The Weary Traveller

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. It certainly looked ominous, Peter thought, especially on a pitch-black night like this. There was a certain…restlessness that stirred in the oppressive shadows, the way they entered inside you and played with your deepest, darkest fears; so much that you fully believed that monsters were real and were waiting for you just beyond the faint glow of the pearlescent moon.

Like everyone in the surrounding towns, Peter knew the stories of how the cabin had become desolate: how a weary traveler came one night in search of shelter and food, and was taken in by the family living there. Many said that the traveler was a witch, or a ghost, or even a demon. Some even said it was a nosferatu. Either way, the tale always ended the same, with the family disappearing into thin air, never to be seen again.

But Peter was not one to believe in such stories, or be affected by the night's dark magic. He was a woodsman after all, and had traversed these supposedly "haunted" forests for most of his life. He had never crossed any creatures or spirits in his nocturnal travels, and had learned that the only thing to fear was fear itself. It was fear that made the monster, not the other way around.

Still, he watched that little ghost light, winking at him with its yellow eye: Come and see. Come and see. Common sense suggested that the cabin was likely occupied by travelers who saw it as a convenient dwelling for the night. Best to leave them be. Yet Peter found himself compelled by some strange irrational spell—be it sheer curiosity or something else—that moved his feet almost unintentionally until he was standing in front of the cabin.

The first thing he noticed was that the door was open, leaving a rectangle of faint orange light shining from inside. Yet the cabin appeared empty. Quiet.

Peter was about to investigate further when he was startled by a figure huddled near the corner of the house. It was bent over and covered in rags, mixing with the shadows to create something frighteningly indiscernible that shuffled about. Peter's fear momentarily stopped him before he remembered his courage. He commanded, "Halt there, Stranger!"

A weary, albeit very human voice, answered, "Well, who be the stranger, you or I? Or am I to take that this as your cabin?"

The indiscernible figure, so to speak, was just an old man in worn clothes looking for firewood around the corner. Peter felt slightly foolish, answering sheepishly, "Well...no."

"Thought so," the old man replied. "By the looks of it, this cabin ain't ben lived in in years. Tell you what, friend, why don't you help me bring some o' them old logs in to put on the fire? I could use th' warmth an' the company."

"Of course. My apologies," Peter said. He silently reprimanded himself for not going with his first instinct: that this man was merely a traveler looking for shelter for the night. So, he paid his penance by helping the old man fumble for firewood in the dark, picking out five good logs that he carried inside.

Upon entrance, Peter's first impression of the cabin was that it was simply...old. Most of the furniture had crumbled away except for two rickety chairs. It certainly smelled old, thanks to the layers of dust that coated everything, and made Peter cough as he set the logs down in front of the cobwebbed fireplace.

He set about making a fire, placing the logs together and lighting kindle with his flint and knife. Meanwhile, the traveler groaned very old-man-like as he settled down in one of the chairs. When the fire was lit, Peter went to close the front door to keep the warmth inside, and sat down in the chair opposite the traveler.

The old man sighed dramatically. "Well, friend, I best tells you who I am, now shouldn' I. Me name's Corvus." Corvus had a gaunt face with pale skin stretched taut over defined cheekbones, his aged eyes sunken into his sockets. His teeth were yellowed and crooked, and his thin grey hair hung in oily strands from his liver-spotted head. His appearance gave Peter the impression of someone close to death, though he imagined it was simply because the old man was extremely tired from his journey.

"I'm Peter."

"Peter." Corvus licked his lips, as if tasting the word. "Good strong name. I bet you're a real salt-of-the-earth kinda man, ain't ya?"

"A woodsman, in fact."

"Woodsman now? Well, how 'bout that? Reckon you know these parts like th' back of yer hand, eh?"

"You could say that." There was something...off-putting about this stranger that Peter couldn't put his finger on. He wasn't one to judge others by appearances alone, so the fact that he could not shake this feeling was unsettling in and of itself. Still, Peter commented, "And what about you?"

"Me?" Corvus replied. "I'm just an old man trying to fulfil a final wish. I'm on a pilgrimage, you see, to visit my ancestral homeland before I die. Though I reckon with how old I am, I'll probably collapse dead on the road before I get there." Corvus erupted with maniacal laughter that radiated throughout the small space of the cabin, as if at some inside joke.

Peter was taken aback, disturbed that Corvus would laugh at such a disheartening thought. "But...doesn't that bother you? That you might not reach your journey's end?"

Corvus huffed good-naturedly. "Hasn' anyone told you that life's about th' journey, not the destination? Besides, we all end up in the same place. Death is the Final Destination." A strange light showed in the old man's eyes as he said this, though Peter thought it merely a trick of the flames and shadows.

The uneasy feeling was growing inside his heart, though he did not understand why. "I suppose," he agreed, albeit uncertainly. "Though I imagine death would be a welcome relief after a life well lived. At least I hope it will be."

