One Way Out

“The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window,” Todd began, affecting his best campfire story voice.

“Where’s the cabin?” asked someone across the circle.

Does it matter?

“In the hills of West Virginia,” Todd replied, drawing out each syllable. “A candle burned in the window…”

“Hey, wait a minute!” The second interruption. “Like, was it a real candle? Or, like… a vision of a candle?”

God, this is going to take forever.

“It’s a real candle, OK? Listen, if you keep interrupting, you’ll never get to hear the story. And trust me, you’re gonna want to hear it.” Todd cleared his throat as he looked around the circle of high schoolers seated on their wood benches and stump stools.

He began again, abandoning the announcer voice. This story didn’t need embellishment.

*****

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. The light danced off the glass panes, or at least what remained of them.

Some 75 yards away, Sam Anderson lit his gas stove. He set a pot to boil and strode out the back door, carrying vegetable scraps to the compost bin at the south end of the property.

He was passing the raised-bed garden when he first noticed the flickering light through the woods.

***

Sam was the newest park ranger at Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park. Room and board was a perk of the job; he’d taken the job back in July after a breakup that also meant separating from his bed.

Now, three months later, Sam was readjusting to bachelor life. As park ranger, his duties were simple: Wake at 5 a.m. to open the gates, update the “fire danger” sign, circle the park in his pickup every two hours, and lock up again at night. Occasionally, he’d plop his wide-brimmed ranger hat onto a kid for photos on the cannons or in the Smoky the Bear cutout.

He was drinking less these days. It was hell to play Friendly Forest Cop with a hangover, and besides, the park rules technically prohibited alcohol. He had to leave the park to throw away his empties in somebody else’s garbage can; the shame was worse than the headaches.

Instead, he’d been spending most evenings tending his little garden and cooking what he harvested. He was amazed by what he could make with just a small kitchen, preparing the same foods that had been eaten on this land for centuries.

***

The cabin was a tiny thing, one room, one door. It sat 50 yards outside the park fence, and nobody remembered it ever being occupied. The tour guide, Lon, had studied Civil War architecture and said the cabin was built later – likely around 1880, based on the mill-sawn boards and beams. Anything earlier would have used hand-hewn timbers, like the home Sam occupied.

Sam had wandered around the cabin and peered through its broken windows before, but there was nothing to see.

Except tonight, there was unmistakably a candle burning.

Sam felt drawn to investigate. He deposited his compost, then hopped the split-rail fence that bordered the park. As he approached, he expected to hear voices, something to explain the lone flame. But all he heard was the crackle of leaves underneath his feet. When he was within spitting distance of the cabin, he froze, giving the cabin’s inhabitants one last chance to reveal themselves.

But no signal came, so he moved closer. The candle sat flickering in the windowsill. It was thin and low; wax gathered around its pewter base. Before long, it would overflow the dish.

Sam peered through the window. There was no other sign of life, not even a match to light the candle. He opened the door, raising a cloud of dust and freeing cobwebs from the doorframe. Nobody had opened this door tonight. Sam’s were the only footprints on the filthy wooden floor.

It was a mystery – one he wouldn’t be able to solve tonight. He blew out the candle and walked back through the woods to his house.

***

The next morning, Sam caught Lon finishing a tour.

“Say, Lon, have you ever seen anybody in that cabin off the south end of my property?”

Lon stared into the distance for a moment, then shook his head. “Not myself, no. I’ve heard rumors that kids go out there from time to time to get drunk and fool around, but I can’t see why. It’s a long way to go, and there’s nothing particularly cozy about it.”

Sam looked at his truck. “Want to take a ride?” Lon checked his watch; he nodded his agreement and climbed in the cab.

“Last night, I was out back and I saw a light in that cabin – a candle,” Sam said. He told Lon how he’d been drawn to the light; he recounted the unopened door, the dusty, untouched floorboards.

“Probably just high school kids having a laugh,” Lon offered. “I’ll admit, the candle is a little bone-headed. We haven’t had rain in weeks. But if that cabin catches fire, who would miss it?”

