Familiar

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. My wait was over. 20 years since it last burned. 20 years-worth of midnight walks, a hefty sack slung over shoulder. It used to happen more often.

“Finally,” I spoke. It was a strange relief to actually see the candle, having not for so long. I’d stopped fearing its appearance, maybe doubting I’d ever see it again. Thousands of walks past a dark, empty window grew tedious. I might have convinced myself it wasn’t real, that I was mad.

But the relief vanished as the weight of what I was soon to do and soon to see, dropped down my spine to my toes, making my feet heavy and slow to move. I shivered in the cool June night. Despite my fear, I forced myself forward. I had no choice.

The door hung ill in place. I shoved it in, surprised it did not fall completely off the hinges. The cabin smelled of moss and death. I turned beside the door and retched, just as I’d done 20 years ago. It was the stench of festering – dank and thick on the air. The smell never left the cabin.

It’s why I could not live here, perhaps save myself the walk. I owned the godforsaken land, fenced it off, kept others away. The closer to the cabin, the stronger the rot. I lived in town with my new wife and four children. I would not let them near here.

I told Maria, as a young man, I developed a habit of taking a nightly walk to clear my mind – that I couldn’t sleep without it. She learned to stop protesting – during storms, blizzards, ungodly heat. I’d leave for an hour or so each night and return. Nothing she said could stop me. I’m convinced she followed me more than a few times. But all she would’ve seen was me walking past the cabin and back home again.

I moved to the corner near the window with the candle. The sheet I’d lain upon it all those years ago had not moved, hinting at its form with its drape. I slid it slowly off and peered into the darkness of the cauldron. It looked bottomless. 20 years ago I was tempted, but could not find the courage. I promised myself, next time, I would test it.

I reached my hand in. Slowly, my fingertips inched down. For how far I reached, they should have hit bottom. The cauldron only stood about 2-1/2 feet high. But I hit nothing. The whole of my arm and shoulder outstretched into its maw. My fingers and wrist had to be beneath the level of the floor. Soon, my whole head was in, as I reached further down.

But suddenly, my hand grew terribly hot. I ripped it back and examined it, rubbing it with my other hand. The hair on my knuckles had singed. I grabbed the handles on either side, struggling to drag the cast iron pot a few feet towards the center of the room. I let it down and fell to my knees, touching the spot where the cauldron had been, where my arm had surely reached through the floor. The floorboards were solid and intact.

My fingers shook and my right eye twitched. I felt foolish and began to move in a frenzy. I finished dragging the cauldron to the cabin’s center. There sat a platform of bricks, piled long ago, elevated to set the cauldron’s 3 legs on, with space beneath for the fire. With everything I had, I heaved the cauldron off the ground and set it into place. I dragged a table from against the wall to just a few feet from the cauldron. From my sack, I removed a white cotton tablecloth, put it to its proper use, and emptied the remaining contents on the table.

A fistful of wolf fur stained with its own blood, a pair of dried rabbit ears, 3 cat’s whiskers, the preserved heads of 6 roosters, the skeletons of 9 fish left to decompose completely in the sun, a dozen candles, some chalk, and a myriad of jars filled with olive oil, salt, fox blood, milk, balsam, charcoal, my own sweat, sand, sulfur, myrrh, honey, vinegar, wine, a brine of ocean water, and dirt from a loved one’s grave. Others were filled with the powders of ground grasshoppers and crickets, moth and butterfly wings, snake skins and salamander tails, dragonflies and corn husks. Still more were stuffed with the flowers and stems of sunflowers, lavender, roses, heather, and dandelions. There were lengths of rope tied into a braided cross, a witch’s knot, a noose, a Celtic knot, and a braided wheel. And lastly, a sharpened dagger.

Prepped, I grabbed a bucket, which had sat beside the cauldron for 20 years, and headed to the nearby pond. Three trips and the cauldron was 2/3 full, as if its bottom was now solid. I set fire to the kindling beneath the cauldron and let the conflagration grow, feeding it with logs kept dry and stored just outside the cabin wall.

