A Kind Rekindled

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.

~ 20 years earlier ~

After weeks of grueling work, Carlisle stepped back, admiring his creation. For several weeks, he worked tirelessly to build a modest log cabin in the forest clearing. Though he had yet to create a formal path from the edge of the woods to the clearing, the weeks of back and forth had worn a small, winding footpath through the grass.

With a sigh of contentment, he contemplated the first night in the cabin. During the construction of the cabin, he slept off the day at his parents' house at dusk and returned early in the morning, when the fog still clung to the surface of the lake.

The lake; another reason he had chosen to build a cabin here. Since he was a young child, he loved the water and took his antique diving suit out whenever he could. Although many would find it strange: him diving in an old suit in the middle of the lake, he had no one to bother him or question him now, but diving could wait.

His ears were filled with the soft whisper of the wind as he turned away from the lake. Walking along the lakeshore, he shoved his hands into his pockets until he kicked something with his boot. As he looked down, he saw that he had kicked the skull of a large deer, but fortunately did not break its antlers, which extended at least a foot outward from the skull.

Carlisle knelt down and lifted the skull from the ground. The sun was setting over the trees, casting long, finger-like shadows across them as the sun dipped into the darkness. He brought the skull home and put it on the porch beside the door, planning to hang it over his mantle the following morning.

After leaving the skull behind, he entered the house and sipped his tea while watching the lake from his window. Hearing what sounded like whispers outside, he assumed the wind had picked up again and thought nothing of it. That night, he heard critters scratching outside his house as he tried to fall asleep. It would take him some time to adjust to all the new sounds.

The image of his grandmother floated through his dreams that night, and her voice faintly echoed in his head. As he awoke, he could still hear his grandmother's voice. After shaking his head to get rid of the lingering dream, he pulled a candle from his drawer and placed it in an old candle holder. Having not thought of his grandmother for a long time, he figured it was time to light a candle in her memory. It was the least he could do. Though he hadn't thought about her for some time, her voice sounded different than he remembered. IT sounded distorted. His memory of her was hazy after being dead for so many years, but he didn’t think it was that serious.

He sat on his bed with the candle burning next to him and watched the wax slowly trickle down the edge of the candle as it settled into a yellow pool at its base. It was eerily quiet outside, and a dense fog was settling over the lake. As he continued to stare at the candle, the scratching noises grew louder.

In the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of movement by the front door. The shadow of a large figure was barely discernible in the darkness as he squinted his eyes. Trying to get a better view, he curled his finger around the candle holder and brought it up to his face. While the candle did not cast enough light, the full moon peeked through the clouds to cast just enough light to see five long, slender fingers dragging across the front window. Slowly scraping against the window, they made a high-pitched grating sound like fingernails on a chalkboard.

The sound abruptly stopped, and though he was grateful, that thought quickly vanished as another sound assaulted his ears. His grandmother's voice came back to him along with a slew of other voices he couldn't quite make out, all battling for his attention and mimicking a radio rapidly switching stations.

With his candle holder still in hand, he abruptly rose from the bed and walked toward the kitchen. The whispers suddenly stopped and a creak resounded from the porch. He froze in place, even more frightened by the silence. His eyes flickered to the door as the handle slowly started turning. Watching the front door with a mixture of fascination and horror, he slunk down onto the kitchen chair. On the verge of hyperventilating, he tried to remain silent, but his breath was fast and shallow. As the door was shoved open, the chain at the top shook harshly with the sudden movement, halting the door. His eyes caught the same slender fingers from earlier slowly winding their way out of the opening in the door. Despite the dim light, he could tell these fingers weren't normal. They were long and slender, with sharp edges like nails, but they were still just skin, black skin. The same putrid, black skin that covered the rest of his fingers.

Then a bright white light shone above the fingers in the doorframe. He began to shake slightly when he realized he was not looking at a light but the creature's eye. As the creature locked eyes with him, it spoke to him once again in his grandmother's voice. He heard the voice clearly this time, "Please, Carlisle, let me in" the voice purred to him. “It is so cold out here. Won’t you let your grandmother in?” As it finished its sentence, Carlisle felt a strange force jerk him towards the door. It caught him off guard and he grabbed the edge of the chair with his free hand, his knuckles white as he struggled against it. Unable to keep his grip, he got up from the chair.

