A Cabin on an Island

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Or at least I think it was a candle. I squinted and focused my eyes on the window trying to see past the sharp glare of the setting sun. There was a temporary tear in the thick cloud cover and the last bits of orange a yellow sun were poking through the dismal grey.



Cupping my hand over my eyes I tried to get a better look. It definitely looked like a candle from this far away and on the shore. That cabin had sat on top of that small rump of a hill near the center of this island for as long as I had been kayaking around this sound and for as far as I knew. Nobody had ever been there. I had been told it was just an old DNR cabin, long ago stripped of anything of value and abandoned by the government, like so much else in this world. 

Normally, I, or we, just kayaked past this island on our way to other more beautiful and bigger islands in the Puget Sound, but today was different. I was kayaking with Ryanne, and she wasn’t nearly as experienced as myself.

We should have made it much further, but in spite of her long lean arms, she was terribly uncoordinated. Four hours after beginning our journey out of San Juan Island, we should have reached our intended destination, however we were not even close. Then, the wind picked up something fierce. We found ourselves out in the open water when the skies clouded over and it began dumping on us. We had to fight 10 knot winds and 2 foot seas, so I made the executive and responsible decision to make camp on the closest island, which happened to be this tiny odd one, before it became too treacherous to continue. 



I turned back to watch Ryanne still struggling to get out of her dry suit. She was so pretty, long limbed and slender and usually, quite graceful. She piled her long brown hair on top of her head into a messy bun and managed to peel off the suit off while balancing on a small rock with Penny was nervously pacing around her. For just a short moment, I forgot about the candle or whatever it was, and admired the two of them against the sunset. Penny’s namesake, her copper colored coat was nearly dry and her life vest had been carefully laid out on some rocks to dry. I waved at them and continued to look for a decent spot to set up our tent.

Ryanne was one of those perfect people, with a perfect family that genuinely enjoyed one another, a perfect education in environmental sciences and a perfectly sized nose that she scrunched up when she concentrated. I on the other hand had an angry alcoholic father, a conspiracy theorist mother and three and a half degrees that reflected my inability to settle on anything permanently. Also I had a nose that I could easily see without looking down or squinting. 

I think Ryanne was drawn to my edge and I dreaded the day that I would let her down once she realized that the aforementioned edge was nothing but a mingling of bad luck and sad stories, spattered with a little bit of wry humor. 



Once satisfied that I had found a relatively flat and rock free area, I debated telling Ryanne about the candle in the cabin window, she spooked easily. I glanced back up at the cabin and the window looked dark again, but my stomach felt tight, something was wrong. It was too late to head back out onto the water and we had already unpacked all of our gear. Ryanne waved happily at me from the shore where she was building a small fire, so I jogged back to grab the tent. 

“Sarah, is something wrong” she said as I got closer. 

“No, all good” I replied “Why?”

 She stared at me closely for a whole second, her green eyes narrowing as she searched my brown ones for the truth.

 “Your face, you look pale and weird, did something happen?”

I did my best to unclench my jaws and soften my eyes while I watched the sun dip below the horizon behind her. 


“I thought maybe I saw something, a light or something, in the old DNR cabin on the hill, but I’m pretty sure it was just a glare, or maybe some other kayakers got caught in the storm and are camping out up there”



I pointed to the mess kit at her feet



“Are we heating up the chili tonight? Or the meatballs?”



I saw the look of panic cross her face as she registered what I was telling her

“You mean there might be someone else on this island?” she whispered



“It’s ok if there is Ryanne” I say while fighting off the alarm bells vibrating my whole body



“It belongs to the parks department and anyone with a permit can camp here, so why don’t we relax and make some dinner, Penny will keep us safe”



I smiled at her and gestured to my sweet copper colored Penny, lying loyally at our feet, her coat all sandy and her breathing steady and calm. Ryanne fished around in her dry bag and pulled cell phone out of a plastic ziplock bag. 



“No service” she said quietly

 “What about you?”



“Nope” I replied, as I had already checked my phone shortly after seeing the unexplained candle light in the cabin window. 