I stood on the overturned bucket and grabbed a paddle, hung decoratively across the doorway. As the water reached its boil, I drew symbols unknown to Christendom in chalk upon the floor, enclosing the cauldron, the paddle, and the ingredient-laden table. With the 12 candles, I encircled the symbols and everything within. Then, I grabbed the lit candle from the windowsill and used it to light the others.

All was ready. The bubbles frothed.

In went rooster heads and all the other pieces of long-dead creatures. Then, one-by-one, I twisted jar lids off and poured or dumped each substance in. The sulfur reeked like rotten eggs and mingled with the cabin’s own wretched musk. I felt the urge to retch again but managed to fight it down. I stirred the thickening brew, sweat dimpling my neck and brow, feeling the paddle bump against bones and desiccated flesh.

Then, all the rest went it. All the hellish things I’d carted nightly back and forth for 20 years. In dropped the noose and knotted shapes like chum into a salty bay. Next the insect-powders and flowers and weeds. Every jar sat emptied, save one. The tablecloth was otherwise bare, except for the dagger. I grabbed it, pricked my left index finger, squeezed out a few drops of blood, and then tossed the dagger in too.

With the paddle, I stirred. I fed more wood to the fire beneath. I stirred and stirred. The brew took on fiendish colors. The spine of a fish breached the surface then plunged back down. I stirred faster, then poured in some oil I’d used to light the fire. I scraped a matchhead against the side of the cauldron and tossed it in. The surface of the concoction ignited in dark green, then orange, then blue, then red flames. Quickly, I collected the final jar and tipped dirt from my long-passed first wife’s grave into the fiery broth. I stirred for another minute, then no more.

I let the fire die beneath the cauldron. I stood above, captivated. The fire on its surface died out. The bubbles calmed and vanished. A drop of sweat clung to the end of my nose. I caught it on my fingertip, held it over the cauldron, and let it drip. A little more couldn’t hurt.

Then suddenly, the brew began to sink, as if draining out. Though I’d seen this before, I had to check. I lay my head against the floor. There was nothing leaking from the bottom of the cauldron. Yet the brew sank and sank, until I could not see anything left. The cauldron looked bottomless again. Just for a moment. Then something in the dark, far, far below, peeked through like a bud sprouting through black, fecund, wet earth at the bottom of a well.

Something similar to fingers popped through and clawed upward through the fertile dark. What might have been hands or talons or paws or roots, started ripping through the abyss like it was mud or clay. The creature tore towards the surface, as desperate as a person buried alive and frantic for air – or, perhaps more apt, an escapee.

Occasionally, the displaced dirt or mud revealed a spot of darkened crimson far beneath. Tiny wisps of smoke emanated from the black and rose into the cabin. The thing burrowed upwards at a monstrous pace. Its hands and arms churned and pulled its way through this unearthly passage. When it was 20 feet away, its head broke through.

We locked eyes and the blood left my face. Some evil thing, some spirit, some incorporeal demon had dressed itself in the ingredients I’d brewed and sent down to it. Skin made of powders, flesh made of bird, fish, and mammal, a rudimentary skeleton pieced together with rope and fish bone, vulpine blood and sea water and olive oil flowing through veins of flower stems, a cluster of rooster eyes, moist with my own sweat, filling the sunken cavities of its unholy face. The brew I cooked, whether by magic, witchcraft, or something else, somehow incanted this thing from another, much darker realm, and now it used the ingredients to dress itself and somehow perform the functions of a physical body.

It climbed and neared the level of where the floor should be. Just a little more and it would be here. Then the dark beneath the creature started to fall out. It drifted down like obsidian sand sieving through an hourglass. The creature scrambled furiously towards the cauldron’s brim.

