The Word

“The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.” It was a small cabin, rotting brown, dusty, very old and falling apart. There were holes in the roof, cobwebs everywhere, and evidence of creatures prowling through it. There was even a root poking out of the dirt floor. It smelled of dust, rot, and creatures. It was largely a part of the woods now, turned wild. In fact, inside the cabin there was little evidence that humans had ever even lived there: a broken chair, a table with three legs, and a lit candle was all that remained. There was nothing special about it, except there was a curious something written above the front door, almost completely faded. Suddenly, the front door screeched open, and a man walked out.

He was tall, he looked to be about fifty to sixty years old, but he was thin, boney, and strong. A scraggly beard adorned his chin and a cowboy hat rested upon his head. His clothes looked dirty and from another century. Boots touched the ground, but they made almost no noise. However, what was truly captivating about this man was his face. It was worn and weathered with the elements, but his eyes were of the clearest blue and piercing, steely, deep, and wise.

The man glared at the woods around him and then his face contorted from a smirk into a full half-grin. Any depth or wisdom found in his eyes was smothered by the toothy, wicked, and menacing smile.

“Someone must have said it.”, he thought, and then he strode toward the nearest campsite.

It was dark, the blackness swallowing up any instance of light. One could barely see past their nose, even with a flashlight. There were pockets of glimmering stars high in the sky, but the thick forest of forty-foot-tall evergreens trees blocked most of them. The earth smelled of rain, pine, and damp moss, giving the campers an ethereal feeling. However, the most ominous sign of all: was the deafening sound of silence that pressed and pounded dramatically on the ears. It was so quiet, the silence started swallowing and muting the crackling sounds of the campfire and the hushed voices of the occupants.

Occasionally, a camper would look up to see the stars and only to be distracted by a large dark shape flying from one tree another. A shiver, a fleeting thought, and they were lost again in the dancing light of the flames.

“Hello”, rasped the man as he stepped into the clearing of the campsite. Four figures sitting around the campfire jumped. Then, three of them turned their heads to look at him.

“I am sorry if we disturbed you”, rambled Alice, a thin, short woman with light brown hair and brown almond eyes. She was wrapped in a blanket. “My husband, Jason here…” She gestured toward her much taller husband with short brown hair and broad shoulders, “told a spooky legend and made me scream.” Alice apologized while playfully punching her husband in the shoulder. “We are here on a family reunion, you see, and the others fell asleep…” Alice stopped talking, for only now did she seem to register the haunting look of the man’s clear blue eyes.

“It wasn’t that scary?” scoffed Mike. A man of average weight and build. He had black hair and eyes. “It was a stupid legend about some stupid word.”

“Was it now?!”, snapped the man with spooky features. He turned to stare at Mike and Mike fell silent.

“Sorry!”, gasped the fourth figure, Emily. A tall woman, Emily, had a terror-stricken look on her face. She moved toward her husband Mike and away from her brother Jason. She was trembling.

Jason didn’t know why he said it. He was starting to realize how creepy the man was too. His instinct was to fight the man off and chase him away from his family, but the man looked him straight in the eyes and Jason couldn’t help but say, “If you think you have a better story, stranger, tell us one!”

“Of course.” said the man grinning, and he pulled up a stump and began his first story:

“Emmy came to New York in the year 1910 with her brother’s family and her two little children. Her husband had fallen ill and died the year before, and her brother had convinced her that they would have a better life in America. Of course, they were fooled by the rumors and stories in central Europe. If one asked anyone that lived there, those that moved to the United States and worked hard, easily moved up classes: “From poverty to middle class and from middle class to rich, just like that!” had become the saying inspired by the United States.

To a family facing religious persecution and poverty, the United States seemed like the perfect solution to make a better life for future generations. Unfortunately, twentieth century New York was anything but an opportunity. The smell was overwhelming powerful: smoke with an undercurrent of urine and feces (which littered the street). The smell changed when it rained though, causing the city to smell like wet dog. And there were so many slums! Men, women, and children, stuffed in tiny rat-infested, broken-down apartments. No running water, no clean air, and no clean food. Many fell ill, including her sister-in-law, Mary.

The jobs were awful! The pay was insultingly low, resulting in multiple families living in tiny spaces, without being able to afford the most basic necessities. The hours were long, exhausting, and the work was often hazardous in hot, cramped conditions. If you got hurt or sick, you were fired. Emmy had this nagging feeling that they should have never left their homeland.

