The Flayers

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

“Is that the old Flayer place?” Darrin asked, pointing toward the glowing orb of light shining through the trees.

“It can’t be.” Nate flashed our light in the direction of the cabin. “We should be nowhere near there. It should be 20 miles away, at least.”

Alexa, my twin sister, quickly moved in front of the flashlight beam, blocking it from view of the cabin.

“It looks like the Flayer place,” she said, “and if there are squatters bunking there tonight, we don’t know who they are. Let’s not invite trouble.”

“We’ve already got trouble, and I’m carrying her.” Matt, who had been helping me hobble along, gently eased me to the ground against the stump of a fallen tree, then tried to settle down beside me but Wilimakit, my English mastiff, quickly claimed that spot before he could. Wilimakit fixed Matt with a hard stare that silently dared him to try to take it from him. I had seen that look of his intimidate a black bear once, so I didn’t blame Matt for backing away. With a grunt he chose another tree across from us to lean against. “You need to lose weight, Ally,” he grumbled.

Normally I would have come back with something snarky, but I was feeling foolish for having hurt myself and ashamed for needing help, so I held my tongue.

Matt was Darrin’s boyfriend. I hardly knew him since Alexa and I had been only been freshmen when Matt had graduated from our high school two years before and had gone off to college. He was shorter than Darrin, but broader, with black, curly hair and brown skin that made his teeth seem impossibly white when he smiled. He had taken to teasing me almost as soon as we met, making fun of my skinny figure, my freckles, my honey-brown ponytail, my difficulty wearing heels for the first time in my life, and the fact that I had been more intrigued by the scaffolding used to hang the lights at the dance than I had been by the lights themselves.

I had agreed to invite Matt to our Junior/Senior Homecoming dance as my date because Darrin had asked me to. Darrin and I had been friends since we first worked together last year on a project for our after-school Engineering Club. I was a sophomore then, and he was a junior. He was tall and slim with pale skin and a mop of brown hair that was incurably messy. The most impressive thing about him, for me, was that he never laughed at my weird ideas for our projects but, instead, jumped in, eager to find a way to make them work. While everyone else was making pop stick bridges, we were experimenting with submersible tunnels and suspended platforms on pulleys. It didn’t take long for him to become my best friend ever.

Darrin wasn’t ready to be open with his parents about his relationship with Matt, so he was looking for a way that they could go to the dance together without officially being together. I hadn’t been planning to go to the dance at all, but then Alexa got asked by Nate – the handsome volleyball player whose blonde man bun she secretly mocked throughout our sophomore year. As soon as he had started flirting with her this year, however, she had suddenly decided his man bun was sexy, and so was everything else about him. He was her first boyfriend, and the Homecoming Dance was their first, official date. Alexa was so nervous about it that she insisted I had to come to the dance too. I didn’t want to be a third wheel, so I asked Darrin, who then asked me to ask Matt instead, which is how I ended up being a fifth wheel to this double date.

I had been relieved when the couples decided to leave the dance early and head to the nearby forest to make out. I figured I would be free to go home and relax. Then Alexa, apparently still nervous, declared that she wouldn’t go to the woods without me. Nate wouldn’t go without her, of course, and he, with his pick-up truck, was everyone’s transportation this night. That meant everyone put pressure on me to go with them.

Alexa and I had changed our clothes to hiking clothes and grabbed some blankets and a flashlight. I also took Wilimakit, my best canine buddy. I figured he and I could go for a hike together until the others were finished doing … whatever. Matt started teasing me about grabbing my “willie.” Then he caught sight of my huge, black dog – 230 pounds and almost as big as a horse. When we climbed into the bed of the truck, the whole vehicle lurched. Matt stopped teasing me.

It was a clear October night. While the others were making out, Wilimakit and I were following a mountain trail – more of a hill, really, except the drop was sheer. I found that out the hard way by watching a shooting star instead of where I was putting my foot. Suddenly I fell. It wasn’t a far drop and there was lots of undergrowth to cushion my fall, if you could call prickly branches scratching away at you a cushion. I was lucky I missed hitting any trees. I heard the loud snap of my ankle, however, and, with my flashlight, could see my left ankle swelling and turning black. There was no way I could climb back up so, when none of the others responded to my texts, I sent Wilimaker to fetch them.

When even Darrin couldn’t figure out a way to haul me back up to the path, they all joined me below, thinking it would be easy enough to hike until we ran into another path we knew of… except we never found it. Then we lost our phone signals and, with it, our GPS. Since then, we had been hiking for hours, completely lost, with everyone taking turns helping me.

