The Craggles' Cabin

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

Tim paused, watching with eager eyes as his friends and family leaned in for more. They sat in a complete circle around a campfire that was casting shadows in all directions. The sun was setting.

“It was always on the same day, every ten years that this candle would appear in the cabin,” he continued. “It was the night that everybody in town stayed inside because if you ventured out into the darkness and the woods, you would never be seen again.”

He paused again, the campfire’s reflection flickering in his eyes. The gentle sounds of wildlife could be heard in the distance.

“You see this was not an ordinary candle, this was not an ordinary cabin, and this was not an ordinary night. On this day, every ten years, the spirits of the Craggle couple would return, lure two unwitting victims to the cabin, and massacre them both. Everyone who lived in the town for more than a year knew the story well.”

Nobody spoke a word; they were transfixed by the story.

Tim smiled and then continued.

“The story of the Craggles and what they did to people is passed down from generation to generation. To teach and to warn. The story always begins the same. The town closes as sunset draws near, everybody knows that they need to be as far away from the cabin in the woods as possible, should the Pull affect them.”

“The Pull?” asked someone else.

The animal noises have disappeared. It was now quiet. The sun had nearly finished setting.

“That is what the townspeople called it. It was a pull, a supernatural force, and anybody who is caught in its web feels an uncontrollable urge to visit the cabin. It doesn’t matter if the person knows full well that this is a death sentence, the power of the Pull is too strong for anybody to resist. That is why the town closes early. Once two people, and it is always two, are ensnared, they travel to the cabin where they see an unearthly light emanating from the candle as well as the Craggles’ ghostly forms. This is meant to tempt the visitors to enter the home. Once they enter the home, the Craggles trap completes itself. This time around it was two visitors to the area, a married couple, Earl and Cynthia who were chosen…

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Earl shook his head and grinned in disbelief as he watched the sunset through his car window. He couldn’t believe the kinds of crazy ghost stories the locals here believed in. He and his wife Cynthia had been returning home from a trip when they made a brief detour in this town to get gas. When they had parked, they noticed that many businesses were closed early.

They had been at the gas mart, paying the gas fare, when the clerk manning the counter learned where they were driving to. As soon as his ears took in their words, he went stone white. He told them it was not a good idea to be traveling through the area at night on this night.

“Why?” Earl said.

“Because of the Craggles.”

“Who are the Craggles?” asked Cynthia.

The man was sweating a lot now and wiped his brow with the back of his hand before he kept talking. He had explained to Earl and Cynthia that the Craggles were a ghostly couple who appeared on this day every ten years. They were a couple who lived and died over a hundred years prior. Some of the details were a little uncertain, but everyone knew the story. That after a terrible accident, Jameson Craggle summoned the powers of darkness to take revenge, and in doing so, he and his wife Cynthia died horrible deaths and became cursed to once a decade drag two people to their ends.

Cynthia and Earl exchanged questioning looks.

“Thanks for your time buddy, but we have to get going,” said Earl.

Before they could leave, the man behind the counter had held onto Earl’s hand. He told them that whatever they do, not to go near that abandoned cabin. It belonged to the Craggles. He had further elaborated that even if they felt an irresistible urge, to fight it. He had concluded his warning by saying that the Craggles will make going to their cabin seem like a great idea, you may even be led there by them, but no matter what you do, don’t go into the cabin.

They had been driving for 10 minutes now and the sun had set. There was a nice breeze and Earl had his window down. Soft rock music played on the radio to keep him alert. Cynthia had the map book and her phone on, comparing their path home.

“I put the map’s directions into my phone. If we stay on the main road we will get home in about an hour and a half. But according to GPS if we take these backroads here, we will get home in about 45 minutes.

Earl’s blue eyes looked with Cynthia’s hazel eyes for an instant and they nodded before saying in unison:

“Backroads it is.”

The backroads were not lit very well, but fortunately, except for Earl and Cynthia’s Volvo, there were no other cars on the road. Earl turned the knob on the radio and the music played louder. His head unconsciously bobbed to the beat of the sounds. Every now and then his eyes would flicker off the road and his rear-view mirror to admire his wife’s beautiful form.

