Love grows still

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

Ah, I see the corners of your mouth twitch. You think yourself familiar with tales of this nature, but I fear I must disappoint you. Come closer, that you might hear me better. The wind blows with ill will, tonight, and we would do well to stay near each other. I feel it pulling at my words, seeking to carry them to those who would despise our presence here, those who would stop me telling their secrets.

We often played within sight of that old cabin, much as it scared all of us, even Dillon. Dillon was the kind of child who belonged more to the woods and the wild than to his parents. My grandmother said that he’d been created in anger and born in pain, and he carried the trace of a child pursued by evil. It was a mark of my innocence that I didn’t know what she meant, though I came to understand it with bitter clarity in the years to come.

When we discovered the cabin that summer, we hooted with delight at such a windfall, each of us pushing any trepidation we felt to the backs of our minds. For I believe we all sensed it, even then. The chill of intuition, much as we tried to ignore it, tainted the warmth of summer in our bones. Dillon had been the first to enter, of course. He was male, a year older than Aimée and me, and therefore leader elect. As a child, I thought him the bravest person I’d ever met. As an adult, I came to realise that the absence of fear in him was merely a symptom of his familiarity with the all-too-predictable pain at home.

Aimée and I waited as he approached the door, testing it first with his foot and then leaning a shoulder against it. The air in the clearing was oddly still, as if holding itself taut, the way a hunter barely breathes as their prey approaches a trap. Those ancient woods, our summertime kingdom, were usually alive with sound, but here, it was different. We wouldn’t have been able to put it into words, but we all knew there was something there beyond the three of us, something wishing us harm. Dillon prised the door open and slipped inside.

Aimée and I waited for his reappearance, I kicking a sandal into the dust, she humming a tune of her own invention as she tapped a stick against a tree. I glanced from the trees to the sky and back to the cabin, noting with a shiver that the door had closed some time after Dillon had entered. As the minutes passed and the door remained closed, Aimée and I edged closer, neither of us bold enough to enter or call out.

A sudden crash drew our screams. We jumped toward each other, nails digging into flesh. We collapsed into giggles as Dillon appeared in the doorway. The relief was short-lived, however, for the look on Dillon’s face was like nothing we’d seen before. He stood rigid on the veranda, staring out into the woods.

Aimée ran toward him, but something held me still. I watched, cold creeping over my skin, as she stumbled up the steps. To this day, I am unsure if what I saw next was a trick of the light or of my mind. The former is more deceptive than you realise, and the latter has become less reliable as the years wear on. For the briefest of moments, staring at Dillon’s dark, blank eyes, I truly believed him dead. I was sure that I saw a noose around his neck, blue lips stark against white skin. I gasped, raising a hand to my throat as I felt my own airway restricted.

As quickly as it came, it was gone, and it was with relief that I registered Dillon’s speckled smile. Aimée had shaken him from his pretence, and his pleasure at having scared us was obvious. He gestured for us to join him inside, and we both entered, almost trance-like. Dillon had an undeniable power over both Aimée and me. My mother called it puppy love. My grandmother called it the evil searching for a new home.

I notice you are shifting where you sit, impatient that I take so long to return to the candle in the window. It will come, in good time. Should the forces called by the wind tonight penetrate our makeshift boundaries, I would like you to understand the full truth about that cabin, for many of the stories told of it have been misrepresentations or outright lies.

That autumn limped in damp and rust-coloured, sucking the warmth out of the air with no crisp breeze or golden leaves offered in return. My grandmother looked to the skies and shook her head, muttering of bad tidings. Dillon, Aimée, and I had explored every inch of the cabin and clearing over the summer, Dillon even climbing onto the roof and leaping off, Aimée and I laughing giddily beneath him. The initial exploration done, however, we played mostly outside in the warm months. Something made us reluctant to enter the cabin too frequently, but, for whatever reason, we found ourselves unable to stray too far from it.

As the evenings began to creep in, we started to play inside more often. The sun withdrew earlier and earlier, as if sensing the presence of malintent and abandoning us to our choices. We believed at the time that it was the season pushing us inside, but I know now that some force from within the cabin was drawing us in. We had a solitary flashlight to aid our games in those darker months, stolen by Dillon from his father's tool shed. His father didn’t catch him in the act, nor did he have any proof that he had taken it, but Dillon’s father rarely needed proof. For a week, Dillon viewed the halo of light dancing on the wall through one eye, the other bloodied and closed.

There were signs that we weren’t always alone in the cabin, though they appeared in such a way as to make us doubt ourselves. One evening, for instance, whilst I was hiding in what might once have been a larder, waiting for the others to find me, I felt certain that I heard another voice. It came from the other side of the wall, an adult’s voice, whispering to Dillon. I couldn’t make out every word, for it used vocabulary that I didn’t understand, but I felt sure that whoever spoke meant him harm. At first, I was frozen by fear. When the whispering grew to a muttering, and I became convinced that someone was about to enter the cabin and hurt my friend, I burst from my hiding place, determined to use what little strength I had to protect him. What I saw in front of me was, in many ways, even more horrifying to my young eyes. Amongst the dust and rat droppings on the floorboards, Dillon’s thin frame was pressed on top of Aimée’s, one of his hands fumbling under her skirt, the other covering her mouth. Neither of them seemed surprised at my appearance, and the eyes they turned on me were oddly dark.

