Wildfire

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

You say, oh no not that one. I already know it.

I can assure if you did know this story, you would not be with me at this cabin now.

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

That was how he too had started the story, my first night at the cabin.

I had been perversely careless with our fourth date, and with online dating, the first date never really counts anyway. But he was charming in a nonthreatening way, or maybe it had been in a slightly threatening way. I seem to remember him having rather white and precisely placed teeth. But it was that dark curly hair and those large eyes, those perennially wet eyes, that had lured me to the cabin.

The Pecos mountains had been pruned just the spring before and as we drove up the winding, slow-moving road, moving over for every passing car even if it was two lanes, you could see where two blazes had kissed and began a Bonnie and Clyde joy ride up one side and down another. At least that’s how he had put it. I thought that too was charming at the time. You’ll have to excuse me if I borrow a line or two.

Those scars are greened over now, you didn’t even notice them on the drive up, did you? No, all you saw, like me, were those rising walls of granite and that hypnotic sound of rushing snowy water. You leave town, turn left and you find yourself climbing up into the Alps. Sets the mood, doesn’t it?

Unaware you’ve actually reached the top because encircled around you are other splendid, crookedly cut peaks adorned with just golden aspens and the rush of new air, the newest air man could ever breathe. We parked at the same place. Where you can see the Pecos River begin its long trickle down both East and West of Baldy, supplying the West with life. It’s all very melodramatic, I know, but you have to admit that it made up for an 8-hour hike.

The sun was setting on us but when I came here before the ground was emerald green and filthy with those wild irises, the violet kind that you can’t get to bloom anywhere but in mountain soil. As we went, he whistled - very well- that old Michael Martin Murphy song, Wildfire. The sound bounced off the trees and boulders, throwing the notes around and they came back to us sounding like the calls of whippoorwills. It made sense to me then, why anyone, Catholic settlers or miners, would venture so far out into wild bear country. It's the beauty that lures us all.

I have lived in this state for 8 years, it was only 5 years then, but still, all I knew of it was high desert plains. By the time we reached the place, I was falling in love with the soft mossy ground under my feet and half in love with him too. But I guess that was the plan.

The cabin is the only one for miles, other than Beatty’s place. You’re not supposed to build out here.

Why? You ask and I can see your own heavy brown eyes glaze in the firelight.

Oh, because it’s not good for the wildlife. It is very remote to live up here even seasonally. But that’s not the real reason. This cabin is already taken.

You laugh, a touch, tired but still listening with the keen interest of a man love-starved and craving the ending to my story and you ask who lives here then?

I asked him the same question. He didn’t answer me either. Not at first. I can’t really explain it any better than he could. And I never bothered to ask him how he had found this place. It just wasn’t important, not in the end.

This is a woman’s house. It always has been.

I don’t know her name, he probably didn’t either. I’ve always thought of her as Autumn. Hard not to given the scenery.

We arrived just before sundown and he was a lot cooler than I was about all of it. Putting up some food he had packed in here. Placing toiletries in that small water closet. But what he really busied himself with was first the fire, here by the water line, and then dinner.

I should have known something was wrong when he said he was making soup. But then steak and potatoes would have been harder to drug.

Of course, I thought he was going to kill me. I just prayed that if he was going to do anything else, it would be after I was already dead. I told basically everyone I knew, including a neighbor, where I was going that weekend and who I would be with, you know, just in case. So it wasn’t like he would actually get away with it.

But when I came to and felt the heavy silver chain around my ankle, I knew that the long weekend was only beginning.

It is still night. Everything they say about deserts being cold at night can be true out here. But we are not in the desert, we are at the top of the world. Or at least the state. He kept the fire big, I did appreciate that. And when he saw that I was awake, he tried to bare his soul. Explain to me what was about to happen. He even cried. I didn’t appreciate that.

He had no choice and I laughed at him. Of course, I wouldn’t laugh at him now. But, hindsight and all.

You see, he had found himself where I was. Where you are now, actually. I got rid of the chain. He had been brought up here, also following a charming man and he also thought he would die out here. Under this canopy of nothing. No one to witness it, no one to know. He would just be another disappeared man in the woods. But then she came.

That’s what he called her. She. Like from that book. Might as well have been Mother.

Autumn came. She lives in there, in that black water. It’s not black because of the fires. It’s not soot. It’s always black. It never dries up. It wouldn’t surprise me if it didn’t freeze either. He didn’t know when she built the place, or who put her in the water. But I have a guess. Woman’s intuition probably.

