Your Soul to Take

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. The story I’m about to tell will possess your soul, so if you believe in the supernatural existence of fate then you should leave long before I begin, or your souls will be condemned.

Do not make a mockery. I made that mistake. Yes, it is true people lost in the woods stumble upon abandoned cabins all the time optimistic they’ll find essentials, oil lanterns, candles, worn blankets, a makeshift kitchen and cot and other aged artifacts needed for survival without an expiration date waiting to be discovered. What’s so frightening about that? I know you’re all thinking it.

“Listen to me cautiously, you still have time to go. Leave! There will be no judgement, no shame. I urge you, leave now before the story is told; else there will be no turning back.”

Veronica looks to her usually submissive significant other of over two years, “Jason, I have a terrible feeling. Baby please let’s just go. I warned you about this creep. I don’t trust him. He’s practically a stranger, we met him yesterday for Christ’s sake and I have a strong disinclination for this campfire horror story bullshit and for him alike. Please, let’s just go!”

“Aww Vee come on. This is fun, he’s just trying to scare us. Nothings gonna to happen to you, I promise. Won’t you trust me?”

“Yes, I trust you! It’s him I don’t trust.”

“Veronica shut up! You’re such a buzz kill for crying out loud!”, exclaims Woody. “We all came out here for an adventure before we go off to college and my boy said he doesn’t want to leave and I for one don’t either, so do the rest of us a favor and kindly take a chill pill and chill out.”

“For crying out loud can we just get on with the story?”

“Thanks Jessie, at least one of you ladies has some nerve.”

Veronica sulks into submission and as much as she wanted to leave, it was already dark and she’s not prepared to walk alone in the woods at night back to the campsite, so she holds Jason close and listens.

Eileen Brackens lived in the cabin with her husband. She was an outcast descending from a long line of Salem Witches. Most of the ancestorial matriarchs in her family were hunted down and burned at the stake during the infamous Salem Witch hunts of 1693. Contrarily the bloodline lived on, surviving into an era where the hunt for witches had long been outlawed, but the reputation of her foremothers was never quite lived down.

Banished and feared by the townsfolk, they were forced to live in isolation like a plague descending upon the land. Despite the laborious and lonely conditions, she and her husband made the best of their humble lives together. Her husband farmed the land by day which allowed them to harvest plentiful fruits and vegetables to eat, and Eileen crafted wax candles and wooden dolls to make trade with those less convinced of her witchery.

While Eileen was a virtuous wife in every way, she was unable to provide her husband with a family, a son. A total of twenty-seven months she carried to term and bore their children, but without proper obstetrics and a midwife she gave birth to three stillborn daughters of whom she had named Evie, Evelyn, and Emory. God rest their souls.

After the loss of their youngest Emory, Eilleen became distant from her husband and with each fleeting night, her heart was replenished with something else. She blamed them—every single last one of them for her misfortune and the murdering of her offspring. She became consumed by anger and hatred for the townsfolk. Her eyes beamed with a fiery light inside.

Her husband cultivated a fear of her rainless and patchy decomposing flesh. Her nails began to coil like the shells of twisted escargot, her teeth began to rot like a worm bitten apple, her hair draping onto a frail spine; withered with darkness of an abyss. Even her vocal cords were transformed into the voice of Lucifer himself. Eileen was no longer, but a monstrosity.

On an artic night he awakened by the clicking and wretched sounds of crepitus like a thousand shells shattering onto the bottom of a dry well. His wife sat on the edge of the bed hunchbacked and boney with knotted vertebrae. She was chanting a spell of necromancy; a language he’d never, up until that moment heard her speak before.

“Rise o’ innocent ones. Croshu Aman’

Salem’s witches and beasts. Croshu Aman’

Rise o’ voracious ones. Croshu Aman’

With their souls I’ve prepared a feast. Croshu Aman’”

“Eileen.”, he called out in a frightened whisper.

As she turned to face him, it was only her neck that swiveled like a crescent moon. Stricken by fear, he fled, ran as fast as he could in the arctic night, barefoot in gown, branches from the hollow trees whipping and bleeding his flesh. The moonlight lighting the path. Closing in behind him the sound of vast footsteps like beasts giving chase. Sounds of wicked laughter echoing through the forest carried swiftly by the wind.

The weight of his limbs became heavy with gravity like running in the deathly whirls of the lake. Twisting his ankle on the root of a tree trunk he toppled to the ground and beneath his chest he lay atop the graves of three Salem witches; their headstones staring him in the face.

There, stood Eileen.

“Rise Evie. Croshu Aman’

“Rise Evelyn. Croshu Aman’

“Rise Emory. Croshu Aman’”

Story has it, he never made it out of these woods.

“What do you mean these woods?”, Veronica said looking deep into her surroundings.

They all began to look around.

The cabin in the woods is just beyond those trees. You see, on that arctic night, Eileen and the spirits of her daughters cursed the town and the lands. Our families suffered fates desolate as her own. Every child born of still life until we offered a sacrifice. The sacrifice of living for the souls of her unborn children and the generations to follow.

Only she cannot possess a living, human soul unless it opens the portal to welcome her inside a campfire story. How else would you know who you are?

The cabin in the woods has been abandoned for years, but tonight a candle burns in the window.