Wasn't Supposed to Be

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Frogs chirped in the sweltering summer night as Jude tried to piece together what she saw. The flame looked more like a freestanding dog tongue than actual fire; long and thick and cardiac crimson. It was still and solemn and stagnant – like a bloody smear on the dust-encrusted window. The fire didn't waver like normal flames. No wind in there, she supposed. No air. No life.

At least, there wasn't supposed to be, according to the HUB.

Jude's sweating left hand palmed the never-used taser that rested on her uniform's kit belt while her right hand's grip loosened around her flashlight. She tightened her fingers around its textured handle right before it fell to the rocky ground and the quick motion shined a harsh, jerking flash around the campground.

Beyond the candle-lit cabin before Jude, six others stood, husk-like, victims to creeping flora, fauna, and time in their solitude and darkness. A derelict mausoleum that she was paid just enough to keep watch over.

She'd patrol the abandoned campground, stroll down the remnants of the cobblestone path, and head back to the watch house four times during her shift, and all four times, she'd expect nothing but stillness.

It was supposed to be a simple, fresh-start job. No experience required. The fewer questions she'd ask about what she was patrolling, the better. All she needed to do was report anything out of the ordinary to the HUB, and she could enjoy her post away from a world that decided she was too erratic for its liking. A job without risks or danger.

At least, there wasn't supposed to be, according to the HUB.

A spike of fret stabbed her gut as she imagined what she'd have to do now.

"Campground Station, report. You missed check-in," a placid, static-obstructed voice said through the radio transmitter that hung from her belt next to the taser.

Still staring at the flame, she reached for the radio, unlatched it, and brought it up to her trembling lips.

"HUB, this is Jude," she said. "I mean, Campground."

Her voice was shaking more than she'd like.

"You sound jostled, Campground. What's happening out there?"

"We have a situation, HUB," she said.

Only a long, searing silence came back in reply.

During the quiet, her mind darted back to the last time Campground Station had a situation. It was when she still called the watch house a home.

She sat back in the good office chair, stirring chicken ramen and humming to disco that played from the station's antiquated vinyl library. Instead of her beige patrol uniform, she wore green-striped pajamas. Her hair was in a messy bun. It was a happy place, and it was enough for her mind to stay in the moment and not travel down a dark path that led to fragments of her past.

She eyed the analog clock hanging on the gray wall and smiled because she knew Drew would be back from his patrol at any minute. He was the surprise in all this. She expected the unsettling night patrols, the sense of being removed from the actual world, the allergy attacks. Yet, he was an anomaly. She didn't think having a patrol partner would turn into whatever they had. She didn't think she'd find someone to make her self-imposed exile resemble a life. With him, the watch house became a home. There wasn't supposed to be this kind of thing out here.

At least, there wasn't supposed to be, according to the HUB. It was in the handbook as clear as day. And they kept it quiet like a precious treasure that's too good for the world.

Yet when he flung open the front door, it wasn't the return she expected. Instead, his eyes were feral and wide. His fingers fumbled for the lock. An incoherent sputtering leaked from his throat. He hyperventilated as he keeled over, wheezing and sweating. She ran over to him, trying to pick him up, squeezing his shivering hand.

"There are people in the campground," Drew screeched.

"Where?" Jude asked, perking up, trying to comprehend what he was saying.

"In the cabins. The candles in the windows burned with red flames. But, Jude, Jude, Jude," he said her name like it was a life raft, and he was clawing at it to return to reality.

"They're dead. They're all dead people. Jude, my dad was in there. Half his face was gone, just like when I found him. Blood, blood all over." He began to burst out in deep, primal heaves. "Jude, Jude, Jude."

"Babe," Jude said. "Are you sure it was him? He's been dead for six, seven years, right?"

"It was him, Jude," he bellowed. "It was that alcoholic, abusive, suicidal monster."

Jude looked out the window in the direction where the campground would be. All she saw was the pure, starry sky.

"We have to report this to the Hubbers," she said.

"No! We can't trust them worth a damn. We both know they're Big Brother, or something," he said mid-sob. "They're ghosts, Jude. They're going to think I'm crazy. I'm not crazy. They'll put me away. But it was him, Jude. He was trying to get me to open the cabin door. He had no mouth, but he was trying to talk to me. I'm not crazy."

"I don't think you're crazy, babe," she said in a tone sweeter than she meant. "It sounds like we're dealing with an actual intruder situation, though. We need to call it in."

"Please," he begged. "Don't call them. You don't know what they'll do. They're hiding things, Jude. Can't you see that? There's something wrong with this land. There's a reason why this whole valley is abandoned and patrolled. Something evil is here. The Hubbers know, they know, they know."

