The Beast's Cabin

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

The beast was back.

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The remote countryside of France was not Bren's first choice as a place to live, but given the state of the world, her student loans, and the semi-recent passing of her grandfather, she didn't see much of an option. On paper, it was a small parcel of land that had been owned by her great-grandparents. It seemed the house was far away from everything, the nearest town being a tiny village that, to her, still lurked in the stone age. Her skin itched thinking of the broken, dirty shack she was about to inherit. Just a few months, Bren. Just til the book gets picked up.

Upon her first visit, the townspeople - the few of them that trudged the cobbles - regarded Bren with wary eyes. It felt like a storybook as they drew curtains and whispered behind her. Bren had never known such dramatic gossip. Was her outfit somehow offensive? Could they see something in her gait or in her face that she'd never noticed?

And finally in person, the property was a starkly different visage. Slumbering for centuries beneath a heavy blanket of ivy and trumpet vine, the structure stretched up into the stratosphere. It could only be called a castle. A crumbling castle.

Bren's eyes were wide, her jaw slack, as she locked her beetle and adventured up the garden drive toward the entrance. The landscape was beyond overgrown, but a vivid variety of flora still bloomed about, taking up residence among tangled bushes and crooked trees. It was beautiful, if a bit tragic. There was a darkness to its loneliness.

Beds of lily and sweet iris lit the air alight with sugary, tantalizing aromas. Hyacinth and red poppies seemed to beckon her further, turning toward the front door that was now peeking into view. Bren ducked under a wild trellis, brushing away wide leaves, and there it was: the chestnut door was monolithic. The woman became a pebble in its pervasive presence, it loomed over her head, stoic and unwelcoming. But something about its impassive nature sparked an urge of challenge within her. What was inside? And would such an old door even unlock still?

She didn't find out; When she leaned on the wood to dig the impressive ring of keys from her purse, the door swung open. Bren stumbled, cursing as she snapped the heel of her old reliables. She wrenched down to snatch the broken stem. Then her eyes rose to the volumes before her. Eons on, those haunting halls seemed to stretch. Her heart thudded, echoing through the grand foyer.

Velcome! She half-expected a tall, vampiric butler to emerge from the darkness and greet her, like in every manor movie she grew up watching. But the area was void of life.

After the initial gaud of her face smoothed back into calm complexion, she found herself settling quite easily into the rustic kitchen. Bren set about busying herself. Tucked away in a closet, she had found a pair of house slippers that fit her nearly perfect. She slid about, putting up the few groceries she had purchased in the town market, she swept the flagstone floors and cleaned off the cherry countertops. She felt more at home here than she expected.

The grand bedroom was just that: grand. A massive four-poster bed with silken ruby sheets. Heavy linen curtains framed a Le Corbusier view out into the back garden. She could see the greenhouse, currently devoid of any indoor plants, but like everything else, wreathed in crawling vines. And beside it was what looked to be a garden or tool shed, with a rusted wheelbarrow parked nearby. Bren flopped back on the bed, staring up at the intricacies of the ceiling. Chestnut wood had been sliced into small panels and arranged in flowery tessellations.

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The first three days passed without much oddity. The only thing that truly rumbled her skin was the howling that she heard each night. It sounded like a wolf, but with a wicked edge to it - like a coyote. But it was much too low and loud to be created by the smaller canine. She’d wake in the night to the bellows and throw open the bedroom window to listen. As much as they terrified her, they also intrigued her. She wanted to hear them, to be the sole person to heed this creature’s message of grief. She felt they were sad howls, as they were never answered by a pack. This animal was alone, as was she.

The fourth morning, the wind was particularly rapid. It hallowed against the castle walls, seeming to shake the portraits and the rafters alike. Bren sat in her bedroom windowsill for an hour, sipping warm tea from the most beautiful ornate teacup, and watching the gales whip through the garden. The mimosa trees that blossomed outside were waving, setting the air alight with the fiery orange of their petals being blown into the wind.

