No One Could Ever Hear Us

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. The candle burned for nearly three hours but I was killed within the first. I could not help my poor lifeless body as he cut it into pieces with his well cleaned silver axe, a flash of moonlight reflecting off it with each swing in the near-completely dark cabin. My arms were placed to one side away from me and my legs were placed on the opposing side. Flames of pain surged through my right hand and consumed me as I screamed in terror, not realising at this moment that no one could hear me. The curtains flailed as I screamed and the soft breeze inside whirled to a wail but stopped when I felt a drop from my hand. I looked at my own hand and saw no change but upon glancing at my disfigured form saw the killer was also a thief as he took my pinky.

Was it not enough that he killed me? Was it not enough how much he had brutalised me beforehand? He held my pinky with such unrecognisable tenderness as he held it near the candle, the light flickering off the prints. Never would that pinky hold down my guitar strings again or would it hold the hand of my partner or brush my sister’s hair. If I had died before, it was only in that moment that I felt truly dead.

My body’s eyes were vacantly staring out the window as my severed head lolled to the side. The eyes were helplessly fixed on the storming winds outside carrying the loose leaves through the hopeless night sky and towards the stars that never answered my prayers. The candle barely flickered with each limb thrown carelessly aside and each curse my murderer bellowed out – with each yell I dearly yearned for someone to race in and catch him in his rampage but they never did. Although I see now that someone who had done this as many times as he had would not be caught by something so simple as shouting in an abandoned forest. An icy fury burned within the depths of my toes and scorched its way through my thighs and torso before the eye of the storm was in my throat and I unleashed it at my killer. I did everything I could to scare him away from slamming any open windows shut so quickly that the glass nearly broke into a thousand pieces. I flew through the cabin and eliminated any light source I could but that damned candle in the window was too strong for me. I screamed from the top of my ethereal lungs but only a strong howl emanated from me which could not waiver him in the slightest.

“GET OUT!!!” I bellowed with every fibre of my ethereal being.

“Your voice will fall on deaf ears friend,” a kindly sad voice said to me.

I turned around to face the voice and saw a girl who looked just like me.

Her eyes were as sad as mine and the smile she gave bore no happiness. Her wrists and neck matched my lacerations and her quiet brown hair was wildly matted with sticky crimson liquid stained in it. Her translucent pale skin stuck to her cheekbones and what must have once been plump pink lips had drained to a sickly white.

“Believe me. Others have tried,” she nodded to the space behind me.

My eyes brimmed with tears as I turned around to see eight other women who looked just like me. Lacerations, sad eyes and crimson liquid sprayed throughout their hair.

“Don’t watch Amy. You won’t be able to live with yourself if you do,” one of the women stepped forward and held me in her strong arms, turning my face away from the horrors happening to me only a few metres away.

I don’t remember when I turned back to face everyone but when I did my killer was gone and so was my body.

“It’s been forty-six years since the last victim of the infamous serial killer Nicholas Imtal, otherwise known as The Photographer, on account of the graphic videos he would sent law enforcement after each kill. Imtal’s last victim was Amy Collins, the tenth woman in a horrific slew of murders he committed across Australia’s east coast. Imtal has continued to evade police custody for all these years and is presumed to be dead; if he were alive he would be about 95 years old. Tonight, Ellie and I are hosting this week’s episode of “For the Women,” at the fateful cabin where these crimes happened. Viewer discretion is advised,” Steph recited into her microphone.

She hit the stop button, saved the file then played it back to identify any mistakes, which, as usual, there were none of.

“Should we really be doing this? We can just record from here and say we’re in the cabin,” Ellie asked nervously, wringing her hands.

“Relax. We’ve told people where we’re going, triple 0’s easy to call and we’re armed. The car’s not even five metres away, we’ll be fine,” Steph assured her as she squeezed her hand. “Besides, no one’s heard this the way we’ll tell it. Everyone focuses on the slicing and dicing part of it-”

“Ugh PLEASE don’t say that, it’s so gross,” Ellie groaned.

“Fine – they focus on the actual horrible murders but no one’s actually said that these were real women. We’re the only ones who can tell their story,” Steph pressed.

“I think they would rather not have a story to be honest with you,” Ellie retorted.

The two women fell silent as they stared at the cabin.

“Do you think any of them knew when he pulled up?” Steph asked quietly.

“I think a lot of us know something like this can happen. No one wants to say it though,” Ellie replied just as quietly.

They both gave a short exhale and stepped out of the car into the cool night.

