The Door

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window off the front porch. As I stood amidst the overgrown shrubbery crowding out and covering up the front walk stepping stones as if they were being swallowed whole, I remembered the last time a light had shone out of this house. My heart thumped in my chest like a drummer’s beat in a crescendo. That was the day my life had changed forever.

I hadn’t been this close to the cabin from my nightmares in ten years. Oh, I walked or drove by every few weeks or so. I couldn’t stay away for some odd reason. Perhaps I needed to see if it had all been real or not that fateful day. But—I never got too close. Not in all these ten years. I had also never seen another candle burning in that window. Until today.

My memories dragged me kicking and screaming back to the day my brother, Teddy, died. We had been outside playing. Our neighborhood was through the woods and over the hill to the left. Not far from here. We’d come across the old Tanner cabin as we pretended to be Jedi fighting against the evil Empire. Everyone knew the old stories of deaths and disappearances near the Tanner place. They were the kind of scary stories people told around campfires at night. Teddy and I figured that’s what they were — just stories. We didn’t pay much attention to scary stories. Not back then.

My mind was on replay as the sheriff talked to my eight year old self. “Heck, Cassie, there’s no evidence of anyone even being inside that there cabin for decades. Dust and dirt so thick it’s as if someone sprayed a bit of White Sands all over everything. There is no way Teddy went inside that cabin.”

Our small town of Ruidoso, New Mexico was a peaceful town. Mostly. More Texans owned vacation homes in our town than actual New Mexico Ruidoso citizens. Everyone thought my cabin story of how Teddy died was an eight year old’s overactive imagination resultant from the traumatic experience of finding my dead brother.

Teddy didn’t die inside the old Tanner cabin. At least, that’s what they said.

Teddy had been found laying in the blue canvas hammock in our backyard. Died in his sleep. Cause unknown. No evidence of foul play. No bruising or cuts. Nothing. I don’t know how he got there, as the last time I saw him was when he walked through the Tanner cabin’s front door. After we noticed the candle burning in the window. The candle snuffed out when the door closed behind my brother—and locked. Teddy didn’t answer my calls. I never saw him alive again. I ran home to get our mom and that’s when we saw Teddy in the hammock. Dead.

They hadn’t believed me then. As the years passed, I stopped believing me, too. After all, I’d been only eight and Teddy ten. Maybe I did find my brother’s body in the backyard and the trauma made me invent some story to explain the loss. My mother, too, couldn’t handle Teddy’s unexplained death. It tore her up from the inside out. Drank herself to death one year to the day after Teddy had passed away. My father was killed in action not long after, and I was sent to live with my Aunt Becca two blocks from my once happy home.

My once happy life a distant dream haunted by candles burning endlessly. Seeing the candle’s fire today in the window of the old haunted cabin, just like it had ten years ago, made me wonder if maybe it had happened after all.

Did my brother die inside this creepy place? If he did, how did he end up in our backyard?

Teddy was tough. A real fighter. He would have fought anyone who attacked him. But, there was no evidence of that. No residual medications in his system from someone drugging him before he could fight them. Nothing to indicate an attacker had murdered him.

Died of natural causes, they’d said.

I stood staring at the flame from the single candle. Hypnotized by it, I wrestled with what my younger self had experienced, what everyone else believed had happened, and what I had been convinced to believe—until today. Until right now. Until the cabin’s candle burned once more.

I didn’t want it to be happening again. I wanted to find some rational explanation. If I went up to the door and knocked, maybe someone would answer. Maybe the old place had finally sold and someone lived there now. That would explain the candle. My feet moved of their own volition. I found myself raising my right leg as I stepped onto the stairs leading to the front porch and to the door whispering my brother’s name. The wood beneath my feet moaned in protest to being walked upon. The candle flickered as I approached.

The door was thick mahogany in a reddish-brown color like dried blood. Different from the rest of the cabin’s wood, which was a soft brown oak. The doorknob was copper and shined to perfection. Odd. One would expect it to be tarnished. There were deep carvings of twisted vines making loops, whorls, and squiggles. The vines created a somewhat heart shaped border, inside of which was a carved replica of the giant weeping willow tree out front. Up close you could almost see three bodies and faces in the large tree carving. As if they had once been humans who were cursed and turned into trees as they screamed in agony. Their bodies twisting to get free.

Although the image of the tree frightened me, I kept walking towards it. The door was calling out to me. Whispering my name now along with my brother’s.

All the answers were inside. I could feel it. Sense it.

The heavy door opened inward as I raised my right hand to knock, beckoning me to enter. As it opened, I noticed the doorframe was jagged like rows of shark’s teeth. I tried to take a step backwards, only, my foot was stuck in place. I couldn’t move away from the door’s teeth. My body felt like stone. Heavy. As if someone had poured liquid lead into my hollowed-out legs.

My eyes were drawn to the bleakness inside. Although I could still see the candle burning from outside the cabin, it didn’t shed any light within. There was nothing but pure darkness inside. An evil emanated from it which prevented goodness or light from existing. Not even flickers from the candle were visible.

This thick present darkness enticed. It cajoled. Waves of emotion flowed towards me. Whatever was inside longed to find peace and happiness. It sought to love and be loved in return. I sensed all of this as fear rippled up and down my spine.

A distant whisper echoed from within, “Help me.” Like a child crying softly, “Please, help me.”

I wanted nothing more than to go to the child and hold it in my arms. The feeling was urgent and overwhelming. The desire to rush through the jagged doorway and into the darkness spread like a wildfire in a windstorm igniting every cell of my body. My heart thundered inside my chest as I slid closer to whoever or whatever was calling me.

An invisible force was pulling me inside like a blackhole sucking particles into the event horizon. I strained against this gravitational force willing myself to run the other way. It didn’t work. It kept pulling me closer and closer to the inky blackness within the cabin.

Was this what happened to Teddy? Or — wait — was Teddy the one pulling me in? Was it his cry for help I heard? No, Teddy died ten long years ago. Get a grip, Cassie!

The harder I fought, the stronger the force became. I could feel the loneliness inside. It was pulling me inch by inch into that utter aloneness. Tentacles of shadows wrapped around my body. Electrifying emotions coursed from the shadow into me as they dragged me inside the black pit of evil. A heart wrenching longing to love and be loved filled me momentarily. Then the screaming came crashing through the dark room in violent waves. Screaming so loud it shredded my eardrums.

I glanced back at the fading twilight streaming through the leaves of the old willow tree as the shadow tentacles closed the door behind me. I heard the lock click into place. A hollow haunting laugh surrounded me. The darkness had another victim. The candle’s flame once again extinguished.

The hollow laugh vibrated around me as I realized it had been my younger voice calling out. Pleading for help.

The truth hit me with enough force to make me stumbled in the darkness. I was the one screaming. And, it was my mirthless laugh mocking me.

I had been pulled within myself. Trapped. A prisoner inside my own dead heart.

Was this what happened to Teddy? Was I still alive out in the real world? Or would someone find me laying in a blue canvas hammock like my brother before me — dead?

Died of natural causes they’d say.

By: Crissy B.