Drew keeled over, sobbing again, curling up into a ball on the linoleum floor.

"I'm going to take care of it," she said. "They're here to help."

She thought she was helping. She would keep telling herself that for the weeks and months to come.

"HUB, this is Campground Station. We have a situation," she shouted into the radio.

The next few hours became a blur to Jude. A dozen black-jumpsuited employees from HUB, or Hubbers, as they called them, flooded the guard house to investigate Drew. Their home became exposed to outsiders. They sat Drew in the bad office chair as four Hubbers stood over him, typing on their tablets. Jude watched, throat raw with worry, as Drew seemed absorbed into the Hubbers' commotion. At one point, their eyes met. His eyes, red and tear stricken, could only look away.

They left Jude alone long enough for her to cower in the corner of the station, where she could see flashing white strobe lights come from over the ridge where the campground was.

She told herself that she dreamed of the Hubbers donning masks and releasing pink gas into the house. She said to herself that in the dream, some of the Hubbers carried Drew away, while others laid herself, head spinning and detached, down on her cot. She told herself that when the Hubbers told her that Drew requested a transfer to Lakeside Station to study the area's abandoned shoreline, it was true. She told herself that they weren't in love after all.

At least, they weren't supposed to be, according to the HUB.

"What kind of situation, Campground?" the voice said, pulling Jude back to reality.

"It's nothing," she said, scolding herself for answering the call. "Just some raccoons running on the cabins' roofs again."

Another silent response. It was then that another one of the cabins' candles lit. Jude's heart plummeted as the flame grew as large as the first, red and deep and thick.

"Raccoons, Campground?" the voice said.

Another cabin's candle lit. And another.

"Yep," she said with an upward-turning tone, suppressing a panic that was trying to surge through her throat. "Sorry to cause alarm."

Three more candles lit.

"Campground. Recite your duties," the voice said.

Jude forced down a panic-induced laugh and swallowed.

"I patrol Quarantine Zone subsection thirteen, known as the Campground Station. I perform seven rounds of patrol during the day and four at night. I do not enter the cabins. I do not engage with wildlife. I do not leave my designated subsection. Any and all suspicious activity is reported to the HUB without my interference."

"Does your 'raccoon story' break any of these duties?" the voice said.

"No, HUB," Jude said, feeling like a scolded child.

All seven cabins had lit candles now. It looked as if Jude somehow woke a whole neighborhood, albeit a macabre one, in the middle of the night.

"Continue patrol, Campground," the voice said in an irritated tone.

The light of the red flames reached the overgrown grass surrounding the cabins. The sound of the frogs seemed to die away as Jude stood there, her breath losing its natural cadence.

Yet, her breath nearly stopped altogether when she saw something moving beyond the candlelight in the first cabin. The sight of plaid-patterned fabric rushed by the window. Then another in an olive green shirt hobbling around. And another wearing something torn and white. Another in bright orange. She took a step back, tripping over a gnarled root from one of the onlooking oak trees, her head jerking downward toward the earth. When she reoriented herself, the door to the cabin was swinging open, revealing a pitch-black void. The flashlight flickered, its output light darkened, and it finally went out.

Jude dropped the dead flashlight and ripped her radio out from her belt.

"HUB this is," she tried to say, yet the device became so scalding hot that she dropped it. It shattered on impact.

The other cabins' front doors followed—a silent invitation for Jude. A beckoning in encroaching darkness, whose only barrier of encompassing Jude's world was the bright, untarnished starlight found only in the isolation of unpopulated nature.

"This is private property," she said in a crumbling voice.

The sound of rustling, moving bodies, and creaking came forth as if a whole silent party was happening in each of the decrepit wooden buildings.

"Stop," she said. "This is private—" she trailed off, backing away with what strength she said left in her legs.

Finally, a silhouetted figure approached from the first cabin. Shadows still covered the figure, but it was tall and still and hovering.

"Stay right there," she said.

"Jude. You shouldn't have called them," a gurgled, wet version of Drew's voice said.

It was enough to scramble her already frantic mind into a full-on frenzy. She bolted to the cobblestone path toward the guard house, unable to let free the hoarse scream that tried to escape her throat.

She continued running up the path, unable to grasp a coherent thought. Drew's voice flew around in her mind like some disheveled gnat. Yet soon, even in this panic, she realized that it was taking much longer to get to the guard house than it ever had before. The path went downhill, and the cobblestones made way for a bleak dirt path. She stopped to turn back around, head spinning, heart pounding. She ran back up the hill, looking for where she might've missed the house, and right before her, someone fell out from the nearby brush onto the path, keeling over in pain.