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for some time since the ghosts had been here, but one night, a strange light burst through the window. They all rushed towards it and saw two women approaching with bizarre equipment on their persons. It was all very compact and fit neatly around their necks and in their jacket pockets. One of them had thick blonde hair pulled back into a tight bun as she rattled off what sounded like an itinerary while her friend had her soft brown hair neatly tied in two plaits, attentive to her friend’s plans.

“Steph, do you remember the exit word?” her friend asked, a sense of fear echoing from her voice.

“Banana. Run to car, I’ll call triple 0 and you start Insta live, just in case. Now, are you ready, Miss Ellie?” Steph asked the friend named Miss Ellie.

Miss Ellie rolled her eyes and gave a nervous smile.

“You bet, Miss Steph,” she answered.

They re-organised their strange equipment and entered the house, a surprised expression reaching their young faces at the lack of a lock.

“That seems like an omen,” Miss Ellie said with great trepidation.

“Or no one locked it after the investigation was officially closed. Come on, let’s get to it,” Miss Steph replied.

She placed one foot over the threshold and stepped inside with her other foot following behind. Her eyes gleaned over the pitch black room as she pulled out the strange light and shone it through, illuminating the plethora of spider webs that had been made over the years. The mirror on the wall was covered in a sheen of dust, obscuring any vision that may once have been possible. As she moved her light around each fleck of dust echoed through the air towards the main living area of the cabin, where the ghosts were gathered watching with wide eyes and even wider open mouths.

“Wh-who are they?” Amy asked.

“Some type of private investigators. We’ve had some of them over the years but these ones seem different,” Charlotte explained.

They looked back to the women stepping with great care through the doorway, their faces blended with curiosity and caution with their darting eyes and twitching eyebrows. The one named Miss Steph had a small smile on her face as she took in the room and scavenged the walls for anything she could find, though what she could possibly be looking for evaded them.

“I can’t believe this place is still standing…listeners, for those who don’t know, Imlat built this cabin himself in about 1975, which as we know is five years before his first victim Phyllis Jones was killed. There are bound to be things tucked away in here that law enforcement missed,” she recited into her small stick near her mouth.

Phyllis floated over to Amy with a twisted expression of agony echoed on her faded face, her once oceanic blue eyes devoid of any depths of the sea and now resembling a washed up wave.

“He wanted to show me his grandmother’s dress collection…I’d told him how much I loved older clothes. They made me feel so beautiful,” she whispered as her eyes filled with salt water.

“Phyllis is described by her friends as an extremely kind, selfless woman who spent her weekends volunteering at her community church. Phyllis was 30 years old when she was killed and was a mother to a son and daughter. Her husband Marcus worked at the bank to financially support the family and put much of his wages to hiring out private investigators to resolve his wife’s murder. The Jones family never stopped working towards resolving the murder until Marcus passed away, even collaborating three other families who had women of their own killed. Charlotte McPhee was killed a year after Phyllis and Margaret Collins two years after that, both women leaving children and husbands in their wake. Elizabeth Rancin was killed only six months after Charlotte which is the shortest gap in these murders. Elizabeth, Charlotte and Margaret all had similar lives, in that they all had children and husbands and would volunteer for their community where possible, so it appeared at this stage Imlat had decided what he liked,”

Margaret and Charlotte emerged next to Phyllis and placed a hand on each of her shoulders.

“He told both of us he had an autographed copy of the Fellowship of the Ring. We both happened to be huge fans of the book,” Margaret said with regret tracing every word.

Elizabeth stepped out of a shadowy corner with a contorted rage plastering every aspect of her face.

“I had just finished University. Moved away, made friends,” she snarled. “And now I’m just some footnote,”.

A harsh gust of wind sped up behind Ellie as Steph spoke.

“Steph are you sure you’re not hearing this?” Ellie hissed.

“Hear what Ellie? It’s just a draft…probably,” Steph tried to sound convincing but the quiver in her voice was unmistakable.

“It sounds like it picks up whenever you talk about one of the women…maybe tell the listeners about Audrey Vardot,” a wind jolted past Ellie and landed next to Steph who shivered at the breeze.

“He told me he didn’t have a problem with me, that he loved I was being who I was,” Audrey said through gritted teeth. “He liked the way the dress fit my body. Said the colours were a beautiful complement to my skin and made my eyes glitter. He wanted to introduce me to his friends,” she continued. “I was dead before I hit the floor,” she concluded.

Audrey’s aura got colder and colder with each word she recounted of her awful demise, the drop in temperature noticed by the girls in the cabin whose teeth had just started chattering.