She came up here for the same reasons everyone did. To live unseen. To simply be away. Everything you did up here mattered because it meant living until tomorrow. And every dawn was a victory. And I’m sure someone resented that. Wanted that. Wanted her. And then she found herself in that water. Staring up at the canopy of nothing. A stranger in her house.

Before the park service came in. Before they said no to vehicles and bikes and more cabins. When real bandits and outlaws roamed and scavenged valley to valley, she probably has had a lot of men in her house when night came. So for a while, at least I guess, she didn’t need sacrificial virgins. Andromeda chained to the rocks. She just went looking for who was in her bed and took what was there. But then that probably dried up.

I don’t know how many were before him. But, he had been chained to the rocks too. No Perseus on the way. And he waited. And I waited. When the last bit of amber light disappeared, he went into the cabin and lit a hurricane lantern hanging in the window.

The evening birds stopped. Mid Song. And the small breeze blowing the tall grasses died. There’s no darkness like mountain darkness. All I could see was about two feet outside of the firelight and the rest was the sound of the water line. It had been still. It’s puddling waves like barely brushed windchimes. But with every beat of my heart, the ripples grew.

The lapping of black water, the rush of an emerging arm, the drips of wet hair. She appeared out of the blackness taking all its void in her frame. Whole pieces of her torso gone, the firelight popping through her, illuminating the inkiness of her body. Her feet drug at wrong angles in the sand and grasses. Her head lobbing and waving on her shoulders as if she had no neck. My god, she had no neck.

I could feel the water drip off her, hitting my jeans, the chain around my ankle. I couldn’t scream, how could I when I had no idea what I was looking at. All I could do was try and crawl away but even that seemed too difficult. I was so afraid, I think I actually wanted her to take me back into the water, anything just to end the dreadful feeling of crushing terror seizing at my chest and shoulders. She wrapped the chain around her…hand?....fingers?...as if she were going yank me along like a dog, but then she stopped.

Her form bent back sharply and I could hear the twisting and snapping of things, like frozen sticks under your winter boots. She turned and seemed to be looking at him where he was cowering behind the cabin doorway.

She stood there, staring, dripping, for a long time. Too long. And then she shuffled to the water line and back into the darkness. Folding herself into it and the water eventually grew still again.

He waited another long eternity before rushing to the shoreline. Staring out into that massive black hole. Asking why, over and over again. He left me out there for the rest of the night. Nudging me awake the next day when the sun was already high overhead.

He hadn’t slept.

Maybe she wasn’t ready after all. Maybe I wasn’t ready. He thought out loud all day. With me laying in that simmer Zia sun. He wouldn’t give me water, instead saying if I wanted some, I could drink from the lake. I knew what he thought might happen. That she would drag me down. I don’t know why I didn’t look for some way to take the chain off. Probably because I knew that there was no place for me to go. He knew where we were and I didn’t. I couldn’t follow a trail of irises back down could I?

It sounds insane, but I wanted to see her again. To know that I really saw her. That it wasn’t just his psychotic break affecting my own fear. To know who she was. And I think he could feel that. My curiosity setting sail against his fear. And I think we could both feel her watching from the waters, even in the daylight.

It was around noon with an old battery powdered radio tuned up, spewing out static from the open cabin door. It fuzzled loudly, making us both jolt up. My legs almost gave out from under me.

By the dark of the moon, I planted

But there came an early snow

Been a hoot-out howling outside my window

‘Bout six nights in a row

She’s coming for me, I know…

He went pale, gray like a dead fish. Running his hands through his dark sweat-slicked hair. Muttering to himself, he went into the cabin. I thought I would see the radio come screaming through the front door but instead, I saw the long barrel of a rifle. I skittered as far as I could go but I was still chained.

He pointed the barrel at me, so close I could smell the oil it was carefully greased in. He demanded I get in the water and pushed the painfully blunt barrel in between my shoulders. Even if the water hadn’t been freezing, I would have shivered.

My shoes sunk into a soft clay bottom, undisturbed and unsettled for decades. I waded out, up to my breast before I had to stop, the chain snapping me back slightly. He shouted out across the water, telling her to come. His voice no longer coming back to us like whippoorwills. More like the screams of a banshee. I heard him pull the firing pin back and I knew he was going to shoot, but it streamed past me, into the water. And then another and another.

He ordered me to drop to my knees and sink below the water. I turned around and yelled something along the lines of ‘go fuck yourself’ and he lifted the gun at me. So I sunk down. Ventilating as hard as I could against the seizing bite of the water, I pushed myself under, digging my hands into the clay bottom to anchor me there.