If this cabin was the Flayer place, we had traveled a lot further than it seemed possible. The good news was that we now knew where we were. The Flayer place had been a well-known landmark to locals for longer than anyone could remember. People claimed it was haunted, which made it a common attraction for kids to prove their bravery by spending a night there. It was also used by nearby hunters and campers as an easy shelter when the weather turned bad. Though the furniture, if there ever was any, had long ago disappeared, and the inside was always thick with dust, the log walls and roof remained sturdy. It was just a simple, square, one-room structure with a stone fireplace for cooking and warmth. There was no glass left in the only window and it had lost its door, but both these openings were easily covered with a blanket or tarp when needed. It could keep you dry.

The bad news was that we were at least another 5 miles from the main road.

“I’m getting a signal!” Darrin announced, suddenly, holding up his glowing cell phone for us to see.

All the rest of us, simultaneously, reached for our own phones. I was relieved to see two bars on mine.

“Who are we going to call?” asked Nate.

“We could call our parents,” I suggested.

“No!” Alexa said.

“Come on, Alexa, they’ve got to be worried…”

As we bickered, I saw Matt cross over to Darrin and wrap his arm around his shoulders. They began whispering softly. Matt took off his jacket and offered it to Darrin, who, I guess, had left his own jacket back in Nate’s truck. I noticed a curious tattoo on Matt’s wrist that looked like a QR code.

“Wow,” I said, ignoring my sister in mid-rant. “Does that really scan?”

Matt and Darrin both looked over at me. I pointed to Matt’s wrist. He shrugged.

“Yeah. I couldn’t decide what to say, so I linked my ink to a landing page that will say anything I want it to.”

“What does it say now?”

Matt grinned toward Darrin.

“I’ve confirmed this is the Flayer place,” Darrin said, quickly, showing us the map on his phone. “I don’t know how we got here, but I figure we have two choices. We can either try to make our way to the road, where we can see if we can get someone to pick us up, or we can check out the squatters and see if they can help us.”

“I’m tired,” Matt said. “I say we knock on the door.” He waved his hand toward the cabin.

“This place doesn’t have a door,” I said.

“It does now.” Matt peered through the darkness toward the cabin. “I’m sure I saw one when Nate shown the light on it.”

Nate directed the flashlight’s beam at it again. Matt was right. There was a door there now. Nate looked to the candle next. The flashlight beam reflected back from a pane of glass.

“Maybe someone’s finally moved in to stay,” he said. “We should go be neighborly.”

“I don’t see any smoke rising from the chimney,” I said, “and you would think whoever lives there now would have come out already. It’s not like we’ve been quiet. If someone were sitting on my front lawn, I’d want to check them out.”

“If it is only one person, he might be feeling outnumbered,” Nate suggested.

“I’ll go, alone,” Matt said, rising to his feet.

Darrin shook his head. “What if it’s some crazy person?”

“You all can see me from here. If I seem to be in trouble, come running.”

As Matt started for the door, Wilimakit rose to his feet and growled at him. Matt paused.

“Control your mutt, Ally. I’m not doing anything to you.”

He started walking again. Wilimakit’s growl turned into a bark.

“Easy boy,” I said, stroking his head and back.

I got him to be quiet, but he was restless and wouldn’t sit.

We watched Matt knock on the door and heard a soft squeak as the door opened. In less than a second, Matt was gone, the door slammed shut behind him.

“Why did he go inside?” I demanded, annoyed. I was hoping the resident would have come out, at least enough for me to see his or her face.

Darrin hushed me, his attention fully on the cabin. He was listening, hard, his eyes shifting between watching the door and the window where the candle shown. We waited a minute, then five. Darrin was growing visibly tense. By ten minutes we were all nervous. My sister and I exchanged glances, both silently asking each other the same thing – what’s taking so long?

“I’m calling him.” Darrin hit a button on his phone. We should have heard Matt’s phone ringing, but there was no sound at all from the cabin.

“Maybe his ringer is turned off,” Alexa suggested.

Darrin frowned. “Something’s wrong. I’m going to go knock.”

A queasy feeling rose inside me. “Not alone.” I said. I tried to rise but I couldn’t get off the ground without someone lifting me.

“You coming to protect me?” Darrin smiled, shaking his head. “You have some one-legged ninja moves I don’t know about?”

“I’ve got a weird feeling about this.” I insisted.

“So do I,” Darrin agreed. “That’s why I have to go. I won’t go in, no matter what. Just keep your eyes on me. Anyone able-bodied, be ready to come help me if anything bad happens. Ally, you sit here and be ready to call 911.”

He started toward the door. Wilimakit ran in front of him and stopped, blocking his way. When Darrin tried to move around him, Wilimakit moved too, not letting him pass.

