If one doesn't get you, the other will

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. It was flickering weakly, a tiny yellow beating heart barely bright enough to illuminate the cabin’s sole occupant who lay face-down on the worm-eaten floorboards. Aside from her chest - which heaved as she huffed and puffed to catch her breath - she had barely moved since crashing through the door and promptly collapsing.

Rhea wasn’t quite sure what she had been running from. There was a thick grey fog rolling through the forest, the kind that swallowed up all light and sound unfortunate enough to be caught in its path, that devoured the silver-barked beech trees that shone in the moonlight one-by-one and caused the rustlings of creatures of the night to grow suddenly and suspiciously still. The fog brought with it an eerie silence to the forest, a silence of a breath held in hiding, a silence that only grew more deafening in its emptiness as your ears strained to hear something, anything, over the sound of your own beating heart and uneven breath.

She thought she could see eyes within the fog, tiny dark malignant shadows that stared at her from within its depths. And when the barest whisper of something slithering through the leaf litter in the distance reached her ears, she’d started running.

Tendrils of fog grasped for her at every turn as she crashed through the forest. She never once looked back, only catching that small yellow flicker out of the corner of her eye - she pelted for it desperately, bursting through the door and almost knocking it completely off its hinges before collapsing to the floor. She shook as she caught her breath. Finally she worked up enough strength to stand again and close the door behind her. The door, despite its old rusted hinges, swung easily enough and fit tightly into the doorframe.

Rhea peeked nervously out of the window where the candle still barely burned, a thick stream of hardened candle wax pooling around its base and flowing over the edge of the windowsill. The fog had followed her. It sat there, waiting. Rhea could no longer see the trees of the forest - only the thick, grey fog and the dead, virulent eyes that glared straight at her.

She spun away from the window and sank slowly to the ground. She could no longer hear the slithering that had chased her, and all was once again silent - but for her pounding heart, shaking breath, and occasional pop of the candle’s flame. She clenched her fists and sucked in a deep, deliberate breath, holding it tightly against her thudding heart, squeezing her eyes shut as she willed her heartbeat to return to normal. The blood pounding in her head began to slowly ebb away with each deep breath in and out, and the shaking in her hands had almost stopped when she realised that the inside of the cabin was also far too quiet.

Rhea cracked open one eye and glanced around. The cabin had only this single small room; there was one doorway to her right and one window above her. The room was so small that even the frail light offered by the candle was barely able to reach the corners. There was a crumbling stone fireplace on the opposite wall, covered in a layer of old, cracked soot and flanked on either side by the shattered remains of two wooden chairs. A musty mattress lay limply in the left corner. A neatly folded sheet and quilt almost made it look like an inviting place to sleep, if it weren’t covered by the same layer of dust that blanketed almost everything in the room. The dust layer was completely undisturbed except for where Rhea’s fall had left an open, gaping wound.

The candlelight fluttered, pale gold dancing across the bare panelled walls. Rhea could make out a dark square against the faded wood where a picture might have once hung. No wind whistled through the numerous cracks and holes in the walls. There were none of the usual creaks and groans of warping wood of old houses. There were no sounds of any other occupants, no breathing, no snoring, no coughing. There was nowhere for them to hide, either - the interior of the cabin was almost completely barren, and had clearly been undisturbed for some time.

Rhea bit her lip. She peered anxiously up at the candle whose flame flickered so faithfully, a beacon of hope in the dark sea of fog. It was burning low but it persisted doggedly, its yellow flame small and alluring. She watched a drip of candle wax slide slowly down the candle’s side and over the edge of the windowsill, where it fell to the floor with a small plop. She was quite certain she hadn’t seen any matches on that windowsill, or any way of lighting the candle at all.

Her heart was beating faster again, a drumbeat muffled by the stifling silence. Surely she had simply missed a trapdoor in the floor perhaps, or an attic in the ceiling where the occupant of the house would be sleeping? Her knuckles turned white as her eyes swept the floor, and her breath frosted into little clouds in front of her. Unless there was a trapdoor hidden beneath the mattress, the door she had crashed through remained the only entrance. She looked upwards, scrutinising every rafter and every shadowy corner for some rope or ladder or door, an icy cold beginning to creep its way through her fingers and toes. But there was nothing - wait. Above her, there was something long and thin, dangling its way down from the shadows in the ceiling. It could have been a rope, if not for the brittle spidery fingers stretching out towards her.

Rhea clasped her hand over her mouth and shuffled quickly away from the wall toward the centre of the room, staring in abject terror as something dropped down from the shadows above, landing silently where she had been sitting only moments earlier.

It sat crouched as it felt the ground around it, lanky arms stretching and searching, gnarled nails scratching at the wood as its long, languid fingers probed the ground curiously. Its skin clung tightly to its bones. It cocked its head to the side as it listened, for it had no eyes - only empty sockets made even darker and deeper by the dim candlelight.

Rhea couldn’t help but glance towards the door. The fog still waited for her. It swirled beyond the window, grey and empty but for two glaring malicious eyes. Within the cabin, the emaciated thing shuffled its way slowly across the floor as it continued its search for her. And on the windowsill, the candle’s flame danced mockingly.