The fire was strong now that the winds had died down and we both stared up at the cabin which was now totally dark and quiet.



“You wanna set up the tent and I’ll heat up these weird veggie meatballs? I’m terrible at tents” 
she said.

I headed up the hill and silently set up the tent after, 
we ate our spongy meatballs in silence, while staring and also trying not to stare at the cabin. Ryanne’s face looked pale as she chewed in silence.


“Are you sure it isn’t too late to head back out?”



I looked out at the dark water and up at the sky, another rainfall was lurking in the clouds to the west of us. 



“It’s too dark Ryanne, and the cloud cover is making it impossible to navigate, not to mention the rain that is coming any minute. I know you are scared, I am too, but realistically, we don’t even know if anyone is up there, and if they are, that doesn’t have to mean anything bad or ominous”



She nodded and we washed up the dishes in silence and headed to bed early in hopes of greeting the morning light faster. When we got into the tent, I spooned Penny, making sure to leave plenty of space between Ryanne and I, so she didn’t get any ideas. I knew she was also still awake by the cadence of her breathing. We were relatively new friends and still not super comfortable with one another. Yet both of us knew better than to fill the silence by verbalizing our fears, so we just laid there, backs to one another. 


I must have dozed off at some point because I woke up to Penny’s small guttural growls. A ball grew in my throat and my mouth became dry. As I tried to focus on the noises outside. I told Penny to hush while trying not to wake Ryanne. My ears focused keenly, listening for what made Penny grumble. There was a light patter of rain.

Then I heard it, footsteps down by the bay where we had eaten our dinner and tied up our kayaks. The footsteps ground against the gravel, it sounded like just one pair of them. I sat up and strained to hear more, but the rain grew louder and drowned out any other noises. I fished around for my camp knife and upon finding it I clutched it in one hand and my flashlight in the other. I sat like that for ages until finally I calmed down enough to lie back down and concentrate on listening to the dark.

I must have dozed off again at some point because when I woke up it was light out and Ryanne was screaming for me outside of the tent.



“Sarah, Sarah” she hollered.



I leapt up and clambered out, struggling to find both of my shoes and my camp knife. As soon as I exited the tent my body froze. Fear makes you cold in a way that nothing else can. Our kayaks were gone. The ropes we had used to tie them down were sliced clean away. 



“They have to be here somewhere” I shouted naively while running down the shoreline.

I ran as far as I could before it became impassable. They were long gone. Penny chased behind me, thinking we were playing some sort of game. Looking out into the churning grey ocean and back up to the cabin, I weighed our options and took a mental inventory. Swimming was out of the question, the water around here was far too cold and the nearest land was far too far away. We could make a larger fire, in hopes of getting someone’s attention, but the rain was starting up again and all the wood would be wet, nearly impossible to light. Still an option, but not the best one. We had enough food, but that was the least of my worries. 



I made my way back to the shoreline where Ryanne was packing up our camp in a state of panic.



“We have to get out of here” she whispered, her gaze had frozen on the cabin her face was pale and her lips were dry. 



I looked to where her she was staring and felt immediately numb. The candle was lit again, and just behind it, you could make out the shape of a larger man shaped shadow moving about inside.



“Can you still call 911 without bars?” Ryanne’s voice asked shakily



“I don’t think so, but my phone is dead anyhow, I shouldn’t have taken that ten minute long video of the Orca yesterday, it just looks like a stupid dot”



Ryanne and I met two years ago when I was bartending at a whiskey bar in Seattle. She was hired on as a coctailer but lasted less then two months. Nevertheless, she kept visiting me on my slow shifts, and we became friends. I watched everyone who met her fall in love with her, including my own boyfriend, although he vehemently denies it. Landon is sweet and handsome but not super emotionally intelligent. He has an annoying tendency of thinking he can philosophize and redirect his way out of difficult conversations. Landon is the artsy quiet type, but I can tell when he is enamored by someone by his vocal fluctuations and conversational topics, he sees a pretty girl and all of a sudden his voice goes up a few octaves and he chatters away about things that only I know he hates.



The man shaped shadow in the cabin snuffed out the candle and disappeared from view.



