The Janitor's Cabin

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Curiously, little Billy wandered toward the glowing pane, but he didn’t get far before his mother called him back.

“Billy!” shouted Myrna. She hadn’t realized they’d stumbled upon that awful cabin until that moment, since the surrounding area had undergone some forest clearing in recent years. “Stay away from there, please!”

Myrna had tried to make her voice sound normal, but the look Billy returned to her proved that she’d failed. Her nervousness had broken through; her call had been warped with anxiety.

“Why?” asked Billy, but Myrna knew she couldn’t tell him. Not at this age, she thought.

“It’s private property,” she replied to the seven-yr.-old. “Do you know what that means?”

“Not ours?” asked the boy, and his mother nodded.

“Let’s go meet Dad for ice cream at Perkman’s, okay?” offered Myrna, and the little boy ran back to her.

As they left the edge of the woods, Myrna looked to the candle again. Against her will, she remembered what had happened in that cabin, and she reached for her blond hair.

…

Myrna was a few years older than Billy when she’d first discovered that cabin. Back then, there had been no main road nearby like there was now, so it had taken her and her best friend Stacy a while to wander upon it. The cabin was at least a mile away from their cul-de-sac, which — like the cabin — was situated among the Tennessee maples.

In fact, Myrna and Stacy had already become lost when they stumbled across the cabin. The woods were difficult enough to navigate in the daytime. Once night had fallen, it became near impossible.

That night, there was a candle burning in the window, and it was that candle that had attracted the young girls to the cabin. Once Myrna peeked through the window, she spotted the cabin’s occupant and recognized him immediately.

“Look! It’s Mr. Wellman!” Myrna whispered to her friend. Mr. Wellman was the janitor at their school, Turnkey Road Middle School, and he was beloved by students and faculty alike. In Myrna’s opinion, Mr. Wellman was handsome for a janitor — devilishly so. “He’ll help us find our way out of these woods,” she said.

The girls knocked on the window, and Mr. Wellman spotted them and came to the cabin’s front porch a few feet away. “Stacy Michaels? Myrna Kinkaid?” asked Mr. Wellman, and they nodded. “Are you girls lost? It’s almost 9 o’clock.”

Mr. Wellman invited them inside. Upon entry, Myrna immediately smelled an overwhelming scent of soap or shampoo. “Let’s call your parents,” said Mr. Wellman, and Stacy gave him her home number first. As Mr. Wellman dialed the number on his landline, Myrna caught sight of a door ajar next to the fireplace, and she peeked inside.

A sliver of light from the cabin’s main room passed through the cracked door. To her shock, strung up on the wall in there were rows and rows of long, blond hair. Enamored, Myrna stepped closer and realized that the scent of shampoo was emanating from that same room, and she shuddered.

Unconsciously, Myrna touched her own hair — also long and blond. Most everyone she knew had complimented her thick, lustrous hair, and Myrna had always been proud of it. Right now, however, she felt uncomfortable having it, as if it made her a target.

“Myrna, what’s your home phone number?” asked Mr. Wellman, and the girl collected herself before giving him the information.

Their parents came and took them home. That night, Myrna couldn’t stop thinking about the blond hair hung up in the cabin and that scent of shampoo. Does that mean it’s people hair? Myrna thought as she lay awake in bed. The idea definitely disgusted her, but it fascinated her at the same time — like a scab that she knew she shouldn’t pick.

A week later, Myrna snuck out once night fell — intent on returning to Mr. Wellman’s cabin. Again, she spotted that candle burning in the window about a mile from her home, and she stepped up to the pane and peered inside. Mr. Wellman was sitting on his couch cuddling a teddy bear. After a minute or two, he stood up.

What’s he doing? wondered Myrna. She watched the janitor drag a huge plastic bag full of trash out from a corner of the cabin’s living room into its center. Is that from school?

Myrna watched, transfixed, as the janitor emptied the industrial-sized trash bag onto the cabin’s hardwood. Among the garbage were loose pieces of paper, binders, a retainer case, and other items one would expect to find in the garbage of a middle school. Mr. Wellman reached into the trash and, with his eyes wide, he pulled out a hairbrush.