In order to provide for her little ones and to hire a doctor for Mary’s failing health, Emmy went to work. She considered herself lucky to have landed a job with the Triangle Shirtwaist Company as a factory shirt maker. However, the work proved more difficult than Emmy had expected: twelve hours a day, six days a week, sweltering heat, few breaks, and the manager never let them open the windows. Ever the optimist, Emmy still hoped that if she endured, the job would help them out of the slums.

One day, after working for hours, a shrill high-pitched cry rang out across the factory. There was smoke and fire coming from a scrap bin. Factory workers raced to put the fire out, including Emmy, but the fabric was highly flammable. The flames grew higher and higher and smoke became more and more suffocating. Workers raced to the door on the other side of the factory. Panic had set in by then and there was pushing and shoving. Emmy stayed near the back, trying to remain calm. However, the door was locked from the outside. One of the higher ups had left for a meeting, didn’t trust the workers to stay and work, and had locked the door.

There was shouting, shoving, and banging on the solid door. It took several minutes before everyone backed up, except for two very strong men, who started smashing it open with whatever machinery was lying around. Several people had passed out by this time, the smoke overcoming them. The stragglers towards the back were helping some of them up.

A stifled shout rang up with the last sound of wood crunching and factory workers mobbed the door. About 30 of them pushed their way out toward to stairs, but the stairs were not meant to hold that many people. With a horrifying breaking sound, the stairs crashed into the stairs below and then the stairs below that. Then, they all plummeted to the bottom. Sickening squelching and snapping sounds accompanied blood curdling screams, until a thud and then- silence.

The remaining 100 or so factory workers didn’t have time to be shocked. They all turned their attention to the only other way out, the way blocked by a giant wall of roaring, searing fire. The way out may have been engulfed in flames, there was no way to tell. Someone broke open a window by throwing something through it, but that only made the flames grow faster and hotter, the heat more stifling, the smoke thicker and the air more suffocating.

Emmy got on her hands and knees, trying to breath.

“Why had she left her home?! Why had she come here to this awful hell on earth! Why oh, why was she convinced that this would be a better life!? What would become of her two beautiful children?! Her brother’s family didn’t have the means to take care of them! She had to survive!

Determined, she numbed herself to the heat, the pain on her skin, breathed what air she could find, and crawled toward the flames. She glanced up at the window, but they were over ten stories up, too high to jump and survive. She tried to go around the flames now which had engulfed half of the factory, but her skin was melting, and excruciating burning pain spread through her whole body.

She couldn’t, she couldn’t die here!

“Had she come all this way, just to die and leave her children to fate?! Had she changed her name for this? To be burned like a villain at the stake?! And for what purpose? Why was this happening?”

The pain was so intense now she could barely stay conscious. She didn’t know how, it didn’t make sense, but she made it to the other door. She lifted her arm, but it was so badly burned, she didn’t recognize it.

“Locked! The door was locked!”

Her last fingernail scratched the wood. She started scratching a phrase into the door.

“I am sorry, my children!” she desperately thought. “I must write I love you to my children. They must see it in the door! The door must be SAVED. “

She frantically scratched with her fingernail at the bottom of the door. Then, she threw herself desperately in front of the message, shielding that part of the door from the flames.

Finally, she closed her eyes for the last time.

When they removed her charred, lifeless body from the factory the door that was miraculously intact did not say, “I love you”. Instead, etched into the wood was one spine-chilling word that had nothing to do with love.”

No one moved. The story was over. They were all staring at the strange man. They could see the reflection of the campfire dancing in his eyes.

Jason no longer felt fear, and his urge to protect had mysteriously vanished. Instead, he was obsessed--obsessed with the story, and wanted…needed to hear more. Some instinct in the dark recesses of his mind told him to stop, to stop and think. However, for some reason he had an insatiable desire to hear more.

“Tell us another, another story.” Jason found himself saying.

Then, the man flashed a toothy grin, and began his second story:

“Justin was a brilliant scientist and inventor. He wanted to change the world, for the better. He wanted to make life better for all involved. People called him weird growing up, they bullied him mercilessly for studying so much and being a little quirky. But Justin didn’t care, or at least he pretended not to. Science, innovation, and the future were all that mattered to him. At least that is what he told himself repeatedly.

After a few degrees, a few failed relationships, and a few brilliant inventions, Justin had made quite the name for himself. He always lost himself in his work. It was his passion; what he was good at. It was his mission in life to make the world better by his innovation. He would help everyone with science and technology! He just knew it!