I ran from the cabin and all the way home without another word, only succumbing to tears once I was within the protective barrier of my grandmother’s incantations and hidden under my patchwork bedcovers. It wasn’t long before I sensed my grandmother next to me. I felt her hand on my back a moment later. None of us had told our families of our discovery, Dillon because his parents were rarely sober enough to register his presence, and his mere voice stirred them to hatred whenever they did. For Aimée and me, it was harder to say why we never mentioned it. It was perhaps the tacit childhood understanding that anything belonging to us would surely be taken away by adults once discovered. It is more likely, though, that whatever it was that had the power to draw us back to the cabin also had the power to ensure nobody would be able to find us there. That night, however, the force of my bitterness overcame it and allowed me to reveal our secret.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wished to snatch them back, the way the elder folk of our town would slip so quickly behind their curtains that you couldn’t be sure you’d ever seen them. My grandmother urged me to sit up, her eyes boring into mine. She would often focus on a spot just above me when she talked of the malign, but I distinctly remember the unease I felt that night as she refused to break her gaze. It was as if she was willing some dark force inside me to reveal itself to her. She gripped my legs, her fingers digging into my skin, even through the thick coverlet, as she implored me to tell her the exact location of the cabin.

I see you drawing your own layers around yourself. Maybe you sense that we are approaching the darkest part of my tale, or perhaps you now perceive the maleficence on the breeze. You start as an owl hoots, then laugh at your own cowardice. That noise should, in fact, reassure you. The calls and rustlings of the forest at night might set you on edge, but they are signs that life prevails. It is when the owl falls quiet and the leaves grow still that we will know that evil has crept across our protective boundary.

I tried to be vague in my description to my grandmother, but she saw through my puerile attempts at deceit with a sight well beyond earthly vision. She begged me to promise that I would never return to that cabin. I, with all my childlike authority, asked her to tell me why. As is so often the case, elderly wisdom could not, or would not, explain itself to the young. It was a mistake that cost her much. I made the promise, of course, but I had my fingers crossed under the blanket.

I did, however, stay away from the cabin for a time, smarting at the memory of my friends intertwined on the floor. I’d been in love with Dillon since he’d first turned his dirt-brown eyes on me, unsmiling, in infant school. I knew – in the way that all ugly children know, even from a young age – that I didn’t have the kind of face that a boy, even one as damaged as Dillon, would ever want to kiss. At night, I sobbed into my pillow, wishing I could claw away my blobby nose, scrape off the layer of fat that sat around my middle no matter how many handfuls of food I slipped from my plate into my pockets. By day, I settled for his friendship, for the most part burying the pain in my chest when I caught him staring at a daydreaming Aimée, at intervals trying to warm myself in the reflected glow of their private smiles.

I had been resisting the force calling me back to the cabin for a week, when, on All Hallows’ Eve, it became too much for me to bear. I sat in the parlour of our cottage, trying to focus on my grandmother’s stories. She sat amongst her candles, her words of the thinning of the boundary between the worlds weaving a picture in the air. I’d always been able to see her words as images, and never more so than on that most spiritual of nights. On that particular evening, however, they were constantly interrupted by fevered images of Dillon, his hands moving across Aimée’s skin, his lips pressed against hers.

We went to bed after midnight, my grandmother ensuring that she saw me under my covers before she retired to her own room. Her lips on my forehead were dry, and I felt the rush of breath as she whispered a spell for my protection. I waited until I heard her snoring, deep and rhythmic, before I rose, limbs trembling, and stole from the house. The back gate opened directly into the woods, and it jammed that night for the first time in my memory. I leapt over the wall, cursing the damp weather that had caused the wood to swell. I know now, of course, that it was not the weather, but the last of my grandmother’s defences. Once on the other side of the wall, I felt something slip from me. I was alone, her protection rendered ineffective through my betrayal. As I stumbled through the trees, I felt sure I heard someone laughing. Whether it came from the darkness or it was inside my own head, I couldn't tell.

Somehow, I knew before I reached the clearing that the cabin wouldn’t be in darkness. Sure enough, a flame burned in the window. I walked towards it like a creature intoxicated. My body was cold, and I trembled, but I walked with purpose. My feet on the steps echoed like the final footfalls of a prisoner on the scaffold. When I reached the door, I found it already ajar. I was as if in a dream, with obstacles melting away before me.

My shadow was enormous on the wall as I crossed that first room, still moving forward as if of another's volition. It was as big as an adult’s, a man’s, and I imagined myself larger, stronger, than Dillon’s dad, able to save my friend from the pain and humiliation inflicted on him daily.

