Cabin in the Woods

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. My mom told me a story about a woman named Lisa who lived just outside the small town she grew up in. The story says that no one had lived in that cabin for years, and the county had been talking about tearing it down. She said that many people had come to see it while it was for sale, but no one ever bought it, and no one ever went inside. One evening around 7 o’clock while Lisa was taking her usual trail walk that looped around the old cabin up to the lake and back to her home. She saw a candle in the window of that cabin. She stopped and thought for a second, maybe someone finally bought it and she would come back tomorrow and welcome her new neighbors. The air turned deeply chilly, and the woods fell eerily silent, she figured it was time to return home to bed.

The next day, Lisa woke up early and started making her famous peach pie, the secret was her home-grown peaches and how she would grill them before they were cooked into the pie. Once the pie was done and cooled enough to carry, she picked her usual trail that looped around the cabin up to the lake and back. She felt excited to meet some new friends. The closer she got to the cabin, the quieter the woods seemed there wasn’t a bird or the rustling of leaves, Lisa paid it no mind and reached the steps of the cabin's front deck. She looked around, the cabin looked like it always had, overrun with dead leaves, moss, and spider webs. There was no glass in the windows and no candle to be found. She slowly walked up the steps, praying they would not break or give beneath her, and quickly knocked on the door four times.

RAP. RAP. RAP. RAP.

After a moment of total silence, a sound came from deep within the cabin, a creaking, a scrape? The air around Lisa cooled even more and goosebumps rose on her arms. She took a step back, holding her breath, and waited another minute listening…. From deep within the cabin, she heard a very slow knocking back to her that mimicked her own.

RAP…. RAP… RAP… RAP….

Strange, that someone would knock back and not answer the door. Lisa put the pie on the deck and left quickly back down the path she came and back home. Something felt wrong. When she got home, she decided to call the local Sheriff and just explain what happened and ask about the new neighbors.

The lady at the sheriff's office told Lisa the place had not been purchased and was due for demolition the following week. They told her it was likely just teenagers playing around, the campground on the other side of the lake was full this week. Lisa blew out a sigh of relief and hung up the phone and went about her day. At 7’oclock Lisa started her usual walk down the trail that looped around the cabin up to the lake and back to her home. As she neared the cabin, she once again saw the candle burning in the window, this time it was accompanied by a shadow. Lisa shook her head “silly kids” and walked straight up to the house, saying “It’s not safe to play in this old cabin in the dark! You guys should get back to your camps across the lake!” There was no response, not a sound, not a bird, nothing. Lisa stopped at the door, she thought not to knock this time, grabbed the handle, and pushed the door open, and stepped inside, the door quickly closed behind her making her startle.

Looking around into the dark cabin, her eyes finally focused on the candle by the window. She walked over to it and picked it up, a creak like a footstep on the old floorboards came from somewhere in the back of the cabin, or maybe above on the second floor. Unable to tell, Lisa took a few steps further into the cabin, realizing she was now in a hallway, the layout of this cabin was nothing like hers clearly. “I don’t like playing games in the dark! It's not safe to play in this old cabin! You should just head back!!” she called out again, no response but the sound of weight shifting on the floorboards in front of her. Holding the candle straight out in front of her Lisa took a shaky step forward towards the sound she heard, looking straight ahead into the darkness she walked deeper into the cabin.

The hallway went on forever, the darkness swallowed it up behind her, but she kept pushing on. Sounds of footsteps and whispers started to buzz around her, and her pace quickened down the hallway. Finally getting to the end of the hall there was a rocking chair sitting in the corner empty and unmoving, she turned to her left and continued hoping for a set of stairs, a sign of someone here, something. She reached the end of that hallway and met a door, it was made of dark wood, and it had scratches around the handle. She touched the scratches with her fingertip; they were deep and not as if a tool made those marks. She turned the handle, it was locked.