***

Later, Sam walked to the cabin in broad daylight to have a look around. He felt the same vague anticipation of an encounter, though it was obvious the shack was vacant. As he approached the window, a chill came over him.

The candle and tray were gone.

He entered the cabin, expecting to find them on the floor, but they weren’t there either. Not a splatter of wax remained.

Sam retreated, shutting the door tightly behind him.

***

That evening, Sam walked into the backyard after dinner. Everything was dark, quiet. He wondered if he’d dreamed the whole thing. He thought he’d go to bed early, restore his wits.

But as he scanned the tree line one last time, he saw the familiar flicker. Against his better judgment, Sam made a beeline to the cabin.

There was the candle burning as before, taller this time, as if it had just been lit. He peeked into the cabin, which revealed no new information.

Sam scanned the trees. The moon illuminated broad swaths of forest floor through openings in the canopy, but there was nothing to be seen. He yelled into the emptiness.

“HEY! You don’t scare me – you’re just making my job harder! And if you start a forest fire, we will find you, and there’ll be hell to pay!”

He walked to the window and, for the second night in a row, blew out the candle.

***

On the third day, Sam again checked the cabin during the daytime, finding no trace of a candle or the person who’d placed it there.

That night, the candle still shone in the window, but Sam waited until nearly midnight before walking into the woods to snuff it out.

***

The next day, Sam’s 5 a.m. wake-up call was more difficult than usual. He hadn’t slept much, and what little sleep he’d gotten had been interrupted by dreams – first of the candle, then of the cabin catching fire, and finally of the battlefield being engulfed in a great conflagration, the acrid smell of gunpowder filling his mind.

They weren’t nightmares, exactly; it wasn’t fear that Sam felt, but grief. When he awoke, his head pounded worse than any hangover. He took Alka-Seltzer with an extra cup coffee and began his Thursday.

Aside from the cabin, everything else at the park was in perfect order. He plodded through the morning rounds, opening the gates and updating the fire danger sign to “High” after three full weeks without rain.

At lunchtime, Sam sidled up next to Lon in the visitor’s center. He kept his voice low. “Lon, I’ve got to talk to you. You have a minute to step outside?” Sam glanced at the cashier, a young woman named Ashley ("Call me Ash," she'd told him), whom he’d been trying to muster up the courage to ask over for dinner. If she heard this conversation, he wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.

Lon tucked the uneaten half of his sandwich in a brown paper bag; without a word, he started walking toward the door. Sam followed, looking at Ash once more. She looked up and grinned, miming an exaggerated hat-tip; she enjoyed teasing him about his get-up.

When they were outside, Lon spoke first. “Did you see the candle again?”

Sam nodded, confused. Lon gave a heavy sigh.

“I told you I’ve never seen anybody. That’s true,” Lon affirmed. “And I’ve never seen the candle. But I’ve talked to someone who has.”

Sam might have felt betrayed by the delayed revelation if he hadn’t been hanging on every word. “Who was it?”

Lon paused. “The last park ranger.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” Sam demanded. “Is this some kind of initiation prank or something?”

“I wish it was that simple,” Lon responded, “but I’m afraid what I’m about to tell you might leave you with more questions than answers.”

***

Our last ranger came to me after he’d been on the job about three months. Same story as you, asking for information. I didn’t tell him anything, because I didn’t know anything. A couple days after he first saw the candle, he quit. Left town. Something he said got me thinking. He said, “I don’t just see the candle – I feel it. It’s like it’s asking me a question that I can’t answer. When I blew it out, it felt like part of me went up in smoke with it. I don’t know who this cabin belonged to, but it can’t be anybody good.”

So I start researching, reading even more than I did in grad school. One day, at the library, I come across a box of notebooks. Transcripts of interviews with some of the last living Confederate soldiers.

In one of the notebooks, a soldier talks about these places called midnight cabins. Says they were never part of the official record. They were more common near the Mason-Dixon line, where “feeble-minded two-timers” – his words – would try to smuggle slaves north to Union territory.

