Possessive

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. The pale skinny man with wool trousers and gray teeth gazed appraisingly upon the dusty space, his gray grin widening. He had with him a backpack filled with more cheap candles purchased at the local Tuesday Morning thirty minutes back the windy road at the edge of Collinsville, a knock-off Zippo that he stole off an army buddy eighteen years back, and a hunting knife that seemed to be vibrating with eagerness to cut something. Cut anything. He imagined the knife was the tooth of an ancient, hungry monster and that it thirsted for meat the way the monster used to. Needed satiation, he often thought to himself.

The pale skinny man with gray teeth moved across the creaking boards to the opposite end of the ramshackle shelter, through a crooked doorway, lit another candle, placed it on a wood-warped dresser topped with a grimy mirror. He looked at his distorted reflection. Waved.

Hello.

He was by himself here in the deep of the Cardinal Creek Woods east of Collinsville. By himself but not alone. He just didn’t know it yet. Wouldn’t for some time.

“This will do quite perfectly.” he giggled to himself.

It was April.

***

If these walls here could talk they might cry. Actually weep and shake like in a hurricane—rainy, gusting, thundering wails of pain and sadness and rage. But they might wait to do all that. If these walls could talk, first they might whisper to you all sweetly. Tell you to stay a while. Beg you, even. They’d guilt you like a parent, get you to ache for them. Get you to open up like a chasm, give it your heart. Because then you’d start to ache, then you’d start to feel like maybe you ought to stay and that maybe this is all your idea. And then these walls would say it’ll all be okay, for the both of you, and they would hold you. These walls don’t have hands you can see right now, but they would find a way. They always find a way to hold you. To comfort you. To keep you.

Then, eventually, the inevitable comes and that rage comes to a head and the levees break from all that pent up, drive-you-crazy emotion.

Because if these walls could talk they would scream, too.

And if they could hold they would squeeze.

***

The skinny man with gray teeth was telling mommy and daddy they had to pick one—the boy or the girl. Opal couldn’t see a lock on this side of the door, but she couldn’t open it no matter how hard she rattled the knob or pushed or kicked. There was a dead rat in the corner of the room that made her want to wail. But her throat wouldn’t listen. Even if she’d wanted to, her time in this locked room had silenced her for now.

It was October.

Her little brother, Travis, just two days shy of his seventh birthday, cried in the other room. They were all going to go to Bridgeman Park, rent a bounce house and eat too much pizza. Now he was wailing like a two year old again from across the cabin in his own little room, his own little cell. They would fight sometimes, yeah. But they were also best friends, Opal and Tee. So when she’d heard him through the thin walls and behind his own door cry out for Opie to be the one to get the scary man’s wrath—get Vlad’s Tooth, the scary man had said, holding up his long, venomous looking hunting knife—Opal had felt a sudden and overwhelming hatred for her little brother, something that made her stomach twist in a knot. She adored Tee, knew he was just scared like her… but how dare he. How could he be so weak?

Her tummy twisted and groaned and her head throbbed in her skull like a punch-punch-punch behind her eyes. End of day three here in this cabin in the woods. Some smelly scraps of meat or stale bread every few hours. Cloudy brown water to drink. Supposedly nothing for mommy or daddy, as far as she could tell. Nothing until they chose, the man had said. And if the end of the day came and they hadn’t yet, the scary man with gray teeth would take his turn in each of the kids' rooms…

She’d stopped speaking after that first night’s visit. Was too lost in horror to make as much as a peep. Tee was the opposite. He wouldn’t stop shrieking. Neither would mom.

“Just kill me!” she heard her daddy say. He’d asked this before. Opie couldn’t stand to hear him say it.

“No,” the gray toothed man would say back. “You know how this is supposed to go.”

