It began as a freak snowstorm.
I've been hiking and camping in the woods outside of Cashmere since I was in high school. It was a spot I used to like to come to with my friends before they all got too busy to return to nature every now and again. The wilderness in north Georgia is just so beautiful. It's a great place to immerse yourself in nature and return to your roots.
This weekend, however, I have found myself at nature's mercy instead of its beauty.
Well, maybe not nature.
The longer I stay here, the more I suspect something insidious might be in this place.
When I had set up my tent Friday afternoon, the temperature had been a little crisp but nothing out of the ordinary. Spring has been in bloom, and it seemed unthinkable that it could get below 50° in the daytime. I had been meaning to hike deeper before coming back out again on Sunday, but when I woke up to find snow, I decided my weekend might be a bust. After gathering the gear I could find, I began hiking back to my truck, but I must've gotten turned around.
As the day fretted out, I realized how lost I had become. My usual landmarks were either covered in snow or changed so drastically that I didn't even recognize them. My compass was also no help. The needle kept turning and turning, leading me in circles as I wandered through the snow. As I got more and more turned around, the night began to creep up on me. I was soon watching the sunset as I thought about whether or not to put up my tent or keep walking, and that was when I saw the light.
It was small, like a candle on a windowsill. I had never seen any houses out in the woods before, but it was possible that someone had built one in the six or eight months since I last been out here. I began heading in that direction, and as I did, I saw a cabin begin to materialize amidst the snow. A candle was burning on the windowsill, and as I approached, I began to look for signs of life. I saw no four-wheeler or any means of getting in and out, and the thought of someone just living in the woods was a little strange. I was certain to make a little noise, whistling and crunching loudly through the snow so as not to startle someone who might not want company.
The cabin was not the sort of premade ones you sometimes saw in showrooms. It looked to have been made out of sturdy trees, and the wood looked new and raw. Someone had built this recently, and it made me even more aware of whoever was inside. It was pretty likely that a gun lived there as well, and I was in no hurry to be a squib in the local paper.
As I knocked on the door, I felt a little like Goldilocks trying to introduce myself to the three bears.
I don't know what possessed me, but when no one answered the door, I tried the knob. It opened easily, the door having not even been locked, and I stepped out of the snow to find a fire roaring in the grate of the one-bedroom cabin. It was humble, a bed, a table, a large bookshelf that seemed to stretch the length of one wall, some chairs, and the fireplace. It was so warm after having come out of the cold that I couldn't help myself. I stepped inside and made a beeline for the fireplace. I was careful not to track snow in, leaving my boots and pack on the front porch in hopes that whoever lived there would recognize that I was here and not be startled. I didn't know where the owner of the cabin was, but if they were out hunting in this weather, I wasn't likely to receive a warm welcome.
Either way, I didn't think I had any options with the snow falling and the night fast approaching.
I sat by the fire, and as the flames dried my clothes, I couldn't help but look at the huge bookshelf that stretched across the wall. It was floor to ceiling, and as big as it was, there was still space for more books. The books were numerous, about thirty in all, and their spines had the names of people instead of titles. My curiosity got the better of me, and I went and took the first one down. The name Jeremy Blake was printed in gold leaf on the spine, and when I opened it, it cracked in that satisfying way old books do. The owner of the home probably wouldn't appreciate me perusing their bookshelf, but I figured I already had enough to apologize for. What was one more thing?
The inside was written in what appeared to be real ink, and the handwriting was delicate and practiced. Whoever Jeremy Blake had been, he had been a very dab hand when it came to writing. I had to assume it was biographical, but the book didn't look old enough to have been written in 1736, as it claimed. Jeremy talked about being out hunting deer with his brothers when they were suddenly set upon by a snowstorm. It had been snowing when they set out, but what they now found themselves in was a blizzard. His brothers had left him when he couldn't keep up, but Jeremy thought he was about to die. That's when he saw the light out in the woods. He talked about coming upon the cabin and how it had seemed empty but lived in. Like me, he had decided to thank the owner when he returned and set about pinning this in his journal, which he had brought with him.
"I pray the snow passes quickly. I would love nothing more than to return to my father's home so that I might chastise my brothers for leaving me in such a sorry state."
The next entry was a little bit different.
Jeremy had woken up to find that no one had returned to the cabin and that the snow was still falling outside. He had thought it looked a little better, and now that he was warm, he had thought he might try to make it home again. Jeremy had opened the door to leave, but upon stepping out, he had walked right back into the cabin instead. He had tried this several more times but always found himself stepping back into the warm, inviting cabin. There was only one door, and when he had tried to break a window in his fervor, he found that they would not break. He became a little bit upset, fearing that he had stumbled into some kind of deviltry. He tried to leap through the windows and nearly knocked himself unconscious. He had destroyed the house, flipping over tables and throwing chairs, but none of them had broken. When he turned around, it had all resumed its previous position, and Jeremy was certain he had found himself in a witches' den and was most afraid.