If a soldier was caught or even suspected of being a defector, they were brought to the camp’s midnight cabin. The interrogators would light a candle at nightfall and begin their questioning. The prisoner had until the candle went out to talk. Didn’t matter whether the candle burned for 10 hours or a breeze blew it out after 10 minutes. If the answers weren’t to their satisfaction, the prisoner would be gagged, bound to a tree and burned alive. Then, when it was time for the troops to move, the cabins were burned, too.

The soldier said that out of the two dozen or so who went in, only one talked before his candle went out. The next morning, they stood him up in front of the whole regiment and cut his throat for treason.

Our soldier reckoned that’s why the cabins were only built with one door. The idea was, once you went in, death was the only way out.

***

“Like I said, our cabin here can’t be original,” Lon said. “It must have been rebuilt – maybe by some former soldier who just couldn’t let the war go.

“But that doesn’t explain our candle,” Lon continued. “As far as I can tell, I’m the only person in the whole area who’s ever even heard of the midnight cabins. All I can say is, you might ought to start ignoring it. What do they say? If a candle burns in the woods and nobody sees it, does it still make a sound?”

Sam considered this mixed metaphor before agreeing to leave the cabin alone. After all, it was off the park property. Whether it burned was no business of his.

***

That night and the next, Sam remained in his house after sundown, determined not to visit the cabin. But he was only partially successful.

The candle came to him in his dreams. Sometimes it would appear in his bedroom, sometimes in his kitchen. No matter where it appeared, it beckoned for him to grab hold and return to the cabin. He always extinguished the candle when he reached the edge of the woods.

He awoke each morning feeling as if he hadn’t slept at all. On Saturday, he stumbled through his rounds. Miraculously, in his sleep-deprived state, he managed to invite Ash to dinner Saturday night.

Ash arrived around 6:30 after closing up at the gift shop. Sam already had vegetables from his fall crop steaming on the stove and chicken thighs in the oven. He opened a bottle of wine – a rare indulgence these days – and they talked about everything from past jobs to the park’s eccentric employees and visitors.

After the second bottle of wine, Ash made it clear that she didn’t intend to drive home.

By the time they fell asleep, Sam had almost forgotten about the candle.

***

Sam woke up seated in an uncomfortable wooden chair, his torso slumped on a table. His head throbbed. To his left, a candle burned in the windowsill. He was in the cabin.

His mind went first to Ash. He looked around; she wasn’t in the cabin with him, but he didn’t know yet whether to feel comforted or alarmed by her absence.

There were, however, two men standing across from him. They wore the dirty blue-gray coats of the Confederacy. Sam would have recognized them anywhere, having seen them daily on postcards in the gift shop.

He glanced down at the table. A yellowed sheet of paper – parchment? – glowed in the candlelight. Even upside down, he could read the neat script:

Suspect: Samuel Lewis Anderson

Interrogators: Col. John C. Smythe, Lt. Daniel T. Frederickson

One of the men spoke. “Well, well. He’s awake. About time, too – I thought he was going to sleep through the whole candle.”

The other responded. “Would have made our jobs a hell of a lot easier, don’t you think, Frederickson?”

Col. Smythe eyed the candle. “By my count, Samuel, you have about another hour to tell us everything you know about the whereabouts and dealings of Mr. Lon Johnston.”

Lon? Sam’s mind reeled. What could he possibly have to do with these men?

“You see,” Smythe continued, “Lon has been on the run for quite some time now, smuggling slaves across the border and spreading treasonous falsehoods about the Confederacy. He’s prolific in his propaganda, yet he continues to evade our capture. Seeing as how you two have become quite amicable in recent days, you’re an accessory to his criminal activity.”

Baffled, Sam finally eked out a few words.

“Lon…the tour guide?”

Frederickson chuckled. “Is that what he calls himself? A man sets free half a dozen Negros and distributes a few pamphlets, and bestows upon himself the title of ‘tour guide?’ He should be ashamed.”

Smythe spoke again. “Lieutenant, shall we give Samuel a moment alone to gather his thoughts? He’s spoken a total of four words. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was nearly as feeble-minded as the last two-timer we had the distinct displeasure of questioning.”

