Stuck

*NOTE – TRIGGER WARNING – SELF-HARM/SUICIDE*

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Lara noticed it as she waded through the thick branches, pausing in the clearing before the dilapidated building.

She didn’t see Bree anywhere. Lara was betting she found this place at some point, and was now using it to try and scare her. Lara didn’t see anything, but that candle didn’t light itself, and there was no way someone was living in there. Lara wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction.

“Bree!” She yelled. “I know you’re in there. You might as well come out, because I am not coming in there after you.”

Her announcement was met with silence, save the shrill cries of the crickets and katydids. Bree was probably watching her from the window. She took a few steps towards the cabin, stopping just short of the porch. Before she could consider her next move, the candle in the window suddenly went dark.

Lara smirked. “Come on out, Bree, I can see you in there,” she yelled. “Give it up.”

Nothing. Lara sighed, and slowly stepped onto the rotting porch, the mossy wood creaking loudly beneath her feet. She tried to peer into the window, but it was so caked in dirt and grime she could see nothing. She wasn’t sure how she even saw the candle so clearly in the first place.

“Bree, come out, it’s not as funny as you think it is,” Lara called out. But, again, her plea went unanswered, the house silent and dark.

Lara let out a sigh of frustration. She tried the knob, and found it opened at her touch, the door swinging wide as if to beckon her in. She was greeted by a hallway, though she could not see more than a couple of feet in.

Lara entered and gingerly walked down the hall, shining her light around as she went. Clearly this place had not been maintained in a long time, it looked as though it might fall apart at any moment. She stopped short when the back wall materialized into view, where the hall took a sharp right turn.

She peeked around the corner and saw what might have once been a living room. Against one wall were the tattered remains of a couch, what fabric it had left hanging in moldy clumps. A recliner in the middle was in similar shape, and a single door was closed tight on the back wall.

The dirty window loomed over the front of the room, where the candle sat on the sill. It was shining again; Bree had obviously relit it as soon as Lara stepped inside. The window was as opaque from the inside as it was the outside.

“Jesus Bree, come on out, you’re not fooling anyone,” Lara said loudly. She dialed Bree’s number, hoping to catch her by surprise. She did not hear the phone ringing from inside the cabin, but to her surprise, someone picked up after a few seconds.

“Hello, who is this?” the voice asked. It was not Bree’s voice, though she faintly recognized it. Not from someone she knew, but from somewhere else, like a movie? It was a crazy thought, but that’s what it felt like.

“Who…who is this? Where’s Bree?” Lara asked. There was something knotting up in the pit of her stomach, something wasn’t feeling right.

“Bree, I don’t….I need help, please, who…” The voice replied, faltering at the end. “I don’t…no, oh God, no.”

With that, the call went out and the phone fell silent. Lara felt a deep chill spread throughout her body. That voice was not Bree’s, but it was extremely familiar. Who the hell was it? She tried to recall if she had seen Bree with her phone today, perhaps she had left it somewhere?

On the other hand, the person on the line said they needed help. Was this part of Bree’s prank? Something inside her said no, the terror in the girl’s voice was too convincing. She shined her light around the room once more, but there was no way Bree could be hiding in here. Lara looked at the door on the back wall.

“Bree, come out here right now, please,” Lara said, trying, and failing, to hide the quivering in her voice. “Please, it’s not funny anymore.”

As if in response, the back door slowly swung open, creaking to a halt about halfway through. Lara gasped and stepped back, fighting the immediate instinct to take off running. She was just starting to peer into the darkness beyond when a voice spoke out from inside.

“Lara, I’m in here,” she heard. It was low, quiet, like it was coming from inside a deep hole, but it was unmistakably Bree’s voice.

“Bree, this stopped being funny a while ago, come the hell on, let’s get out of here,” Lara replied. Bree, however, did not respond.

“I’m coming in there and dragging you out by your hair, I swear to God,” Lara said, walking up to the door. She pushed it open slightly and stepped just inside. It smelled of mildew and rot, but something else underneath that, something sickly and almost sweet. She pulled her shirt up over her nose, which helped a little.