He was a lucky guy. Cynthia was busy on the phone while he was doing this.

Because they were not looking at each other’s faces or their own reflections, neither noticed momentarily that their pupils turned ash black and then the color spilled out and filled in their eyes completely. Just as soon as this happened, the blackness vanished, and their pupils were their standard color again.

Earl’s eyes flicked back to watching the main road. He turned the sound up on the music station; he wanted a good base playing that would keep him alert.

“Hey honey,” said Cynthia.

“What is it, sweetheart?”

“According to the GPS, that cabin that the guy warned us to stay away from is two minutes from here, off of the road that is coming up on the right.”

“Huh,” responded Earl. His eyes then looked down at the clock on the dashboard. It would only be a 5 minute or so detour.

In the silence from the outside world, Earl almost thought that he heard a voice whispering, “Come visit us.”

It was odd, Earl could not have cared less about the cabin when it was first mentioned, but now the more he thought about it, the more enticing a visit it was.

“Hey babe,” he said hopefully, “how about we take that road and go check out the cabin? It’ll only be a few minutes out of the way. Besides I need to stretch my legs.

Cynthia cocked her eyebrows in response to this. She was surprised that Earl would want to visit such a place. What could have gotten into him? As she was thinking about this, she heard a very faint deep voice.

“Come meet us.” However, the more she thought about it, the more she felt it would be a good idea to stretch their legs. Hers were starting to cramp.

“That’s actually not a bad idea. Let’s do it”

Earl turned right and the car’s headlights breached the darkness as they made their way down a long road. The further they traveled, the more the car started to rock back and forth.

“Road must be in really poor condition,” he quipped. Just as he was about to stop the car, declare that it wasn’t worth it, and turn around, he saw two figures ahead of him in the darkness. It seemed to be a man and a woman, in a suit and dress, respectively, beckoning him to follow them as they slowly walked. It was hard to make out their details clearly, but their clothes were certainly old-fashioned.

Earl wasn’t sure, but then his eyes went fully black again, and he decided to continue driving.

The road’s condition cleared up noticeably as the cabin came into view. Earl drove the car off to the side and killed the ignition. He and Cynthia’s eyes roamed over the structure and went pitch black again.

Parts of the cabin were in massive disrepair. There were roof shingles missing, the porch was broken in places and yet other parts were in pristine condition. It looked like someone had been renovating it. The door was nicely polished, the windows were clean, and the rain gutters practically sparkled.

Cynthia’s eyes stopped at one of the windows that had a coating of dust on it and said only one thing.

“What a beautiful candle that is. Look at how much light it gives off.”

Her voice sounded entranced.

Earl’s eyes danced over the candle too.

“It is nice,” he said while nodding. His voice sounded very sleepy.

Earl then shook himself, becoming alert again.

“Okay, we came, now let’s go home.”

“Alright,” said his wife in an almost robotic voice.

As Earl was about to start the car, he saw the man and woman again. This time he could see them a little better. The man had a long beard going halfway down his chest and the woman had on a messy apron covering a plain grey dress. Both of them glowed in the light of the candle and moonlight, and they almost looked see-through.

“Won’t you join the two of us?” the man and woman said in unison as their eyes flashed a deep orange. The candle in the window had grown brighter and was pulsating with light.

Both Cynthia’s and Earl’s eyes went black.

Cynthia turned to Earl.

“Seeing as we are here, let’s go inside the cabin and see what the fuss is about.”

Earl nodded.

“Sounds like a good idea sweetheart.”

The man and woman walked into the cabin and Earl and Cynthia got out of their car and followed behind them. The door was fully open as they crossed the threshold and stood in the kitchen.

