The Cabin

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

These were the first legible words of a letter I found in the “undeliverables” pile in the mail room at Miskatonic University.

The postal stamp on the letter shows it had been in the pile, lost, for almost three years. Oh, how I wish it would have remained so and my damned curiosity never had prompted me to open it.

It was such an odd looking letter, yellowed with time and the name of the addressee so illegibly scrawled across it. The entire address written almost as if the writer was writing while running from something.

The contents, which I will share with you, have me most terrified and I’ve been having the most horrible dreams since reading them.

If I can track down this Dr. Armitage to whom the letter was apparently intended I would deliver it to him personally, but he has apparently retired from the university and in truth I’d rather forget the letter entirely.

I tried to burn it yesterday, but for some reason I could not bring myself to do it. I do not know if it is fear or some other compulsion, but I cannot stop reading it … over and over.

Each time I feel like my soul sinks further into this nightmarish “Swishing” sound the author mentions.

Heavens protect me! Please let me read you the letter and see for yourself the burden it has placed upon me. Perhaps between us we can find this Dr. Armitage and release ourselves from this cursed thing!

The first half page of the letter was pure dribble – scribbles like the rantings of a madman. It wasn’t until the cabin is mentioned that the writer’s words take shape.

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“It is about that night I am writing to you Dr. Armitage,” the letter continues. “Even now I can feel the darkness closing in and you are the only man who can help me.”

“You must pull yourself away from Miskatonic University and come at once! I fear I cannot face this terror alone much longer. My strength and resolve fade each day.

I may go mad with fear before the end and if the worst happens, I want someone who can save humanity to know what has transpired here to put a stop to the madness.

I suppose I should tell you the story from the beginning. To understand it all you must first have an understanding of the cabin.

Set far back in the dark of the Taconic mountains, the cabin had long been a subject of speculation and legend among the few locals that call the area home.

It is a five-mile hike to the old cabin from the nearest road and few ever ventured there, fewer still did so knowingly, but I’ve passed the place on numerous occasions, often finding reason to pass that way as, since childhood, I’ve felt a strange fascination for the place.”

“The wood shingled roof is mostly gone and the glassless windows almost seem to reach out like the gaping maw of some nightmare come to life, beckoning for any that might come within their reach.

Strangely, the lone door was always intact and shut, which in some ways makes sense as no one has dared approach it to look inside in all the years I’ve known of the cabin and according to local legends it has sat empty half a century at least.

Few of those who were alive then will speak of what happened, but I have heard a group of men from the area boarded up the door to contain the horror within. A horror that has now found its way out and is drawing ever closer!”

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Here begins several more paragraphs of illegible script before the text becomes coherent again.

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“As a child, I first saw the cabin when my father and I tracked a wounded deer near the cabin.

My father made several “signs” and muttered some strange words I’d never heard before as we neared the cabin but he would go no closer than about 50 yards.

The deer’s tracks showed it heading toward the cabin and we made a wide circle around it but found no sign of the deer going away from it.

“It must have fallen somewhere near the cabin,” my father cursed. “It’s lost.”

“Can’t we go look for it,” I asked.

“No. It is gone,” he said. “We never go near the cabin. Let’s go.”

The cabin was dreadful and made the hair on my neck stand on end but at the same time I felt drawn to it.

I couldn’t help but stand transfixed, peering into the bottomless black of those windows. I expected at any moment to see a fanciful terror move past one of those hellish portals.

I stood there for several moments until dad’s demanding voice called me back down the trail toward home, but for a moment, I thought I could hear a faint sound coming from the cabin, almost as if someone was sweeping. Swish. Swish. Swish.

Father would speak no more on the matter again and it was nearly a decade before I once again beheld that dread place.”

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Here the writer talks about the goings on in his family and reveals his seemingly unholy fascination with this cabin and mentions hearing the “Swishing” sound in his dreams. I swear I’ve been hearing it in my dreams and now it seems I can almost hear it even when awake.

He addresses Dr. Armitage and mentions some events at Dunwich and some “invisible horror” and how the doctor seems to have put an end to it and then the script devolves again into gibberish before picking back up.

