For the Love of Money and Booze

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Having spent an hour hunting deer using only the light of the full moon, Nicholas’s eyes are immediately drawn to the orange flickering light. He is still some distance away from the cabin; his habit is to avoid the place not only because of its crumbling fragility, but also because of the persistent rumors of hauntings. Nicholas pauses between two Spruce trees, adjusts his scarf to better protect against the chill November air and looks again towards the distant light.

Having grown up not far from the cabin, his father liked to tell tales about it, starting with its history as an overnight stop along the route the bootleggers took from the Canadian border to Spokane, Washington during the days of prohibition. In fact Nicholas's grandfather, now dead these 37 years, had been a driver for the bootleggers, stowing casks of illegal scotch whiskey in a fake compartment in his beloved 1919 Ford Model T. Nicholas had often thought that his ambitious and possessive nature more closely resembled his grandfather, rather than his easy-going father.

A brush of cold air against his neck reminds Nicholas of why he avoids the cabin. In the fall of 1923, Simon Goodsell had been found dead outside his cabin; his wife Clara, was found frozen in the weeds on the edge of pond a few hundred feet away. Nicholas tries to remember the exact date of the murders but when he cannot do so, he shrugs and imagines it was a night similar to this one.

Since the murders sixty-three years ago the cabin has sat empty, but looking at it now, Nicholas’s brain finally realizes what his eyes are telling him. The light from the candle seems to be shining through an intact pane of glass. In fact, although it is hard to tell from this distance, it looks as if there are white lace curtains hung from the top of the window.

Nicholas’s curiosity has him take five steps towards the cabin before he stops again. He looks at the seemingly intact cabin and notices there is a faint glow surrounding the building. Then as if a switch is turned on, soft noises suddenly hit his ears where there was only the silent night before. The faint sound of wind chimes drift on the icy air and the mechanical drone of a motor can be heard coming closer. Nicholas looks towards the west where the road emerges out of the trees and he can see headlights in the distance, however he can’t hear the sound of rocks and sticks crunching beneath the tires, only the motor.

Nicholas takes a few steps back and positions his body behind a tree so that he’s mostly obscured from the arriving vehicle while he continues to watch the bewildering scene in front of him. Once the vehicle stops, the door of the cabin opens, and the faint candlelight shows the silhouette of a person waiting at the stoop. Although there is not much light to see by, Nicholas can tell by how far back the driver is in relation to the long, front hood that the car is an antique model. A feeling of dread winds its way to his stomach and a sick feeling takes root among his confusion.

The driver exits the vehicle wearing a long dark coat and a fedora hat; the shadows provide no clues to his identity. The sound of voices but no distinct words reach Nicholas as the driver and the person in the doorway, both male from the sound of it, greet each other. The figures go inside the cabin and Nicholas is left again in the quiet woods, where only the faint sound of chimes is heard. He does not understand why a crumbling cabin should look whole again, and why a vintage car and driver would be visiting such a rural location so late at night. Nothing makes sense.

After an internal debate, Nicholas decides to leave when suddenly the front door opens again and two faintly glowing figures walk out to the vehicle. He hears them shuffle things around and something heavy is pulled from the cab. However, he realizes that the only noises he hears are coming from the scene playing out before him; there’s no sound from people or objects interacting with the environment around them, no footsteps on gravel or tree branches being pushed aside.

As Nicholas hears the men’s voices rise in pitch and intensity, a third figure, likely that of a woman fills the cabin doorway. With the increased volume, he makes out a few words including “whiskey”, “danger” and the word “payment” three separate times. The voices become angry, and the sounds of scuffling and breaking glass are heard.

The woman from the doorway begins yelling and Nicholas sees moonlight reflect off a metal pole, perhaps a tire jack or a crowbar in one of the men’s hands. A sickening crunching sound and a yell of pain by one of the men is followed by a scream of terror from the woman in the cabin doorway. Another thwack of metal hitting flesh and breaking bone makes the man's yell cease while the woman’s screams intensify in pitch and panic. The man in the hat stands over the unmoving figure and drops the metal pole soundlessly to the ground.

Nicholas sees the woman run across the porch and onto a dirt path towards the lake. Shafts of moonlight fall upon her frame as she runs between trees, and he sees she has the same, blue-tinged luminescent glow about her that the men and cabin have. The realization that the woman appears slightly transparent freezes his muscles with fear and stops any thoughts of trying to help her. He wonders in shock if this scene plays out every year on the anniversary of the murders or if something else has triggered the ghostly replay?

Although the screaming woman has a head start, the man in the fedora quickly gives chase and after a dozen yards, grabs onto the woman’s flying hair and yanks her backward with a terrible cry of pain. Nicholas hears the two figures struggling, but at the sound of choking, he realizes the woman is being strangled. After a few horrifying seconds, the moonlight reveals that the woman has gone limp, and the man stands perfectly still holding her dangling, lifeless body for what feels like an eternity. Finally, he picks her up, walks her down to the pond and pushes her body into the water without a splash or a ripple.

Nicholas watches the man in the hat return to his vehicle and lifts with effort, the heavy container from earlier, packing it back into its place inside the car. He retrieves the metal bar as well. Then he gets into his vehicle and starts to reverse down the drive. As he does so, Nicholas sees a glint of reflected moonlight from the silver hood ornament. An ornament in the shape of a flying pheasant, a custom piece that he knows well. As Nicholas looks down at his hands, he remembers the time when as a boy he held the ornament, having broken it off his grandfather’s beloved Model T car while playing in the garage. He had never seen his grandfather angrier and the whipping he received from the unintended vandalism was the worst in his life.

As Nicholas looks back up at the cabin, he sees that the glow is gone and the cabin is returned to its usual decrepit state. The candle in the window has disappeared and he is very alone, with no dead bodies or ghosts, in sight. As he turns his back on the desolate building and begins walking home, he knows his life is forever changed as he lets the knowledge of two things sink in. He suspects he knows the reason for the Goodsell’s deaths, and he realizes that he is the grandson of a murderer - a thought that terrifies him more than the ghosts in the woods.