The next few days were full of entries about Jeremy continuing to live inside the cabin and discovering what it was all about. He found that he did not need to eat or drink, which was both a blessing and a curse. Despite not needing these things, he found that he was always hungry and constantly licking his lips when his mouth felt dry. He watched from the window as the snow began to melt, and as winter became spring, he watched animals roam outside the cabin.
After a while, his entries became a journal of what he had seen from the cabin's windows until I discovered the last entry in his long series of observations.
"I know not if anyone will ever read this. I suppose it matters not. I have existed in this house for a long, long time. I cannot say how long exactly, but I was not even fifteen when I came in out of the cold, and now when I look at the glass over the fire, I see an old man staring back at me. I don't know how much longer I will survive, but today I saw another person for the first time in a long time. I was looking out the window, watching the snowfall again, when a child came hesitantly from the tree line. He was looking at the same candle that had brought me here, but his eyes got big when he saw me. He took a step towards the house, meaning to come inside or ask who I was, but I shooed him away. I think now that I should have let him open the door to see if I could escape, but I couldn't take the chance of the boy being stuck as well. Better to die alone here than have some young fellow watch me pass. He scampered away when I banged on the glass and yelled at him, probably for the best. I'm going to stop now. This journal does nothing but remind me that I am alive. Maybe it would be better to be dead."
I wasn't sure what to make of the journal. Was it real or some make-believe story the owner had concocted? I looked at the bookcase and wondered if they were all like that? It was dark outside now, so I took the second journal over to the fireplace so I could read it in the roaring light of the fire. A pine knot cracked as I got comfortable, and the whole experience was very rustic.
The handwriting was a little rougher, not the same as the beautiful script of the previous one.
Inside were the musings of a woodcutter.
His writing was shorter and more surface-level. He had gotten lost while chopping wood and found the cabin on his way home. He stopped in to see who lived there and got himself trapped inside, just like the writer before him. He had used his ax to try and break free but to no avail. He had taken up the book he found on the shelf and began writing it to pass the time. It wasn't much, three or four pages before he stopped. He wrote about watching some squirrels, seeing a deer, and worrying that he would starve when he didn't find food in the cabin. Whether he died or became bored, I don't know.
He stopped writing after the fifth page, signing Roland Wood at the bottom.
The same name on the book's spine, written in the same rough gold leaf that the words were written in.
The next diary turned out to be a kind of fantasy story, something my grandpa would've called an oat opera. It talked about pioneers on the trail, one of them breaking off in the night to have a call to nature. He finds a strange cabin with a flickering candle, and once he went in, it refused to turn him loose. He spent a few pages talking about being trapped in the cabin, and when his sister came to look for him, he saw her and banged on the window to get her attention. She looked up, clearly startled, and ran away before she could help him. Whether she had seen him or not, no one else ever came to look for him. The rest of the journal was spent telling the story of the pioneers and what they must've seen on the trail. His sister seemed to be the main character, and he talked about the Indians they fought, the animals they hunted, and the things they survived on the way to their new home. Eventually, she married a man, and the two lived on the prairie with their growing family on the outskirts of Preachers Glen. Towards the end, he must've become a little jaded with the whole thing as the story took a dark turn. His sister, her husband, and her children became riddled with hardships as the Indians descended upon their house, burning their crops and killing them all. His sister watched her family suffer for the crime of leaving her brother behind. The journal ended with her finally being allowed to die at the hands of her captors.
He signed it William T Pitt on the last page, and when I looked up from the story, I realized that it was day again.
As snow rattled loudly against the window, I had to wonder if it had only been a day? Jeremy's journal had made it clear that the concept of time was a little wobbly. Had I been here a day, a week, a year? I had no way to know. The snow was still blowing outside, but it didn't have to be the same storm that it brought me here. I looked at the door as I got up to put the book away and wondered if I would find myself stepping right back into the cabin. I took a step towards the door, but I just wasn't bold enough to try it yet.
I needed more research first.
With little else to do, I picked up the fourth journal. I noticed that William Pitt was on the spine of the third one, as I put it back, and Beverly Striker was on the spine of the one I took down. It seemed that the cabin had finally attracted a female resident, and I was interested in getting her point of view on this whole situation.
Beverly's story was a little different from the others.
Mrs. Striker was in trouble when she found the cabin.