Yes, Opal knew. The man breathed in deeply, preparing to again recite his rehearsed monologue. “Vlad needs satiation,” the man said to her daddy in his strange sort of theatrical cadence, one you might hear from the stage of a Shakespeare Festival at your local park in the summer. “Vlad’s Tooth needs a painful sacrifice, not an easy one… if thine giving hand be languid in its gifting, and heart of apathetic means, let Vladimir’s tempestuous wrath be lashed unto thee as anguished reports of hellish gramercy.”

Opal felt something in the room with her and she turned. But there was nothing there. Only that dead rat, a dark, dusty corner, and—

They’re beginning to give in…

Opal’s spine snapped straight and her eyes went wide and her heart hiccupped in her ribs. What was that? Who’s there?

One of them has chosen… the other will choose soon…

It was a voice she heard not with her ears but with her insides, with her brain, and when it whispered to her the punch-punch-punching behind her eyes would stop, if only for a moment.

“...hello?” Opal whimpered softly.

Hello, the thing said back.

***

The cabin, this cabin, was abandoned for a very good reason.

The last family that lived there, see, they were a broke family that couldn’t really live anywhere else. Single mom and four kids situation. Sold the trailer home to buy a generator and a hot plate and some food to last a while and hunkered down in this place in the middle of the woods. Hid here so they’d be far away from their mean, nasty pops who liked brown liquors and piss-yellow beers and smacking people around, especially his wife and kiddies.

They were desperate. Nowhere else to go.

Just like the thing in the house.

The thing in the house was the first, see? The maiden voyage. The christening tenant. The builder of the place, actually. It had a family once—or, he had a family once. A girl, so it’s said. A young daughter. They were flesh and blood once. Until she was blood and flesh, until she was gore. Until some local hunter-man, some nutso, graduated from deer to dear-little-girls… or so the legend goes. This local nutso, the hunter-man, he hacked his way through the front woods, then the front door, then the girl’s pops, until finally he hacked himself a one-way-ticket straight to Hell when he cut up that dear-little-girl. And when he was good n’ done and he left, the cabin went quiet for years. Quiet, and empty, except not really… because something stayed behind. In the walls. Has been here for so, so long that time means nothing to it anymore. All it knows is need.

It needs to not be so alone anymore.

It needs to be a family again.

If these walls could talk… they might whisper sweetly to a family of five on the run. Might do more than whisper. Might reach out and hold them. Might try to right his wrongs. Might try to keep them around forever…

***

She did notice all at once that her parents had gotten real quiet. They’d stopped their loud protests and angry battering of empty threats…

Your mother has chosen

Opal shook her head No, but then Travis wailed from his room and she heard both mommy and daddy tell him it was going to be alright, that this would all be over soon. Then they fell back into their silence.

Your father is hungry… So, so hungry and so, so tired… it said, Are you scared?

“Yes.” Opal trembled.

I never hunger…

I never tire…

“Sun has set, Scott. And it looks like your better half has her mind made…” the scary man crooned. Opal’s heart thumped faster and faster and faster until her fingers began to go tingly and numb and her scalp began to sweat even though it was so cold she could see her breath. The scary man continued, “An answer’s promptly needed or I start my nightly rounds again.” Then in a sing-songy way, “Guess it’s all up to you nowwww…”

Opal was numb with terror, until the thing spoke up one more time.

I never fear…

And that’s when the scariest thing of all happened.

***

It’s not a question of good or evil—the thing in the cabin isn’t like the Wicked Witch of the West or the East or the Good Witch of the North or whatever. This isn’t Oz. This is the Cardinal Creek Woods. This is real life. Where good and evil is more complicated. Gray, like the scary man’s teeth. This place, this is where it all happened for real. Right above us upstairs, there’s still blood stains on the floor. On the walls, even.

And right over there, in the corner, where that old coat rack is leaning…

…that’s where the thing in the house reached out and touched the real world.

***

Tee’s wailing sobs became howling screams. Primal and ragged and cadenced with icy cold, unfiltered fear. The kind of scream that makes your throat bleed. The kind of scream they say turns your blood into cottage cheese right in your veins as it's pumping.

