Too Dark

The cabin was only one room. There was a fireplace in one corner with two wooden chairs that looked about a hundred years old. There was a table and chairs in the opposite corner. They also looked like they would fall apart if the wind blew. There was a door Jessica assumed was the back door, given the size of the cabin, opposite the front. Beside it, there was the map on the back wall and a small table in front of it with the lit candle on it. Will had placed other candles he’d found in the windows and on the table and mantle. The place was pretty well lit.

There was nowhere to sit so they all took their gear out of their bags and made a spot in front of the fire with their sleeping bags. Cody shivered in the doorway and smoked a cigarette.

“If you’re not coming in, at least close the door so we can get warm,” Courtney said.

“Come inside Cody, you’ll freeze out there,” Jessica said smiling at him. This worked and he finally came in and sat beside her as close as he could get. She leaned toward him and smiled. It was still storming outside, and this made Jessica shiver. Cody offered her a jacket from his bag, and she took it. Courtney rolled her eyes.

“Aren’t you guys glad I suggested we come here? Listen to it rain, imagine if we were caught out there in tents,” Will said.

“How did you know about this cabin anyway?” Cody asked.

“Ahh, you know,” Will said.

“No, I don’t know,” Cody said back. Jessica could feel the tension building between them.

“Fine alright listen, some of the guys I met in town were talking about it and how it’s haunted and then, they sort of bet me that I wouldn’t stay out here… so I took the bet,” Will said.

“Great so you’re making money off of us? How much?” Courtney said.

“Wait… so it’s just a cabin so why would they be willing to pay you to stay here?” Jessica asked, “I mean what’s the big deal?”

“Someone… or several people may have… been found dead here,” Will said.

Cody stood up instantly, “umm no, I’m going.”

“What? Ew when?” Courtney stood up too.

“Relax it was like fifty years ago,” Will said, “it’s just a local legend teenagers use to scare each other when they are bored.”

“What about those guys, I saw them, they weren’t teenagers,” Jessica said.

“They’re idiots, they probably got told the story too many times as kids and now it’s like…” he pointed to his head, “stuck in there ya know.”

“What’s the story?” Jessica asked.

“What?” Will asked casually trying to avoid the question.

“The legend, the story, what happened here?” Jessica asked.

“No, I don’t want to know,” Courtney paced around the room biting her nails.

Cody walked over and sat down by Jessica again, “I do.”

“Alright two against one,” Will said, “Courtney you can go outside if you don’t want to hear it.”

Right then lighting struck a tree right outside the window and they all screamed, Courtney ran over and cuddled up under Wills arm. Will laughed and pulled her in tight. He looked at Cody and Jessica.

“You really want to hear it?” he asked, they nodded so he continued, “okay, well you see that door over there,” he pointed to what they assumed was the back door. Jessica nodded and Cody just stared at Will.

“That’s not the back door,” Will said.

“Oh sure, what is it then?” Jessica asked.

“The door to the basement,” he said.

“This place has a basement? Look at it, it’s barely standing,” Jessica scoffed.

“I’m serious go look,” Will said almost sounding unsure himself. Jessica laughed and stood up. Cody started to stop her, but she rolled her eyes to reassure him it was ridiculous to worry about it. She walked over to the door. She put her hand on the knob and hesitated. Something made her not want to open the door.

“What’s wrong?” Will teased.

“Nothing,” she said and swung the door open. Sure, enough there was a set of stairs that only went down about five steps then turned at a landing. It looked as though the stairs did a full one-eighty at the landing meaning they lead to directly under the cabin. The wood of the stairs looked like it would crumble under someone’s feet if they attempted to walk down them. Jessica felt something wrong, like she shouldn’t be looking down there. She quickly shut the door and rubbed her hands together like it was no big deal. She walked back to the pile of blankets they were all huddled up on and sat back down next to Cody. She almost wanted him to put his arm around her the way Will had his around Courtney, but only because the basement had freaked her out.

“Okay it’s a basement, so what?” she asked.

“That’s where he did it,” Will said.

Cody rolled his eyes, “just spit it out, stop the cryptic stuff and tell us what happened.”

Will glared at him, “alright, it was the seventies, the height of serial killers. A man named Michael Blackwell lived a nice life, worked at a factory, was married to a nurse, and had three kids. Michael had a dark secret, he liked to kidnap little kids, he built this cabin out in the middle of nowhere, even brought his family out sometimes because they never went down to the basement. See that’s where he took his victims, he would hurt them and torture them for months and then when they were finally dead, he would bury them under the ground down there. One day his kids got curious on one of their family getaways to the cabin. They crept down to the basement and found a boy who was dead, but Michael hadn’t buried yet. Legend says the boy wasn’t fully dead and that he talked to them. Michael caught them down there, killed them all, and his wife then turned the gun on himself. Police eventually found them all out here, and several off the bodies under the basement though they really don’t know how many there were possibly out in the woods, they found thirty right down in the basement.”