“Call him off,” Darrin ordered me.

“He’s telling you not to go. We should call 911 right now and sit here.”

“What about Matt?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s having tea or something. We should wait.”

“He could be in trouble right now!”

“And, if you go, you could be too!”

Darrin shook his head. “I love him. I won’t go inside, and you all will be watching me the whole time, right? My phone ringer is on, top volume. So get your dog out of my way!”

I called Wilimakit. He frowned at me and growled at Darrin.

“Come!” I insisted.

This time he gave a little whine, like he was pleading with me. When I called a third time, he finally obeyed.

“Someone, see if you can get a better angle on that door and film it. I want to know who answers,” I said, while we watched Darrin approach the cabin.

Both Nate and Alexa moved out, with their phones ready, as I lifted mine. We were all in a line. I was viewing at an angle on Darrin’s left, Alexa was on his right, and Nate was in line with Darrin’s back. I held my breath as Darrin knocked – three quick raps. We heard the door squeak as it slowly opened again. I thought I even heard Darrin take a breath, readying himself to speak, then he was gone and the door slammed shut.

“What the HELL!” I exploded. “He promised he wouldn’t go inside!”

“Darrin!” Nate yelled at the same moment, running toward the door. Wilimakit headed him off and pounced on Nate with his full weight, bringing him down to the ground, then he sat on him to hold him down. My dog looked toward me, over his shoulder, and I saw an “I told you so” in his expression.

Alexa started screaming.

“Nate, are you O.K.?”

I dialed Darrin’s phone. I heard two rings on my side, but nothing from within the cabin. Then the recording telling me that Darrin was unavailable to come to the phone right now started playing.

Alexa was still screaming, while tugging at Wilimakit’s collar in a failed attempt to move him. He far outweighed her. In fact, he outweighed us both, together.

“I’m calling 911” I exclaimed.

“Are you listening to me?!” Alexa demanded, still screaming. “Wilimakit’s crushing Nate! I think he’s suffocating him!”

I heard a muffled male cry from somewhere under Wilimakit’s tail.

“Wilimakit, come!” I demanded.

Wilimakit stood up, his hind legs straddling poor Nate’s head, treating Nate to the least desirable view on any dog. Then he began barking loudly and continuously at the cabin. When Nate started to wiggle out from under him, however, Wilimakit moved his massive front paw onto Nate’s crotch. It didn’t look to me like he was pressing down, but Nate instantly froze, while Alexa kept pushing and pulling at my dog. He ignored her, staring at the cabin.

“Your dog is crazy!” Nate shouted, sounding panicked.

“No. He’s right.” I responded. “Nate, you can’t just rush up to that door. We have to make a plan. Promise me, when Wilmakit lets you up, you’ll come here and help me.”

“Darrin didn’t go inside on his own,” Nate yelled. “He didn’t make a move. I swear. I could feel it, a pull. It sucked him in! We have to get him and Matt out NOW!”

“Did you see who opened the door?”

“No. I couldn’t see anything at all. It was just black. Seriously, Ally, your dog is hurting me!”

“Let him up, Wilimakit.”

The dog shook his shaggy head like he was trying to get water out of his ears. I might have laughed at him, if I weren’t so mad about his refusal to obey.

“Now!” I said, losing patience. “If he moves for the cabin, then you can knock him down again, but LET HIM UP!”

Wilimakit heaved his shoulders in what resembled an exaggerated harrumph, then moved off of Nate, placing himself between Nate and the cabin.

“Alexa, call 911,” I ordered, as Nate struggled with me to help me stand.

“And say what?” she demanded.

“Everything. The truth.”

“They’ll never believe me!”

“Well, at least there will be a record of it.” Finally, we got me standing on my one, good foot, leaning heavily against my sister’s boyfriend. “Nate, no one is going to that door again, agreed?”

“We’ve got to get inside…”

“We’ll try the window. Can we get some kind of rope or something? I want it so that if one of us gets sucked in, the others can pull him or her out.”

“I’m not letting you girls go anywhere near that cabin!”

“You’re going to leave us out here, alone and defenseless?”

Nate frowned, annoyed.

“What do you think is happening to them?” he asked me softly, glancing toward Alexa, who was busy talking on the phone.

“I have no idea.”

My mind started spinning horror stories. I pushed them away, struggling to keep my head clear.

“If we’re dealing with suction, like you say, then we really need some kind of rope. We need the strongest people ready to pull on that rope, before whoever goes to the window can be sucked inside. Right now you and Alexa are stronger than me. I can’t pull as well with only one leg. I’m too imbalanced.”

