Senses Deceive

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. A flickering, inviting light. The kind that made you ignore the sounds of scurrying beasts in the underbrush. The kind of light the made you forget the feeling of eyes tracking your every movement as you tried to step lightly through the crunching dead leaves and twigs beneath your feet on the path. Its warm glow burning away the cool chill of the autumn night. Beckoning the approaching group of teenagers like a beacon.

Sarah’s eyes saw it first, pointing out the bright light among the darkness of the trees. High above the canopy, the last of the orange clouds faded to dusky purple as twilight began to settle.

“What light?” Tanner asked thickly. To annoy Sarah further, he pretended to squint into the distance, right at the cabin.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise?

Another gust of wind brought shivers to Sarah’s body. She rolled her eyes at Tanner. All day he’d made stupid comments in response to every question she’d asked and he was well past getting on her nerves. Trudging forward on the path, she let the leafy branch whip back into his face. A satisfied smile sliding into place on her face at the noise he made went it hit him.

The light ahead still flickered, as if it was guttering in the wind even though it was safely behind the window. Something about it was tantalizing. Inviting. Her whole being focused on the flame as she approached the cabin. Her senses absorbed as it danced before her. Somewhere behind she could hardly hear the conversation of her four friends. All of them playing on Tanner’s stupid joke about not being able to see the cabin.

“Oh my god! There really is a cabin there!” Helen’s dumbfounded voice echoed through the woods behind Sarah.

The urge to grumble under her breath was swallowed by something as Sarah stepped onto the porch. Faded green paint peeled from the wooden door. Once upon a time it had been something cheerful and welcoming. Now it looked sad. A memory from long ago. Something that died and had no one left to mourn it.

Sarah moved forward, the light that had once shone brightly through the window seemed to dim as they moved across the porch towards that dilapidated door. A layer of dust and muck on the window blurring the inside of the cabin from sight. Everything blurry but that flame. Its magnetic like energy transferred to the door, drawing Sarah in. Her handed rested on top of the knob and before she could think better of it, she turned her wrist and pushed the door open.

A shaft of light streamed onto the porch. More light than a single candle could produce. Sarah thought nothing of it as she stepped through the threshold.

The room beyond was nothing spectacular. Mostly dust. And very old, dated furniture. The candle itself sat on a sad, rickety looking table. Two matching chairs beside it. One of which was tipped over onto its side. Almost as if the person who’d been sitting in it had left in a hurry, knocking it down in their wake.

Sarah walked about the room, looking for what she didn’t know. But there was nothing to note. Nothing scary. No dead animals. No sign of life. It was just a warm, dry cabin, even if it was on the falling apart side of things. A blessing after a long day hiking in the rain. The sun had barely been able to make an appearance before it had begun to set over the horizon. No chance for its warm rays to dry the forest floor floor before the teens had planned to set up camp. Sleeping on wet ground was something none of them had been looking forward to. Yes, this would do nicely for the night, a voice murmured in the back of her mind. She paid no attention to the fact that it wasn’t her voice that said it.

“What was that?” Helen whirled around to the now closed door. Who closed it? Sarah hadn’t heard it make a sound. It should have creaked just by looking at it. Panic etched its way into Helen’s face. Silence settled over the room, Tanner said nothing only for Seth to pipe up that he hadn’t heard anything.

“I’m serious. It sounded—” Helen swallowed hard, “like something dying.”

Goosebumps prickled Helen’s skin. There it was again. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, like static after someone drags a balloon over your arm. Her head snapped to the side at the sound of a loud crash.

Tess had tripped over an old Moroccan rug on the floor. Landing hard on her knee, she swore loudly as she hacked on the dust that she’d stirred up from the rug. Helen watched as both Tess and Sarah looked at the rug with strange expressions. One with disgusted interest and the other fear.

The goosebumps seemed to grow goosebumps of their own and in attempt to lighten the mood, Helen halfheartedly began humming A Whole New World. A grimace stretched across her face at the expressions she got from Sarah and Tess. Sarah’s face shifted from fear to mortified realization. The whites of her eyes visible to Helen from across the room. An almost shell-shocked look.

Thump thump. Thump thump. Thump thump. Helen’s heart pounded in her chest at the terror in Sarah’s eyes. Something was wrong.

A scraping noise echoed from somewhere inside the cabin, pulling a startled scream from Helen. No one seemed to hear it though. She turned in a circle, eyes darting furiously about. The boys had found a cabinet in the corner, where an inch thick layer of dust covered boxes and cans of non-perishables that had most certainly perished by now.

“What the hell?” Tess shouted, far too delayed to be in response to Helen’s scream.

Helen turned back around to her friends. Their faces now clouded with fear and panic, tears on Sarah’s cheeks. Tess was slowly, almost robotically pulling her arm up from the rug. The motion jerky and unnatural, like there was an invisible elastic pulling her arm back down to the rug.

Sarah was sobbing. Her mouth opening and closing as she tried to find the words to describe what she was seeing. Tess continued to slowly pull her hands up off the floor one at a time, that invisible gum resisting her. Finally, Sarah blurted out, “It’s blood!”

Laughter echoed from the corner where Seth and Tanner had pulled a dust covered box from the shelf. A plume blossomed in the air in front of them as Seth blew the filmy layer of dust off. Their laughter a jarring warning to the girls across the room.

“I dare you to eat one.” Seth called out, oblivious to what the girls were currently experiencing. Tanner didn’t need to be double dog dared. The sound of the box opening and a plastic bag crackling followed the laughter of the boys. “Whoa! That smells wicked. Did something die in that box?”

Three heads whipped around to focus on Tanner as he lifted something to his mouth that none of them could see. Sarah’s mouth opened in slow motion. She got the barest glimpse of the object before Tanner popped it in his mouth.

“It tastes like blood.” Tanner coughed, his face twisting at the tang. No one but Helen heard Seth say he could smell it. The metallic scent of fresh blood. She and everyone else cried out as their vision went black.

Helen’s sudden plunge into darkness was punctuated by the sounds of her friends screaming. Crying out. Panic. Realization dawned on her that she felt weightless. She couldn’t feel anything. Couldn’t smell anything despite Seth’s proclamation that the box smelled like death and whatever Tanner had eaten bloody. Her senses were gone. All but her hearing. As the screams continued piercing her ears, tears she could not feel slid down her cheeks.

Beside the rug, Sarah watched in horror. She could see everything but hear nothing. Not Helen’s crying or Tess’s screams. Not Seth’s comment about what he was smelling or Tanner’s gurgling as blood kept spewing from his mouth. She heard none of it. A ringing had replaced all sound. She thought she’d taste the bile in her mouth but she didn’t. Looking down at the vomit on the floor, shock began to overtake her.

Tess couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, all she could do was feel that rug beneath her. The squishy, wet rug that wouldn’t let her go. Every time she tried to pull herself from it, the rug pulled her back down. Slowly swallowing her further and further, as if the cabin was alive and devouring her. And she was powerless. The only sense she had control of was touch and it scared her. This feeling of being swallowed. She didn’t know what was going on around her. What was happening to her friends. A dizziness began to mingle with the darkness. Breathing became hard. And then there was nothing.

Outside the cabin, the candle flame flickered. Once. Twice. Then sputtered out. Stars winked and twinkled in the night sky above the forest. A cool breeze rustled the rain droplets from the leaves. They plinked down to the forest floor, a symphony of sounds echoing around them. But the blood trickling from beneath the door to the cabin was silent. And then that ringing noise seemed to echo, drowning out the sounds of the night.

If five teens vanish inside a cabin that no one can see, did they die?