And I opened my eyes.

She use to be beautiful.

I felt the chain slide on my ankle and I knew it had come loose. I rose up out of the water just enough to see him bending to reattach the chain, rifle on the ground by him. I ran, pulling the chain to distract him, and then jumped onto his back. Wrapping the chain link around that charming throat. He flailed, bucking me like a horse until he jutted back against the side of the cabin’s log frame. I held on for another two blows before I let go, feeling a rib crack.

He strangled me. His red face broke into ugly deep lines as he squeezed before letting me go. He pulled me back to the campfire pit and before I could kick away, he placed my chained ankle on a bracing stone around the pit, picked up the rifle, and swung the butt down, shattering my joint.

I can see the concern in your eyes. I know, it’s an awful story, but I promise it has a happy ending.

Again he left me out in the sun. Barely knowing if I was even conscious through the constant thunder of pain. He squatted in the shadow of the cabin as the sun crested past its eves. Only a few hours left.

I’m not a bad guy, he said.

The prayer echoed in the heart of every man, I suspect. Hoping that chanting it enough times would make it come true.

I told him I wasn’t going to give out any absolution.

If it makes you feel any better, I really did like you.

The radio buzzes to life and he let out a child’s whimper. She’s coming for me I know…

I laughed. I couldn’t stop. Even when he stepped over my, picking me up by the front of my still wet shirt.

I’ve made it this far, I’m not going into that water.

He said other threats. Other petty insults that any man on death row would spew out in the moments before the currents began to hum. He went back inside the cabin and came out with the bag of food we packed. He poured the leftover soup, congealing in the same bowls as the night before, onto me. Painting me with tearings of jerky and trail mix.

His plan had changed. I was to be left for bears to toy with and he was going to walk out and never come back to the cabin. She wouldn’t follow him all the way to Las Cruces. He got all the way to the edge of the cabin with his backpack before he realized I had tossed the chain in his path and he was already falling when I pulled it tight. I hadn’t planned on him knocking himself out on the edge of the splayed log corners.

It might have been ten minutes or it could have been days, but I crawled to him and searched every pocket and zipper for a key. There was no key. I realized for the first time that the chain wasn’t fastened or wrapped around anything, but sunken into the ground. And then I thought seriously about pulling my twisted and buckled ankle through the chains, calling it a loss on all the tissue that would go, and hobbling down the trail.

All I had to do was just go down, right? But I didn’t. The rifle was out of rounds, I checked. But even if I had enough shots to destroy the chain link. I wouldn’t have gone. I waited.

Bears never came. Obviously. But it wasn’t until dusk that I used the spoiled soup still on me to lubricate the chain. I managed to take my boot off with much yelping and then slide the chain over my shattered bones. I shambled to the cabin door, just as the last bit of amber light disappeared and lit the hurricane lantern hanging in the window.

And the birds stopped. And the breeze died. And the water began to jingle. She had already drug him half the distance to the water line before he woke again. Clawing and screaming and pleading. Grabbing onto the chain as his toes touched the black water. With a small tug, the chain broke free from the ground and his scream echoed back to me across the water like the dying whelps of a rabbit.

I waited. Like you’ve waited. Like you waited so patiently through our three dates. But based on the roofies I found in your backpack. I’m guessing you weren’t planning on waiting for much longer.

Don’t worry. I was telling the truth when I said I got rid of the chain. I find it’s much better if instead of knocking you out, I just give you a little dose of your own medicine. You’re in a much better head space than I was.

I do have some flair for the dramatics out here. Not quite a virgin sacrifice, God knows. But I would appreciate it you crawled your way over here. Thank you. My ankle is a bit stiff after all that hiking. You’d think though, by now, it would be used to it.

Oh, that? I found that, the next day. I stayed here that night. I had to honestly. I went out the next morning to see….anything really. Still waiting. And in his struggling and frankly, tantrum-throwing, he pulled that up. It’s what was anchoring the chain down. Yes, it is a gravestone. I don’t think it’s where they laid her. I think we both know where her final resting place is. But the name you see, worn off, all that’s left is the season she died.

Why me? You ask. Why did she take him? Who was he? I understand, I really do. But you see, son, it just doesn’t matter. This is a woman’s house and that’s just how it has to be. And now, you’ll watch me walk inside and light the lantern in the window. Let that light be a reminder to you, where ever you go now.

This is a woman’s house and there will always be a light in this window.