She used her phone to illuminate her surroundings. It was a small bedroom, or at least it used to be. The bedframe was mostly intact, but what remained of the mattress was little more than soggy strips of fabric hanging over rusted springs. An old wooden dresser sloughed against one wall. The only other feature of note was a slatted closet door, closed tight.

“I love the commitment to the bit, but seriously, come out, I know you’re in there,” Lara said, her voice full of tired exasperation. “It’s disgusting in here.”

She prepared herself for the inevitable jump scare, and slid the closet door open. Inside, slouched on the ground against the corner, was a rotting female corpse. The skin on the left arm was sliced open from wrist to elbow, and was crawling with worms and maggots. The corpse was wearing Bree’s shirt, and a bloodstained piece of paper lay beside her.

Lara screamed and stumbled back from the horrific scene, gagging reflexively. She tripped over the edge of the bedframe, sending herself sprawling to the floor. She scrambled up and through the door, back into the living room, right into someone standing there. She screamed again, recoiling in terror.

“Lara, Lara, it’s okay.” It was Bree, standing there in the dim candlelight, a concerned look on her face. “What happened?”

Lara stared at her in disbelief, tears streaming down her face. “What did you do!?” She screamed. “What the hell did you do!?”

Bree took a step back. “I’m sorry, I was just messing with you, I shouldn’t have hid out in here. It’s okay,” she said.

“WHO IS THAT!” Lara screamed, pointing towards the room. Bree looked at her quizzically, then brushed past her into the room. Lara followed her in, to see Bree scanning the area with her phone. Everything looked the same, except for the closet: it was empty.

Bree turned back to her. “What are you talking about?” She put on a mischievous expression. “Are you messing with me?”

“It…she…was right here,” Lara mumbled, her mind felt like it was somehow both racing and frozen in place. “What’s happening?” She looked at Bree, her face marked by desperation and despair. “I don’t understand.”

Bree’s face melted into one of serious concern. “Lara…what are you talking about? What happened, what did you see?”

Lara felt her arm lift and point dumbly at the closet, like a marionette being manipulated by a string. “She was right here,” she whispered. “I don’t…” She trailed off.

Bree put an arm around her shoulder. “I’m sorry, this was a dumb prank. Let’s get you out of here, go back home, yeah? You can tell me all about it in the car.”

Lara looked at her in a state of shock, nodding slowly. “Yeah,” she replied softly.

Lara leaned on Bree as they exited the house, her knees too weak to stand on their own. She felt like she was going to burst into tears at any second, but she just wanted to get out of here and back to her own house. She took a glance back at the cabin as they stepped off the porch; the candle was still there, its flame dancing in the window.

It was a short walk back to the car, where Bree held the passenger door and helped Lara in. She then strapped herself in the driver’s seat and slowly backed out of the small trail they had parked in. Lara stared out the window, silent, as Bree snaked through the gravel backroads. They turned onto the old highway back to town, where Bree finally spoke up.

“You okay? Want to talk about it?” She asked.

“I just want to go home, maybe we can talk about it later,” Lara replied. “I just…I don’t feel great.”

“That bad, huh?” Bree asked.

“Yeah, it…I mean, I don’t know, I thought I saw something in there, something that couldn’t possibly be, but…it felt so real,” Lara said. Now that they were driving home, she was starting to calm down a little. Her imagination had just ran wild for a second, she told herself, it was nothing but some temporary hallucination, based on some weird power of self-suggestion or something.

“Maybe it was, you saw it,” Bree said. “Pretty hard to just imagine a dead body like that.”

Lara almost nodded in agreement, but turned to look at Bree with horror on her face. “I didn’t tell you what I saw back there,” she said, fear rapidly blooming within her as she spoke.

“Back there?” Bree said with a laugh. “What makes you think we ever left? I’m fucking dead, Lara. Didn’t you see me?” She started laughing harder, and Lara noticed they were accelerating quickly.