“You can’t run, either, or defend yourself…”

“No one had time to run, and if you can pull me away quickly enough, I hope I won’t need to defend myself.”

“What’s your plan?”

“I don’t really know. I’ll just start with looking in the window and trying to see inside. There is no back door. No one’s come out. They’ve got to still be there. If anything starts pulling me in, you pull me right back out again.”

“So how do we get rope?”

“Where’s my backpack? We brought a couple blankets. We can tie those together to get something long enough. How good are your knots?”

While we were fumbling with the blankets, Alexa came up to watch us.

“Did they believe you?” I asked.

She shook her head, then shrugged. “They said they’d send someone. Told us to stay put. They’re still on the line. They want me to keep it open as long as possible. My phone’s almost dead so that won’t be long.”

Alexa hated my sort-of plan when we told her. I didn’t blame her, since I hated it too, but it was the only idea I had. I sent her to find a strong, tall branch I might use as a temporary crutch while Nate tied the rope blankets around me as firmly as he could. They weren’t long enough so we added in Matt’s coat, and I ended up taking off my jacket, then Nate’s shirt, then even my t-shirt, leaving me in only my bra. As a last minute thought, I turned on my camera again and tucked my phone into my bra as securely as I could. If I was going to get vacuumed into that cabin, I wanted a record of it.

The minute we were ready and started heading toward the house, Wilimakit blocked me.

“I know you’re right,” I told him, “but I need you to help me rather than stop me, understand?”

I explained the plan to him, though I had no idea how much he understood. At least he stopped blocking me. He walked beside me toward the window, letting me lean on him. He was tall and proved to be better support than the heavy, crooked branch, which still had smaller branches with leaves attached.

I pressed my face against the window. Beyond the candle, there was only darkness. There weren’t even shadows. It was just black.

“Get ready,” I said to my sister and her boyfriend. Then, with all my strength I pounded at the glass window with the branch, shattering it. I heard a huge woosh and felt a strong force, like a whirlwind, lift me off my feet and begin sucking me into the cabin. I held the branch in front of me, across the opening of the window, using it to block my movement, and tried to peer around it, pointing the flashlight beam directly into the cabin, but I could still see nothing inside. The beam of light ceased, abruptly, just past the candle. The candle, however, was still burning calmly, despite the heavy suction.

I could feel the blankets tied about me rubbing against my bare stomach, which is how I knew the others were trying to pull me back, but the suction was too strong. My left hand, the one holding the flashlight, was drawn in, against my will. As it slipped into the cabin it disappeared from my sight completely. It looked as if my arm had been cut off right at the threshold, except I could still feel it, caught in the suction, on the other side. None of the light from the flashlight, which I still gripped in my hidden hand, made it out to me.

Suddenly, something grabbed my invisible arm and pulled it, hard. It seemed to be shaped like a hand, but there was no warmth, no softness. It just felt cold and sharp, as if it were something of stone or metal. I couldn’t break free of that grip.

The branch, my only barrier, cracked and snapped into pieces, and I felt myself toppling through the window until a harder jerk from outside yanked me back. For a moment it seemed like my friends and I might actually win this bizarre tug-of-war. Then something very fast reached through the window and grabbed my shoulders, pulling me.

As my head and upper body crossed the window frame, I heard the sounds of screaming, moaning – sounds of agony and dying. There was light on the other side, though I couldn’t identify its source. I was half-way in a room full of strange objects. Everything seemed to be made of leather strips sewn together. A patchwork rug of all different shades of browns, smeared with reds, covered the floor, and more, similar strips, hung from the walls, dripping something dark that pooled beneath them. In a pile against the wall on my right, what looked like bloody limbs lay entangled. They didn’t look human, but the shapes were humanoid. They were slowly writhing. Something rose from that pile, as if it were a head with messy brown hair lifting, turning toward me. There was no face, but just a mangled, bloody mess with a gaping maw and familiar eyes that, for a moment, seemed to stare at me, pleading. It had been lying on another head-like shape – one with black, curly hair.

Then a searing pain, moving slowly up my arm that was being held, banished everything else from my awareness. My vision dimmed and I started to scream. I struggled to break free, but the grip on me was solid. In desperation I grabbed at the curtains of the window with my other hand, clinging to them as if they had the power to pull me away. They felt slimy, slipping through my fingers, but the increasing agony in my arm as the pain rose toward my shoulder caused me to clench them even harder, until they ripped in my hand.

I felt another tug from the outside, low, pulling on my jeans. Then something reached out of the window and fixed like a vice to my leg dragging it in. Suddenly everything about me exploded into a piercing howl and the grip released.

