For the Sake of the Children

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

Were they back?

It seemed like it was yesterday that a middle-aged couple were raising their grandchildren in this cabin after the untimely demise of their parents. So, as I walked my dog Oscar around midnight, I began to wonder if the long-running fear that the family's spirits had occupied the cabin since that fateful day was correct.

It all began with two parents slavishly devoted to their children. I remember the parents taking the children to piano lessons, soccer games, and other social activities. The happiness of those kids appeared to be the sole reason for their existence.

It seemed like the world stopped when the neighborhood heard the awful news that the parents of the children suddenly died in a head-on collision on their way home from a grocery trip. After being notified of this terrible news, the grandparents hurriedly moved in to care for their orphaned grandchildren.

Sadly, the grandparents expressed little desire to interact with the neighborhood. The rumor was that they had them cremated and placed their urns at the front door so they could guard the cabin and minimize the risk of a home invasion. The town had heard from the parents that the grandparents had suffered a home invasion decades ago when the grandfather was on a business trip. The horrifying experience left the grandmother mentally distraught and caused the elderly couple to become highly suspicious of anyone they met. The deceased parents told neighbors that the grandparents blamed this horrific experience on a close friend.

So as neighborhoods attempted to reach out to the grandparents to voice their condolences, they told everyone to respect their privacy and leave them alone to mourn. Most were still dumbfounded to learn that they stopped all the social activities that the kids participated in as soon as they moved into the cabin.

They also took the kids out of their elementary school and opted to home-school them. It seemed strange that these socially active kids now stayed indoors 24/7. Many now believed the children had become prisoners in their own home, as they did not even venture out to play in their own backyard.

The grandparents covered every window with dark drapes that prevented the outside world from seeing what was happening inside. No one really knew if the kids were okay or miserable after being cut off from the outside world.

Still, widespread rumors maintained that the drapes would move whenever anyone walked by the cabin. It was as if the children were crying out for help while trying to avoid tipping off the grandparents of their desire to interact with the outside world.

Only the grandparents knew the truth, but they refused to speak with anyone in the neighborhood. Even when they went out for groceries, their car had darkly tinted windows to minimize any potential engagement with anyone. They didn’t work as many say that they used their past savings and an insurance payout from the parent's death to cover expenses.

Then one day, the grandparent's red car was seen with its doors wide open in front of the cabin. The car lights remained lit until the battery lost all power. The dim lighting behind the dark drapes also seemed to disappear too. At first, people speculated that a home invasion had taken place. But after the police found many valuables were left intact inside the cabin, they ruled out the possibility of a home invasion.

After several months of this unsolved mystery, many concluded that the parents of the kids had engineered a spiritual intervention and taken the family to a better place.

With all these thoughts racing through my mind, I woke up several neighbors after seeing the fresh burning candle and convinced them to help me understand why the cabin was now showing signs of life inside.

As our neighborhood group approached the cabin, our nerves were on edge. After knocking on the door and receiving no answer, we slowly let ourselves in and were comforted by the pleasant scent of the burning candle.

But as we walked past the entrance, the pleasant scent was replaced by a cool chill that ran up our spines. We never found any signs of a burning candle either. This led us to adopt a sense of déjà vu and reaffirm the view that the family may have never really left the cabin.

It soon became apparent that if the children’s biological parents decided to take the entire family to a better place, we should have known that there is no place like home!