How It Will Happen

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. And the candle contained a death watch. And it ticked. And it said everything that it said. And it knew everything that would happen. Because no home is truly abandoned and no place leaves no trace and no memory. So now I’ll tell you what will happen. And you’ll listen. And you will know how it will proceed.

You will find the cabin, and you will see the candle, hear its death watch, and you will notice the light, and you will hear the wind in the trees, and you will stare into that flicker. And the candle will only confuse you. You will try to stop thoughts, but you will find them too compelling.

You will recall the words of your favorite professor. So many years ago, in the comfort of a class, the structure of a lodge of learning:

“There are two kinds of fear: ‘terror’ which drives you away, and ‘horror’ which draws you in.”

And you will know now what he meant all this time. And you will know the Terror drove you, and you will know you found the Horror. You will not resist. The fear will grow as mystery deepens. You’ll wonder at the candle in the window. You’ll feel the need to know, and you will not resist compulsion.

The know the night dark stillness, trees that seem to listen, wind and clouds and stars and moon late risen in the dark, and you will not know where you are or how you came there. And the cabin will draw nearer as you nonetheless approach. Who could have lit that candle? What is its wretched sound? Who could be there in the night? Who would dare disturb a place all beings would only abandon?

But they didn’t abandon.

In the branches of a beech tree still as carvings you will notice an owl and a lynx sharing a perch and studying your approach. They will whisper with human voices. The ghost of a child will giggle at you; you will notice her gown and dark hair. She will be a little girl who died of cold a century ago, still desolate in rags beside oak.

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” you will ask.

She’ll smile and answer nothing.

“Shy?” you’ll ask. “Or cold? How the wind blows. Such a lonely sound don’t you think?”

But you will know you’re only making conversation, and worse yet you’ll know the little dead girl also knows. She’ll step behind the old oak and feign timidity, but at a glance you’ll know she’s not alone. The woods will be full of a host of silent others, all of them frozen and all of them cold, all of them children, all with treasured playthings, dolls that have no eyes. Their eyes have left their sockets and now flutter all around you out of place, livid and vivid and clearly human, no longer the dolls’ eyes at all. These eyes are asking questions, stating answers, eyes telling lies and the truth. You will not want to listen. You will listen.

“We are the hosts of the abandoned. We are the children you want to forsake. You try to forget us but we will not go away.”

They all talk at once. You will not understand. You will understand. You will not want to.

“Little ghosts so shy,” the lynx will whisper to the owl and both hiss comprehensible laughter that belies any trace of amusement. You will pray it becomes impossible to comprehend. No one will answer your prayer.

You will tap on the door to the cabin and pray now for another non-answer. But the door will open. Your prayer will close.

“Who’s in there?” you will ask, your voice cutting the dark like a knife.

The dark will not reply. Instead a voice like a rustle of leaves or ashes or sparks will answer. “You know me,” she will say, and you’ll hear in her voice the longing, the yearning, the pale, unanswered desire. “That’s where it starts,” she will say. “I will not tell you how it ends. The need to fend off the sleep, to keep these dreams out of your head.”

“I hate my dreams,” you will say and wish you hadn’t.

The lynx will think of other nights and sidle to the ground and then approach you. The owl will hoot and hover, if only to observe. The lynx will show a gleaming set of teeth and purr and try to smile if nature made that possible. You will notice a jackrabbit in a gorse bush with a wizened human face. You will not like the way it looks at you.

You will enter the cabin and try to find the beautiful source of that beautiful voice, and she will listen and speak and not listen and not speak all at once and yet at the same moment, and you will hear her voice as you’re hearing mine. And the candle will flicker on the table in the dust as the door will close behind you and the death watch in the candle keeps ticking.

“Everything is soft,” the voice will say. “We always welcome you.”

You will search every inch of the dim light around you. There will be shapes in the dark, and shadows, and slim dark moving things, but you will not find the woman with the voice. And you will try to tell her about the forest outside and the wind that won’t listen, and the moon that makes you sad, and the clouds that do not notice you, and the stars too far to matter or to care, and the hosts of ghostly children in the trees, and how they are abandoned in the centuries, demanding reuse of their lives, and the last come from schools in America, and the animals that are not animals and that whisper human words and the rabbit in the bushes with the face and human eyes. And that heroes have no limbs. And that priests only gibber and have old tiny hands. And the guides are all clever deceivers.

And all will be as I have told.

And you’ll know the creature under the bed is really there, and the creatures in the closet and walls, and these creatures have always been real and are still and really still real and they haunt you.

And the cabin will close in closer, and the night will silence more, until every creak and whisper will intrude into your brain. And you will not hear the voice again, and you will not see its source for the death watch ticks in the candle.

And the candle will burn. And the candle will die. And the death watch will stop. And the dark will close in and contain you. And you will try to breathe. And you will try to pray. And you will try to move. And you will try to scream. And it will find that it just isn’t possible.