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“Momma passed away a few years ago and after staying in Albany for a year, the yearning to return home took me and in the Fall of 1932 I found myself standing on the stoop of our old farm house assessing the ravages of nearly a decade of neglect.

It took some time to get things in order and get a good crop of vegetables and a few head of chickens, pigs and cattle started off well on the land.

Once things were moving I found a little time for myself to wander the forest trails of my youth and remember fondly.

It was the sweltering summer of ’33 and just a day before my thirty-third birthday that my wanderings finally lead me up to the old cabin.

The shadows of the trees were growing long when I realized where I was. The old cabin was in sight before I realized how close I was and when I looked up at that horrid edifice my heart leapt into my throat.

A candle burned in one of the windows! It’s pale glow was like the siren’s song – beckoning me to my own doom!

Who could possibly be there? My mind raced for an answer. No one had been within its walls in more than half a century and no one who had called the Tactonics home since childhood would dare approach it.

I didn’t believe in the legends, and in my youth the cabin held a strange sway over me, but now, I found myself fighting the urge to run screaming.

It must be a hunter from outside the area, I thought.

Strangers began coming to the Taconics in search of game during the Recession and many were still returning.

I slowly made my way around toward the front of the cabin, keeping my distance and keeping my eyes fixed on the candle. A slight breeze was blowing and yet the candle didn’t flicker. Instead it watched my every move, a baleful eye in the gathering dark.

As the front of the home came into view I gasped once again, heart leaping. The front door was open!

I stood there shaking when suddenly I heard it clear as day – the Swishing!”

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The letter gets rather choppy here. The author appears to have wadded up the paper and later tried to smooth it out and finish his writing, but ink smears make much of it illegible. The following are the words I’ve been able to make out.

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“Swishing … coming through … the door! … the shadows moved. … Swish. Swish. Swish.

… terror … frozen … an eternity … I fled! It’s behind me … Swishing! Dear God! … the sound!”

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All I can fathom is that the cabin’s door, once opened, released some kind of terror and the author fled with it in pursuit. Swishing … such a sound … almost on the edge of hearing.

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“I came to a week later in the hospital. I had been admitted delirious with fever and ranting.

A father and son found me the morning after my ordeal lying half in a creek near the main road to town. Somehow, despite the warm summer, I was feverish.

My body was so hot to the touch the pair used gloves to load me into their truck. I was so wracked with ague that my teeth popped from my grinding them together.

At times I would scream in my fevered sleep and toss and fight as if warding off an unseen devil.

It was the worst fever anyone at the hospital had ever seen and many feared it was a contagious new disease, perhaps a return of the plague of 1918.

However, after six days my fever broke, and I settle down, but still I screamed in the night and tore at my blankets, forcing the nurses to restrain me.

I was in an out for the next week – conscious at times but mostly in a kind of waking coma.

I remember coming to the first day for a moment and seeing my surroundings, but then the dark swallowed me up again and again and again. I found myself running in terror through a primordial forest, driven forward by that ceaseless Swishing.

It was nearly a month before I’d recovered enough to be discharged. I had nearly broken my own back in the throws of the feverish chills and several of my teeth had cracked and needed capping.

I would not speak about the cabin at first. I was still too shaken by the experience even if I had half convinced myself it was a delusion brought on by the fever. But one night after waking from that horrid Swishing, I confided in a nurse – Anna.

She assured me it was all dream brought on by the fever, but seemed strangely interested in my description of the cabin. After that she pestered me about it until I no longer wanted to discuss it.”

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It seems an entire page of the letter is missing here. This “Anna” is mentioned again later in the story but I get ahead of myself. I swear I can almost hear this “Swishing.” Can’t you?

At any rate the letter goes on at some length uninterrupted.

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“Several neighbors from down the valley had taken to caring for the homestead while I was away but in my absence some predator had found courage to invade the farm.

All of the chickens were missing and two piglets. I suspected a wolf had wandered into the Tactonics from Canada, but I found no tracks and none of the neighbors’ livestock had yet fallen victim to the poacher.

