Walk

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Lily had found a box of them, along with holders, right where he said they’d be, under the broken sink at the back of the darkened kitchen. As the candle flickered into life, so did the room.

She lit another candle and placed it in the holder on another window. The flickering light bent a little around the corner of the kitchen door frame and onto the entrance where her friend Sam stood. It dimly lit her feet; her laces loose and caked in mud from the day’s excursion.

“Lauren, come in here. That guy was only right. And she’s found candles too.” Sam cried out to the darkness behind, her breath just about visible in the cold.

“Thank fuck,” replied Lauren, “thought he was full of shit! Come on then.”

As Lauren and Sam threw down their bags and explored the rest of their newly found shelter by the light of their phones, Lily lit one more candle. The spark of the lighter blinded her for an instant, and as the wick began to take a flame, she was briefly lost in its gentle dance back and forth.

“There’s a little lounge we can kip in back here,” shouted one of the other girls from another room. Whether it was the biting cold that still ate at her ears, or the dampness of the wood taking hold of each sound, everything Lily heard felt muddled, washy, as if someone was rapidly twisting the volume knob up and down.

She picked up one of the candles, wanting to save what little phone battery she had, and moved out of the room. A glimmer of a bright white light jagged through a hole in a stud wall, and she rounded the corner to see Sam using her phone to inspect what appeared to be a sitting room.

“Oh it was you!” she said to Sam’s shadow-lit back.

“Jesus! You scared the shit out of me,” cried Sam, bringing a hand to her chest to pacify her fear. Over dramatic and just her style. “What you mean it was me? Not gonna be anyone else!”

“Yeah. I think the walls muffle the sound a bit. Had no idea who it was!”

“Hmm weird. Tell you what though, it fucking stinks in here! Like Andrew’s socks! Hey Lauren, anything knocking about?”

As Lauren entered the room and as the three of them discussed the state of the cabin and the plans for the rest of their night, Lily focused on the smell. Sam and Andrew were the perfect couple; always well presented, always happy, always in love but also able to poke and pull each other like only the best of friends can. His socks couldn’t smell.

Sam was often full of it. Over exaggerations and a soap opera with every glass of wine, but the stench was undeniable and for Lily, impossible to ignore. A daydream overtook her. She tried to untangle the twisted web of odours that grabbed at her. Rotting potatoes, stagnant water and a suffocating fog of damp. A soft burning, sickly sweet smell.

“Yoohoo, sweetie,” said Lauren in a high-pitched voice. “Drink?”

In her hand was a can of gin and tonic, which Lily dutifully took.

“Woop! Finally.” Exclaimed Lily. She wanted to get in the spirit of things. She always wanted to get in the spirit of things. She said the right words, did what was expected, but it was all such hard work. The stench suffocated her and the cold and wet weighed her down.

The weekend of walking was not her idea. It was Sam’s. A hair-brained version of a girl’s only getaway where they’d go into the wilderness, and camp among the trees. But the man had told them about the cabin, the candles and the candleholders, so they sought it out amongst the rain, and for one night only, it was going to be their sanctuary.

“If you see some old-style doors on the ground next to the tree, that’s the old cellar doors. They’re locked up but you can get in round the back no problem. It’s old and no one ever uses it, saves setting up a tent. Probably dryer and you can make yourself a bit more comfortable too. If you’re lucky there might still be candles and holders. There’s defo a little toilet out back. So some luxuries!” he had said. A smile spread across his face, a face that Lily struggled to settle on. It seemed to have no prominence to it; just a mashup of anonymity.

“As long as we have somewhere to drink!” Sam had laughed.

And then he walked away, smiling. They had all looked at each other, then Sam and Lauren looked at one another, and a decision was made to head for the cabin. Lilly had turned to look at the man, and in the thickening fog, thought she saw him turning back too.

For the next hour or so, surrounded by the rest of the candles from under the sink, the three weary walkers sat in their sleeping bags, drinking and laughing. Sam and Lauren lead the conversation and Lily spoke, sipped and smiled in all the right places.

“I need a piss,” announced Sam, at the end of one of Lauren’s stories. And abruptly, she threw off her sleeping bag, grabbed a roll of toilet paper from her bag, forced on her untied boots, and went to another room in the cabin, using a candle to light the way.

The sitting room fell quiet. Lily and Lauren exchanged a smile, then both sipped on their cans; naturally made cold by the elements, but with a warming effect the more they drank. A few moments passed and conversations came and went.

They heard a loud thump.

“Sam?” they cried in unison, but there was no reply.

“Sam?” they repeated, but again no reply.