They turned left and they could the man and the women by the fireplace, a fire was roaring with ferocity. It didn’t bother Earl or Cynthia that these two were completely transparent. Nor did it frighten them that the woman’s body was now in pieces. Her head was floating above her body and her limbs were in their respective places, but floating next to her, rather than attached. And the man had many stab wounds throughout his torso and a massive wound to the side of his face. The clothing that they wore looked like it could have belonged in a museum. The man was wearing a buttoned-down shirt, with tan trousers that were being held up with suspenders. The woman’s dress had very faint images of flowers on it.

The man and the woman, the Craggles, started to move towards Earl and Cynthia, but they stopped when Cynthia spoke.

“This is a very nice cabin you have here,” her voice had a singsong quality in it.

“This is where we lived and where we died,” the man spoke in his deep cadence. They now stood completely still.

Earl looked from them to his wife and back again.

“Died?”

“I am Jameson Craggle and this is my wife Gertrude.”

Earl looked a little afraid now. The candle pulsated with more power and his eyes went black again. He then relaxed a little.

“Why did you bring us here? What do you want?” asked Earl, calmly.

“You are here,” responded Gertrude in a raspy voice, “because the cycle must continue.”

Cynthia mildly cocked her head.

“The cycle?”

“The cycle of our deaths. It must always continue!” Jameson roared.

Earl probed a little.

“Why?”

“This is our punishment, my punishment for conjuring forces to seek vengeance,” said Jameson. “Because I called upon dark forces to avenge my children and kill Gertrude, we are condemned in death to repeat this for all time.”

Cynthia looked at them with a little fear for the first time since entering the cabin. Her eyes were a little glassy. The candle pulsated and her eyes went black.

“You…you killed your wife?” she asked with a mild stammer.

Jameson nodded once.

“She brought it on herself. She was meant to be watching our children outside. But instead, she was fornicating with the neighbor. Our children ingested some deadly herbs and died. At that moment, I called out to the darkness to seek vengeance, and then I killed and dismembered her. Because I killed her using the darkness, we are linked. And now, the cycle must continue.”

Gertrude nodded.

“The cycle must continue.”

The ghosts then flew into Earl and Cynthia’s bodies.

They then became surrounded by a dozen lit candles; candles that had not been there before. The furniture and décor of the cabin had also changed. It was…older, like over a century older. The phone, TV, and refrigerator were all gone. And above the mantlepiece were a variety of long and short guns. By the front door, there was a long ax.

Both Earl and Cynthia were shocked. They were temporarily overcoming the effects of the candle, the Craggles, and the cabin. Earl found the strength to talk, though it came with a stammer.

“W-w-what the hell was that?!”

“I don’t…honey your face!”

Earl’s hands shot up to his face. His features began to change. His facial features began to twist and distort themselves and his clothes began to change shape and color. He felt pain streak across his body.

“Honey, something weird is going on!” he called out.

“I know!”

He then looked at her and he saw that like him, her features were changing as well. She was wincing in pain.

His short brown hair was growing and changing color to long and jet black. His face was deflating and collapsing in on itself. His nose was growing and becoming more pointed. His teeth were turning yellow and looking mildly rotten. He was developing a beard…

Her long blond hair was changing to auburn. Her face was similarly deflating and the bone structure was cracking and reforming to give her a strong Slavic look. She winced as several of her teeth vanished and her belly began to grow and grow.

Cynthia was terrified.

“Earl, what’s happening to us?” she cried out. Then her eyes went black

“I don’t know,” he responded. Then his eyes went black.

And then their bodies stopped changing and just looked at each other.

Even though both Earl and Cynthia instinctively knew that the person they were looking at was their spouse, they no longer looked physically like them. They had in all ways physically become the translucent figures that had possessed them. Those thoughts were the last ones that they had before they lost consciousness.

Jameson Craggle now stood by the fireplace; his wife Gertrude had moved away from him and was going to tend to items in the kitchen.

“Gertrude if the children die because you were off fornicating with our neighbor instead of watching them, then may God have mercy upon you!”

She turned around and looked at him with pain in her eyes, but said nothing.

The local doctor emerged from the children’s room with a defeated look on his face.