I went about setting some of my father’s old traps about the place in hopes of trapping the pest.

Every night I was wracked with the terror of the Swishing and almost every day another animal disappeared with no sign of tracks or blood.

The traps were never sprung and even those using rotting meat as a lure were unvisited.

Between setting traps and patrolling the farm, I fought off the compulsion to dwell on my night terrors.

I was still trying to convince myself it had all been a fever-induced dream. That, somehow, I’d become suddenly ill and that all of it, even the cabin and the Swishing hadn’t happened. Yet I could no explain how I was found so far from home lying in a stream.

The wolf’s kills grew increasingly larger until the sow went missing one night. Strangely, one of the cattle turned up about this time with a wound to its hind leg that looked almost as if it had been burned with acid.

I took to putting the livestock in the barn at night and purchased two vicious-looking bullmastiffs from a neighbor to patrol the property at night.

For the next week there was no sign of the wolf, but on several occasions I heard the dogs break out into a riot of aggressive barking.

The small herd of deer I was used to seeing every morning drinking at the pond grew increasingly smaller until one day none came down out of the forest.

I attributed this to the presence of the dogs, but at the same time the woods around the cabin grew increasingly quiet.

Birds, which could be seen flitting from tree to tree, did not sing and it seemed even the crickets and frogs that bellowed all night had fallen silent.

During those hot, summer nights I slept with my windows open and routinely fell asleep to the sounds of the night insects. It was harder to sleep without their droning and often, just before sleep took me, I would imagine I heard the Swishing far off in the distance coming down the valley.

One night I heard the dogs begin a particularly violent fit of barking and break off toward the woods. I listened for a long time and for a moment I thought I heard one yelp, but the night went still and I plunged back into my nightly terrors before I could give it another thought.

The next morning neither dog could be found and they did not come to call. I searched the property and into the woods for some distance but found no sign of either of them.

I had been sheltering the livestock in the barn for about a week at this point and that night I woke from my terrors to the sounds of the cattle stamping around in the barn and the pigs squealing.

The dogs were gone and the wolf had returned. He’d clearly gotten the better of two large mastiffs. Perhaps it was more than one wolf.

I resolved to stay awake the next night and end my predator problem once and for all as it was clearly harrowing my livestock through the walls of the barn. I stayed awake for some time, dreading sleep, but as the darkness finally took me I thought I heard the Swishing out by the barn.

The next morning I spent shoring up a corral for the cattle down by the pond and visiting a neighbor where I purchased a goat to use as bait for the wolf or wolves that evening.

In passing, the man mentioned a pretty nurse from the city who had come by his farm several weeks earlier and who had helped him with a cut he’d sustained while chopping wood.

This caught my interest and I asked him about the nurse. He said she told him her name was Anna and she was in the area for a few days to paint some of the country and she thought some old cabins or houses might be fun to paint.

He said she left heading up the valley toward my farm, but he never saw or heard her come back down the road in her auto.

I was sorely disturbed by this news and decided I would go back to the city and ask for Anna at the hospital the next day, but tonight I needed to end my wolf problem.

That evening I sat up in the loft of the barn with a rifle and an electric torch. I reckoned that at the first sound of the wolf attacking the goat I had tied up to a post in the yard, I could flick on the torch and dispatch my quarry.

I’d moved the cattle down to the pond, fearing the gunshot could cause them to panic and damage themselves and the barn.

I’d carried a chair up from the kitchen into the hay loft and as I sat there waiting on the predator to make an appearance, I fought off the thoughts of the horrid cabin and fretted over Anna.

A cool breeze kicked up and eventually I found myself half dozing in the chair.

A full moon was coming up on the horizon when I was startled awake, nearly falling out of the chair and dropping the electric torch onto the wood floor of the loft.

I didn’t remember dreaming, so I must not have fallen completely asleep, but still I felt like I’d once again been running in terror from the Swishing

The loud thumb of the torch falling startled the goat in the yard below and I heard the bell I’d placed around his neck jingle once, then all was quiet.