With the violence of a car crash, I found myself on my back, pain everywhere, looking up at a sky full of stars rattling in and around the treetops. They seemed to be bumping and jumping, but, looking back, I realize now that that was me. I was being dragged away from the cabin, probably hitting every bit of bracken along the way. I still heard the howling. It was inhuman, at a pitch that I thought would drive me insane. Wilimakit was running toward me from the cabin, something in his jaws. I wanted to call to him but there was too much howling, and screaming, everywhere. It wouldn’t stop. My arm felt like it was on fire, the pain overwhelming me, and the screaming continued, until at last I realized that the screaming was coming from me.

“Ally! Ally!” Alexa was sobbing. When her arms wrapped around my body. I forced my screams into sobs and gasps and stared, shocked at my burning arm. A long strip of skin, from my wrist to my shoulder, was missing. Blood coated my visible muscles, dripping down my arm, but it couldn’t hide the fact that my skin was gone. It was as if something had just torn the skin right off of me in one long strip.

I couldn’t move my arm for the pain. I just stared at it through a numbed mind, trying, but failing, to make sense of what was happening.

“What is that?” I heard Nate demand, staring at the thing in Wilimakit’s mouth. It was shaped almost like a forearm with the hand attached, but it wasn't human.

“Is it a skeleton?” Alexa asked.

Nate shook his head.

The hand on it was not a hand. It had three appendages, pointed tips with flat, sharp edges.

“Knives.” I thought, looking back to my arm. “Peelers to take off the skin.”

When Alexa gasped, I realized I had spoken aloud.

“What was inside?” Nate demanded of me. “Did you see Darrin and Matt?”

“No!” I cried, the agony welling up inside me. “It couldn’t have been!”

“Don’t push her,” Alexa said to him. “She’s in shock.”

I watched, almost from outside my body, as Nate gently pried my right hand open and released the bit of curtain I was still gripping.

“Good God!” He exclaimed, staring at it in horror. He was shining the flashlight from his phone on it. When he held it up to show Alexa, I could see it was a long strip of something brown and dripping red. On the bottom end of it was a QR Code. It looked familiar.

I honestly don’t now all that happened next. I think I was slipping in and out of consciousness. I remember a new kind of scream from the cabin. Inhuman. Then Nate was carrying me, running through the woods. He was following Alexa who was following Wilimakit. I remember the night growing lighter as the sun started to rise, but there was no bird song. My brain fixated on that, as if it were important somehow. Where were the birds?

“Matt? Darrin?” I kept saying.

I kept looking around me, hoping to find the birds, but I didn’t see them.

The next thing I knew, we were at the road, the forest behind us. The police were there. They grabbed at my bra. I wanted to protest because, really, police aren’t supposed to do that – especially not with minors. Then one of the police people was handing my phone to the other one. They were stealing my phone!

Then I was in an ambulance with my sister beside me. I think I was screaming again, but slowly the pain was softening, and soon I fell asleep.

......

Much later, when we could finally talk together, in private, Alexa and Nate told me what they had seen. When the branch broke, I started getting sucked inside the window. They were pulling as hard as they could, but the suction was stronger. My head and shoulders had already disappeared inside, then Wilimakit grabbed at my jeans and added his strength to theirs trying to pull me out. He was staying low to the ground – probably to avoid the suction from the window, but he was strong enough that it was working. Then something reached out of the window and grabbed my leg. Wilimakit attacked it, tearing it off from whatever was inside. That’s when the howling started, but it was also when the suction stopped and, at last, they could get me away. For a few minutes they thought we were safe to rest where we had been sitting all night, but then there was movement from the cabin and things, not human but with limbs like the thing Wilimakit had grabbed, started emerging. Nate scooped me up and everyone fled to the road.

We don’t know what happened to the weird arm. It was last seen in Wilimakit’s jaw. Nate assumed he dropped it as we all ran. The police claimed they went to investigate the cabin and look for Matt and Darrin after sending us to the hospital. They saw some of our stuff that we had left behind, but there was no sign of our friends. The cabin, they claimed, looked exactly the same as it always had – no door, no candle, no glass in the window, nor even shards, and thick dust coating the bare floor inside that didn’t look disturbed – except that they found my flashlight lying by the window.

No one ever saw Matt or Darrin again. There is no official explanation for their disappearances. Someone started a story that they had run off to be together. I wanted to believe it. I tried, really hard, to convince myself that this is what happened. Nate, however, in all the confusion and horror, had stuffed the strip of “curtain” in his pocket and forgot to give it to the police. He found it later, when he got home, and surrendered it to the authorities then, but not before he had scanned the QR code. It took him to a landing page where there was an image of a big heart with the words “Matt loves Darrin” written in the center.