“I’m fucking dead and you didn’t even read my note. With friends like you no wonder I killed myself,” Bree said. “Wonder if I can do it again?”

She drifted into the opposite lane, still accelerating, and turned her headlights off. There were a couple of other cars a mile or so down the highway, heading their way.

“Bree, stop it!” Lara screamed through her tears. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because you let me die!” Bree hissed at her. She slammed her foot down on the gas, the trees and houses on the side of the road blending together as the car picked up speed. They crested a small hill, so hard the car left the ground for a second. Ahead, less than a hundred yards in front of them, the lights of an oncoming car were shining directly at them.

There was no time to react, no time to do anything, so Lara simply closed her eyes and braced for impact, the sounds of Bree’s maniacal laughter ringing in her head. She acutely felt the rumbling of the uneven highway against the tires, and then, nothing.

There was no crash, no crushing of metal on metal that she expected. She didn’t feel anything, it was as if the world had simply stopped. She wondered, briefly, if this was it, if she could, maybe, just sit here, eyes closed, staving off the end forever in the darkness.

But no, something was wrong, there wasn’t nothing, exactly. She could still feel the seat underneath her, and there was a smell. Almost sweet, but thick and noxious, offensive on a base level. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes to whatever was waiting on her.

It took a second for her eyes to adjust, but her brain couldn’t process what she was seeing at first. A light, like a small flame, was glimmering ahead. No, two lights, one smaller and duller than the other. As her vision came into focus, she saw it was a candle, and its reflection on the window behind it, that she was seeing.

She was back in the cabin, sitting in the crumbling recliner in the living room. She felt something crawl down her arm, a giant water bug scampering down from her shoulder. She quickly stood, and immediately fell to the ground, dizzy and ill, feeling like she was going to vomit.

Hacking and gagging, she knelt like that for a second, trying to get her bearings and fight the panic within. She wasn’t back in the cabin. She never left.

She stood, feeling around in her pockets for a phone that wasn’t there. She glanced at the door to the bedroom from before, closed tight, but couldn’t bring herself to open it. She had to get out of here, she could figure the rest out later.

Trying to leave brought another wave of horror however, as she realized the room had changed. Where the entry hall had been, the one that lead to the front door, now stood only a wall. She was trapped, it appeared.

“No no no no no,” she said frantically. She started pushing and prodding on the new section of wall, hoping to move or open it somehow, but it was to no avail. She was stuck in here, but she wasn’t going to let herself die in here.

Lara started looking around closely, there must be something in here, some hint or clue as to how she could escape. What was going on? What was the thread that was binding her to this place? There was little to work with in the room, only the furniture and that damn candle. She was thankful for its light, but also oddly resentful of it. After all, she might never have entered if she hadn’t seen it.

After scouring the room, and finding nothing, she knew the only thing left was to try the bedroom. She steeled herself, trying to mentally prepare for what she would find, and gripped the knob tightly. At her touch, it seemed to turn and push forward on its own. It wanted her to come in, it seemed.

It was exactly as before, from what she could see, and the smell again hit her with the force of a truck. It was actually even worse, it seemed. She stood there, at the threshold of the door, afraid to enter but knowing she must. She walked over to the candle, knowing without her phone she would be practically blind in there.

Incredibly, it looked as though it was almost at full length, despite the fact it seemingly had been burning for some time now. Curious, but she had more important things to think about. She took the candle and walked back to the door. She did not notice the flame that continued to flicker in the reflection of the window.

Armed with a light source, she looked around the room, and towards the closed closet. She tried to take a deep breath to steady herself, but the stench only made her insides roil. She swung the closet door open, where the corpse on the floor still arranged just as it was. It looked even more desiccated though, like it had sat for weeks since she last seen it. It was less...juicy was the word that came to mind, which made her almost vomit anew.

“You didn’t even read my note,” Bree had said. Sure enough, the bloodied piece of paper was still lying next to the body. Trembling, Lara reached down and grabbed it, reading it by the dim candlelight.