The torch’s bulb had broken in the fall, but the moon was casting enough light I could see the post and the dark shape of the goat lying next to it. I concluded I could still get a good shot on the wolf when he came and I settled back into my chair.

Only a few minutes had passed when the cattle began to stir down at the pond. Several of them bawled loudly and I heard them stampede to one end of the enclosure. The wolf had to be moving about.

The goat was suddenly on his feet bleating and the pigs below me in the barn were moving nervously around their pens.

I heard the cattle break free of their pen and stampede off into the woods. As the stamping of their feet faded into the distance my heart was stabbed with ice. Was that the Swishing sound?

Swish. Swish. Swish. It was coming from the pond area moving toward the barn! I slapped myself. I was dreaming again! I had to be!

Nothing I did woke me from this nightmare and the terror laden cries of the pigs and goat grew increasingly more distressed as the sound moved closer. Swish. Swish. Swish.

The Swishing was nearly beneath me when the goat finally tore free his tether and bolted into the night. For a moment the Swishing grew more rapid, Swish-Swish-Swish, as if something were chasing the goat, then it went quiet.

The pigs were squealing and thrashing around their pens and I my eyes darted about trying to pierce the darkness.

After a few moments the Swishing began again this time it was coming closer to me in my perch! It came straight to the barn. Swish. Swish. Swish. And stopped right below my perch!”

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Here the handwriting becomes so shaky the words cannot easily be made out except two sentences: “I collapsed to the floor of the loft and the next thing I knew sun was warming my face of a bright, cloudless morning.” And, “The goat and cattle were gone and I could find no signs of blood or tracks in front of the barn from the night’s barrage.”

I cannot decipher the rest, but that sound ... doesn’t it seem like it echoes in the mind?

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“One thing was clear. I was alone in facing whatever this thing was and it was up to me to protect my neighbors and somehow secure my own sanity. I wanted to leave and never look back but I knew if I did, I’d never sleep peacefully again.

Thoughts of checking on Anna evaporated and I set about securing my farm.

I boarded up windows. Secured doors. I built a defensive position in the loft, knocking down the stairs and installing a retractable rope ladder.

I carried food and water to the loft along with all the armaments in my small arsenal – A rifle, a shotgun and an old revolver.

I filled several glass bottles with gasoline and set up several troughs in the yard below the loft to use as braziers, spreading dry hay all around them.

That night I settled into my loft fortress and waited for the pigs to squeal, knowing it would mean death was stalking me once again.

A waning moon was beginning to set that night when the pigs finally stirred. At first they fidgeted nervously and then they began to squeal and soon I could hear the swishing coming from the direction of the cabin.

It seemed to hesitate at the ring of light cast by the braziers. I could hear it – swish, swish – moving along the ring of light and I sat perfectly still, fighting my rising dread and poised to act as soon as an opportunity presented itself.

When the braziers had died down to smoldering embers the swishing began to move closer. Swish. Swish. I shook violently and strained to see any movement. I could hear the thing move, but I could see nothing.

Finally, when I deemed the sound was close enough to one of the braziers, I hurled a bottle of gasoline into it.

The night erupted in an explosion of flames and again and again I hurled bottles into the spreading fire igniting burst upon burst into a growing wildfire.

I scanned the area for any sign of my quarry but there was nothing – only a frantic swishing and the roar of flames.

And then my courage quailed!”

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Once again the author seems to have gone into a fit of some sort in his writing and only pieces of the next page are legible. What? Oh, that damned “Swishing.” See I told you, it catches in the mind’s ear like a bad tune.

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“In the shadows cast by the flames … the horror! A mass … boneless flesh.

… it fled … toward the cabin … undulating shadow haunts me. … invisibility. … injured by fire.

… hunts at night. … it cannot climb. … cabin is its lair. … resolved to burn the cabin to the ground.”

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The illegible ranting goes on for quite some time before the author’s sanity seems to return. God it’s like crickets at night when trying to fall off to sleep. Swish, Swish, Swish in my head. It’s going to drive me insane.

