The Withered Hand

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. A solitary, shrivelled hand extended into the light, the skin translucent as the hand reached towards the light, a candle snuffer dangly from its spindly fingers. The light went out, darkness encasing the trees again.

Amber watched the light as it was extinguished from the bushes on the edge of the property, waiting for something more to happen, but after a few minutes, she grew tired of waiting. She slowly unfurled from her crouched position, edging backwards towards the road she’d taken to get there. She had been intending to spend the night in the ‘haunted house’ like her friends had dared her, but if there was someone in there, she would have to come back.

Three days passed before Amber decided that it would be ok to brave the cabin for the night. A bag was all she took with her, a bag with warm clothes, a blanket, some snacks, and a torch. That would be all she would need. There would be no sleep for the night. Sleep would invite the things that go bang in the dark, and she wanted to be able to watch her surroundings.

She wasn’t afraid. No. despite the ghost stories her friends had poured into her before Amber had set out for the house she would be fine. At least that’s what she told herself. The cabin sitting on the crest of the hill in the middle of the woods had always creeped her out.

The stairs leading up to the door creaked as her feet landed on them. She shook herself. Typical of old houses. Nothing abnormal about that. The hairs on her arms stood on end as she slunk forwards, frustrated at herself for letting the stupid ghost stories get to her. Just a silly old house with creaky floors, she repeated to herself as she opened the door, and screechy doors, she added to the thought as it let out groan, swinging open on the loudest hinges she’d ever encountered. She began to wonder if anyone had ever lived in the cabin at all.

Cobwebs covered every corner of the interior, draping like blankets over old pictures that looked as though the hadn’t been touched in decades. The furniture that wasn’t covered in sheets had spiderwebs so thick encasing them they looked like they did. Even the spiders seemed to have abandoned the cabin. Nothing moved. Silence encased the cabin as though it as holding its breath. Waiting. For what, Amber didn’t know, and she didn’t really want to either.

Dust billowed out like a cloud as Amber removed a sheet from an old armchair, and, coughing, sunk into its depths. She pulled a blanket from the bottom of her bag, and lay it across her lap before resting her torch on top of it, pointing it outwards. It was going to be a long, sleepless night. She watched the sky through a window as clouds passed over, the sun having set hours ago.

There were too many clouds to see stars that night, but a small amount of light from the moon shone through the cracks in the clouds. Just enough to cast an eerie light through the room, making everything ten times creepier. Wonderful, Amber thought. That was exactly what she needed.

At some point, she must have fallen asleep, because sometime later, Amber was woken by a strange scratching sound. She pulled in a sharp breath, sitting up as much as the plush armchair would allow her and glancing around. Probably some rats, she tried to reassure herself.

Glancing out the window, a strange shadow caught her eye, but it was gone before she could figure out what it was, and she pushed it from her mind. Just shadows cast by the clouds probably. She shot a look at the sky. Almost completely cloudless. There were a few though. The temperature around her had dropped significantly since she had last been awake, likely because there were no clouds to trap heat in the atmosphere.

The scratching came again. This time it seemed closer, but she couldn’t be sure. She had only just woken up the first time, and she hadn’t really been paying close attention to it. Something upstairs fell to the floor. Amber sucked in a breath. The scratching, she could dismiss as rats, the loud thud of something heavy hitting the floor was a little more difficult.

Amber wished she’d brought the crowbar her father kept in the garage now, but her brother had called her a silly little girl for believing in ghost stories, and she wasn’t one to ‘wimp out’ as he had so eloquently put it when her friends had dared her to stay the night in the house.

The chair tried to swallow her again as she slowly got up, but she managed to climb out of it; about as elegantly as a toddler trying to run in their mother’s high heels. But she was up. The torch light threw everything into a stark light, making it seem slightly less threatening. A strange creaking sounded as she crept up the oddly silent stairs. They looked more recent than the rest of the house, as though someone had updated them in the last couple of decades.

A shiver went up her spine as Amber realised that the creaking was moving closer to her. Or maybe that was her imagination. She hoped it was. She wasn’t sure what she’d do if the ghost stories were real. They say someone had been murdered on the property and buried somewhere in the house.

The creaking cut off abruptly when Amber reached the top of the stairs, almost immediately replaced with a whirring. It sounded like some sort of old record player that had finished reading a record. Maybe the film of a projector flicking over at the end of an old-fashioned movie. Whatever it was made Amber want to turn and run out of the house and never set foot in it again, but her friends taunts echoed in the back of her head. Too scared? She’d show them. She’d spend the entire week in the house if she had to.

A loud bang at the end of the hallway made her jump and almost fall, but she managed to right herself. She wanted to change her mind, go home and forget this ever happened, but she steeled herself and made a decision. She didn’t want to investigate. She’d just go back to her armchair and wait the rest of the night out, ignoring the creepy noises. She spun on her heels and headed back down the hallway she’d been skulking down.

As the light of her torch swept through the shadows, it faltered. Amber’s heart danced in her chest, beating like it was trying to break out of her chest and start a life of its own in witness protection. She swung the torch back around and watched as it flickered off in the same spot as before. Her hands began to shake.

Cold air seeped under a door to her right, the direction her torch had been pointing both times it had faltered. Slowly, she reached out and turned the handle. The door swung open soundlessly, and Amber peered into the room.

Three chests sat in the middle of the room, next to one another. They looked like the kind of chests pirates would hide treasure in. Her curiosity won out, and Amber edged closer to them. She didn’t notice the change in temperature as her skin broke out into goosebumps and her breath came in clouds out of blue lips. She didn’t notice as the door swept shut on silent hinges and the lock clicked quietly behind her. She didn’t notice the gnarled hand slowly reaching for her, too entranced as she was by the only furniture adorning the room. The chests. It was only when she unclasped the chest in the middle and lifted the lid that she realised her mistake.

A solitary severed head sat resting on a velvet cushion in the middle of the chest, the mouth open in a silent scream. Yellowed teeth of different sizes were stuck into the mouth at odd angles, as though whoever had drilled them into the head had been in a rush, because with horror, Amber realised that not all of the teeth matched. The eyes were different to each other too. One blue, one green, but they didn’t seem to belong in the head either. The only thing that seemed to belong was the original face, the innocent face of a young boy.

Amber backed away in terror, screaming. Straight into the waiting arms of the haggard old woman behind her. She screamed again, spinning to face her attacker. Dead eyes set into a shrivelled husk of a face stared through her, unseeing.

“Have you seen my head?” It sounded like a mix between a rasp and a whisper coming out of the old woman’s mouth. Amber backed away only to come to a stop when the back of her leg hit the chest she’d opened. The woman gave her a ghastly smile filled with more mismatched teeth – some that looked as though they’d been taken from a child, and others that looked as old as the hag in front of her. She screamed again as, quick as a whip, the woman’s hand shot out and enclosed her wrist in an iron grip.

“Yours will do.”