So, it didn’t come as too much of a surprise when the United States Government hired him, with a team of other scientists and inventors, to help develop an invention that would end the horrible war raging across the oceans. The enemy was led by an evil man named Hitler, the worst of the worst. The Allies were afraid that Hitler and his Nazis would develop this weapon first and win the war for the Axis of Evil, so the team that Justin was a part of was tasked with inventing it first.

Justin poured himself into his work. Day and night he worked tirelessly, feverishly. He would help the world! He would save it!

After making some significant progress, the full destructive power of this weapon dawned on him. More deadly than anything that had been invented to that time. The realization caused Justin to descend into a dark state of panic.

“What had they done! By attempting to better the world, they had effectively developed the means to destroy it!”, Justin thought. He couldn’t eat or sleep. He used whatever sway he had to prevent the use of the weapon. They couldn’t actually use it! This creation most certainly was spawned by the devil. He desperately hoped it would be enough to intimidate the enemy, to make the enemy stop just by having it, just by threatening to use it on their people. Innocent people didn’t have to die. Justin was sure of that.

Though he held no leadership role, he convinced the development team to meet, as he knew many of them had come to the same realizations he had. Together, they drafted a letter to the U.S. President and Congress and then they all signed it.

“Under no circumstances, should the US or any Allied Power use the Atom Bomb on or around people”, the letter read. “For if used, the innocent death toll would be astronomically high, and such an act would surely bring the wrath of God upon us all” and “could start a series of events resulting in the end of the world.”

The top-secret atom bomb team received assurances from Congress and the President. This brought a degree of comfort and relief to his colleagues, but not for Justin. Unfortunately, Justin had this horrible sinking feeling that the bomb, the demon spawn, would be used on the innocent. Somehow, he knew that his creation would horribly and suddenly destroy millions of lives.

Justin tried to slow the project down, but he had gone to far with it and worked too obsessively and quickly on it before. He also wasn’t the only one on the project. It seemed they were all convinced that Hitler would make it first, which caused them to work even more frantically on the project. Except for Justin.

“It was an end, The end! Perhaps the end of the world! Was it an end to their souls? To the souls of others? If you died by this weapon, could your soul even escape?!” Justin thought desperately.

He knew the right thing to do would be to destroy it, but the nasty little voice in him mind reminded him: “Others know how to make it too, now!”.

It was too late. The evil had been done. The project was finished. His higher ups took the resulting monstrosity, and they didn’t just use it as a deterrent. His wort fear was realized.

They used it! The military, the Allies, the United States Government, had dropped the devil on Japan. Then, they did it again! Hundreds of thousands of innocent people dead in an instant! Not just dead, disintegrated! The weapon was so powerful, many of their bodies were not even left behind. The hundreds of thousands that were left behind were injured, burned, and suffering. Unspeakable horror was all that was left of the once beautiful cities. Most of those suffering were innocent people, though somehow deemed less than those who carried out the atrocity. And… people were celebrating! Even his own team was celebrating!

“Why?! What had he done?! What had they done!? Why were they celebrating?! Didn’t they know, what they had done?!” Justin’s mind looped these words again and again in his brain.

Every time Justin closed his eyes, he could see Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He could see the blinding light, the once beautiful people and land in distress and ruin. He could see the pain, burns, and suffering. He could hear their cries. He could smell the awful smell of burnt flesh.

When Justin opened his eyes he could see parties, celebrations, he could see himself being promoted. He pretended to be happy, too. Justin wasn’t sure why, but he pretended to be just fine.

“How could he explain to them what they had just done?” he thought. “Everyone seemed happy: the Allies, the U.S. government, the people around him, even his team.”

The United States government promoted him, gave him lots of money, and told him whatever project he worked on next would be given unlimited support.

“Why, hadn’t they listened?!”

Then…. Justin got his idea for his next project.

“Time Travel!” he found himself saying. His next project would be a Time Traveling machine. “I will go back in time and stop that awful weapon, that great evil” he smiled to himself.

So, just as before, he worked feverishly and got his old team back together. He would take them all back in time and convince their past selves not to invent the weapon. Maybe they could make sure no one would ever invent it! Maybe they could think of something else to win the war. Something good, that wouldn’t kill the innocent. They would save all those people!

In order to succeed, Justin knew that he must plan everything out meticulously: He must verify that each calculation was perfect. He must add on to his colleagues work to make the time traveling submarine better than any of them could have imagined. Jason had to modify coordinates in time to travel much further back than they were planning to. Plus, it was imperative that his team never find out his plan, until the right moment, or the U.S. government would find out too. If they found out, there was no telling what they might do.