Jude yelped but slowed herself down enough to approach the figure, who was groaning in pain. The person had a beige patrol uniform like hers, with a splash of crimson blood. A matted mop of sweaty, red hair jerked upward to reveal a face where a trail of tears cut through mud. Jude knelt to face him, unsure of what to do. His eyes were darting back and forth from her to the ground, to the sky, to the trees. Behind a bloody, mud-packed beard, a pair of lips mouthed muted words.

"What happened," Jude said.

Finally, he looked directly at her, and then he didn't stop. He didn't even blink.

"They're waking up again. They promised me that they'd keep sleeping if I gave them what they wanted. But now they're waking up again," he said.

"Slow down," Jude said. As she did, an image of Drew in hysterics on the house floor splashed in the forefront of her mind. "Who's waking up?"

"Oh, don't act like you haven't seen things. You wear that uniform, and you mean to tell me you haven't seen them? Heard them in the night? Felt them watching you while you sleep out here? They create hallucinations. They create mirages. They create hell,"

His voice was high-pitched, aggravated. Jude edged herself away to be out of arm's reach of him now.

"They said to me they only wanted one of us. If I brought her to the water, they'd leave me alone. But they're still hungry. They still want me. It's my fault. I should've known they wouldn't keep their word."

She looked at the wet mud that covered him. The mention of the water.

"Are you Lakeside Station?" she said.

He looked up as if she had just called him the worse name in the book.

"My name is Anders, not Lakeside Station," he said. "What are you, Woods Station?"

"Campground. Well, I'm Jude. Sorry," she said. "Anders, is there a man named Drew at your station?"

He shook his head, looking at the trees that towered above them, only lit by the stars.

"No Drew. Only Cammie and I. Cammie. She was the only one I had. But they told me, they told me, if they could just have her, that I'd be safe."

"Anders, who are they?" she said.

He looked at her again, confused now. As if she was a child asking why the sun was setting.

"Do you not have a lot of activity up here?" he said.

The sight of the red flame glowing and stationary came to her.

"No," she said. "It's just the trees and the darkness."

"Trees. Trees and darkness," he said, starting to laugh.

His laughing got louder, and his twitching became more violent.

"You're telling me," he said, slapping his face, laughing, grunting. "That no dead things are walking around up here? They don't take the form of people from your past and follow you around until you can't even tell if you're in the present anymore? Nothing is making you feel insane?"

"No. At least, there wasn't supposed to be, according to the HUB," she said.

He let out one hoarse laugh. More a scoff than an actual laugh.

"There wasn't supposed to be," he said, nodding over and over again. He then stood up and began limping down the trail.

"Where are you going?" Jude shouted, a shrill of panic coming out.

Anders didn't say but continued down the disappearing road, mumbling to himself, slapping his face in random intervals.

She turned back to where the road would eventually lead back to the campsite. The thought of the cabins and the flames and the figure that may or may not have been the ghost of Drew made her stomach lurch. So, she just stood there in the center of the road, hearing the wind rustling the leaves above, the nightingales far off a painful creaking in the old tree limbs. Yet there was something else in the darkness—a humming, a churning. A cold slither spiraled down her sweat-drenched arms. Even if she somehow returned to the house, she wouldn't be able to stay. This world was now marred and ruined. She needed to get out of the Quarantine Zone.

Yet by the time she decided to follow Anders, he was gone, and she found herself going down a path that ended, and she was trekking down a declining slope filled with trees and thorns and shadow-shrouded things. Her mind was so frazzled that she couldn't truly comprehend what she was doing, nor where she was going. Yet one thing was returning to the forefront of her mind.

"No Drew," Anders said.

It was enough to make her scream. Not that it was a surprise. The Hubbers were liars, even from the very beginning.

She remembered sitting in a padded interrogation room across from Erin, a perky twenty-something with a broad smile and neon-pink glasses.

"To be honest," she said with a chuckle. "It's a pretty sweet gig. Wish I had it."

Jude smiled and shifted, pulling at the collar of her cornflower blue blouse, pinching the staple in the copy of her resume.

"It sounds great," Jude said, returning the chuckle. "How long do people usually stay on patrol?"

"You know," Erin said, leaning back in the same type of office chair Jude would find at the guard house later, "it just kind of depends on the person. My buddy, Juan Carlos, has been at Mountaintop Station for thirteen years. He has no intention of going anywhere, that's for sure. Gustavo and Lena are in Orchard Station for four, I think? Maybe five? Hillary is obsessed with Lakeside. So, yeah. It just depends if you're happy with your post, you keep your eye on things, and you just do your best."