Beneath its waist, the darkness abruptly broke off entirely and fell. It plummeted into a sea of roiling lava and fire. Far off, I could see a Plutonian sand shore, strange beings darting about, slaying each other. Tears flowed down my cheeks uncontrollably.

One of the creature’s hands now clutched the rim of the cauldron. It hung there, dangling above a place I feared I’d someday go. I backed up to the wall next to the cabin doorway and stood, petrified.

Its other hand swung above the opposite side of the cauldron and locked on. The hands were huge, spackled in the matter the recipe called for, but there had not been enough. Parts of its hands were bare, powder spread about, but lacking enough to coat the entire demon’s spirit. In some ghost stories, spirits are unable to touch or move physical objects. But enough matter coated the palms and fingers of this creature, it could grip the iron of the cauldron and contact the material things of earth.

Its massive, bulging forehead crept into sight. 6 beady eyes filled each socket. It folded its armpit over the brim. Its opposite hand pressed up, and the creature spilled onto the cabin floor.

It stood. It stared down at me. Over 8 feet tall, broad-shouldered and thick-trunked, had it not been mostly spirit, I’d have guessed it weighed 400 lbs.

Everything I’d cooked, it wore like skin. Flowers strewn haphazardly, rabbit ears pasted on like cheeks and chin, ground insects and snake skins drying on its arms. Sporadically, it had missed a spot, and there was a dark nothingness. My eyes rolled over this madly dressed scarecrow. Its shinbones suddenly stopped half-way down. It seemed to have no feet, but still it stood.

There was a brooding darkness about it, an anger. It looked at me with scorn. Like it wanted to hurt me. And in its hand, it held the dagger. It let out a growl, a baying, like a starved wolf. I’d never heard a more disturbing sound in my life.

Then, as if mimicking me, it looked me over several times. Like it studied me. I knew what would happen next. It began contorting. It fell to its knees and writhed. The matter it was covered in, changed. It could manipulate it, somehow reorganizing all the smaller things that make up animals and plants and other substances of earth, to look like something else.

It squeezed down and inwards, compacting to human size. To my size. With less surface to cover, the gaps in skin and flesh were filled. Its eyes consolidated to one on each side. They matched the brown of mine. Its hair took on the part and length and black shade of my own. Its garb and boots matched as well. I stared at my twin, and it stared back. Only our demeanors could distinguish us. My visage bore unfettered fear, while my doppelganger struggled to contain the rage seething within. It wanted to murder me. It smiled.

Then, its head slowly turned to the window. Maria’s jaw hung low. The creature spun and moved towards her, an ironclad grip on the dagger. It locked eyes with my wife. She stared in disbelief at this copy of her husband. I don’t think she was breathing. Through the window, it examined her from head to toe. Then, it started to change.

From behind, I saw its hair lengthen and clothes change color and texture. Over the creature’s shoulder, Maria’s face was pale and ghastly. A few moments later, from my vantage, Maria stood with her back to me inside the cabin and faced me through the window from without. The creature raised the dagger, intent on smashing the glass with its hilt.

“No!” I screamed, leaping in front of this twinning devil. “We have a contract.”

Eyes fierce, trying to mask my terror, I wondered if this thing that looked like my beloved Maria, cared at all about our agreement. It considered me for a moment, turned, and walked out of the front door without a word. I followed it out and ran to Maria. Together, we watched the creature head into the woods away from town, glad to see it going anywhere else.

Maria’s face held a thousand questions.

“Meet me at home,” I said.

“What have you done?”

I fumbled for an answer, but nothing came.

“I will answer all of your questions at home,” I managed. “But you must go now.”

I returned to the cabin. I collected the candles and jars and returned them to the sack. I set the paddle above the door, the table against the wall, and the cauldron beneath its sheet. Lastly, I put the candle back on the windowsill, wondering how long it might be till its wick burned again.

“What was that thing?” Maria said, back in our parlor.

“I don’t know…I don’t know where they go. I don’t know what they do…But you don’t have to worry…They never come back.”

She too would grow old.