Apprentice

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

“I saw it. I swear it,” said the dark-haired boy.

“You did not,” said the blonde-haired boy, twisting his front bike tire so it crunched in the gravel.

“You don’t even know the story,” said the brown-haired boy dismissively, “and you just want attention. C’mon, let’s ride out past Summerdale.”

“No, wait. I do know it,” said Dark, “There was a painter who used the cabin for a studio. And he only painted at night. By candle and one day he just disappeared.”

Brown shook his head and spat, “Not even the half of it.” And with that he launched into the tale that had been whispered in the valley for who knows how long. Brown did his best to set the record straight and with a few gentle corrections from Blonde along the way he laid out the gist he’d inherited from his older brother.

Back about 150 years ago some tortured artist (no one remembers his name, of course) came down to the valley from the city and built this cabin in the woods to work. He only came to town for supplies and never spoke to anyone. But soon word started to spread that strange noises—cries, screams, yelps of anguish—were heard coming from the cabin, and finally the townspeople confronted the artist the next time he appeared on the streets. By this time he was gaunt, unshaven, unbathed and seemed to be in great distress. He broke down and explained that he was working on his masterpiece but simply could not finish it. Inspiration only came at night—yes, he only painted by candle light—but when the morning came he hated what he had done and would burn the canvas outside. What he needed, he realized, was help. Someone to help him finish it, some small missing piece that his own mad genius could not provide. Only this would finish the work and give him the peace he craved.

Word spread and it was learned that the painter was a man of some renown and so young men came from all over to help and sit at his feet. But no one fit the bill. In fact, some say that the painter was so abusive to those who came that many of them packed up and left town and never returned. With each failed apprentice the artist withdrew further and grew madder and madder. The ashen pile of destroyed attempts outside the cabin grew taller and taller. Eventually the townspeople were on the verge of going out to the cabin to evict the madman for good when one morning a young boy wandered into town. Said he was from the city and asked where he could find “the artist”. He merely smiled at the dire warnings and insisted on directions to the cabin. When the townspeople finally relented he simply tipped his cap and disappeared into the woods. The next day, they say, the cabin was empty and no one ever saw the artist or the strange boy ever again.

“That’s it?” cried Dark. “That’s not even scary. Just weird.”

“I know, right?” nodded Blonde. “This hick town is so lame that we can’t even make decent legends.”

“Well, some people say the fact that the story’s kinda weak is proof that it’s true,” Brown replied. “Anyway, there is some cool stuff—I’ve also heard that he buried the finished painting, or something, out in the woods, or that he’ll return one day to finish it. And…” Brown paused dramatically, “The sign for that will be a candle in the window of the cabin.”

The three boys were silent for a moment. One set of feet on the ground the other tensed on their pedals. And then Dark spoke, “I saw it.”

“You did not,” sneered Brown.

…

The next day the trio met at the fountain in the square. Dark was last to roll up and before Brown or Blonde could mumble a greeting he offered a self-satisfied grin along with, “Saw it again last night.”

Brown rolled his eyes and said, “What are you, just out there wandering the woods in the middle of the night? Every night? Yeah, right.”

“No,” Dark replied calmly, “I’m out riding. It’s pitch black by seven out there and you can just see the cabin from Dempster. About a half mile after it turns to dirt.” He paused as Brown and Blonde shared a blank, irritated glance. “Guys, I mean it.”

…

At a little past seven the three boys met under the pale puddle of orange sodium light offered by the bent, graffitied street lamp. The last surviving insects from the recently deceased summer spun, clicked and hissed in the tall grass along the road. All three bicycles stood parallel to each other with their front tires slightly squashed on the jagged, worn line where the crumbling asphalt gave way to a weedy, wheel-rutted trail.

“So, just up there?” asked Blonde lifting a lazy finger.

“Yes. Not ‘just’ but a ways up,” replied Dark.

“Let’s do this then,” mumbled Brown.

With that the three of them pushed off and trundled onto the dirt. None of them spoke for the short ride but all of them shivered as the damp October chill coiled and snaked around their legs, poking and teasing its way up fluttering pant legs and billowing shirt sleeves. The glow of the street lamp quickly receded and the trees on either side of the path seemed to encroach closer and closer, curving precipitously overhead, cathedral buttresses threatening to collapse. When the boys stole small glances at each other all they saw were huffing silhouettes, mottled here and there by star and moon glow. Suddenly Dark pressed his heel back on his pedal and skidded to a halt near the ditch.

“There,” he said and gestured sharply with his head to the right. And indeed there it was. When Brown and Blonde arranged themselves right next to Dark they could see it—a ruddy, smudged glow pulsed deep in the woods through the snarl of shedding trees and dense undergrowth. A pinprick, really. A step to the right or left and it disappeared.

“I told you,” said Dark in a husked whisper.

“How do you know…” began Blonde but Dark had already dropped his bike to the ground and began to tramp across the forest floor toward the light with careful but exaggerated steps. Brown and Blonde hesitated for a moment and then followed suit.

