Nightly Walks

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. The soft glow of the flickering flame revealed a shadowy silhouette hovering in the window, watching the outside world like a prisoner locked in its cell. In the blink of an eye, the silhouette vanished as the candle was suddenly consumed by the darkness. The old cabin now stood in its usual condition in the middle of the woods - dilapidated, candleless, and dark. Exactly as it was meant to be.

The discontented old man hurried past the cabin as he’d done almost every night for the last 5 years. He did not notice the candle or the silhouette as he walked and thought, and thought and walked. In fact, Tom Sangrati was unlikely to ever notice anything unusual with this cabin. He made a point to avoid looking at it. Mr. Sangrati would never admit it, but that old, worn-down structure terrified him. Even though his fear was justified, the stubborn man continued walking past the house every night in spite of that fear to avoid admitting he was scared.

The woods in which this cabin was enclosed were notoriously difficult to navigate, and the only visible path led right past the cabin, and the entrance to this path was conveniently located right behind Mr. Sangrati’s house. The old man kept in the habit of walking every day year-round to maintain his health, but every summer, his daily walks became nightly strolls to avoid the brutal, Louisiana heat.

This dilapidated cabin, which unnerved Mr. Sangrati in the broad, winter daylight, became a menacing presence when the darkness of night would take over. It creaked and groaned as warm wind darted nervously through its mangled wood - noises that resembled ear-piercing screams occasionally escaped from the walls of the cabin and rippled through the woods. Whomps and thuds would echo through the foliage as the ancient, wooden structure readjusted and settled. Old man Sangrati was briefly enveloped by these eerie sensations every summer night along with ones that he struggled to explain away. He heard noises that sounded like spirits wailing and crying out to him, begging him to join them in the soul-crushing darkness in the cabin. Shadows scurried around in the corners of his eyes accompanied by the sound of footsteps crushing leaves and snapping twigs. For years, these noises and shadows frightened Tom Sangrati so much that he avoided acknowledging the ominous, wooden shack every time he passed it.

On a particularly cool summer evening, shortly before sunset, Mr. Sangrati embarked on his nightly walk. Goosebumps formed on his arms from the brisk air, and the old man wished he’d brought a jacket as he walked and thought and thought and walked. Though the cabin was not yet in sight, he knew he was getting closer when its haunting noises traveled into his ears and stirred up the nerves inside him. Preparing for the inevitable, he began intently admiring the foliage on the cabin-free side of the path, which was quickly becoming a darker shade of green as the sun fell lower and lower in the sky.

A single bush rustled behind Mr. Sangrati, causing him to stop in his tracks. A chill went down his spine as the old man stood frozen, debating whether or not to look behind him and inspect the source of the noise. After a moment, he slowly turned towards the bush, taking inventory of his surroundings to ensure he wasn’t being followed or watched. Much to Tom Sangrati’s relief, nothing out of the ordinary presented itself. When he turned back around to continue down the path, he saw the bushes now moving in front of him as if someone was running past them. The distinct sound of laughter danced towards him, and he caught a glimpse of what looked like a small child with blonde hair frolicking through the trees and bushes up ahead. Mr. Sangrati blinked in confusion as he tried to process what he was seeing. Once again, the sound of laughter filled the old man’s ears as the child continued on towards the cabin. Sangrati took off with hurried steps and desperately commanded the child to stop running - he was worried the kid had run off from his parents or wandered out of his backyard and was lost in the woods. The young boy, who looked no older than six years old, did not listen to the old man’s pleas and continued running listlessly through the trees along the path. In a panic, the old man started jogging to try and physically stop the child from wandering off into the woods, but his frail legs were too slow to catch up.

The cabin came into view in the distance. It loomed between the trees with the sun setting quickly behind it, as the mysterious little boy squealed and laughed as he danced through the trees. Mr. Sangrati began frantically shouting when the child quickly shot across the path ahead of him and made a break straight for the cabin, which now was in full view. Mr. Sangrati stopped in his tracks and a look of horror spread across his face as he watched the ruthless cabin peer down at the careless, wandering child that was quickly and cheerfully approaching. The old man’s stomach turned and the color drained from his face as the young boy looked back at him and shrieked with glee as he pushed open the door. Fearlessly, the child slipped into the cabin and was swallowed by the darkness, leaving old man Sangrati frozen on the shadowy pathway trying to choose the lesser of two evils.