Yet one such stream of current pulled a tree just enough to the left, to reveal a brown shape in the back of the garden. Bren leapt to her feet, face pressed into the glass with bright eyes. It blew again. Wood. Again. A structure. How had she not seen the house before? She’d walked through the gardens each morning, admiring the different native flowers. She hurried outside, smiling widely to explore even more of the ancient property that was growing on her.

Bren struck upon the cabin, shocked to see such a small structure. Even the gardening shed had been grandiose. The weathered shack illuminated the passing of eons with peeling sideboard. In the areas of shadow where the original wood color remained rich, there were lines of bold contrast with the sun-washed, bleached maple that dried out the rest of the house. She pulled her robe tighter in the freezing wind.

The short door was locked. She had left the keys back in her bedroom. So Bren settled for peeking in the thick windows. It was hard to make much out from the glare, foggy glass, and dark interior. The interior windowsill housed an empty vase and an unused candle. A sofa was leaning beneath the window wall. On its back, Bren could see a blanket of some sort - except it didn't look very soft. The furry fabric looked coarse and needlelike. She cupped her hands to the cold glass, looking closer. Something like bile rose in her throat to see it was a pelt - a wolf pelt, at that. Its bushy dog face stared right at her with unblinking, soulless eyes.

She left quickly after that, new opinions brewing storms in her mind about her past family. What sort of people kill wolves like that? What sort of hunters kill wolves like that? Taking the longer, winding path back to the castle, it was a few yards before Bren noticed all of the plants around her were the same. The area around the cabin lacked any sense of the bountiful biodiversity of the other gardens. She knelt, taking a sharp leaf in her hand to examine it. Dark, deep green, it was decorated with small spines along its edges. The bushes were large, planted in rows that emanated from the cabin. But there were no flowers.

One lone tree stood in the area, a sad, sloping willow. The path over to it was much narrower, more of a foot-trodden line than a designated road. Beneath the tree was a large grey stone. Moss and fungus crossed from the bark to the rock. In worn, handmade carving, a flower was depicted - undeniably a rose. Beneath that, was the name of Bren's great-grandmother: Belle. The two dates were close enough to turn stomachs. All too soon after giving birth, she had died young.

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On the sixth night, Bren gasped awake, reeling from a nightmare. Her back was steamy and drenched, she wiped her brow, placing a hand to her ravenous heart. Magnetic, eyes were drawn to a crack in the dense curtains. A tiny light flickered out in the garden, fighting through miles of greenery to reach her. It was the cabin.

Quick feet thudded through the hall, placing butterfly kisses down the steps, rapid and light. Bren toed on the old garden boots that waited by the back entrance. And then she was off, whipping through the vines and brambles in the dark, slashing her face and arms with thorns and sap. Had the garden been this treacherous in the daytime?

As if she hit an invisible sheet, she slammed to a stop. The hedges surrounding the cabin were absolutely starry with bursting, red roses. Again it seemed like the flowers were turned toward the building, edging her onward. She coughed, a sickening sweet odor wafted from the roses. The little light winked at her, the candle in the windowsill. Bren covered her mouth and nose with her nightgown sleeve, braving forward through the garden.

Her feet stumbled as she neared the cabin - the door was cracked open. A sliver of light from the candle begged her to enter, to see the rest of what the structure held close behind its decrepit hands.

In a dense armchair, shrouded in the corner of the cabin, slow breathing wafted through the stale air. Unlike the miasma of the roses, a rotten, cadaverous odor lurked inside. The edges of the candlelight licked the umbra of shadow, catching glints of massive shoulder, of tips of fur, of metallic horns. The beast rumbled the windows, shaking the entire shoddy structure of the cabin. Bren quivered in the earthquake.

She didn't have time to scream. And outside in the rows of roses, each bush dropped their petals. Like the castle land, they were once again bare.

Wild and bestial. A beauty.

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