Corvus chuffed. “Wha’? Ya think you’ll be welcomed by the angles then, sonny? That they’ll hail you with their trumpets and harps to welcome ya to paradise?”

“Well, yes,” Peter replied. “My mother always taught me the importance of my immortal soul. That is why she gave me my name: to help me remember to always be good, so that I will go to the Gates of Saint Peter.”

Corvus’s face puckered, as if hearing that name was somehow discomforting. But then he glanced at Peter with an indiscernible look in his eyes. He leaned in secretively, as if he had some mysterious truth to reveal even though they were the only ones here. He murmured quietly, "Wha' if I told ya, friend, tha' I've been there? That I've been to that Final Destination and back? Cuz let me tell ya...death ain't nothin' like what most people think. There ain’t no paradise, or angels playing their harps and strings on puffy clouds. And there certainly ain’t no Saint Peter waiting for ya at some pearly gates, boy."

Peter was about to scold the man for his blasphemy, but something stopped him. At first he thought it had been a trick of the firelight, the way Corvus's face was changing. It was so gradual at first, that looking straight at him, you could never tell. But now, after a few minutes, the changes were apparent: the old man was somehow...wasting away before him. Corvus's eyes were now milky, sunken further into his sockets while his skin had grown a sickly yellow.

"Death," he said, "is cold...so very very cold. It is the coldness of damp earth smothering every part of you until it is all you know, and the worms start diggin’ into yer flesh like slimy li'l knives until you can feel 'em inside you. Everywhere.”

Peter could no longer ignore the dread that spread through his heart like ice and turned his stomach into knots. But like a mesmerized onlooker to a gruesome spectacle, Peter could not run or even move, but was completely frozen in horror.

Because Corvus’s skin was now leathery and dry, stretching back from his lips to reveal his yellowed teeth in a horrible death grin. His eyes were completely wasted away by now, leaving his sockets empty and void. His nose was crumbling away into nothing; and even his hands…his bony hands were now just that: skeletal digits that rested on his knees beneath the sleeves of his tattered black robes. A spider darted out from one of them, scurrying across his thigh before he swiftly crushed it with the palm of his hand.

He seemed to enjoy Peter’s fear, smiling at him with that horrible corpse-like grin as he continued, “Death is yer empty bloodless veins rubbin' together like sand, and all the water of yer insides pooling together in yer belly until you think you'll burst. And even if you manage to break free from the soil, and rise above its weight that crushes you like a mountain, Death, my friend…is wandering.

“It is walking forever an’ ever, watching the world change ‘round ya ‘til nothing is the same. It is realizing that you belong nowhere, are going nowhere, and are trapped in this endless circle with no end in sight. Ya might as well be a whiff of air or a lifeless stone, because you simply want to disappear. But yer still here, trapped in a purgatory of time, wandering ‘til the end of days.

“And the very worst thing…” he paused dramatically, “…is that Death is inescapable. And it is permanent. Death comes for us all in the end, no matter how much ya try t' run.” Corvus’s face was now a bleach-white skull, his teeth in a permanent grin as a malicious laugh bubbled from his nonexistent vocal cords. He laughed and laughed, his maniacal voice rising to fill the cabin completely, so that it was all Peter could hear in his ears and in his mind.

It was this laughter that gave him the strength to move, and he bolted out of his chair, knocking it down as he ran to the door. But the door was jammed shut, made impassable by some dark supernatural force. Still, he pulled desperately, all while Corvus’s laughter radiated inside his head until it was all he could remember.

Corvus’s spiny neck snapped as he turned his skull-head to look at Peter. “WHERE YOU GOIN, BOY? I TOLD YA THERE AIN'T NO POINT IN RUNNIN'!” he shouted, laughing even louder.

Peter banged on the door with his fist in desperation. “SOMEONE HELP ME! PLEASE! ANYONE!” But no one was there to hear his pleas. Instead, he heard slow rickety footsteps walking up behind him, before he turned to face what was coming. The last thing he saw in this world was a skeletal figure in tattered robes, laughing manically as its bony hands reached out for him.

He screamed.

*************

Years later, after the cabin had deteriorated and the roof had fallen in, a passing caravan of gypsies chose to investigate on the chance that there was anything salvageable inside. When they managed to push the door open past the obstacle that was blocking it, what they found was unexplainable.

The first were two chairs sat facing each other amidst the other decomposed remnants of furniture. One was knocked over; the other was blackened with soot as if it had been aflame. Yet somehow the burned wood did not extend past the chair, leaving the rest of the cabin untouched.

The second was a decomposed body that had lied against the door but was now pushed aside. It was the obstacle that had inhibited them when they had opened the door, and now lied disheveled at an angle. According to the disintegrated leather and furs it was covered in, the gypsies guessed that the remains were that of a woodsman.

However, they soon left in a hurry, for they could feel the evil that permeated this place. As they hurried outside, they looked one last time at the woodsman’s remains, its skull smiling at them in a horrible death grin as if silently laughing at some inside joke.