Knowing he couldn’t leave a helpless kid in an abandoned building in the middle of the woods, he stepped off the safety of the path and fearfully made his way through the woods towards the dreadful cabin. He stopped a few feet from the entrance and observed the gruesome structure before him. A large padlock dangled from a heavy-looking chain that laid uselessly on the ground in front of the door, which, along with the rest of the cabin, was made entirely out of logs from the surrounding trees. The logs had remained firmly in place over the decades but were warped from time and weather. Vines twisted and tangled through open spaces between the logs, and two windows looked out towards the walking path - one of them was somehow perfectly intact, though dusty and dirty, while the other let wind and debris from the woods flow freely through its shattered glass.

The cool air had a bite to it now that the sun was tucked behind the woods - its remaining glow faintly peeked between the trees to say its final goodbye before disappearing for the night. Mr. Sangrati’s hair stood on end as he held his breath and pushed open the rickety old door. He stood listening for any sign of the child but was met only with an unnerving silence that caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end. The old man called out to the young boy, breaking the silence as he moved one foot through the doorway and into the cabin. He stayed like this for a moment, holding the door open and hoping the young boy would decide to run back out of the cabin before he could fully enter. When nothing happened, the old man reluctantly moved both feet inside and let the door swing shut behind him.

Tom Sangrati’s senses gave way to the cabin’s wishes as its darkness blinded him and its silence hung heavy in his ears. He called out again to the young boy and began moving cautiously through the cabin with his hands stretched out in front of him to temporarily replace his eyes, which struggled to adjust to the dense blackness that surrounded him. Mr. Sangrati’s foot struck something that was laying on the floor. Startled, the old man lost his balance and toppled over as the object went rolling across the room. He laid on the floor disoriented from his fall but quickly collected himself and sat up, listening to the rolling object come to a halt.

When silence, once again, permeated the house, the old man, still sitting on the floor, heard a soft, rhythmic inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, and felt warm breath slide down his neck. Tom Sangrati froze up, his heart was pounding. “Kid… Is that you?” The sound of the child’s laughter echoed softly from the depths of the cabin, and the old man immediately turned in his seated position to grab whoever was behind him. His hand quickly swiped through nothing but air. He immediately stood up and listened for footsteps, but Mr. Sangrati was, again, met with nothing. Feeling as if his fears about this cabin were being confirmed, the old man considered leaving and calling the police so they could find the young boy.

Deciding that walking home and calling the police was the best decision, Tom Sangrati felt his way back to the door in the pitch dark and gave it a push to leave, but it didn’t budge. He jostled it back and forth thinking it was stuck on something, but it still didn’t move. Once again, the young boy’s laughter tauntingly rang through the cabin from an indiscernible location. Tom Sangrati became enraged at the child that led him into this godforsaken cabin and slammed his fist against the door.

In the midst of Mr. Sangrati’s tantrum, a warm glow was suddenly cast over a small area of the cabin. When the old man began to tire out, he noticed the faint illumination and began looking around confused. His eyes fell upon the flickering flame of an old candle that was sitting in the window that looked out towards the walking path. The old man, unnerved at the inexplicably lit candle, gazed out at the path that he walked along each night and shuddered thinking about someone, or something, watching him from this old cabin.

The interior of the cabin became barely visible in the candlelight- the floor was covered in dirt, leaves, and twigs. There was one door directly on the right wall that was blocked by a dusty cupboard wrapped in cobwebs. On the left side of the cabin, there were a few bales of hay with a small desk beside them. A square table sat in the center of the room, and in the far right corner of the table was a lantern. Mr. Sangrati grabbed the mysteriously lit candle and held its flame against the wick in the lantern to generate a new flame. He took the lantern over to the cupboard to see if there was anything he could use to shatter the rest of the glass in the candleless window, so he could get out of the cabin.

The old man opened the cupboard and could immediately tell that there was nothing he could use to break the window. Only one half-empty box of crackers sat on the shelf. Mr. Sangrati curiously examined the box as it looked relatively new in relation to the state of the house. There were also clean circles in the dust that coated the shelves as if cans had been sitting there and were recently removed. Mr. Sangrati didn’t spend much time thinking about the mysterious signs of recent visitors before moving on to the next section of the room in search of a heavy object to smash the window.