The others sat enraptured by the story, and right as soon as Will was done the wind blew a window open. It crashed against the wall. The wind blew all the candles out. Only the fire in the fireplace stayed lit. They all screamed.

“Dang it Will,” Cody yelled.

Courtney slapped his arm and Will scoffed, “I didn’t do it, I can’t control the weather,” he rubbed his arm where he’d been slapped, “or maybe it was Michael.”

Jessica stood up and so did Cody, she crossed her arms, “that’s not funny, those poor innocent kids…”

“If it’s even true,” Cody said, they both went and started relighting the candles one by one.

“Oh, it is, trust me,” Will said.

“And how would you know you only met those guys today that told you about it,” Courtney said.

“I looked it up on the internet,” Will said.

“A reliable source of information,” Jessica rolled her eyes.

“Hey I read the news reports, it’s real you can look it up yourselves if you don’t believe me,” Will said.

“Okay I will,” Jessica said, digging her phone out of her bag. When she looked at it, she realized she didn’t have any service. She tossed it down, “no service.”

“What? All the way up here?” Cody said, he looked at his own phone and shook his head.

“Oh no, I’m not staying here without cell service,” Courtney said.

“What choice do you have? You gonna hike back to the car in this storm?” Will asked.

“I just don’t get how we are practically on top of a mountain and still have no reception,” Cody said.

“It’s probably the storm,” Will said, “come on lets just go to sleep and figure it out in the morning.”

They all reluctantly agreed, mostly because they didn’t really have a choice. It was either stay in the cabin or hike a whole day’s journey back to the car in the storm, and the middle of the night. The trial could be dangerous in the best of conditions, going back in this weather would be a death wish. They all piled up in the floor by the fireplace in their sleeping bags. Courtney refused to join hers with Will’s even though he begged her. Jessica was relieved they wouldn’t have to pretend not to hear them hooking up for the next half hour. Surprising almost all of them, they fell asleep very quickly. They had let the candles burn out but left the fire burning for warmth. They were lined up in a semi-circle around it. Will, Courtney, Jessica and then Cody. Cody was closest to the door to the basement. So, it was extra confusing to Jessica when he slept through the noise that woke her up a couple hours after she fell asleep.

She knew it was coming from the basement, it sounded like metal banging against metal. She looked around at her friends to see if it would wake any of them. It didn’t. She sat up and listened. She shivered uncontrollably even though it wasn’t cold.

“Cody,” she whispered. A candle lit itself by the basement door. She gasped. She heard a whimper from downstairs. It sounded like a child in pain. She could feel her bottom lip quivering. Again, she whispered, “Cody.” She put her hand on his shoulder and shook him. He shot up to a seated position.

“What, I’m up,” he announced with his eyes still closed.

“Shh!” she put her hand over his mouth, he opened his eyes and looked at her confused, almost like he didn’t know why she was there. “Listen,” she whispered. The clanging noises had stopped for the moment, but she could still hear faint whimpering. It sounded like it was right beneath them.

“What is that?” Cody asked. Jessica shook her head and shrugged. Then they heard it grow louder.

Then, “help me, it’s too dark.” Jessica grabbed Cody’s arm and leaned into him. She was shaking all over but numb at the same time.

“Let’s go,” Cody whispered.

“Go where?” Jessica asked.

“We have to leave,” Cody said.

Suddenly Jessica felt a chill and heard a small voice say, “don’t leave me.” She muffled a scream into Cody’s arm then spun around to Courtney who was still asleep. She shook her arm violently.

“Wake up,” she said.

Courtney moaned and rubbed her eyes, “what is it?”

“We have to go!” Jessica shouted.

Will heard the commotion and woke up, “what are you talking about, it’s the middle of the night, we aren’t going anywhere.”

“Yes, we are,” Cody said standing up and pulling Jessica with him. He took her hand and they walked to the door. The rest of the candles which had been blown out started to light up one by one. Cody yanked the door open, but it flew out of his hand and slammed shut. The girls screamed and Courtney ran to her brother. Cody stared at the door in shock.

“I said no,” Will said slowly, he sounded strange, and they all turned to look at him slowly. He looked the same but also somehow different.

