Right Where She Started

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

"What's that?" Macy said, pointing at it with her light.

The sight of the flame behind the glazed glass stopped Leia in her tracks.

"Turn it off!" Leia whispered frantically.

"Why?" Macy said, taking a step towards the cabin.

Leia took her by the wrist and wrenched the flashlight from her grasp. Quickly she turned it off and stood as still as she could, as if the dark would somehow hide them better if she did that.

Macy turned to her, a quizzical look in her eyes; but to Leia's relief, her rowdy friend acquiesced for the moment.

Leia looked closely at the window, not knowing what to think. The cabin leaned like a tired old man in the center of the clearing. It appeared old and rickety, as if the softest breeze should flatten it and blow it to dust. Its wooden walls looked grey under the high moon, its windowpanes were faded and foggy.

No one came to this part of the woods anymore; not after mom had decided to construct a new lakefront cabin after what happened in the old one. Most of the family never came this way, much less did they think of it. No one wanted to come here anymore, not after how they had found dad.

Stare at it as she might, there were no shadows or moving shapes that suggested a presence within. Against all reason, Leia felt a strange relief flow over her.

"It's my dad's old cabin," Leia said, letting her breath leak out ofher.

"Whaaaat," Macy gasped, turning back. "The one he always said was haunted?"

"Yeah, that one," Leia said.

Ever since she was young, her dad had warned her to stay away from it. He always said it like how dads usually say those things—like unfunny jokes, but serious enough so that you knew there was something more underneath. Maybe at first, Leia hadn’t given it much thought; but when her dad said it, sometimes in passing, sometimes for real, each time they headed up into the mountains for the family’s summer camping trips, the thought burrowed into her brain the way warnings do when you hear them young. You just remember them for a lifetime and hesitate to step over the line even though you end up thinking it’s only an ineffectual taboo as you grow up. The older she got, the weirder of it she thought. Why keep the cabin if you’re going to stay away from it?

But Leia never questioned him, and when dad turned up dead in it, Leia pushed all thought of the cabin from her mind and buried all memory of it deep within.

“Hey, chat’s going crazy,” Macy squealed.

“What do you mean?” Leia looked down at her phone. Sure enough, lines of excited text flitted up the screen faster than Leia could have scrolled.

“They want us to check it out,” Macy said. “Fifteen new subs! See, now we have to.”

“I…I really don’t think we should,” Leia said quietly.

“Come on!” Macy begged. “We have two thousand concurrents and more than half of them subbed already. It’s the most we’ve ever had, all thanks to the haunted forest hike. This crap was your idea, must I remind you?” Macy’s eyes sheened with an ambitious and hungry spark.

Leia hesitated.

Macy scoffed. “Well I’m going with or without you. But if you don’t come with, you can count yourself out of splitting the revenue from this point on.”

Leia turned back to gaze out into the woods they had just waded through. Dark and murky as they were, it suddenly seemed the much safer option.

“Yeah chat, night vision is on,” Macy said, turning the torch back on and smiling for the camera. “Can you see? It’s pretty dark here, we are literally putting our lives on the line for you. Thanks for ten subs!” She turned to Leia again. “Come on, Leia, don’t be such a killjoy. Chat says they’ll let us know if they see any ghosts, LOL.” Macy giggled as chat rioted in anticipation.

“Cameras can’t capture ghosts, moron,” Leia whispered. “Cameras are a thing for the living, not the dead.”

Macy shrugged and twirled on her feet so that the camera picked up their surroundings.

As the light made a circle into the dark, it swiped swiftly by a shadowy shape, maggoty white arms hanging by its smooth legs, black dress sleek and clean, mangled black hair flowing over its head thrust toward the ground. From behind its tangled locks, Leia saw the dense gleam of two dark eyes.

Leia screamed.

“What?” Macy said, scrunching her nose.

Leia’s trembling hands were barely able to switch on her own flashlight. She managed to point it to where she thought she saw the figure. Nothing was there but bark and branches and trunks and leaves.

“She’s already terrified,” Macy teased. “I’ll go by myself. You wait out here.” Without waiting for Leia, Macy made good on her promise.

Fear sprouted and twisted like dark branches through Leia’s thoughts.

“Wait,” Leia croaked, running after Macy. She failed to notice the candlelight had gone out until Macy was already creaking the door open.

As the cabin door thudded against the wall with a shudder, a dark, musty smell hit them like a blast of wind.

“Ugh,” Macy groaned. “Chat, make sure you tell us if you see anything! We might have night vision cameras, but we don't got goggles."

The air was thick, denser than smoke and fog, wafting from the weighty black mass of the darkness in the cabin.

“Here we go,” Macy said, pointing her flashlight into the room. There was nothing extraordinary about the cabin. The table and chairs were right where Leia remembered them to be. The mantel was heavy with dust and behind it the decaying remains of the kitchen. The sofa was riddled with holes, the stuffing oozing from the pores like wriggling white worms.

“Crap,” Macy whispered, flashing her light at the ground where the coffee table used to stand. “Is that blood?”

Leia didn’t answer. That was where they had found her dad, lying there, his eyes opened wide, his jaw thrown by someone or something, tossed halfway across the room as if it were dirty laundry. She still remembered, that for some reason, it looked like he was smiling. Maybe it was the lack of the bottom part of his mouth and the way his top teeth protruded past his upturned lip.

