The Devils Cabin

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. It rested on the edge of a quaint village separated only by a small patch of fir trees; it nestled in a small clearing at the start of a much larger forest. No one could remember how that cabin found itself there; there hadn’t been any signs of construction, no greetings from foreign faces and there was no letter of warning sent ahead to prepare us for the possible noises the construction could make. It had just somehow appeared there one night as if it had sprouted right up out of the ground.

If you spoke to the elders, they would tell you that it must be haunted or filled with monsters; either way they stayed clear of it, and warned us to do the same. The younger generations where far less superstitious, however, and they did wander over to investigate when the adults weren’t looking. They found nothing out of the ordinary, just a simple cabin with two windows on the ground floor, and a door. There were no other windows or doors to speak of, but that was the only thing that even made it slightly odd, and after a few days of not finding anything that piqued their interest, the young ones soon lost interest. After that no one had even bothered going to check on the cabin.

That is, until one day, someone on their way back from collecting firewood in the forest noticed the lone candle sitting on a simple table by the window closest to the village. Of course, it was reported to the mayor right away, and after some investigation they still couldn’t find any signs that anyone had been in or around the cabin. That did not sit well with the elders, and they were quick to put a ban on approaching the cabin until further notice. However, this could not stop the curiosity of youth and five of the villages' children snuck out of their homes with only the light of the stars to guide them.

Obviously their first move was to try and stealthily take a peek in through one of the cabins windows. It looked exactly as it had been described in the stories that they had heard. There was a large open space with a bed, a bookshelf and a night table on the left side; the right side had a kitchenette and a small table to eat at. On the back wall sat a decent sized fire place, dividing the two sides of the room. The thing that the stories all seemed to leave out is that this cabin had a fireplace, but it didn’t appear to have a chimney. A thing that only one of the boys there that night had noticed. Of course, everyone else had been distracted by the table and the candle that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

The next thing that they did was to try and get inside. However, just like in the stories, neither the door, nor either of the windows would budge. To say that most of the children were disappointed was an understatement; after all, they had snuck out and risked punishment just to be the first kids to step into the ‘ghost house’ as it had come to be called. So, they turned to leave, ready to trudge home, complaining about how lame the whole situation was. They did not make it far though, when the distinctive sound of rusted hinges rung through their ears. Their heads whipped right around as they stared with wide eyes at the door that had seemingly opened up all on its own. The leader of the group chortled as he said aloud what everyone was thinking; that it was like a sign from above to go explore the unknown, and he led the others through the doorway.

They all entered single file, spreading out to explore all the cabin had to offer. Everyone went in except for one boy who stayed just outside of the door way. As he watched his friends wander around inside, he could not fight the feeling that this was a domain that no mortal man was meant to tread. But no matter how he tried to warn them, they just waved it off as him being a baby. All he could do is watch as they opened empty cabinets and struggled to open a stove that turned out to be fake. Everything inside the cabin seemed to indicate that no one was using it, but somehow that candle had been placed by the window, and there wasn’t a single speck of dust on anything. Only a thin layer of some sort of slime.

“This is kind of lame... and gross; I think we should just leave” one of the children said as they tried to wipe the slime off their palms and onto their jeans.

That is when the boy who had stayed near the door saw something that made him stumble back a few steps; the walls behind the boys had started to shift and change. The cabinets and fake stove seemed to dissolve into the walls quickly replaced by something that looked pink and fleshy. The fire place twisted into itself, and left in its wake a gaping hole in the back of the room. Above the pit, what could only be described as a ball of flesh descended from the ceiling with a wet popping sound. The fleshy transformation seemed to ripple outwards towards the door at a fast pace.

Someone screamed “RUN!” and a few minutes of chaos ensued as everyone made a mad dash towards the door. As they did, the door flew shut with such a force that when it clipped the young boy standing a few steps away from the door way it sent him tumbling through the grass. The resounding slam of the door cutting all the screaming short, leaving nothing but a heavy unnatural silence.

The sight that greeted him when he regained his bearings and managed to push himself into a sitting position would stay with him for life. The windows had started to slowly drift up to the empty space where there should have been windows had there been a second floor. They had started to bulge out and fill with what looked like muddy water and deep black pits formed on the crests of the waves, making it appear at though the cabin was staring back at him. The door had also started to creep up the wall, settling just under the muddy eyes. But unlike the eyes the doors transformation was anything but silent. The sounds of snapping bone could be heard throughout the clearing as the door started to bulge outward, until it had transformed into a wickedly hooked nose. The shingles twisted and curled giving the appearance of hair until it looked like someone had taken the top of a giant’s head and used it to replace the entire top floor.

There was a moment where the boy and the house seemed to be locked into some sort of staring contest. But then a wind came blowing through the clearing carrying with it a gust of leaves that just for a moment blocked the boy's view. And, as if the house was waiting for that very moment, a crack appeared a few inches below the nose that used to be the door, stopping just short of the edges of the building. There was a moment where the boy thought that nothing would happen, that maybe the cabin was just going to fall apart and the nightmare would be over. But then it peeled back thin gray lips in a terrifying smile of black gums and pointed teeth, set in a crooked array, seemingly finishing off the creature’s transformation into a fleshy gray terror.

He could see the terrified looks in his friends faces as they desperately tried to reach out between the gaps in the creatures jagged teeth. The thing opened its mouth just wide enough to allow enough space for a human to crawl through as if it was responding to their cries for help. There were only moments pause before they started scrambling for their freedom, but no one managed to get out. The creature suddenly opened its mouth wide before snapping it down like a full row of razor-sharp skewers. The chorus of screams and snapping bones filled the night air in an unforgettable symphony.

As its jaws mashed and chewed his friends, the creature never seemed to break eye contact, not even when it finally swallowed them down as the sun started to crest the tree line. Then it gave him one last wry smile, as if to say ‘no one will believe you’. This time the sharp teeth and black gums were painted with his friend’s blood. With that smile, the boy knew that it would be free to do this again whenever it hungered. Then as if the sun had broken the curse of the night the creature returned to just as it had once been, a simple cabin; with the candle nowhere to be found.

The boy didn’t move in inch from that spot and if he hadn’t been found hours later by a search party, he may have never left that spot in the grass at all. They took him back to the village and tried to get answers from him but he refused to move or even speak, he just sat staring blankly at the wall. It wasn’t until weeks later, after everyone gave up on finding the other missing children that he finally spoke up about what had happened that night. And- just as the monster seemed to have predicted- no one believed him. They knew something terrible had surely happened, but certainly the story he told of the cabin could not have been anything more than a hallucination or a fallacy. And so, they did what they thought was best for the boy and sent away to the Asylum on the edge of one of the bigger neighbouring cities. And the elders, once some of the children who went to school with the boy, say that he is still there to this day.