mind, the deepest crevice, where you will bare witness but will have no say. Any good you’ve ever done will be steadily dismantled in the way that nature ruthlessly recycles the dead, pulling them apart to their last molecule and restructuring them into new forms. They will crush you against the grindstone of your morals until you are nothing more than the salt in your own wounds. You may try to end yourself, to spare the world of what is to come, but they will not let you.

They, the fester of lost souls, who should have been trapped. Trapped because it was I who sealed them here; it was I who carved barriers with tools rendered from my own bones and sealed this place with blood. It is I who died to keep what was here locked away. And yet, you have by your very entrance allowed them to escape.

And for what? A mere candle glowing in a window was all the cunning it took to fool you? A hint of mystery and you ignore every warning I left for you? You ignored how stepping foot on this land froze your veins, how the wind in the trees screamed for you to leave, how the very presence of the cabin weighed upon you like a clammy hand pressing down upon your chest. Even now, you ignore my words as I tell you to stay put. You should entomb yourself in this place; when you are beyond the barriers I can no longer influence you, or them. I will no longer be able to grant you any mercy.

You will be alone in this.

However, I am beyond feeling pity.

You brought this on yourself.