“Probably fallen over her bloody laces again. I looked earlier and she didn’t even have them on one boot! They were just shoved down next to her sock.” snapped Lauren.

Lily pulled a face to Lauren, then got up, grabbing a candle of her own.

“Sam?” she said again, this time with less of a shout and a hint of concern. She always knew what to say and when to say it.

Her steps were slow and deliberate and she noticed the creaks of the floorboards, and that the light seemed to be flooding through the cracks between the wooden panels as if the gaps had somehow widened.

She approached the toilet, and the flicker of her candle met the flicker of another; it was the only moving thing in the room. There was a phone on the same shelf as the candle, mud and leaves on the floor and a slightly unravelled toilet roll. But there was no Sam.

“Sam?” cried Lily, beginning to get panicky. No doubt Sam would pounce on her as a prank, and Lily would laugh and say all the things about being scared stiff and how it was funny. But at the moment, all Lilly could think to do was panic and try to find her friend.

And then she heard the screams.

-----------------------------------------------------

Lauren sits in the sitting room alone, peering at the photos of the day, and hears Lily shout for Sam. She puts down her phone and looks up at the wall from where the sound came. She pulls a face and goes to shout out to find what is happening but as she moves her tongue into the position to make the noise she wants to, she hears a noise like nothing she has heard before or that she’ll ever hear again.

Her body is taken over by a burning sensation. Every single cell in her being seems to be on fire and her bones feel like they’re bursting at the seams. Her eyeballs want to explode and all sound is replaced by a shrieking white noise.

She screams. A scream she didn’t know she could make. Violent, desperate and loud.

The lights around her begin to swirl, then jab at her.

The floor of the cabin is dragging her down. Splintering and snapping, driving into her skin, through the filling of the sleeping bag, through the cotton of her clothes, and right into her muscles, clawing her down into oblivion.

Wood breaks apart and a chasm begins to open in the floor of the cabin. Blood flows from her legs and the darkened brown of the floorboards turns into a blackened crimson.

The wood wraps around her lower leg, and her shin bone snaps in two.

She wants to pass out.

The floorboards pull her in tighter forcing her into the chasm, forcing her to scream and fight and writhe. But she will never win.

She makes her last sound and sinks into the chasm below.

-----------------------------------------------------

Lily ran to Lauren as fast as she could and was met with a tangle of wood, muscle and blood. The sounds of creaking timber, snapping bone and agonising screams. As the floorboards snaked up and down like the heads of some man-made hydra, she pressed herself against the wall.

She continued to watch. Paralysed into nothingness, cemented by the havoc at hand, able to help but unable to do so. She watched as a convulsing Lauren was swallowed by this body of soaking lumber.

A sickly sweet smell began to fill the room. The hole in the floor began to slowly undulate and the odour became stronger. A thickening web that seemed to pull Lily closer to that hole. She clung to the wall, still paralysed by what she had just seen. The cabin floor she had sat on just a few moments ago was alive. It had turned into a vine-like creature and taken her friend. It had probably taken Sam too.

The sickly sweet smell that gushed from the nightmarish hole before her grew thicker, stronger and harder to resist. She had to see.

Each step brought a new creak. There was a heat, a light, a bubbling noise, and a swirling too. Then as she peered down into the hole, the undulating wood suddenly transformed into those vines once more and dragged her down, down, down, into the chasm and a light so bright, she could feel it through her clamped shut eyelids. Then she passed out.

-----------------------------------------------------

She blinked her eyes into action, unsure of how long she’d been asleep. As her surroundings became crisp, and the recent memory of events came back to her, a panic exploded within.

The chasm above her had closed. The floor below was no longer boarded. It was all red carpet, thick, velvety and soft to touch. Around her were candles, lots of candles, hundreds of candles. Each moved in unison, flickering in programmed synchronisation, telling her where to look. So she followed their direction, and that’s when she saw him.

“Awake are we?” he asked rhetorically. His back to her, busy with something.

“Where are they? Where are my friends? We were walking, we stopped here and then they both got, well, I dunno, it was like, where are they? Where am I? Who are you?”

Lily blurted it all at once, every question she could think of, and some she didn’t think of at all.

The man stopped his work and half-turned to her, glancing at her with one eye. Then he sighed, and slowly turned into the light, revealing a face like nothing she’d ever seen before. Mangled, scarred and spotted with red. Rash upon rash with folds so deep that no light could ever enter.

“I will answer all your questions, but please my dear, one at a time,” he said, calculating every syllable.

As the questions rushed to her head, she struggled to meet his gaze.

“Where am I?” was the question that Lily settled on.

