Judgment

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

A couple with scattered belongings tousled through the fresh snow. Sam hadn’t had enough time to put on her shoes before they’d abandoned their impromptu outdoor camping trip to Judgment Mountain.

They approached the cabin. At the bottom of the stairs a key shone in the moonlight. Sam glanced up at the cabin. She held Reina close to calm her down as she begged to go in.

Pots adorned the eaves of the porch roof, like strange wind chimes. They clanged against each other as a gust of wind sent a shiver down Sam’s spine. A rope bench swayed in the wind, choking the bars suspending the wood. Sam eyed the candle in the open window. Despite the wind, the candle didn’t flinch.

…

The door clicked and squealed as Sam pushed through.

The cabin smelled like mildew and something rotten, and was as chilled as the night air. Their old beaten up car, parked a couple miles away, was a paradise in comparison. Sam dropped their belongings onto the floor and felt the wall for a light switch. Dusting through cobwebs and other mysterious things she was glad she couldn’t see, she found the switch and flipped it.

The light from the table lamps buzzed, illuminating the room in a warm glow. It would have been a simple old western cabin if not for the walls adorned with crosses and photos of saints.

She and Reina shared a look. “Are you sure it was him?”

Reina nodded faintly.

“Hello?” Sam called out. Her eyes followed the crosses, spread out from the top of the wall, all the way to the floor, to the smallest gap of a door frame that lead to a kitchen.

Water pooled out of an old farmhouse sink, all the way onto river rocks, until it fell like a waterfall into an iced over river.

“Where’s the phone?” Reina’s voice split the icy fog off of Sam’s shoulders.

Sam’s heart lurched as she forced her hands around her coat and over her pockets, pleading with herself to stay calm as she brandished nothing but keys, a lighter, a bag of blunts and lint. She swallowed and met Reina’s eyes.

“We left them in the car. Remember?”

Reina reddened. “There’s gotta be a phone.”

…

Reina watched Sam as she flicked her lighter at the fireplace. Like Reina’s dad, Sam remembered the alcohol and the drugs, but didn’t remember the important stuff. Like their phones.

But they were here for Sam’s birthday. So Reina couldn’t get mad at her now. And besides, Reina was the one who wanted them to put their phones away. To live in the moment. Or, at least, that’s what her therapist recommended.

Sam walked to the wall of crosses and picked a thick, blue metal one off of the wall. She weighed it in her hands. “Rei,” she called, “Your dads not here, because if he was…” she flipped the cross in her hands and put it back on the wall. “He’d never leave this place.”

Sam wrapped a swift arm around her girlfriend, kissing the side of her head. She nuzzled her neck. “We stay here until morning…” she eyed the crosses warily. “If anything’s out there…” She motioned over her neck with a slashing noise. A whisper of a smile flickered across both their faces.

The sound of a mechanical beeping replaced the silence they shared. Reina looked away.

“Stop.” She whispered to herself. She rubbed her scarred wrist, willing herself to forget what she’d seen.

Her father, in a dressing gown, as spry as ever as he clutched onto his leather belt with contempt.

…

The candle in the window was as still as ice. Sam engaged in a one sided staring contest with it, urging the fire to blink.

She’d found a wool blanket and used it to cover the couch for Reina to rest on.

Reina wrapped a different blanket tighter around herself and watched Sam from the stiff, grody couch. “What are you doing?”

Sam was standing, leaning against the fireplace and away from Reina. Her feet curled onto themselves.

Sam hesitated, gaze unwavering from the candle. “I’m gonna look around.”

…

Sam wandered down the hall and cracked the door open to a bedroom. The window was peeled up, letting in a stream of chilled air. Snow dusted the floor.

A bundle of something brown and rotten lay strewn along the windowsill. Sam gagged and pulled the sleeve of her jacket to her nose.

She swept into the room. Her eyes watered as she pushed the window closed with both hands. A glass jar fell onto the ground from the force.

Sam looked down instinctively as it shattered. Her blood went cold. She fell back until she sat down on the bed. At her feet, a string of verses shone scattered on the floor in note-like fashion. Glass shards, rounded like river rocks encircled a declaration. “Am I my brother's keeper?”

Sam clutched the fire poker close to her chest like a stuffed animal. She jumped up from the bed and kicked at the glass, cluttering her feet up as she scattered it across the room. She slammed the door behind her.

A frame rattled on the opposite wall. A painting of an iced over lake, a dead deer with blossoming red petals in otherwise pristine snow along the riverbank.

Sam pressed a hand to her mouth to muffle a cry, dropping the fire poker in the other hand like it had burned her. She flipped the painting over. On the back, in bold red ink,

“Samantha,

I should never have

pulled you out.”

…

Reina thought she’d imagined it. First, her father stalking them in the woods, next, the scent of whiskey and roadkill. She pressed into the blanket, willing it to shield her from the memories. She wished she’d done more to keep Sam here.

She took a deep breath and gripped the blanket tighter. “Breathe,” she muttered to herself. “It’s not real.”

Reina focussed on the cabin. Bibles piled high on shelves, tables, chairs, anything with a surface. Bibles thrown onto the floor by Sam. Crosses, saints, an abundance of pots and pans spilling out from the kitchen, a medicinal cabinet filled with jars and decayed herbs. More crosses.

Reina chewed her lip. “Maybe… none of this is real. Maybe I’m really crazy.”

Reina screamed as something slammed onto the table beside her. It reminded her of her dad, how he would slam doors, slam liquor bottles onto the kitchen table.