“He turned my body away as he took each part of me. My toes went first, then my feet and legs. He slashed at my torso into jagged pieces, each of them bloodier than the last. My arms were sliced at each joint. I was so surprised he kept my finger. He didn’t even look at me. It’s like he was disgusted by me, my very existence causing him a physical revulsion. I don’t know how he managed to hold himself together for as long as he did on our date, if he’s so disgusted with…well, people like me,” Audrey’s eyes fixed themselves on the cabin’s wooden floorboards while the echoes of her murder and life flitted around her, thanks to the urgent tones of Steph and Ellie’s disjointed phrases.

“…only trans woman he killed…her loss is still felt by the family today…incredible work in the LGBTQI community...her friends said her voice was unlike any other…enjoyed swimming on the weekends…”

The rest of the words trailed off as the ghosts surrounded Audrey and consoled her for she had been weeping with every anecdote of her life and who she was. 40 years were not enough for her.

“It’s definitely gotten colder, how are you not feeling this?” Ellie groaned while jumping on the spot. “Listeners, I am of the firm belief there is definitely something wrong with this cabin. Steph believes it to be just the climate but there is a notable shift in the temperature when we talk about the women who’ve died,”.

“Okay, fine, let’s say it’s haunted. Why have they not tried to shove us off? Don’t ghosts normally try to kick out the people in their place?” Steph countered.

Ellie didn’t answer but took some pensive steps around the room, careful not to step too hard on the floors or brush her hand against something too quickly.

“Maybe…maybe it’s not about us being kicked out. Maybe…we’re supposed to listen, or something,” Ellie stopped pacing and felt the harsh cold breeze around her relax as she spoke. “Maybe…maybe talk about Louise and Jane, or Amy or Eileen or Stephanie, it might make them listen to us more!”

“Right okay, well listeners, as we know Louise and Jane were actually killed on the same night. It’s said that Imlat made one of the girls watch as he killed the other but still cut into her flesh as she was forced to witness those unspeakable acts. The evidence is not clear over who was killed first but we do know that Louise and Jane were inseparable from a very young age. They went to all levels of schooling together and were killed a year after Audrey was,” Steph spoke into her microphone, her confident tones from earlier in the night properly starting to shake.

Two hard howling winds whirled past the girls and flew to the ceiling, almost crying at these tales of tragedy. The air stayed as cold as ever but was not as musty as when they entered. It felt cleaner, easier to breathe with each woman’s story.

“That…seemed okay. Should we tell the listeners about Louise and Jane’s University project?” Ellie mumbled.

“Yes, thank you for the reminder! Unfortunately before their deaths, Louise and Jane were conducting a project at their University in the film section. The year was 1985 and there was a rise of science fiction in cinema, which the women thought the University should start teaching about. They managed to get 1000 signatures from fellow students but we unfortunately know how this story goes,” Steph concluded.

The wind on the ceiling howled again but gradually faded away as the next story began.

“1986 saw the murder of the up and coming actress Eileen Woodsworth. Eileen had just finished performing a play in Sydney to a sold out crowd and looked to be performing to similar demand for the next three weeks. Eileen’s family and friends, one of whom is actually my grandmother, said she was a vivacious soul who needed the world to see her and wanted to see it back. Her death is also where Imlat started to get more violent when initially meeting the women he would kill. He reportedly posed as a fan and used that to get her alone before pulling a gun on her. It’s hard to say no to someone when they’re holding that in your face, isn’t it?” Ellie’s eyes swam with tears as memories of her grandmothers stories played on a reel for her. A gentle breeze swam behind her and dived over her shoulders before handing at her feet, bringing a sad smile to her face.

The cabin creaked in the silent gap after the story of Eileen and the leaves outside brushed fervently against each other as the occasional branch brushed against the window. The moon was almost completely obscured by the canopy but a glimmer shone through. The mists in the cabin bathed in that brief light and whisked it towards Steph, who adjusted her steps and started the final story.

“This brings us to the last two women, Stephanie Allens and Amy Joveson. Like Eileen, Stephanie was a friend of my grandmother, but she was said to be a more reserved person. You’d be more likely to find her with a book or painting than talking to someone, but my Grandma said that she would give you all the time in the world if you asked for it,” Steph’s eyes met Ellie’s and she walked to her to hold her hand.

“If only I could have asked that for me,” Stephanie’s ghost cried to Eileen.

A similar breeze rose in the cabin at Steph’s words and it hovered over to her. Her shoulders suddenly felt more relaxed and the chattering teeth slightly eased as she began the final story.