His legs wobbled beneath him and seemed to carry him with a mind of their own towards the front door. In a panic, he searched the room for something he could possibly use against this creature, force, or whatever it was. On the table beside the front door, his eyes caught the slight glint of his pistol. Still in control of his right arm, he placed the candle on the windowsill, his hand shaking and spilling wax over the edges and burning his hand. He hissed in pain as he involuntarily brought up his left arm to the chain lock. Panicking, he forced his right arm to quickly grab the pistol and wrapped his finger around the trigger. Shaking madly, the gun practically clattering in his hands, he brought up the pistol to the crack in the door and shot madly as his left hand undid the chain without the direction of his mind.

The door swung open. Instead of seeing a creature standing before him, he saw the deer skull he had found earlier clattering to the ground as if it had just been dropped. When he bent down to pick up the skull, the intense, nonsensical whispers returned. The empty sockets seemed like two endless black holes and he continued to stare at them as the whispers began to grow louder and his vision narrowed. Carlisle managed to tear his gaze from it and hurl it into the lake before it was too late. Once it hit the surface, the whispering slowly started dying down as the skull sank to the bottom of the lake. Panting heavily, he stared at the lake, watching the ripples fade as the fog cleared. He heard an owl hoot in the distance, and the forest finally came back to life for the first time since he awoke that night. He smiled faintly, however it soon disappeared as he focused on what was just standing on his front porch.

As he stumbled back inside, he slammed the door behind him and reattached the chain to the lock. Taking a chair from the kitchen, he wedged it under the knob and drew all the curtains. Despite feeling a weight lifted with the skull gone, it wasn't enough. After a few moments, he shuffled back to bed and lay there, looking at the ceiling with wide eyes. Throughout the night, he kept his ears open and tried to listen for any unusual sounds. He jumped when he heard a howl in the distance, but it was far away and did not threaten him. As much as he tried, he couldn't stay awake. Exhaustion finally overtook him, as he drifted off into a restless sleep.

Getting up the next morning, he removed the chair from beneath the doorknob. The candle was still on the windowsill and his pistol lay haphazardly near the door. Early morning sunlight streamed through his windows as he opened the curtains. It was only in the morning light that he felt the heaviness of the night before lift and he felt embarrassed about his actions.

He ventured outside and watched as a pair of chipmunks quickly scurried around from the cabin. That explains the scratching I heard all night. Shaking his head, he looked down at the ground with his hands on his hips. Last night was clearly a sleep-deprived delusion, and he had allowed it to consume him. Well, it wouldn't anymore. He was determined to make the most of his time there and seek the peace and clarity he had been looking for.

Several days passed by without incident. The forest around him was teeming with life and he found it comforting. The creatures surrounding him weren’t evil or trying to get into his home, and he no longer had any more nightmares or delusions about them doing such. He spent his days landscaping the area around him and building a shed in the backyard, and the days flew by rapidly.

He slumped down on the porch nearly a week later, bored and uninspired. Seeing the lake, he had an idea. Forgetting about the incident a week prior and the skull that now rested at the bottom of the lake, he dug through his shed until he pulled out his diving suit. Carlisle smiled as he loaded the extra utensils into his small wooden boat, careful not to tip it.

He donned the dress, boats, and belt before carefully perching the helmet and oxygen on a seat in the boat. Getting into it, he paddled out into the middle of the lake and began to take care of the more complicated dressings of his suit, and tested the pressure valves on. Finally, he fitted his helmet onto his head and turned it into place. After grabbing the air hose, he threw part of it into the water to prevent the boat from capsizing. In his lead shoes, heavy belt, and helmet, it was a miracle he hadn’t already. Standing on the edge of his boat, he tried to plug his nose with his hands before realizing his mistake. He sighed in his helmet and put one foot over the side of the boat and jumped in. The water was a murky greenish-brown color, and he hardly could see. After looking around at the vegetation floating around him, he started making his way to the bottom of the lake.

Eventually, his lead boots sank into the deep silt at the bottom, and he was free to explore. As he slowly trudged through the muck, he scanned the surroundings for anything that might be of interest. However, the lake was so secluded that it was unlikely he would find any valuables, shiny objects, or exciting finds. Nevertheless, being able to walk around freely underwater was calming and breathtaking. In retrospect, he could have probably done it simpler and lighter with a more modern diving suit. However, this one had a certain charm and he couldn't bring himself to replace it until the seals started failing and the threads were stripped that is.

He trudged around for a short while longer before stumbling upon the skull he had thrown into the water a week earlier. His memory of the creature trying to enter his cabin that night was almost hazy, but he had already rejected any notion of the being as real by this point.