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“When I reached the end of the passable road I was stunned to find an automobile parked under a tree near the trail leading up to the cabin.

Who could possibly be up here? No one had driven past the farm in weeks. Suddenly, my heart sank. Anna! My neighbor said she drove up the valley and never returned.

I set off for the cabin at a run. After weeks knew there was no chance I’d find her alive, but in my fear for her, my reason escaped me.

I was winded and stumbling when I finally came within sight of the cabin and upon seeing the front door terror once again gripped me. It was open! Wish as I might I could no longer deny it was all real and it had not been a fever-induced delirium.

A backpack lie propped against the door frame and in my emotional state I almost ran to grab it as if it were Anna I’d found safe. But my senses reeled with renewed terror at the open doorway and the thought Anna was inside.

I wanted to run away and simultaneously wanted to run inside and drag her out, but eventually my instinct for self-preservation and my wits found common ground and I loaded my shotgun with buck shot and dug out my electric torch.

I was going in after Anna. I had to know for sure she wasn’t trapped inside before I burned that monstrosity to the ground.

I thought to call her name, but my instincts warned me to silence and I choked back screaming out for her.

Slowly, I advanced on the cabin. Each step was an eternity in the taking and an eternity would I listen straining to hear that horrid Swishing that told me terror was near.

The gaping doorway seemed more ominous than ever and I could picture in my mind that invisible beast just inside the door, waiting.

I stood in the very threshold of the door for long minutes listening before I flicked on my electric torch – the beam disappeared into the darkness as if being swallowed.

Despite the glaring midday hour, neither sunlight nor torch seemed to pierce the smothering darkness that crowded towards me.

After listening for some time for that maddening Swishing, I stepped through the door and plunged into darkness.

I could swear I stood on the edge of eternity. Tiny flecks of sunlight peaked through cracks in the ceiling … or were those faint stars in an ebon sky overcast by a thin veil of clouds? I could not be sure.

I stood in wonder as I found myself poised on the edge of space – one step more and I’d tumble into oblivion.”

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Here the writing again gets almost illegible. The clear words I can make out are as follows:

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“… remains of … the candle! … frozen … I’d been right.

… gun … empty … spent shell casings ... everywhere.

… mustered my courage … tripped … a woman’s shoe! Drops of blood!

… hallway … on for eternity …

Swishing coming from … the hallway … several shots … no effect! … fled … into the light … tossed flaming bottle … engulfing … horror inside…

… it fled …. down the hallway … into oblivion. … scream of contempt.

… the cabin … gone.”

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Again, the author’s penmanship returns. And there that damned Swishing has come back too. I thought for a moment my mind would finally be silent. It seems to happen each time I read this letter.

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“I turned over a tag on the backpack and it was a hospital identification card. It was indeed Anna’s.

I solemnly slung the pack over my shoulder and trudged down the mountain for home.

Dr. Armitage, what happened next, I cannot find a logical reason for. I returned to find the autos missing.

I made the hike to my farm and found it dilapidated and in shambles. The animals were gone and the house sat with a layer of dust.

That was the first night since the night of the candle in the window I slept without terror-laden dreams.

The next day I walked down to the neighbors to ask for help retrieving the cars and their surprise at seeing me was only equal to the fear in their eyes!

It was now 1935! Somehow I’d lost two years of time!

Finally, to quiet their fears, I told them I’d been forced to leave abruptly on a matter of life and death and had not have time to get word out to anyone of my leaving.

I don’t think it did much to calm their suspicions.”

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The next few paragraphs were written and then blotted out with ink. All I can make out is two words “murder” and “Anna.” The rest of the letter is also choppy. I will read to you what I can make of it.

Is it hot in here? I feel almost feverish. Damn that Swishing. Even now I swear I can hear it, almost as if it’s just outside the door.

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For three months … finally … precious sleep … no Swishing.

A month ago … night terrors returned. Swishing … in my dreams! Dear God … that sound! … It is coming!

… being driven mad. … finally … courage to investigate … The cabin… The cabin stands!

The door is open!