“Finally, Amy Joveson, the last of the women to be killed, was also the youngest. She was killed at only 18 years old, two weeks after her end of school dance. She was set to go travelling around Australia for a year and was supposed to leave in the new year,” Steph barely managed to get the words out before she and Ellie collapsed into a puddle of tears as the final story finished.

By this point all the ghosts were weeping at their stories being told, but there was a small feeling of freedom at hearing others recognise their pain. The unity of the experience had started to create a bond, creeping up on them over this last hour that none had noticed until now, thanks to these girls in their cabin. A dampness emanated from them and stuck to the walls with each tear they cried and their sons were echoed through gushing winds.

“I’m…I’m so sorry this happened to us,” Elizabeth said. “We were going to do so much,”.

They all pressed their heads together and held each other as tightly as ghosts could. Their hands didn’t quite pass through each other but never properly met, like an out of sync handshake or delayed sentence.

“We should tell them thank you. No one has ever heard us,” Phyllis suggested, to which the women quickly nodded their heads.

“Well. We’ll be heard now,” Jane said with the first sense of determination she’d felt since starting those petitions.

“Steph I - I think we should go,” Ellie’s petrified whisper echoed through the isolated cabin’s walls and reverberated off each of them, the realisation of the words then sinking into the floor.

A sharp wind jolted past the girls and blazed against their necks before it landed abrupt behind them. A peculiar shapeless mist was forming in front of the dust coated mirror and was stationary bar the small wisps of movement. Another gust of wind whirled next to the girls on either side and slammed against the windows but did not break any of the fragile frosted glass, rather leaving a streak of movement in it’s wake, similar to someone wiping a finger through it.

“Get the candle,” Steph whispered back. “Imlat had a candle burning every time he killed someone, maybe it will help us talk to them,”.

Ellie fumbled in her backpack for a few minutes as the soft winds grew firmer and more resolute. The cabin had become almost unbearably cold as the wind increased and the chattering of teeth was nearly audible over the sounds of whirling wind. Ellie sighed with relief as she plucked out the candle and placed it on the window sill then lit it. As soon as the flame burst from the wick the wind died down and let the flame breathe in the icy air.

“Listeners - Ellie and I believe we are not be alone in this cabin. There have been no reports of any hauntings at this cabin but perhaps we will change that. The horrors that Imlat inflicted onto these poor women is bound to leave a mark of some kind,” Steph whispered clearly into the microphone.

The girls walked over to the candle and bent down to look at it clearly, the flame holding strong against the cabin breeze.

“It’s said that Imlat used a candle to time how long his murders took. His low usage of the electricity and gas helped keep him off the radar from law enforcement, as we discussed in our previous episode,” Ellie continued into her microphone.

THUD.

The girls froze in their spots and widened their eyes as they fixed their gaze on the candle’s window reflection. Dread as hard as a rock fell from their mouth and rolled down their throat before impacting their stomach and almost moved them in their place.

“Sh-should we l-l-look into that?” Ellie mumbled throughly barely moved lips.

Steph nodded silently and inhaled deeply before minutely rotating on the spot to look behind her and pointed her torch towards it.

She didn’t say anything for what felt like hours as her jaw clenched and grip on the torch handled tightened as her widened eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. The rock in her stomach rolled further down towards her legs and her toes tingled to remind her she still had them, which meant she still had her feet to run with if her body pulled her that way.

“Steph?” Ellie asked in a quiet voice.

“Turn around,” Steph choked out.

Ellie clamped her eyes shut and thought of the bright sun she would get to see tomorrow morning on her walk with her dog and the delicious breakfast she would have with her parents afterwards before driving to her work building. She thought of the movie she would see later that evening with her boyfriend and how he would probably hate it while she loved it and they would lovingly argue about it all the way back to their apartment. Ellie focused on this for three more seconds before she opened her eyes and saw what Steph saw.

“Oh my God,” she exhaled.

The dust on the mirror had moved.

The dust was arranged in strange shapes and motions before it became clear what it was.

He burned us.

The heat of the candle grew from a mere hint to a comforting temperature, the backs of the girls necks grateful for the change as the small hairs that had been standing on their backs relaxed.

“Holy shit,” Steph squeaked. “L-listeners, we can confirm that we are not alone in the cabin,”

The words hung on the mirror for another minute before they vanished and the dust moved again to form a new harrowing message.

We were never going to be found.