Laughing at the memory, he reached down to pick up the skull, but before he could, it rose out of the muck on its own. The ground shook beneath him and a thin, black, sickly, humanoid figure with flesh that clung to the bone materialized beneath the skull. He recognized the long, spindly fingers from those wrapped around his doorframe nearly a week prior. The fingers he had convinced himself were not real and merely the result of a sleep-deprived and exhausted mind.

His gaze traveled down the length of the figure before ending at what could only be considered its feet. Instead of anything resembling feet, its legs ended in two flat, dull stumps that were reminiscent of pegs. With a slight tremor, he glanced up to meet the eye of the eight-foot-tall figure. The deer skull and antlers served as its head, and floating around it was stringy, brown hair that probably fell somewhere between his shoulders and mid-back. A light coating of flesh now covered the skull of the deer, but it clung tightly to it like the rest of its body.

When Carlise finally met the creature's eyes, something in the creature changed. “Carlisle” it hissed. This time, it spoke in its own voice. Its own deep, dark, ethereal voice that reverberated in the water around him, without the creature uttering a word out loud. Its mouth did not even move to form the words, but it certainly came from him and echoed in the waters around him like ripples. In a panic, Carlisle closed his eyes and tried to cover his ears, forgetting the helmet he was wearing. The creature stopped and laughed, its mouth this time forming into that of a smile, showing its sharp teeth that were uncharacteristic of a deer.

In an effort to reach the surface, Carlisle wrapped his lips around the exhaust valve on the inside of his suit. Instead, the creature wrapped its sharp fingers around Carlise's umbilical cable at the front of his suit, pulling him face-to-face. Silently smiling, he brought a finger to the cable and severed it.

The creature pierced Carlisle's suit beneath the helmet and wrapped his fingers along the inner edge, preventing him from floating back to the surface. Within seconds of the creature's fingers grazing his skin, he began to feel cold seeping into his veins. It was suffocating. Almost as suffocating as the water that was now surging into his suit. He floated there, cheeks distended with the effort of holding his breath, and gawked at the creature in front of him. As he gazed into the glowing, white eyes of the beast, manic whispers overwhelmed him once again. He groaned and shut his eyes, beginning to squirm.

He frantically kicked his feet beneath him, trying desperately to escape the creature's grasp. As the water flooded into his lungs, saturating them, he choked on it and began coughing. The water burned like pure alcohol as it flooded into his lungs. He felt as if they were going to burst as the water filled them like oversized water balloons. His vision began to blur as his body begged for oxygen. Before he closed his eyes for the last time, he saw the creature’s glowing white eyes recede into the back of its head, and its body start to morph and change.

As Carlisle’s lifeless body sank to the bottom of the lake, the deer skull thumped back down next to him. In place of the figure once beneath it, an angry black mist now swirled around for a moment before heading towards Carlisle’s body.

~ 20 Years Later ~

Daniella was walking her Carolina dog off-leash in the forest on the outskirts of town. She moved slowly, admiring the beautiful and overgrown forest around her and not following any trail, as there were none around her. She watched her dog, Max, run around the ferns but he stayed close to her as he usually did. That is until he caught hold of a scent and began to chase it. Daniella yelled for him, but he easily outran her and bounded into a clearing with a dilapidated cabin at the edge of a lake.

The whiff of deer he had smelled suddenly gone, Max began fervently lapping at the water. In the distance, a candle flickered to life in the abandoned cabin as an arm shot out of the water in front of him. Max yelped and jumped back, his ears flattening and a low growl rumbling through his throat. The arm thumped roughly onto the grass and was covered in tattered clothing. Through gloves, bits of swollen, gray flesh protruded. Another arm shot out of the water as the figure began to pull itself up out of the depths. Max's growl turned into a shrill whine of utter confusion and terror as he raced back to Daniella, who hadn't yet reached the clearing.

The figure continued to emerge from the lake as a large, heavy, and ancient diving helmet with bits of plants sticking to the sides rose slowly to the surface. The creature hauled its body up and out of the water, its leaden feet thudding on the ground and leaving imprints in the overgrown grass. It made its way over to the cabin, throwing open the front door. The wind swept into the cabin and the candle flickered. The creature walked towards it, the cabin boards cracking and splintering beneath his weight, groaning but not yet snapping. He pinched the wick with his wet, rotting, gray fingers until it made a wet, squelching sound and fizzled out. The creature peered out the window; watching and waiting as the candle sparked back to life.