Lara, if you’re reading this, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but I can’t go on. I hope you never find this, but if you do, don’t wait. There is only one way out of this hell. I love you. I’m sorry. Bree.

The note was grimy and barely legible in places, but it was one hundred percent Bree’s handwriting. The paper fell from her hands, fluttering softly to the floor. Her mind insisted this must all be part of some elaborate prank, that somehow, Bree had set all this up and was she was just waiting for the punchline.

She took a closer look at the body on the ground. It was clearly a female, and those were without a doubt Bree’s clothes. It didn’t make sense; this person had been dead for weeks. Bree couldn’t have walked in more than ten minutes ahead of Lara.

Suddenly, she heard something that couldn’t be real: Bree’s phone. Her ringtone was emanating from the corpse. She could see the faint glow of the screen in the jeans pocket. She didn’t hesitate at all, she reached down and pulled the phone out, surprised to see it was her own number that was calling. Hesitantly, she hit the green button on screen and put the phone to her ear.

“Hello, who is this?” Lara answered.

“Who…who is this? Where’s Bree?” the person on the phone asked. Lara faintly recognized the voice.

“Bree, I don’t….I need help, please, who…” Lara started, then paused. She looked at the screen again. It was her calling. “I don’t…no, oh God, no.” She dropped the phone, and could feel herself going into some sort of shock. It was her. She had reached herself, at least this version of herself, before. She picked the phone back up, but it was now dead and unresponsive.

She screamed, a primal howl that carried the fear she felt in her soul. She had to get out of here, or she was going to lose her mind. She raced out of the room, but the living room had not changed again, the mysterious wall was still blocking her exit.

She frantically looked around, for anything that could help, pausing as her gaze passed over the window. She saw the strange ghost-like reflection of the candle’s flame in the window, but it was nothing more than an oddity. What she really saw was a possible way out.

She banged on the window with her fist as hard as she could, but to no avail, the glass seemed remarkably thick and strong. She took a step back and chucked Bree’s phone at it, but it bounced harmlessly off and thudded to the ground.

Lara punched at the glass a few more times, but it may well have been concrete as much good as she was doing. She hit it so hard she felt something give in her hand, it felt as though she had broken something.

She slumped to the floor, cradling her hand, and the dam of her tears burst once more. How long she sat there and cried, she couldn’t say. After a while, she simply laid down sobbing for her mother. Her cries went unanswered, and she eventually, somehow, fell asleep, curled into a ball on the dirty floor.

She woke up some time after that, and a quick look around showed nothing new. Time grew fuzzy, she simply milled about, alternating between periods of frantic sobbing and numb calmness. It felt as though days passed, though she never grew hungry or thirsty. She found that sleeping was her sole escape, if only briefly, but eventually it all seemed to blend into a daze, the line between her sleeping and waking selves growing thinner and thinner.

The time took its toll. Every day, every week that passed, she felt like less of herself, as if her very essence was being drained. Perhaps it was. The house must be keeping her here for a reason, after all. Perhaps it was feeding on her, sucking her dry with every hour she was here.

She went to Bree’s corpse, which was now little more than a skeleton with a few scraps of flesh remaining, and found what she was looking for hiding behind the body. A small pocket knife, rusted with blood, sat on the ground. It must have been what Bree used on herself.

Sitting down next to Bree’s remains, Lara felt strangely at peace with her decision, if only because it was her decision to make. She just wanted this all to end, whatever it took. She took a deep breath, much easier now that the stink of Bree’s corpse had dissipated, and put the blade against the skin of her wrist. She was surprised by how cold it felt.

The blade was not very sharp, and though the cut was jagged and deep, Lara barely seemed to feel it. She only felt a sense of relief. As what was left of her life ebbed away, she saw the candle’s flame through the crack in the door. Had she put the candle back? The darkness took her before she could recall.

Outside, the cool wind picked up a bit, and it started to lightly rain. The candle in the window flickered softly, then suddenly went out, and the cabin in the woods was dark and still again.