Unfortunately for Justin, this project was more massive in scope than he had predicted. He was also unaware of the possibility that even if he and his team did manage to travel back in time that it may be impossible to change. Events in the past are fixed and if one or even a group of people tried to change them, the universe could fight back. Natural laws may prevent the past from changing. Justin wasn’t completely oblivious to these things. There was always this sense that something about traveling through time was much more difficult than it seemed and that the calculations were not quite adding up. He assuaged his doubts, as he believed he had resolved all the equations with countless checking.

“Don’t doubt yourself, Justin,” he told himself. “This is your purpose in life: you can save all those people!”

“But what if it not your purpose?” replied a voice in his head.

“It has to be!” Justin replied firmly.

Justin couldn’t sleep the night before the big test. His project was riddled with subterfuge. He had compartmentalized enough that his team was wholly unaware that the entirety of the submarine was a time machine rather than it being just a carrier of the device. He had also convinced them that he would be sending a hat back in time five minutes to an hour, not sending themselves years in the past.

“I have triple checked everything.” he thought. “It must work. This is our one shot at redemption. We must save those people.”

Despite his confidence, Justin knew that things could go wrong. For this reason, just in case the experiment failed, and they were never heard from again, he would compose a letter telling the U. S. government and the Allies exactly what they had done wrong. The letter was magnificent and poignant. He explained how they had destroyed the lives of many innocent people and exactly what they had done to them:

“We cannot destroy evil with greater evil. We must be better!” he wrote.

He warned them that the U.S. or the Allies could be next if they didn’t stop making bombs. He went on to detail his plan, that tomorrow’s test was not about sending hats to the past, but about righting wrongs by send twenty people five years in the past to prevent them from ever inventing that awful world killer. If they failed, and they couldn’t be found, then they were probably all ripped apart, scattered throughout space and time. Obviously, if they failed; it was their fault. They were the ones that had used it.

The voices in Justin’s head continued their dialogue:

“Maybe its your fault!” said a voice in Justin’s head. “You could have done more; you didn’t do enough!”

“That’s why I am risking everything to fix it!” he snapped back.

Finished with his letter, Justin carefully placed it on the desk in his study. “If we succeed, they will never read it. It will never be written.”

Eventually, the next day arrived, and Justin gathered his team into the submarine and went far out into the ocean. He was calm as he gave the order: “Send the hat!”. The moment they flipped the switch, Justin knew there was something wrong, and he had a sudden jolt of horror as he contemplated his fate. “What had he done?!” Then they were gone, never to be seen or heard from again.

In the following months, the United States Government looked everywhere for the party of time-travelers. At first, they were convinced they would find the submarine and its occupants in one piece, maybe floating or traveling through a different part of the ocean. However, it soon became apparent that they would never find them. Finally, they searched Justin’s home. Maybe they would find some clue of what happened to them. Instead, as they searched Justin’s study, they found not an eloquent letter penned by a hero, but a single word carved into the top of Justin’s desk.”

The story was over. They were all staring again. The man with the stories looked strangely translucent now and Jason couldn’t help asking for another story. The man began his third and final story:

“Audrey always wanted to be an astronomer. She went to school for a very long time. She earned several degrees. One of which was an accounting degree, so she could fund her passion for astronomy. She desperately wanted to see what was out there: to discover new stars and solar systems. Someday, she hoped to find intelligent life in the universe.

“Just like us”, Audrey mused. “There is intelligent life out in the universe, and they are just like us!”

Audrey had always hoped to get a job at NASA. It was so prestigious, and she would have the best equipment to explore space. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, NASA had a hiring freeze and many of the astronomer’s budgets were slashed.

Instead, Audrey saved up as much money as she could through her accounting activities and bought the best equipment, she could. Eventually, she set up shop in the middle of the Utah desert, high in the mountains. This place was far away from cities and towns. A place with no light pollution and little obstruction to the night sky. It was the perfect spot for Audrey, and during her weekends she would search the night sky all night long.

One night as she was searching the night sky, she found a large black hole swallowing a star and planets in neighboring solar system. Without her high-powered telescope, plus its enhancements, and the sheer dumb luck of looking in the exact right spot in the sky, Audrey would have seen nothing. However, Audrey did observe it, or technically around it, and the black hole was mesmerizing and terrible. As she studied it, she realized that it had already swallowed several solar systems and that it was swallowing several more. In fact, it seemed to be gaining momentum.