“I’m gonna go up there” I heard myself say

“Sarah, please no, don’t leave me here” 

She pleaded with me at me as I put my knife in my boot and looked around for any other weapons, I found a decent sized bat shaped stick.



“We can’t just wait here like sitting ducks, besides, whoever it is may not be that bad, maybe it’s just a grouchy old man who’s pissed that we’re trespassing on what he perceives as his island or something”



Ryanne reluctantly nodded at me while staring out at the ocean, already resigned to a fate unbeknownst to me.



“What am I supposed to do? Just sit here?”



“You keep this fire going and try and make it as big as possible, look for anything or anyone that you can flag down” 



Or you can come with me, I thought to myself and we can take this person out together. 

But I know her type, she was frozen.

 Her type gets like that, they freeze when one needs to act.

They only think of themselves and self preservation in difficult situations. Yet put them in a crowded room full of ignorant onlookers and they will chatter away about how adventurous and brave they are, much like Landon.



I started up the hill and only glanced back once, she was just sitting there, not even trying to stoke the fire. Penny was loyally sitting by her side right where I told her to stay. As much as I wanted and needed the company of my dog, she would just be a distraction. It looked to be about a fifteen minute hike up the slippery rocks until I reached the cabin. 

The path was mossy, and wet. The rain was pelting down again and I cursed our shitty luck. My shitty luck actually, I was pretty sure that I had been cursed in life, a dark shadow had followed me around ever since I was a kid.

I felt guilty for feeling frustrated with Ryanne, people who grow up like her just aren’t built out of the same stuff as people like me are. I’m still on the fence if that is a good thing or a bad thing, or a just a thing. Anyhow, this wasn’t her battle, it was mine. 

I was getting closer to the cabin, my heart was beating so loudly that I could hear it thumping through my shirt and over the rain.

Suddenly, a blood curdling scream stopped me in my tracks and I flipped around to look back down the hill just in time to see Ryanne getting drug into the water by a large man shaped shadow. Penny was barking furiously at the shoreline. 

Slipping and falling I ran back down the rocks as fast as I could shouting for Penny to run in my direction, but my voice was getting lost in the wind and the rain. I stopped and fell to my knees as I saw the ominous man shaped shadow push and pull the limp body of my friend further into and longer under the water. Slowly, he rose and reached out to grab Penny, still barking on the shoreline. She dodged him. He lunged for her again and I ran faster. I slipped, I steadied myself, I kept running, I couldn’t see well.

When I got down to the beach, the man shaped shadow was gone and Penny was lying in the sand with blood oozing out of her side. I fell beside her and held her whimpering body as she took her last breath. 

Frantically I whipped my head around looking for the person who had done all of this, there was nobody, it was silent. The rain stopped and my head was pounding, the pine forest and ferns were too thick to run through, there was only the shore or the trail back up to the cabin…or the ocean.

I looked around for him, he had to be somewhere. Clutching Penny I sat on the beach and stared into the ocean.

There was only one way out. Grabbing Penny’s lifeless body I waded into the ocean. I kissed her sweet face once before letting her go out to sea. I had to put an end to the trail of shitty things once and for all, I had to try to swim. As I waded further and further, I saw more clearly how the man shaped shadow had followed me all my life, how he had nudged me in certain directions, and pushed me into one crummy situation after the other.

I took step after step into the cold water until just my head was poking out. Glancing back onto the shore I saw the man shaped shadow emerge from the woods, our eyes met for the first time just as I was letting the currant take me away, there was no way I could swim anywhere. It was cold and it was dark, and as I relinquished control, it was nothing.



A few days later, there was an article on the front page of the Seattle times reading “Kayakers disappear after camping on abandoned DNR Island in what appears to be a suicide pact”. 

The man shaped like a shadow pauses to read the headline through the window of a newspaper stand. All the while he is keeping his eye on a small girl struggling to keep up with her visibly angry father. He notices her eye a candy bar and whispers for her to grab it. Her head lurches up, and looks around for the source of the voice. She sees nothing yet quickly shoves the chocolate bar into her pocket.