I Need More Hands

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. The candle flamed danced in panic as a dark shape quickly passed by it.

Paul thought he felt a draft as he pondered over papers in his study. He looked behind him.

There’s no such thing as ghosts, he thought. The people who owned the cabin a year ago moved away so they could go to their new house quicker and move past the death of their son. Paul shook his head. It was a tragic incident, for one of the young teenage boy’s arms was found chopped off. Authorities chalked it up to someone who broke in the cabin looking for drugs. But the axe was found nearby the boy, like he did it himself.

As Paul flipped the pages of the work he was studying, something whispered into his ear.

“I need more hands.”

Paul gasped in surprise. He gripped the oak desk and looked around in panic. He slowly got up by the portable lamp light, for it was the only source of light other than the candle close to his room. He picked up an axe close to him. But what did he plan to use it against?

Ghosts?

Paul scoffed at the notion, even though he was feeling uneasy, especially while holding the axe. The rest of the room was blanketed in shadow. Paul recalled the old story that the cabin's original owner built the cabin with his own hands. According to some, he wanted to build more to the point of obsession. He ended up murdering his family with an axe because they would not help him build more, then he killed himself after the deed was done.

Pure slasher film garbage.

Paul picked up his flash light and turned it on. There was no one else with him, but noticed that his bedroom door was open.

What on earth?

Paul held his axe in his other hand as he walked to the door. He set the axe aside on the wall adjacent to him and reached out to close the door, but a shadowy hand gripped the door and swung it wide open.

A sinister whisper shot out at him: “I need more hands.”

Paul yelled as he stumbled back into his room. He went to grab for his axe but another shadowy arm grabbed it.

As he shivered in the dark wooden room, Paul thought about how the murderer killed himself.

He chopped off one of his arms and bled to death.

Paul saw something dark smother the candle. Paul swung his flashlight over to his desk and saw a black hand swipe it away. The lamp crashed and flickered.

In the last few flickers, a hand shot out of a pool of black blood.

“I need more hands.”

Paul’s eyed widened as he screamed to get out of the room. As he ran down the cabin hallway, multiple hands shot up at him. One of them grabbed him by one of his arms. Paul frantically beat the arms with the flash light and struggled free.

“I need more hands,” the whisper continued in a chant. “I need more hands.”

Paul ran straight to the cabin door but a batch of dark arms covered the door to block his escape. He turned around and saw more hands grab at him. The man struggled and screamed as he pulled them off but more kept grabbing at his legs and torso. He saw a black pool form under him with multiple shadowy hands reaching for him.

Paul glimpsed the window. Gritting his teeth and with his heart pounding frantically, Paul fought against the hands as he made his way towards the window. With every step he took, it grew harder to fight back against the hands grabbing at him.

“I need more hands.”

Paul used the butt of the flashlight to hit the glass. Each impact splintered the glass inch by inch in a twisted web. He yelled and finally broke the window. Paul dropped his flashlight and gripped the other side of the window to try to pull himself out.

Another set of hands from the outside shoved him back in.

Paul screamed until the hands covered his mouth, eyes, and entire face and pulled him deeper into the black pool.

After the hands receded from the floor, everything was silent.

Crickets chirped. An owl hooted from a distance. A long howl echoed in the night. The only things on the cabin floor were glass shards and a broken flashlight.

And an axe that was lying close to Paul’s corpse, a corpse that was missing an arm.