Audrey was nervous, she felt that this blip in the sky was way to close to the earth for comfort. “What if it swallowed the earth?!” she thought. “What then?!” Audrey shuddered. She didn’t want to think about it.

She looked at her calculations and then back at the giant hole of gapping nothingness consuming more space and matter. It was growing. A giant crushing blight in the universe.

“This is an abomination!” she thought. “Calm down!” she thought. “It is probably ok. This kind of thing happens all the time. Doesn’t it? It is just shocking to see it in real time. Right?” she told herself. “But this doesn’t feel right!” she replied in her mind.

The next day Audrey went into town, for she didn’t have any cell service in the mountains. She frantically dialed any contacts at NASA that she had heard of and looked up other contacts on the internet. She got a hold of no one. Panicking now, more than ever, she scoured the internet for news reports about black holes. Nothing!

Next, she went to the library, looked for, found, and printed off all information she could find about black holes and their velocity. According to her calculations, it could take the black hole only two days to reach them. And… it might reach them… it was a real possibility!! The end of the world!! Perhaps the end of everything!!!

“NASA probably knows about it and has a plan to save us.” she tried to re-assure herself. “But what could they possibly do?! How could anyone or anything escape an enormous black hole?!”

“Maybe it won’t reach the earth.” she tried to re-assure herself again. “But how could they know! Even astronomers didn’t know much about black holes. Black holes happen rather suddenly and unless scientists predicted the exact time the giant star would die, they couldn’t possibly have prepared for it!”

Plus, tonight everyone would be able to see the gaping hole in the universe. They wouldn’t need a telescope to see it blocking out stars. Where stars should have been, instead they would see, an empty nothingness blocking it out. People would see a giant void of death growing bigger and bigger, racing toward the earth. A ball of gravity so powerful as to consume everything in its path, even light. For black holes, emit no light as they consume all with the crushing force of their expanding gravity.

Audrey waited all day in town hoping to hear back from NASA. She didn’t.

As she made her way back to her observatory, she looked up into the night sky and gasped. There it was! The size of a softball, growing!

“Maybe her calculations were wrong.” she thought.

She raced back to her observatory to study it more. She learned nothing new.

Audrey slept barely a wink and anxiety had truly taken a toll on her, now. Disheveled, she jumped into her truck and quickly drove into town. Frantically, she started calling, plus emailing first NASA, then every astronomer she knew, plus anyone she could think of. No one was getting back to her! Exhausted, she went outside the library, to look at the night sky. Half the stars were blocked out by the growing explosive force of one dying star!

She raced back inside the library. Why had no one responded to her?! Exasperated, she opened her sent e-mail box and looked at each e-mail she sent. Dumbfounded, she realized each of them only said one word, the same word in-fact, one strange word.

It was at this point that the stranger’s last story was interrupted by a blood-curdling scream. Alice was screaming as she pointed at the night sky!

“No!” Jason thought. “The story can’t be true!”

But as Jason looked at the night sky, he saw a softball shaped hole in it. Stars should have been there. There was no light pollution. The stranger must have performed some trick to scare them but as he turned toward the stranger, the man was nowhere to be seen. Jason tore through the forest. Searching for the man frantically, the strange man.

“Why had they invited him to join them?” he wondered, no longer under his spell. “He was a stranger! And why did, he, Jason ask him for a story? And…” Justin realized with a jolt of horror. “Why did he tell the others of the legend?”

Justin stopped wondering as he stumbled upon the small, old, decrepit cabin. He shivered; he could still see the light inside the window. Holding his breath, he slowly turned the knob of the door handle and the door of the small cabin squeaked open. Nothing! Nothing, inside but dust, cobwebs, an old chair, an old table, and one old lit candle.

“But why was it lit?” Jason thought trembling and backing away. He glanced above the door of the small cabin. “It couldn’t be! That word!”

Justin started to say the word again.

“No!” he thought and set his jaw. “He wouldn’t give it or the stranger the satisfaction! Wait…. what was he thinking? This couldn’t be true!” His head was spinning now, he couldn’t breathe.

Another sound broke the haunting silence. Jason jumped a foot in the air. It was a wailing sound. Jason realized it was coming from his wife back at the camp.

“Alice!” Jason ran back towards the campsite as fast as he could go.

His wife was crying hysterically by the fire, pointing at his sister. When Jason looked at Emily, the girl he knew was gone. He watched in horror as she frantically scribbled one word, over and over in the dirt. Though the stranger hadn’t said the word, he knew this was it:

“Croatoan!”