"Wow, it sounds like they're all really happy," Jude said.

Erin leaned in, looked Jude straight in the eye, and sighed. She put her manicured hands on the brushed-metal table that divided them as if she was reaching for the interviewee's trembling hand.

"Look, Jude. You've been through a lot. Your resume doesn't need to say it. Your record doesn't need to, either. I can see it in your eyes. You're weary. But you're eager, aren't you? What we have here is a chance to start over. To find some purpose. And, you're helping a greater good that most can't even fathom."

It was enough to make Jude dance right there in the room back at the HUB. Now, she felt something scamper by her feet in the middle of pitch-black woods, only accompanied by the sound of her short breath. She pushed through thorns that dug into her sweat-soaked long pants.

She stopped, keeling over, trying to catch her breath. Then, to her left, she could see a half-dozen flashlights in the distance. Something in her propelled her to run to them, sobbing, telling them everything she saw. Yet something else held her back. She saw Drew's face as he told her that she couldn't trust the HUB. That they were hiding what was really happening there. There was desperation for her to listen, and she couldn't do it. She wouldn't do it.

This time, though, she ran in the opposite direction. Limping away from the whole world, she knew that somewhere, Drew just smiled. But it wasn't enough. She still couldn't bring herself to forgive herself.

"Jude," she then heard a voice right behind her say.

She yelped and whipped around, seeing nothing but the faint shapes of trees. She turned back around and quickened her pace, slipping in the muddy ground.

"What are you doing here?' an angry voice said.

"Shut up!" she shouted.

She walked, hard, into a tree limb, a line of hot, red pain searing the left side of her face and shoulder. Still, she continued onward. Twigs cracked under her stumbling, wayward feet. With each step, the voices got louder and more frequent.

"Jude, you're better than this," an elderly voice said.

As the voices surged through the forest, screaming at her, she began to feel pinches all over her body. At first, they were small nips like those from the mosquitoes that infested the woods, but soon they became harsher, deeper, longer-lasting. It didn't take long for them to feel more like small stabs.

"Why did you call them? Why couldn't you have listened to me, Jude?" she heard Drew's voice say.

Jude screamed and sprinted as she ran through the woods, branches, and brambles, making the assault even worse. Finally, she tumbled down a small embankment and landed on a sandstone slab. As soon as her body smacked against the rock, the voices and the cuts stopped. Blood trickled down her arms and pooled around her hands as she pushed herself upward. Panic filled her as the pain in her left leg exploded in agony.

Yet one voice remained.

"Jude," it gasped.

She screamed at first, but then she continued to hear raspy breathing. Through a sliver of moonlight, she saw Anders lying on his side, blood pooling around him. His eyes were listless and fading fast.

"It got you, too," he said, coughing up blood. "It's going to get all of us by the end."

"What is it?" Jude said, wheezing, fighting the urge to sleep, to let the pain just wash her away to somewhere brighter. "Please, tell me."

"It was Callie," he said. "And my ex-husband. And my kid. And the guy I sideswiped. And you. It was you, too."

Anders' eyes then focused on something Jude couldn't see, and they didn't look away again.

Jude tried to sit up, but the pain was just too much. As she lay on the ground, the voices came flooding back, pain erupted once more, and all the fragments of a broken past came falling back into her mind. Despite trying desperately to start over, it all flooded back like water waiting behind a dam. Yet it was all distorted, mutated.

In one fragment, she was a daughter who sat at the bedside of a mother too wracked in pain to even lift her wizened head, and without hesitation, Jude pocketed the morphine for herself and for profit.

"What are you doing here?" a nurse said, walking into the room. "They said you're not allowed to come back."

"I just wanted to tell her that I love her," Jude said.

The nurse ripped Jude's jacket off, pills scattering to the floor.

Jude dove at the nurse, clawing like a feral, trapped animal, tearing the nurse's white scrubs.

In another, Jude stood over the bloody, sobbing remnants of a man who took out his anger on her sister. His plaid-patterned shirt was soaked in dark, spreading blood.

"Jude, for God's sake, stop! You're killing him!" the sister screeched.

She couldn't stop kicking. She wouldn't stop kicking. And she'd pay for it with her freedom and her sister's severance.

In another, she ran out of her neighbor's home, pockets full of cash and jewelry, and stopped dead in her tracks as a pistol was pointed at her head. The old man gasped and quivered, wincing in pain, as he made his stand.