Again the trio did not speak as they trudged single-file—Dark, Brown, then Blonde—snapping twigs underfoot, root-tripping, hands recoiling from the saturated trunk moss they repeatedly had to grip for balance. The crimson smudge grew nearer and to Blonde’s eyes it seemed to sputter and undulate with each of their approaching steps. “It’s excited,” he thought and quickly shook off the absurd notion.

Dark pulled up short. Blonde and Brown, lungs frosted and panting, flanked him. The lumped hulk of the sagging cabin stood before them. There wasn’t much of a clearing around it anymore. Mother Nature had taken most of it back. Their moon-adjusted eyes could see that the trees in the immediate ring around the cabin were a bit smaller than the giants beyond. At a glance it would seem the place would be no larger than a single room. A couple of vine-swallowed trees grew up through and split the planks of a shallow porch held up by two rough, hand-hewn columns. There was also a rotting door under a hopelessly cracked lintel and to its right a small window, its pane implausibly intact, smeared, it seemed with years of dirt, grease, and oil. The candle sat right behind it, its halo of light blurred and flitting rapidly side to side.

Brown broke the silence. “Well?” he wheezed. No one moved. Brown looked at Blonde who shrugged meekly. Dark was looking down and seemed to have his eyes closed.

“Screw it,” said Brown and placed a wary foot on the creaking porch. Scuffing a trail of grey sludge, he stepped to the window and attempted to squint inside. “It’s too smudged…you can’t see anything!” he loud-whispered back to the other two. Dark stepped forward and with a silly bow and an exaggerated “after you” gesture, he indicated the door. Brown looked at Blonde who stiffly, and barely perceptibly, shook his head. Brown frowned, shrugged and stomped the four paces to the door, seemingly making a racket on purpose.

“HELLO???” He banged three times with the ball of his fist.

Nothing.

“ANYONE IN THERE?!” he yelled at full voice, the trace end of his shout bouncing back off the forest wall.

Still nothing.

Brown turned to the other two and held out his hands, palms up. Dark shuffled closer into the circle of light. “Try it,” he mouthed pointing past Brown toward the door handle.

Brown narrowed his eyes, irritated, at Dark and took the challenge. The door was warped and water-logged, bloated and stretched in its listing frame, but with three tense tugs Brown was able to wrench it open about halfway, the rusted hinges sharply pleading. Brown stepped sideways through the opening and reaching back waved the others to follow him. In a moment, the three boys found themselves standing in a single, bare, rectangular room; but before they could get a full sense of their surroundings, an angry, gusting, tendril of wind snaked through the door and snuffed the candle out.

Blonde made a small gasp and all three of them stood frozen, rooted in the center of the room. What felt like an eternity passed when ashen moonlight quavered through the window and compensated somewhat for the lost candle. There, on the far wall, an object slowly dissolved into view. An ornate, gilt square, slightly off kilter, hemming in a black, almost liquid, field. A frame. And no, not just black…a painting. And its subject, emerging at an agonizing pace—a misshapen blotch…no, a head…lolled to one side. They could see it now. A head, a jaundiced, ill-proportioned head…skin taut against the shell of its squashed skull, lidless fish eyes with thick, dilated pupils which seemed to take in everything and nothing at once, the lower jaw wrenched out of alignment with the upper, leaving behind a gaping, mocking rictus of razored, blackened teeth.

“Wait…” stammered Brown, holding up one hand, but it all happened so quickly. A thick, wet, pink, forked, serpentine tongue uncoiled from the head’s jaw. It splatted on the floor of the cabin and with dexterous speed slithered toward the boys. Each of the tongue’s forks skillfully coiled around one leg of Brown’s and one leg of Blonde’s. The head seemed to make a guttural gurgle from deep in its throat and the tongue suddenly snapped backward—a fisherman whose bait has been taken—and wrenched both boys off their feet. Blonde and Brown could only whimper feebly as the tongue dragged them across the floor planks, their fingernails pathetically carving jagged trails into the splintered wood. The tongue strained and twisted as it pummeled the two boys against the wall and then clattered them up its plane. It dangled them there for a moment like a pair of bug-eyed, broken marionettes before one last heave reeled them upward and down into the head’s widened, wet, elastic gullet. Gone.

A cold, dead-wind silence followed. Dark stood there where just a moment before Brown and Blonde had been at his left and his right. He slowly brought his hands to his lips and spoke.

“Are you sated, Teacher? Is it finished?”

The sound of wood scraping against wood—a chair, perhaps—echoed from the far corner of the room. The darkness seemed to swallow that part of the room more than any other, so even Dark’s keen eyes could only make out a shapeless hulk. It quivered and spoke but the voice—weary, scraped and scored—seemed to come from the wall.

“No, Xavier. No. You’ll bring more?”

“Of course, Teacher.”

A pause, and then again the voice from the wall, “Xavier, it’s so dark in here.”

The dark-haired boy smiled, turned, and tapped out a long match from a box balanced on the sill. Cupping his hand against the night breeze, he relit the candle.