The two officers exited the cabin, leaving Sam to wonder how he’d ended up here.

***

The candle was diminishing rapidly. An hour seemed generous; more likely, thirty minutes and the pooled wax would overtake the last of the wick. What had Lon – his Lon – said? Death was the only way out.

Sam eyed the flame, the ledger, the bone-dry wood of the cabin. He thought of the weeks without rain. He visualized his path through the dark forest as he quietly rose from the chair, one hand on the doorknob, and touched the corner of the parchment to the flame.

***

Smythe and Frederickson noticed the flames and rushed to the cabin. As they pulled on the door, Sam pushed, flinging the two men off balance. He ran through the trees, arranged differently than he remembered, not daring to look back.

***

Sam finally stopped when he reached the main road. He was outside the park; he’d gotten turned around in the woods and had run west – not north as planned.

Behind him, he heard sirens rapidly approaching. A fire truck roared past, trailed by an ambulance. They were headed toward the park. A moment later, a police car passed Sam at full speed. Then he saw brake lights and heard the angry screech of tires. The car reversed to where Sam stood and again squealed to a stop in front of him. Two officers stepped out.

“Sir, are you Sam Lewis?” the driver asked.

Sam said yes, he was.

“I’m Officer McArthur. Sam Anderson, you’re under arrest for aggravated arson and attempted first-degree murder.”

They handcuffed Sam and loaded him into the back of the squad car. As they drove to the station, they had to drive through the park. The firefighters were dousing what was left of Sam’s home. Sam craned his head; even from this distance, he could see Ash sitting in the back of the ambulance, watching the police car drive away.

***

The public defender managed to talk the district attorney down to reckless arson and gross negligence after a psychiatric evaluation, which concluded that Sam had been substantially impaired at the time of the fire. His sentence was light at only nine months; it helped that Ash declined to press separate charges.

On his first Sunday in lockup, a guard came and told Sam he had a visitor. In the phone room, Lon sat on the other side of the thick glass holding the receiver.

“I told you to stay away from the cabin, Sam.”

Sam stared at Lon, mouth open.

“I told you, when the candle goes out, somebody dies. But how many times did you walk into the woods and blow out that candle? Five? Five times you blew out the candle while one of my fellow tour guides was in for questioning.”

Sam didn’t follow; the look on his face made that much clear. “But… the cabin was empty. I saw it with my own eyes!”

Lon looked annoyed. “Things aren’t always as they seem, Sam. For instance, I look pretty good for nearly 170 years old, huh?

“We had a plan, Sam, and all you had to do was stay out of it. We were making a north run with a group of slaves, a family from a farm 30 miles south. But Smythe got wise to us and started picking us off, one by one.

“Once my men enter that cabin, they’re as good as dead. I instructed them to use their last few minutes for redirection. But every night, you put out the candle before they could give any useful misinformation.

“Now they’re dead, as are, I’m sure, our human contraband. And, by the way, you nearly killed Ash with your attempt at intervention. I don’t think she’ll be coming over for dinner again.”

Lon stood to leave, but he hung onto the receiver.

“I tried to help you – I really did. But I told you: It doesn’t matter how the candle goes out. Next time you see them, you can thank the good men of the Pocahontas County Fire Department for their…help. Tell them Lon sends his regards.”

***

Sam didn’t sleep at all that night. Every time he closed his eyes, the candle taunted him. It was easier to simply suffer through the night. He felt the slightest comfort at being locked behind bars, alone.

The next day, he was pulled from the mess hall during dinner – more visitors. In the phone room, the guard introduced them.

“Sam, this is Chief John Smythe and Lieutenant Daniel Frederickson of the PCFD. They’ve got a new lead on the origin of your fire – and they say they’ve got some questions for you concerning Lon, one of your colleagues from the park.”

Chief Smythe picked up the receiver and smiled knowingly at Sam.

“Don’t worry, Sam. This won’t take long. We’ll be finished by lights-out.”