There was the sound of huge motion, like the sail of a ship whipped and slung about in mean gusts of ocean storm, like the sound itself could take you off your feet and fling you across a room.

Then it was mommy’s turn to scream that horrible scream. Opal fell back onto her rear, her knees had given up, couldn’t take any of her fifty two pounds anymore. The shrill shrieks of the scary man were next, and hearing that scary man sound so terrified made Opal’s bladder loosen into her jeans.

It wasn’t just her knees or her hands that were trembling but the floor and the ceiling above her too. The walls went at it then, and that huge sound coming from somewhere beyond the door kept getting bigger and meaner and then her father screamed. It was then that Opal had to cover her ears.

She’d never heard her father raise his voice. Now he was shrieking like a banshee. Like his skin was being peeled from behind his knees or his nails were being yanked from his fingers or the roots of his teeth were being prodded by needles…

He can’t hurt you, the voice said in Opal’s head. Nobody will hurt you anymore

She pressed her palms harder against her tiny ears, squeezed her eyes tight, but the voice was loud and the voice was clear and the voice was calm.

I will save you from them

“STOP!” Opal shouted above the chaos.

I will save you

The huge sound died suddenly, like Opal had gone deaf with a blow to her head. But when she uncovered her ears she could hear the cabin creaking—trembling with recovery from its exertion—and she could hear her blood in her ears and her own raspy breathing.

Then came another sound, and somehow this sound, though smaller and softer and much easier to read, was far worse than the big one before it.

It was the sound of heavy somethings dressed in fabric sliding across a wooden floor—limp bodies that were still warm but maybe not all in one piece anymore, dragged efficiently. Then they were thudding up the rickety stairs on the other side of the wall. She could feel the vibrations of their heads banging clumsily on the steps in her legs.

A creak from above her head, dust falling in ribbons from the ceiling, from the floor of upstairs. The dragging sound was up there now. Moving around her. And she shivered when it came to her that she did not hear footsteps.

If she cried out for her daddy, would the scary man hear? Would he barge in again? Would he sic Vlad’s Tooth on her…

He succumbed to the pain

He was weak

The voice was so calm, so warm…

They were all weak

So loving…

But I’m here now

Opal tried to speak. Could not.

Yes, the thing answered her thoughts, It is over now, and I am here

Opal looked around, moving her head slow so as not to come suddenly upon a sight that might send her into fits. Her gaze fell upon the warped dresser with the grimy mirror on top… the dead rat in the far corner… the boarded up window… an old coat rack with a dented, wide-brimmed hat and a scratchy looking overcoat slung on its wooden hooks.

But then the hat wobbled as if in a breeze, and the overcoat’s collar shifted and the slumped shoulder shrugged and the hollow sleeve seemed to develop girth from the top and slowly down to its opening…

…and the pale tips of human fingers peeked from the sleeve, reaching out to the world like the prodding ends of spider’s legs. And soon the whole of a long-fingered hand was free from the coat’s sleeve. The ashen-white skin of the hand looked soft to Opal’s scared eyes. Like velvet or powdery silk. She wanted to touch it.

The hand of the coat lifted, reached out to the girl, and beckoned her with a flick of its fingers.

Opal stood.

They are gone, the thing said.

Who are you?

Opal approached the coat rack, approached the pale hand. Her heart slowed, her breathing evened. Her fears began to dissolve. She ignored the droplets of crimson drip-drip-dripping from the ceiling and onto the floor of the room. She did not look up at the spaces between the wooden slats in the thin, concave ceiling. She did not want to spot a dead eye peeking down at her from up there, or else her fear might return.

The hand beckoned again and she obeyed.

And then her hand was in it’s hand.

And the thing wrapped warm fingers around hers. A flower folding shut around its fragile, precious pistil.

I am here…