“What is wrong with you?” Courtney asked him. He smiled at her and didn’t say anything. She walked over to him, “Will, answer me, tell me what’s going on right now!”

That moment the basement door crashed open causing them all, except for Will to jump. Courtney huddled up to her brother and Jessica. They backed up against the front door as they began to hear heavy footsteps on the stairs up from the basement.

Jessica whispered back to Cody, “open the door.”

He tried it and it wouldn’t open, “I’m trying to,” he said. He continued to try as both the girls got more and more frantic as they yelled at him to open it. The footsteps seemed to grow closer and closer as Will walked over to the basement door and looked down.

“Hi dad,” Will said.

Cody, Jessica and Courtney were so shocked that they stopped yelling and fighting with the door for a second to all say, “what?”

“Don’t ever trust an unreliable narrator,” Will said turning to smile at them, “the story was all true, except for the year it happened and the part about Michael killing both of his children, one of us took after dad too much…”

“So, your dad isn’t dead?” Courtney asked almost hopefully.

“Oh no he is,” Will said stepping out of the way of the door exposing a gruesome and awful sight, too horrible to describe. It was Michael and he was coming at them. All three of them began trying to open the door. They were screaming and kicking and banging on the door. Will grabbed Courtney and he and the Michael creature began dragging her down to the basement. Cody and Jessica grabbed her arms and tried to hold her, but they were too strong. She was screaming as they carried her kicking and screaming down the steps. Cody ran toward the basement, but the door slammed shut. He couldn’t open it. He tried to ram into it with his shoulder, but it wouldn’t give. Jessica tried the front door again, but it wouldn’t open either. They could hear Courtney screaming from the basement. Cody tired himself out trying to get through the doorway. Jessica did the same with the front door. It was useless.

“They are going to do this to us one by one,” Jessica said. She fell back against the door and slid to the floor sobbing.

“The windows,” Cody said, “go out the windows.” He ran over to the window and opened it, it opened to their surprise.

“You won’t fit,” Jessica said.

“I know, but you can, go get help,” he said.

“No there isn’t time, by the time I even get to someone…” she started.

He grabbed her shoulders, “if you don’t go, they’ll get us both, go!” he shouted. Jessica started to climb out the window as the basement door opened. They stopped and turned as several bleeding children walked out the basement door.

Cody turned to her, “get out of here, now!”

Jessica whimpered and hugged him quickly before letting him pick her up and put her feet through the window. She jumped out and landed on the front porch. She turned back to Cody.

“Come on, you can try to get out,” she said.

He started the try to fit out the window but then he yelled, “run!”

Jessica saw that Will was coming, she took off sprinting through the woods as fast as she could. She had only run a little way when she saw the Michael creature up ahead on the trail. He held out his arms as if to catch her. A ghostly woman appeared and pushed him out of Jessica’s way. Jessica ran past her. She could hear Will’s heavy footsteps running after her. The Michael ghost appeared trying to stop her a couple more times but each time the ghost woman came to save her. The last time the ghostly woman said, “we can’t go past this point.” Jessica was relieved to be away from them, but she still had Will following her. He was a lot faster than her, and she couldn’t understand how she’d gotten away from him. That’s when she dared to look back, she saw Will with a bunch of the children ghosts holding on to him slowing him down. And not far behind that she saw Cody.

She stopped, “Cody,” she shouted.

“Keep going,” Cody yelled out. She didn’t know how much longer they could all keep this up. It was rough going downhill anyway because if one of them fell and rolled the wrong way, they could roll right over the side of the mountain. This gave her and idea. She stopped and started to go back.

“What are you doing?” Cody yelled; he had almost caught up with Will.

“Children, push him that way,” Jessica yelled to them and pointed to the side of the mountain. The ghost wife appeared again.

She watched with a sad look on her face, she turned to Jessica, “he’s my son,” she said.

“But he’s going to keep doing this, he keeps supplying more victims,” Jessica said. Will’s mother just nodded. The ghost children dragged Will kicking and screaming over to the edge of the mountain and threw him over. Then they all faded away.

Jessica looked at the woman who was beginning to fade as well, “thank you,” Jessica said. The ghost nodded and faded away. Cody caught up to Jessica and they were both out of the range of Michael harming them. They sat on the ground and rested for a few minutes. They got up and walked until the sun came up. At dawn, they got back to the car and both breathed a sigh of relief as they climbed in. Jessica took the drivers seat and looked up into the rear-view mirror. Will was sitting in the back seat.

She screamed.