The only other object in the room was the desk on the other side of the cabin, so Tom Sangrati took the lantern over and began inspecting. Up close, he noticed a small drawer on the front of the wooden desk. Though it was unlikely that anything heavy enough to break the window would fit in the small drawer, Mr. Sangrati wedged the drawer open. Inside, he found a small notebook that had minimal amounts of dust, again, signaling the presence of a recent visitor. Out of curiosity, the old man opened the notebook and saw that it was filled with writing.

He put the lantern on the desk and began flipping through the pages, skimming the neat handwriting. Enclosed in the notebook was the story of a young girl who had been kidnapped and locked away in a cabin in the woods where she was physically and sexually abused by her kidnapper. The man would visit her each day and bring her boxes of crackers and canned goods as well as a dirty flask filled with water instead of booze. He would bring enough food and water to keep her alive, but not enough for her to have any strength to escape. The girl’s kidnapper would chain her up in the cellar if he was going to be gone for longer than a day. Otherwise, the young girl had to stay in the bedroom of the cabin, which the man barricaded every time he left. The narrator explained that, in the bedroom, there was one window with metal grating, which the kidnapper installed himself. In addition to the single window, there was a mattress on the floor that hid the door to the cellar. On nights where she wasn’t chained in the cellar, the kidnappee would sleep on the uncomfortable mattress on the floor. In the tale, the young girl would look out the window every night hoping someone would walk by, but the cabin was notoriously avoided and, as a result, few people ever passed by. She managed to steal a candle, and if she did happen to see someone walking along the path, she would light the candle and make as much noise as she could - banging on the window, rattling the gait, and screaming bloody murder - hoping to catch the walker's attention.

The old man furrowed his brow as he began to read about an old man that started walking past the cabin every night shortly after she was kidnapped. Suddenly, the story seemed familiar as she wrote that the old man passed at night in the summers and during the day in winters. The young girl would follow the same routine that she did for all passerbys, lighting the candle as he passed and making noise, but the man never looked in her direction - he never even noticed the candle in the window. The tale told that the kidnapper was occasionally coming to visit her or leaving a visit at the same time that the old man was walking by. She always hoped that someday he’d notice her candle, cries for help, or the man that kidnapped her and call the cops, but he passed each night for years, blissfully unaware of her presence.

Unsettled, Mr. Sangrati looked up at the cupboard with the half-empty box of crackers that was blocking the door across the room. He didn’t have much of the journal left, so he continued reading. In the story, the girl ended up impregnated by her kidnapper and gave birth in the cellar of the cabin to a boy with golden blonde hair. The man would take the baby boy most nights, but occasionally left him with his mother when he locked her in the cellar. The child was a great comfort to his mother, and, as time passed, the kidnapper grew tired of looking after the kid, so he began leaving the child with his mother more and more often. The conditions imposed by the deranged man were too harsh for a young child, and the blonde-haired boy only lived to be about four years old.

Heartbroken at her child’s death and devoid of any hope of ever escaping, the girl wrote that she had planned to control her own fate for the first time since she’d been kidnapped, and the final pages of the notebook contained a gut-wrenching suicide letter.

Old man Sangrati flipped the last page of the notebook and finished reading with tears in his eyes and a horrible feeling in his gut as he pieced together what had happened. He stood up, grabbed the lantern, and walked towards the cupboard, hoping that the notebook was nothing more than a tall tale written by someone with an overactive imagination that enjoyed visiting the creepy cabin. The old man struggled as he pushed the cupboard to the side, freeing the door to the barricaded room. He slowly pushed open the door, and his stomach turned when he revealed a barren room with a single metal-grated window and a mattress laying on the floor. A candle that was almost completely used sat solemnly in the grated window. When Mr. Sangrati pulled the mattress across the room, he saw the hidden door to the cellar just like the notebook disclosed.

The old man stared at the cellar door for a moment, filled with dread, and then walked over and held his breath as he pulled it open. A rancid smell floated out of the room below, and Tom Sangrati carried the lantern as he shakily descended the rickety ladder into the darkness. He held up the light in front of him as he walked through the cellar, scanning its contents until he found what he hoped he would not find: the rotten corpse of a young girl that could’ve been saved by an old man who took nightly walks through the woods and walked and thought, and thought and walked, but refused to look at a creepy, old cabin.