“Oh yes,” Mr. Wellman whispered to himself, and he cherished the hairbrush by holding it close to his chest. It was obvious why the hairbrush had been thrown away. It was totally full of clumps of blond hair, such that its previous owner probably didn’t think it was worth the trouble to clean. Hungrily, Mr. Wellman leaned in and sniffed it.

“Oh!” Myrna gasped. Mr. Wellman turned and spotted her outside in the window. For a second, he looked embarrassed, but Myrna watched his face change to display a look of pleasure, and then eagerness. He dropped the hairbrush and stood up from the trash pile before walking out of the cabin’s front door onto the porch — just feet away from the candlelit window.

“Myrna! It’s late,” said the janitor. “Did you get lost in the woods again?” For a few seconds, Myrna was too stunned to speak.

Eventually, she found her voice. “Mhm,” she grunted. Again, Mr. Wellman welcomed her inside.

“Do you want some tea?” asked the janitor. Myrna nodded.

“I saw you with the hairbrush,” she blurted out. Mr. Wellman chuckled before leaving for the kitchen to prepare the tea. “What are you doing with it?”

The janitor returned with two cups of tea and encouraged Myrna to drink it up. With a smile, he picked up the phone and asked Myrna for her home number again. To Myrna, the tea tasted fine — good even.

“I had a daughter once,” Mr. Wellman told her. “I still do, technically. Her mother took her away from me. She’s an awful parent, keeping her away from her father like this. Do you want to see something?”

Mr. Wellman stood up and walked to a nearby room — the one Myrna had peeked into during her first visit to that cabin. As they entered, he flicked on the light. To Myrna’s surprise, the rows of blond hair that had been hanging on the wall were gone now. Piled on the floor were dozens of little stuffed animals — elephants, tigers, sheep, and more teddy bears.

“There was hair in here before,” Myrna said. Mr. Wellman smiled. He picked up a nearby stuffed monkey and handed it to her. She smelled it, and it smelled like shampoo.

“When I sleep with these toys, I feel my little daughter Kitty so close to me, in my soul,” said Mr. Wellman. “Can you feel her, Myrna? She has long blond hair, like yours.”

They returned to the cabin’s living room, and Mr. Wellman made Myrna another cup of tea. She looked at the clock, and it read 1:33 a.m. “Where are my parents?” asked the girl.

“They’re coming,” answered the janitor, and Myrna — despite her best efforts — fell asleep on his couch.

When she woke up, Myrna felt a breeze on her head. Groggily, she stood and looked out of the window. Dawn was beginning. On her shoulder, she found a few clumps of blond hair. She touched her scalp, and it felt bristly.

Myrna’s stomach dropped and her jaw fell open. Where is it? Where is it? she thought.

She quickly found the cabin’s small bathroom and flicked on the light. What! It’s gone! she realized. Where her long, beautiful, blond hair had been, there was nothing except pale white skin and a millimeter or so of hair left on her scalp. “I look ugly! I’m so ugly!” she screamed. “I’m ugly! I’m ugly!”

“Myrna?”

In the bathroom mirror, the girl spotted Mr. Wellman behind her in the doorway. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “I borrowed some of your hair, and I made this for you.” He extended a stuffed hippo, and she backed away from him.

“Isn’t this better than having hair?” he asked, forcing the stuffed animal into her hands. Myrna was dumbfounded. “It’s yours! It’s yours! I made something for myself, too. You had so much hair before, there was plenty of it left over.”

Mr. Wellman went to the couch and picked up something else — a doll of a little girl in a dress, boasting long blond hair. “I’d like to keep this if I could. Your hair is just like Kitty’s, and this was her dress when she was little.”

Scared mute, Myrna fled from the cabin, and Mr. Wellman didn’t give chase. For a long time, Myrna kept the absence of her hair a secret, and she didn’t speak to anyone for an entire year after that night. Once she started talking again, she never told a soul about what Mr. Wellman had done despite the endless questions.

For some reason, Myrna was too embarrassed to speak about it, as if she’d been duped out of her best quality — her long, blond hair that eventually grew back.

...

“What did you guys do this evening?” Myrna’s husband asked her once she and Billy had met him at Perkman’s. “Sorry I had to work late.”

“We just went on a walk,” Myrna told him.

“We found an old cabin!” Billy told his father. “It smelled just like Mama.”

THE END