“You are in the cellar of the cabin. This is where I live.”

“And my friends, where are they?”

“They are gone, my dear. That is how this works.”

“How what works? What have you done with them?”

“How the cabin works. And I have not done anything with them. And next time dear, please make sure you keep to one question, or I will have to take steps.”

“The cabin took them. But why?”

“Because that is how I got here, and how everyone gets here. I have been here a long time, and you will be too.”

“I want to go home!” she shouted. She really did. Her bed at home was comfy, her flat was warm. She owned it, it was hers. She’d never wanted to be on this weekend away in the first place, she hated camping, she hated being wet, and cold, and tired. All she wanted was to curl up in her bed and wake up the next day and her life to be fine.

“I think it’s a bit late for that my dear.”

The panic rose again. She made eye contact and saw the features of his face once more. Somehow they had changed. There were different scars, the red blotches had turned to purple and the rashes had become less pronounced.

“How long have you been here?”

“Oh, it’s hard to say. I mean like you, I was spared. But I suppose I had to be.”

“Spared? What for?”

This time he paused before answering. Then he raised a hand, his palm facing her, and moved it in a sideways sweeping gesture.

“The candles. If I wasn’t here, who would make the candles?”

At that moment, the candles all rushed higher and swirled round, once again in unison. The man’s many shadows twisted on every wall and ceiling. The suffocating smell surrounded her, then left her in an instant.

Lily was still sitting in the same position in which she had woken up, with her back against the wall and her legs stretched out. She slowly brought her legs towards her and arched her back slightly.

“Why do you make candles?” asked Lily.

“So I can see the light. Don’t worry, you’ll see it too. I remember being like you. Cowering and afraid. But don’t worry, the light will make it alright. It will light the way for you too. You’ll see.”

“But let me answer all your questions. Your friends are gone, the cabin has taken them. It only takes what it needs. I was spared and you have been too, for that is your purpose.”

“It’s not a bad life,” he continued, “I have a purpose, and there are always enough leftovers for me from groups like yours. I’m allowed to leave if I need to hunt, and there is always prey. In time you’ll learn to hunt, you will find a way; the light will guide you.”

Lily was silent. She could hear her breath and that bubbling sound from before. Then she heard the shuffle of his feet as he turned his back on her once more. She looked at him as he picked up a long stick, and began to stir the pot from which the bubbling sound emanated.

“Let me out,” Lily demanded. “Let me out now.”

Her friends were gone. They were her friends. She had never had many but she had always had Lauren and Sam and had made sure to cling to them. She had grown apart from them both but they were her foundation that could maybe build a normal life. So despite it all, she had held a grip. That grip, it seemed, was too weak.

“Let me out!” Lily screamed again, this time louder and with more force. The man stopped stirring and turned.

He rushed closer, holding the stick, dripping with a thick gloopy liquid. As he did, those rotten features became sharp under the light and that’s when she realised that it was him. A different him. The man from the woods reformed into something different. That same smile spread across his face, and that mashup of anonymity danced into shape like a devil under the pale moonlight. But it was all different.

“You. From the woods. You fucker. Why?” screamed Lily.

“I told you, I must hunt. Now, this is your final warning. If you want to see the light, then you must be kind. If you don’t want to see the light, then fine, but you shan’t be spared, my love. I will tell you when it’s time.”

He turned his back on her once more, and went over to his business, thrusting the stick into the pot. He stirred it, and the meaty sweet smell rose up once more.

Lily looked around the room. Candles everywhere. Row upon row of wax and fire, all melting and moving like copies of one another. The light they created was unstable but constant. It grew and glowed and shrunk and shook as one and in the corner of one of its shadows, Lily caught sight of a boot. One of Sam’s boots.

She shuffled slowly to it. He was engrossed in his task as she now was in hers. There were no creaks on the carpet, and the bubbling muffled her breath. Bit by bit, shuffle by shuffle, she made her way to the boot.

The light flickered around her, the man continued to stir and the bubbles continued to pop, but she had made it to the boot. She placed her hand around it and in her mind, it had become a weapon. Her grip tightened and she readied herself. Then just as she counted down to the moment of explosion, her finger felt it. The lace. The untied, unattached lace that Lauren had derided. She began to cry.

A swishing sound from the swirling candles shook the room but he was still lost in his business. The flames from the candles rose higher and shone brighter. This was her signal, so leapt up, pulled the lace tight and wrapped it around his throat.

He was weak and tired, but in the throes of death, he found a strength and fought with all he could. Lily pulled on her improvised garrote, ripping into his neck, and into the cartilage. She tugged him closer and wrapped the lace around her knuckles.