She jumped off of the couch. A book had slammed open. Reina gingerly leaned into it, reading the annotations, the highlights. An exact replica of her fathers Bible. Encircled in yellow highlighter, the verse, “honor thy father.”

“No.” She denied, backing away from it. The back of her knees hit a short table, sending the books piled on top of it onto the floor.

Reina backed into a corner pillar, sacrificing the blanket to the floor. “Stop!”

Again, something slammed against the table. Reina gagged on the smell of whisky, covering her nose with the crook of her elbow. “Please,” she begged. “Please, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Reina’s father knelt close to his daughter, a hospital gown adorning his thin, pale skin and sunken face. He slapped the belt in his hands together. “…For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged.”

Reina screamed.

…

Sam pulled the painting off of the wall and slammed it onto the ground with a cry. The painting shattered before it melted into the floor, an icy trail of water and blood splintering minuscule rivers into the floorboards.

Sam yelled as her hands burned ice cold. She dropped to her knees, into the floor. She grasped at the surface as her body succumbed to the river. She screamed for her brother.

A weight choked off a sob and her hands let go of the floorboards, snapping to her neck in desperation. The cabin flipped upside down, the noose now suspended from the ceiling.

David dragged her down and cradled her desperate body.

“D-David?” She choked out as the noose loosened. She clutched onto her brother, crying out for him and apologizing like she had when she’d found him twelve years ago to the date, up in the attic.

Reina screamed, and Sam looked up to find her brother staring at her with frozen over eyes.

She tore herself away from the apparition, choking on wet sobs as she tore through the hallway and into the living room. “Reina?”

Reina sobbed in the corner, shielding her face with thin arms. The candle waited in anticipation in the window, daring Sam to snuff it out. The wax was almost fully engulfed in the flames, as low as it could go before it would die.

Sam charged, ignoring the heavy footsteps that stalked behind her. With a cry, she reached for the candle, igniting her hand in shards of frost. She clutched it, shaking in agony as she collapsed by Reina’s side.

…

Reina jerked awake to Sam hovering over her, trying to pull her off of the ground with one hand, cradling the other.

Sam shivered, teeth clattering like the keys on a xylophone. Reina cried as Sam attempted to lift her off of the ground. “It hurts. It hurts. Please… please, stop.”

Sam clutched Reina tight. She kissed the side of her head, then, with a great heave, ripped herself off of the floor.

With a deep breath, she blew out the candle.

The flame only grew.

…

Something ground against the wall to the right of Sam and Reina, spinning slowly until one final click put it back into place. The cross had righted itself.

Sam pulled Reina close and fell to her knees as an enormous, thin shadow engulfed the wall. It turned from a thin rope, into a silhouette. The body was pulled up the wall, hoisted to the ceiling, until the tip of her brother's head rested centimeters in front of her face.

“Please,” Sam begged. “David…”

The shadow hung suspended from the ceiling, dripping black water onto the floor, where wet footprints began to surround the girls.

Prayer-filled chanting rang in Sam’s ears. “Judgment” they screamed.

The floor froze over. She gasped for breath over the stench of guts and death, clutching Reina’s body like a lifeline. Reina shook violently, screaming in Sam’s arms as the chanting grew louder and thicker until it engulfed them both.

Then, it grew quiet.

“Judgment.” They demanded.

…

Reina cried out, shielding herself from invisible blows. On her skin, old scars reopened, anew. Blemishes and bruises reappeared after years of abuse, stating their case.

The walls trembled until they exploded, sending crosses at the couple like a flock of demented birds. The floor cracked under Sam, the chanting resumed. Another blow tore through Reina.

Invisible people chided and yelled at them, cursing them for different things. Boos and screams of discontent preceded every bite from a cross, every whip of the belt.

Bright blue eyes met Sam’s as her consciousness flickered between worlds. The crosses fell dead onto the floor.

A hand caressed her face. “I say to you,” David’s soft voice seized the angry room. “That everyone who is angry with her brother…” he looked at Reina. “Or her father… will be liable to judgment.”

David leaned close and pressed a kiss into Sam’s forehead. A cross branded her between the eyes.

…

The room beeped mechanically, chanting blended into hospital monitors and rotting guts melted into sanitizer. Sam slumped over Reina, unconscious. Reina shoved her bleeding wrists into her fathers face. The voices growled and groaned, recoiling at the sight, debating amongst themselves.

“What about me?” She screamed above the noise. “What about how you judged me?”

Reina’s father leaned against the IV, clinging onto it. With his other hand he swung the belt wildly, desperate. He smelled like whiskey and hunting trips. “Honor. Thy. Father.” He screamed with every blow.

Reina recoiled as her father threw the belt back for one more strike. She kept her wrists outstretched. “You judged me first!” She yelled. “Before I ever judged you.”

The room went quiet. Suddenly, he yelped like a wounded animal and fell onto his back.

Reina moved her hands from her face gingerly. The chanting stopped, her father clutched at his ears, begging for forgiveness.

She watched as her bedridden father and his belt decayed into the floorboards like oil through water with one final apology. Bleeding into the foundation, the cabin consumed him.

The crosses disturbed in the assault snapped back into place. Reina shielded her eyes as the sun rose outside the window. The candle flickered. Once, twice, and then it died.

…

Reina pulled Sam out of the cabin and set her on the porch as she brandished the lighter Sam had stashed in her pocket.

Where her father had collapsed, she set the cabin alight. In flaming letters, a word blessed Judgment Mountain with a verdict.

“Forgiven”

The candle in the window reset.