The yearn for life had died many times with the women since they had been killed that first night all those moons ago. They had resigned themselves to being nothing but an entry in the records of a perverted person when doctors analysed his crimes. They expected only their families would remember them when they watched their favourite movie on a Friday night with freshly made popcorn, or when their favourite song came on at a party. The existence of each women rotted with every burned bone as it became one with the soil and their memory eaten away like the leftover flesh on their bodies, each bite gorging away on everything that woman had done in her short life. Their souls had been screaming for help to end their pain, the purgatory they were all in nearly a greater suffering than the events leading them there. One by one they had all stopped howling and crying and lost themselves to the winds of passing lives.

None of them knew how to react to the pulse burgeoning in their veins as Steph and Ellie sobbed with a painful realisation of how much horror this man created. None of them knew how to react when a faint outline on each of their arms and legs and their fingers wiggled. With each sob Steph and Ellie cried the outlines grew stronger and as close to solid as it was ever going to be. Amy looked at her form and joined the sobbing girls with cries of her own. She could see the scar on her left thumb from a roast dinner gone wrong and the freckles from long afternoons at the beach with her sister.

“Look!” She exclaimed to her friends.

They all broke out in ecstatic cries as their own forms showed them parts of them they had forgotten in favour of their empty future. They clutched at each other’s essence and bathed in the moment together, thrilled to be united by feelings of joy and purpose instead of the dread and neglect they had all felt since they died. Their memories flooded back to them in waves of light blues and greens and washed over them, the deep pits of black and navy blue falling out of them as the waves crashed through.

This is what has supposed to happen when they all died.

This feeling.

“Steph look!” Ellie gasped and pointed at the mirror.

The girls clutched each other and stared at the heartbreaking words on the mirror.

No one ever heard us.

“They must have been so scared,” Steph choked out.

Margaret wiped away those words.

He took everything from us and no one heard us when he did.

Amy turned to the girls and waited for their reaction but they only held each other more tightly and held their breaths, as if knowing there was more to come.

We were terrified.

Amy had not written these words but the heavy hands of Louise paused after she wrote her heart on the mirror, her outline as strong as the others but still flickering with turmoil.

Steph and Ellie shared a mournful glance before carefully standing up and directing their equipment at the mirror.

“You got all that, right?” Steph asked shakily.

“I hope so - I’ve been thinking Banana for the last twenty minutes,” Ellie replied in a stunned tone.

“I reckon we’ve got plenty,” Steph said as she reached for Ellie’s hand, who reciprocated instantly and nodded rapidly.

The girls started to walk to the door before Amy wrote another message on the mirror.

You heard us.

Thank you.

The women circled themselves around Steph and Ellie. They inhaled very slowly and each thought of the happiest moment in their life, ranging from first kisses to concerts to travels as they encased themselves in the warm memories from each of their lives. As they exhaled they poured that happiness and joy onto the girls who gave them back their voices.

Steph and Ellie felt their skin prickle with heat that had not been there that night. The cold hues hovering on the cabin battered walls evaporated as a mellow blanket wrapped itself over the abandoned place as soft glows of light sparked where the mists were. Gold and sapphire and emerald shades twinkled around them and glittered as the mellow blanket tucked in the cabin away from the unimaginable horrors it was forced to witness.

“C-can you feel that?” Ellie asked.

Steph nodded and let a small smile escape her.

“I think we’ve helped them,”.

The cold dripped away at those words as the sparkles of light shone brighter in their place, almost as big as hand held lanterns.

“You’re all welcome. Phyllis and Charlotte and Louise and Amy and…and…” a lump lodged itself in Steph’s throat as she found herself unable to continue with the names of the killed women.

“And Audrey, Jane, Elizabeth, Margaret and Eileen and Stephanie,” the last two names Ellie gave Steph’s hand an extra big squeeze.

Steph wiped away her eyes and clutched Ellie’s hands as they left the cabin and felt their legs carry them to the car, the light of their torches fading with each step into the cold night they took.

Two of the ghosts standing in the circle held hands in an eerily similar fashion to Ellie and Steph and they pressed their heads together.

“Proud, Miss Ellie?” The woman with soft red hair asked, her forest green eyes prickled with fresh water clinging to leaves.

“Extremely, Miss Steph,” the woman with jet black hair answered, her cloud grey eyes moments away from a torrential downpour.

They embraced and basked in the moment of their heard voices and grandchildren of their dear friends. The women joined their embrace one by one and wept with sorrow and joy as they felt their hearts resting with each soft pulse.

“They heard us,”.

“They did,”.

With richly held hands and beaming eyes, the balls of light grew around them and soothed their souls with the warmth of stars and suns for an eternity to come.