In the Shadows

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

It was 11:02pm on the 31st of October – the night of Halloween 1986 when the piercing screams of a girl echoed through the forest and were swallowed by the shadows of the night. She was young, no older than 18, when she walked the woods alone that night. She had been toking on a cigarette as she walked across a narrow path of dampened dirt when she noticed the small flicker of a flame in the cabin window.

It was an old uninhibited cabin. The front porch was crooked and bowed at the stairs, worn - the only evidence that remained to show that life had once lived among the shadows. Stories had been told for decades of the cabin in the woods. Stories were told of the trapped spirits that preyed on the souls who wandered the night, feasting on their fear and their pleas for help.

Nearby trees had intertwined themselves with the cabin, a testament that sometimes not even the most beautiful things in life can withstand the lure to be drawn into the darkness.

She was cold and her body was shuddering beneath the eeriness that consumed the evening. She hesitated when she reached the porch, an unease set in the pit of her stomach telling her to turn back but the cabin had a way of compelling it’s victims into its trap. The floorboards creaked beneath her feet, piercing the silence. She turned the knob of the front door; it was barely hanging on its hinges as it screeched along the floorboards kicking dust up into her face. She coughed and spluttered and waved the dust away. She peered across the room, an upside-down crucifix and demonic omens fixated and painted across the walls. She gasped as she looked across to the small window where the candle sat on a small broken table, where it flickered one last time before disintegrating to dust.

“What the –”

The door behind her slammed shut and the air’s temperature dropped immensely and her body shuddered. Her body was thrown across the room. She screamed as her head made contact with the wall before collapsing to the floor. She desperately fumbled for her torch. She switched it on with trembling hands of fear as she shone the light across the space before her to meet nothing but the vacant dark space that accompanied her. An intense scratching sound rang in her ears. It sounded like it was coming from the walls. She looked around frantically crying out ‘Who’s there?!”

“Sarah,” a voice whispered, “come play with us.”

She screamed as the fear set in her as she scrambled to her feet and made a break for the door. Her legs moved her faster than ever before in a desperate flea. She screamed as she continued to run, her heart pounding in her chest.

“Sarah…” the voices trailed on, echoing amongst the shadows.

“Sarah, come back to us,” it whispered “we want to play a game.”

She was still running when she felt her feet rip out beneath her as a heavy force yanked her backwards towards to cabin. She was flailing her arms and digging her fingers into the dirt beneath her begging for it to let her go. Her nail beds were bleeding and her clothes shredded. The entity threw her back into the cabin, throwing her across the floor and holding her in a chokehold. She was asphyxiating as she threw her head back gasping for air. If the entity had a face, you’d see a wicked smile plastered across its face. It was laughing at the sign of her struggling and withering in pain.

It let its hold on her ease just enough for her to let out one last gut-wrenching scream which echoed through the trees but were drowned out by the shadows of the night. She was never seen or heard of again.