“I am sorry, but the herb that the children consumed is too fast-acting. There is nothing that I can give them. Very soon, the children will be with God.”

Upon hearing this, Jameson ran to his children’s room and clutched them as they breathed their final moments. He spent minutes hugging them and kissing all of their brows until he felt the warmth in their bodies grow cold. He looked at all of their faces; their eyes were open, looking at him accusingly and hauntingly.

“It’s not fair, it’s not fair,” he muttered over and over again. He looked up at the ceiling, up towards the heavens. “God, how could you allow this?”

Jameson then heard voices all around him. “Do you wish to have the power to avenge them, to bring justice?” they asked in unison.

“Yes,” his voice quaked.

“Are you sure?” they further probed.

“Yes!”

“Then it shall be.” The voices responded before vanishing.

A great darkness overpowered him and conjured up degrees of anger, hatred, and vengeance that he had never felt before. His eyes went fully black, reflecting the state of his soul.

“Give me the strength to rain vengeance down upon those responsible,” he muttered.

Swiftly, he left his children’s sides and went back to his wife.

Gertrude looked at her husband with fright. His eyes were pitch black and when he spoke, his voice reverberated.

“The children are dead. They must be avenged.”

Those were the last words that Jameson ever spoke to his wife. He walked over to the front door and picked up the axe that he used for chopping wood. Gripping it tightly in his hand, the axe soon turned as black as his eyes were.

Before Gertrude had a chance to respond, Jameson walked with purpose up to her, raised the ax, and brought it cleanly through her neck. Blood spurted out of her neck wound and hit the floor.

Her head fell from her shoulders and rolled over once before stopping by Jameson’s left foot. Blood began to pool at his shoe.

Jameson swung the ax 4 more times, taking off each of his dead wife’s limbs with fury. Her scattered remains lay at his feet, drowning the floor in a thick blanket of blood. Jameson then put the ax down. With that, the darkness vanished from his eyes and when he saw his wife at his feet, he fell to his knees in horror and began to dry heave. Very quickly, his trousers and hands became stained with her blood.

“What have I done?” he cried out to himself.

Unable to cope with the horror that he had unleashed, Jameson’s eyes glazed over, and his mind entered a fugue state. He rigidly stood up, grabbed a knife that was closest to him on the mantle, and took it to his torso many times. When he was done, blood dripped from the wounds made and coated his shirt. He then took a small pistol also from the mantle, lined it up with his temple, and pulled the trigger.

One second later, his body collapsed next to the pieces of his wife.

As both bodies lay on the cold floor, objects in the house began to vanish. The guns disappeared, as did the candles, as did the ax. Everything that was old in the house vanished like a mirage in a hot desert. The bodies and faces of Jameson and Gertrude began to change. A minute later, lying on the floor now were no longer the corpses of Jameson and Gertrude, but Earl and Cynthia. He was whole and she was in pieces. Both lying in each other’s blood. Their eyes were open, staring coldly at nothing.

Looking down at them the ghosts of James and Gertrude spoke.

“The cycle has continued. The cycle will continue.”

With that, they faded into the night outside, and the house went completely dark.

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“The next morning,” continued Tim, who now used a sole flashlight to light his face, “the remains of Earl and his wife were found in the house by the police. The police had received a tip from the gasmart clerk that the couple might fall prey to the Pull. When the police got there, they knew exactly what had happened; they had seen this scene play out many times before, no matter how hard they tried to stop it. The ghosts of Jameson and Gertrude had found their victims for that year. Now Earl and Cynthia were not the last victims of the cabin and in fact, according to the stories, the cabin continues to find victims to this day. So, let that be a warning to us all, do not go into any cabin that is abandoned. You never know what might happen. The…end.”

Tim then lay back against his foldout chair, clicked off his flashlight, and watched everyone reel from the story. A tiny smile appeared on his face; he had freaked some people out a lot. Some of his relatives glanced over their shoulders in fear. The fire that they sat around was almost extinguished.

Ten miles away, two men, Josh and Frank were in their car driving down the road when both of their eyes went fully black.