"There wasn't supposed to be," Jude said, catching her breath. "Anyone home, Mr. Payson."

"You're better than this," he said before collapsing to the floor, his hand gripping his heart over his olive green shirt, the gun going off, blasting a hole into the wall.

In another, she sees a father slapping his daughter across her face at the BuyRite, and she can't stop herself from stepping in, perhaps a little too far.

There's one where it's simply the warmth and pressure of Drew's hand and hers pressing together. The sound of the guard house's air conditioning hummed in the background.

She sees one where she wears an orange jumpsuit and sits next to a fellow inmate and holds her shoulders as she sobs so hysterically that the only thing she can do is cry with her. All she can do is sit there and let the world win, let it steamroll them, and help her rebuild herself in a day that they're owed.

In another, she sees herself trying to numb the pain of something so deep that even now, in this twilight, all she can feel is a cold, coarse touch and the smell of sandalwood and whiskey, and the sound of a low hushing voice.

Jude was raw, unfiltered humanity. She was gray and fractured and both the best and the worst of herself.

It all came to a head. The pain became so loud and overwhelming that it simply became background noise to an unconsciousness that she welcomed. In that peace that she found in the quiet, there were no fragments, no voices, no cuts. There was simply her. And nothing else.

At least, there wasn't supposed to be.

She woke up to the pain in her broken body gone. In fact, she felt better than she had in a long, long time. Yet, still, something was off. She was moving quickly. Yet, she wasn't walking. She looked up to see two Hubbers in hazmat suits hoisting her up by the armpits. Another Hubber before her strode backward, holding up a boxy device that emitted a harsh strobe light and a high-pitched frequency. She began to resist, but their grips tightened to the point where she yelped in pain.

"Try not to do that. We don't want to hurt you, Jude," a voice said.

She turned to see Erin walk alongside her captors in the same business suit she had on during her interview.

"I was really hoping this wouldn't have happened to you, Jude. All you needed to do was let us know they were at it again. Those damn candles get everybody. And now, you've crossed over."

"Crossed over?" Jude said,

Erin nodded.

"I really was rooting for you," she said.

Jude then looked beyond the Hubber with the strobing device and saw where they were taking her. Two Hubbers held open the door to a cabin, its void a gaping inescapable pit.

"What are you doing?" Jude screamed.

"I don't know what it is with you ghouls," Erin said. "You have a hell of a knack for looking like the exact person who someone doesn't want to see. I mean, right now, you look like my old boyfriend. A minute ago, you looked like my deadbeat stepdad from my childhood. Disgusting. We don't need more of ya'll out here. Don't worry, though. You won't be alone in there."

Jude began flailing her legs, kicking and screaming. Finally, she lurched forward enough to kick the Hubber with the device in the groin. He keeled over, dropping the device. In an instant, the grip of the other two seemed to weaken immediately. She was able to run faster than she ever could before. She ran through the woods, screaming, howling again and again, past the cobblestone path, past where she fell on the rocks, past the lake, the orchard, the rocky ridges, the abandoned town, the river and finally, finally, stopped to catch her breath when she saw a warm, soft campfire.

"We shouldn't be camping this close to the QZ, you know that, Ethan," a teenage boy said.

"Oh, come on, Rafi," Ethan said, throwing pieces of popcorn into the fire, laughing. "Too scared of the haunted woods?"

"Rafi's right, man. They say some crazy stuff happened back then out there. It's not safe," the third teenage boy said.

Jude tried to catch her breath as she walked up to the campsite.

"Please," she said between gasps for breath. "Please help me. I need your help. They're keeping people prisoner in there. They're keeping someone I care about very much prisoner in there. You have to help me! Call the police, please."

"What was that?" Rafi said. "Ethan? Jamey?"

"You guys are sucking the fun out of this," Ethan said.

"No, Rafi's right. I heard something, too. It sounded like my grandpa?" Jamey said.

"Really? To me, it sounded like, well, it sounded like my jerk of a cousin," Rafi said.

"Hello?" Jude said. "Didn't you hear me? You have to help me save Drew!"

"There it is again!" Rami said, jumping up, scanning the darkness for something he couldn't quite place.

"This isn't funny," Jude said. "You three have no idea what I've been through."

"You had to hear it that time, Ethan. It's muffled, but it's there. The voice keeps changing," Jamey said.

Ethan's eyes got wide, and he stood up, too.

"Listen to me!" Jude roared, kicking dirt into the fire.

All three teenagers screamed as the flames roared in a wild rage, with a ghostly scream in the wind. They ran into the darkness, leaving Jude to look into the flames as they grew still and dark and cardiac crimson.