She was over him now, her biceps, wrists and shoulders screaming with tension. Vicelike and deathly. Snot mixed with her tears, but still she pulled tighter. Then she felt a pain across her right hand. He still had his stick, and he too wanted to survive. It was a hot, searing pain, and whatever was on the stick quickly spread across her skin, seeping into her pores so it could burn and scald and scar her deeper and deeper.

Lily held her grip firm and opened her eyes wide. Beyond the struggle, there was a cauldron.

Is that wax? It must be? For the candles. That’s what was causing the bubbles. She thought, still in the midst of a life or death struggle. The pain grew stronger.

But why is he making candles? Where is he getting the wax from?

The man began to weaken but still he tried to defend himself with the stick. She pulled tighter again, eyes fixed on the cauldron, body zoned in on the task at hand. Her hand burned and the candles around her shone brighter.

Where is Sam? Where is Lauren? What’s that floating in there?

Still, she held tight. This was about survival. But her survival meant another had to die. And as he became more limp and her grip became more taut, a choice lay in front of her. The candles grew brighter again, and she had to squint slightly.

What is that? What would he have done with the bodies? Did I see the floor do that? I want to go home. I want to be at home. Where are they? Did he do it? No one will miss him. He deserves it.

Tears and snot cascaded down her cheeks as the pain from the stick’s lava spread across her knuckles and into the webbing of her fingers. But she held on tight. She pulled the lace tighter and tore into her own skin. He pulled his hands up in a last-gasp grab for life and the candles blazed high, forcing her to try and avert her gaze; but their glow was unavoidable.

I can’t do it.

And with that, she slackened off her grip, he fell to the floor, and began to cough and take in the pungent air around him.

A window to escape in a room where there was none. Lily looked around, desperate for an answer to the question of what next?

She saw a curtain and ran towards it. She pulled it back and behind it was a darkened vent-like pathway. Just big enough to get in if she bent over. So she entered into the darkness.

Behind her, the cough had turned into howls and fits of maniacal laughter, and the urge and resolve to escape strengthened within her. So she carried on. Still bent over, using the soaking bare brick walls as guide rails. Then something touched her foot. She moved away in shock but the same thing happened.

She reached out and up to steady herself, and above her felt wood where there was once brick. It was the cellar doors.

The laughs, howls, and maddening wails were getting louder, and the cloud of fear was moving in. The searing pain of her scolded hand seemed to mock her. But this was it, if she wanted to survive, the time was now. So she screamed and kicked and slapped and punched and threw everything she could at those cellar doors and as she pried them open, a light appeared, illuminating the nightmare below.

Severed limbs, fat removed, and chunks of muscle carved out. Dead squirrels, rats and birds. Bits of people. A sea of bodily debris, discarded and hidden from view. The light above brought it all into focus. Every sliced particle of skin and every portion of human meat that had been taken from these limbs was there for her to see, in a light that seemed blinding and all-consuming.

“HANDS OFF MY LEFTOVERS!” shouted the man, now crawling towards her, candle in hand, skin peeling.

All Lily could do was scream and ignore the pain in her hand and punch the wood above her.

“WHERE ARE YOU GOING? WHO WILL MAKE THE CANDLES? YOU HAVE EVERYTHING HERE!” The shouts had turned to barks. Staccato, sorrowful and unstable.

Lily looked down at her feet and saw a chunk of fat from a severed leg beside it. The same chunk from the cauldron.

He was upon her, within reach. She punched up one more time. As the scarring pain of molten wax and melted tallow and liquid human fat shot through her, the sound of cracking wood filled her ears. She had forced the door open.

She looked up, into her escape, and a light filled the tunnel, it filled the cellar and filled the cabin too. She took one last look at the man, rotting and writhing, and as she did the candle he held went out.

Lily turned upwards once more to a spectacular all surrounding light, and at last, as if for the first time in her entire life, she was free.

-----------------------------------------------------

“How long have you been doing this?” asked the middle-aged lady, with short hair, Norwegian walking sticks and a slightly oversized raincoat.

“Too long!” laughed the guide.

“Well, thank you for all your help. We’ve had a lovely day and can’t wait to go out there on our own. Sleeping in the woods at our age! How exciting.”

The guide just replied with a silent put-on smile.

“Well, wish us luck!” said the lady with the sticks and the coat.

Then with an outstretched hand, the guide pointed down the overgrown path and said “Straight then rear left after the big tree with the hole in the roots. Good luck!”

The middle-aged lady looked at the hand and noticed the scars, and that night, a candle burnt in the cabin once more.