Leia shuddered. “Good enough? Let’s get out of here.” But then some dark desire, some purpose of malice seemed to nudge them forward into the clutches of its spite. Leia’s heart raced, her feet glued to the floor, and she turned to look to her rear.

The shape was there at the edge of the clearing. Its body was drenched in silver moonlight. Its skin was as smooth as porcelain. But Leia could not see its face, shrouded in the shadow of the forest.

Leia tried to speak, to warn Macy, but the weight of it was paralyzing, as if the air bore down upon her and thickened into sludge, so that even gathering the force of will to move was extraneous in itself.

“Macy,” she finally rasped. It came out as a gurgle and a whimper.

Macy turned to face her, eyes glimmering with curiosity and fascination. “What?” she said, turning to where Leia was looking. She flashed her light, and passed against the shape, then zipped it back and forth. “What?” Macy frowned, rolled her eyes, and stepped wholly into the cabin, leaving Leia alone.

The shape trudged forward. Its dress didn’t sway, even its twisting strands of hair didn’t move. It took another slow step. It moved in a way that made it appear as if it were standing in place, and instead its surroundings were drifting past it, like an immovable constant in the center of a slowly rolling film reel. And with each moment, it drew inevitably closer to Leia.

It took another step, then another. Leia stood petrified, and yet, as its face edged upon finally revealing itself, Leia felt a horrified curiosity. In a sudden movement the shape lunged forward on one foot, though it never got closer. Its face was suddenly revealed, and Leia saw it. The skin of its face was like cracked chalk and flaky dough, like the dehydrated surface of a desert or a parched tongue. Where its eyes should have been were only gaping holes, dark tearstains branching below them. Its mouth yawned as if in mid-howl, the shape so wide as if the jaws were thrust forcibly open to shatter the joints which held them—but there was a slight curl at the edges so that Leia was sure that even in its misery the thing was taunting her slightly.

Leia was too terrified to even stumble back. Then suddenly of its own accord, the door slammed shut, sending her reeling into darkness.

Horror seemed to release her from its vice-like grip. “Macy!” Leia shrieked. She plummeted, as if into a pit, drowning in darkness. She fell hard against a concrete floor.

She groaned and turned onto her stomach. She groped for her torch and flicked it on. She was in a concrete box, some cubicle cage, with not a door or window of escape to be seen.

“Macy!” Leia whimpered. She saw Macy’s phone on the ground just in front of her. She grabbed it and looked at the shattered screen. Chat was frantic, lines of text streaming up the screen.

“Where’d they go?”

“The cabin’s really haunted?”

“Shouldn’t someone get their location and call the cops?”

“Hoax. Called it.”

“100% rugpull. Can never trust these newer streamers.”

“Not enjoying this view of the kitchen, guys.”

But Leia was confused. Her camera screen was capturing her blank surroundings, not the kitchen.

“Chat,” Leia said frantically. “Help us. I don’t know where we are. Macy’s gone.”

There was a hiss behind her.

Leia turned and screamed. Macy stood in midair, as if on a floating platform. Leia could only see the whites of her eyes. Her lips were whispering in a maddened frenzy, as if she were speaking a thousand words a minute; but Leia could only hear disjointed gasps and hisses and seething, none of which matched with the manic movements of Macy’s mouth.

Leia reeled backwards. She covered her mouth with her hand, trying not to scream, for fear of what it might bring. She realized she was still holding up the camera. Her eyes flicked towards the screen.

In the far corner there was that black shape from before, standing still, peering at her through the strands of its hair. Leia looked up from the phone and flashed her light to the corner, but her naked eye saw nothing. She looked back down at the screen, and the thing had moved closer. But still her naked eye saw nothing. She looked down again, and the thing had stretched its arm out as if to grab Leia. It was just behind Macy now. The next time Leia looked, she only saw its legs, as if it were standing just before her.

Leia let a scream tear through her lips and she dropped the phone and ran.

Run.

Run.

Run.

She ran through this endless concrete hall that had been but a box only moments before. As the light from her flashlight zigzagged against the walls and the floors in a frenzy, she saw things.

Naked bodies standing with their backs to her, huddled against the corner, staring at something in their midst. A creature with the face of a haggard old man, its limbs splayed grotesquely as if he was a spider, staring at her from glazed grey eyes.

She ran and ran and ran, until she fell down on the floor, panting.

She began sobbing.

She crawled so that her back would lean against the wall. In terror, she looked out at the chamber. Once again, it was only a concrete box with four walls and four corners. Her hands brushed against something. She looked. It was Macy’s phone. Despair and disbelief came upon Leia as if she were being thrown off a cliff. With trembling hands, she lifted the flashlight. There was Macy, still in the air, still going on with her feverish mumblings. Her head moved slowly down. Her white eyes locked with Leia’s own. She smiled.

Leia realized something with hopeless horror. She lifted the camera and looked. There was nothing around her. She switched it to selfie mode. There, on her shoulder, was the face of the thing, gazing at her with greedy eyes. Leia turned her head slowly, reluctantly, terrified of what she might see beside her.

Nothing.

She gave in to crazed laughter as she picked herself up and started running again.