Blowing out a large puff of air and shrugging, Lisa turned around ready to leave and forget about this silly cabin and those silly kids. When she turned around, she was met with a wall only 2 feet from her, confused she looked around, placed her hand flat against the wall, and then turned back to the locked door, letting her hand drop and tried the handle again, still locked. She turned around again starting to panic, feeling trapped, and found herself in the hallway again. She shook her head, took a deep breath and walked a little quicker down to where the rocking chair had been sitting before, she could hear an eery creaking noise slowly at first, then getting faster, getting closer to the rocking chair she noticed a dark figure sitting in the chair and it seemed to be rocking slowly. She stopped walking and the back of the chair hit the wall startling her, she held the candle out as far from her as possible to try and get visibility, “hello?” not a sound and she could not see anything but the shadow of the chair on the floor. A sudden gust of air from behind her blew out the candle, Lisa felt as if someone or something was standing right behind her, adrenaline spiked through her body and she rushed forward arms out hoping to not run into anything, she rounded the corner of the hallway and saw at the very end sat a single candle, burning in the window.

She hurried to grab it and turned right to exit the cabin, there was the front door. It was locked, she jiggled and jiggled the handle and started to bang on the door with her fist, but it would not budge. She stopped and took a deep calming breath. She thought she heard a slight giggle come from somewhere behind her. She turned away from the door to look back down the hallway, maybe she had taken a wrong turn when the candle was out. She walked back to the window and looked out, there was the front porch, the path she always took, that looped around up to the lake and back down towards her cozy little cabin. She longed to be home with her feet up and book right now. Turning away from the window back towards the front door, she was met with another hallway, she could see down and around the corner was a soft flickering light, curious she walked towards it, the closer she got the more she noticed the shadows casting on the wall around the corner. They were shaped oddly, not quite human, she jumped at something clattering to the floor behind her. Too afraid to look she kept walking forward and got to the corner, she turned and found another hallway.

How can this small cabin in the woods be so confusing, the candle that was flickering around the corner fell over and wax splattered across the floor behind her, she turned around to pick it up and hit her head on a solid wall. The hallway she had just come down, was gone and so was the front door. She pressed a shaky hand flat against the wall and gave it a hard push, with a frustrated and scared cry she smashed her fist against the wall “WHAT IS GOING ON!!” her voice cracked into a whimper and a very loud jarring thud came from the other side of the wall she'd just hit. Eyes wide, Lisa backed away from the wall and down the hallway again. She kept going till she came to an intersection, from what she could see to the left was a door and to the right was a dark hallway with no visible end. She heard footsteps approaching from behind her and the sound of something scraping the walls. She started to turn left, and the door started to jiggle, and cries started to come from it loudly, the footsteps behind her got louder and louder, she turned right and started running. She was running so fast that the candle went out, but she could not stop. Banging on the walls and the same cries from the door started to surround her further down the hallway she ran. She started to cry from fear, tears dripping off her chin, she dropped the candle and covered her ears, and kept running.

She came up short when she started to see the outline of a chair in the corner, the rocking chair. It was empty but rocking slowly making an awful creaking noise. She turned the corner to keep going and spotted a light up ahead and the cast of the moon shining through the cabin window and a single candle burning, she ran up to the candle and took it with relief and stared out the window again, longing to be free. She wiped her tears away, she could see a flashlight coming down the path, hopeful she started to yell for help! “Help me, I’m trapped in this cabin! Please help me!! I’m not alone in here”, footsteps from behind approached her slowly, panicked she tried to break the wood on the window to try and escape but the wood just splintered her fingers and tore the flesh from her hands. Fearful and bleeding she cried again, the flashlight out on the path was getting closer. The footsteps behind her were so close now, a cold chill ran up her spine, she could hear the voices on the path, it was a younger couple…. “My mom told me about the woman who lived in this cabin long ago, the story goes that she was alone here for so long that she started to lose her mind, one-night smoke billowed through the trees, and fire rescue was called to Lisa's cabin. It looked as though she had been trying to escape through the window, there was wood torn apart and dried blood along the window sill. Her body was not recovered from the fire, even though they were able to put it out before it took the whole cabin down. My mom said that some nights when you take the path that loops around past the cabin up to the lake and back you can see a single candle burning in the window, some even say they have seen her crying for help stuck in the cabin forever…” the footsteps stopped and the cold chill wrapped around Lisa completely, just as she went to scream for help, a cold dark claw-like hand clamped over her mouth and pulled her away into the darkness, leaving one candle burning in the window.