The creak of my foot on the stairs brought my heart into my throat, and I paused, briefly free of whatever force was guiding me. I felt, again, like a child alone in an ungodly place, and almost ran to the door. I saw my shadow once more, and took courage from its size. I began to climb.

There was only one room upstairs, perhaps once a bedroom, surely built for happier, less wicked things than it became known for. Someone had lit a candle in there, too, and its flickering light grew brighter as I ascended. I knew, from our explorations, that there was but one window up here, and that it was sealed tight. I knew also, somehow, what was causing the candle to sputter.

The scene that awaited me as I reached the top of the stairs begins to play out whenever I close my eyes, be it when I try to sleep or if I merely blink against the sun. My shadow was gigantic up here, too, crouching against the eaves. This time, however, I wasn’t alone. Another shadow stood dark against the wall, and I watched it for a while. Back and forth it swayed, mocking me, daring me to tear my eyes from it and confront its creator. Over the sound of my pounding heart, my ears registered the creaking. When I finally turned, the fevered vision of Dillon on the veranda on that summer day, so long ago now, played out in front of me in harrowing reality.

I see you are sickened, but not quite surprised. Why is that, I wonder? How could it be that you are not shocked that a child should have met such a nightmarish end? Perhaps you already knew what happened. Perhaps you were already familiar with what happened between those walls. Word of such horrors travels as rapidly as the wind, after all.

I stood for a while, terror deadening my reflexes, its paralysing poison caressing my limbs. The corners of the room untouched by the candle loomed large, and I became certain that someone, or something, lurked there. I felt sure, also, that I was its next target, that I had been lured there for just that reason. I tried to lift a foot but, as in a nightmare, felt it stuck to the floor. Whatever it was in the room with us began to move toward me. I felt, rather than saw, it. I felt its form take hold of my muscles, felt it close its icy fingers around my throat, felt it slow my heart.

The story told afterwards varied. Some folk spoke of a tragic accident, of a boy playing at being a pirate, or a cowboy, or whatever else boys pretend to be when they tie a knot in a rope and climb into the rafters. Others whispered of a father known for violence, who'd never wanted the child at all. Yet others murmured, to those they believed might be sympathetic, of evil spirits that resided in the cabin, that had been known in that clearing before the cabin was even built, since their own grandparents were at the teat. Nobody could be sure, but the cabin was demolished, anyhow. Trees were planted there, as a memorial to Dillon, but none ever grew.

There were mutterings, also, of another child found beneath the body, whimpering on the floor, with a heart rate so slow that they marvelled at the child’s surviving. A child whose grandmother nursed them at home, refusing care from medical professionals. For fear of what? Said the whisperers. The third child, who used to play with them in the cabin, was rarely spoken of again. Some said her family moved her away, to disassociate themselves from the tragedy. Still others denied ever having seen her.

You look sceptical. How, you wonder, could people be unsure that a child had ever existed? You, who have grown used to your modern life, with all its obsessions with records, and trails. Up here, in these ancient hills, mostly forgotten by advanced society, things are different.

But you knew that once, didn't you? Knew how it was to lose yourself in the woods for hours, without anyone worrying about you. Knew what it was to feel the pull of something unseen, something that city people would scoff at, that they would deny existed. It's easy to pretend that our world is ordered and inhabited only by the things we understand, when you're surrounded by noise, and light. Up here once again, with only the stars and the noises of the forest, you begin to recall that there is more at work.

No, you are right. Now that you mention it, I do notice that the noises have stopped. It is only my voice that breaks through the silence. You glance over your shoulder, wondering if something approaches. Look at me, Aimée.

You try to laugh, to deny what I say, but I note the fear in your eyes. Did you really think I wouldn't recognise you? I, who spent so many hours watching you two together, who knew every movement of your young bodies, noted every expression that flashed across your faces? Why else would you still be here? Anyone else would have left as they noticed the evil growing around them, would not have stayed to hear the end of my tale, knowing as they did how it was to end.

Where were you that night, Aimée? I looked for you in the corners, but you weren't there. Did you perhaps sense that you would be next, and flee? You can't have loved him that much, in that case. I always knew that I loved him more.

You grow angry. If there was ever any doubt, I know it is you now. That flash in your eyes hasn't changed since you were a girl. It is exactly as it was when I disturbed you that day in your fumbled lovemaking.

Come closer, that you might hear me better. Anger won't save you tonight. You switch to pleading, to denial. You glance at the trees, as if to run toward them, to surrender yourself to the dark rather than stay here with me. Don't kid yourself. I stayed here, after you left us, and I know every leaf and root in this forest. You wouldn't stand a chance.

No, Aimée, you have been running for too long. Something drew you back here, brought you home. We never could resist it. Keep still, now, that I might do what needs to be done. It is time for the evil to find its new home.