Beverly had been fleeing into the night to escape her abusive husband. She hadn't wanted to marry him, he was not the sort of man that women like her often married, but she had made the mistake of falling for him when she was younger, not realizing what a brute he was until it was too late. By then, her father had decided that if his youngest daughter wanted to marry someone so far below her station, then he would let her. He had enough useless mouths to feed, useless mouths in need of dowries, and her husband had asked relatively little from him by way of a dowry.
The two had been wed less than a year when Beverly had run away the first time.
He had found her easily enough. Her husband was a hunter, and her trail had been easy to follow. He'd had his farm hands tie her up in the barn and whipped her with horsewhip he used on the colts they had been breaking in. Her skin had been covered with welts, broken and red from the lashing, and Beverly had been left in the barn overnight to think about what she'd done.
She thought, alright, but it wasn't likely the reflection her husband had been thinking. Beverly lay in the filthy hay all night, thinking about her current situation and planning her next escape attempt. She played the dutiful wife for the next three months, filling his cup, cooking his dinner, and keeping his house like he liked it until her husband grew lazy again. He stopped having the hands watch her so closely. He stopped locking the bolt every night so she couldn't escape. He stopped putting the dogs out every night so they would alert him when she left.
Then, one night, she ran, but not fast enough.
He was after her sooner than expected, and she had heard the baying of the dogs and the clomp clomp clomp of the horse hooves. She was running through the woods, the early autumn chill sending goosebumps up her skin. She hadn't gotten dressed in anything heavier than a shift. If he'd caught her getting dressed, he'd have known she meant to run, and so now she ran in the light of the late year moon, her body bathed in the golden light as she fled for her life.
When she had fallen, she had expected to be ridden down out of hand, but the hooves and the dogs went past her as she lay curled in the bow beneath a tree. The roots made a kind of cage; Beverly looking through the bars as she listened to the insects and night birds sing their song. She expected to be found, expected to be caught, but as the night deepened, she found it was only her out here in the wilderness.
The dancing light had stolen her from her worries, and that was when she noticed the candle.
Beverly had found the cabin and been trapped by the enticing cage.
There wasn't much after that. She had written a little more, but nothing as exciting as the night-long run through the forest. She read the journals and discovered she couldn't leave, but there was none of the fear or uncertainty the others had shown. She was content in this place, a place her husband couldn't find. She lived inside the cabin, updating the journal sparingly and passing away with nothing to show for it and no one the wiser.
I looked at the door again, but the next book looked so inviting.
Books became my food. I devoured them, rereading some of them and taking their stories in. The cabin had attracted many in its lifetime, and I wondered how many more had chosen not to write? How many had suffered in silence here? How many had simply wasted away with nothing to mark their passing except their memories? Those who had written had left behind everything from pages and pages of observations to short little stories about nothing at all. They wrote fantasies, westerns, slice of life stories about the people they left behind, and it all became more and more modern as time went on.
I don't know how long I sat there reading, but it was snowing again when I looked up to find a journal with my own name on it.
I opened it and found the pages as white and blank as the landscape outside my window.
The doorknob was cold when I wrapped my hand around it.
The wind was cold as it blew snow in through the open door.
My boots were still on the porch, but they looked old and weather-beaten. The backpack was gone, likely dragged off by some animal while I was reading. The boots had been tan when I'd bought them less than a year before I entered the cabin. Now, they looked bleached, the fabric thin as a mummy's cheeks. I wanted to reach out and touch them, see if my finger would go through the thin skin of the boot, but I knew I would never get close to them.
I stepped out onto the porch and found my foot coming down on the hardwood floor of the cabin.
I closed the cabin door and went back to the fire, picking up the journal with my name on it.
If you're reading this, then it's already too late.
I don't know if this place is supernatural or just some odd pocket out of time, but I do know that it's a trap.
I don't know if there's any escape from this place, but I know that no one is coming to look for me. I hope my diary is the last, but I have no doubt there will be others. The house seems to draw us to it, collecting stories as it collects lives. At least I'll be warm before I die.
I looked down at what I'd written, unsure of what else to say. It was barely a page, and the effort seemed lame. I was no writer, I'd never done more than emails or text messages, but as I struggled to find something to add to it, the futility of the exercise hit me all at once. If someone read it, they would be trapped anyway. My warning wouldn't help them, and my eyes slipped over to the fire as I thought about just burning it. Would it burn? I didn't know, but if the cabin wanted lives, then why give it what it wanted?
Then I turned back to the door and thought of something a little different.
An experiment that might bear results.
The book thumped onto the porch when I tossed it, and when I turned back to the bookshelf, it hadn't returned to its spot. The snow skittered across the pages, leaving wet runners on the paper as they marked them. They fluttered back and forth as the wind hit them, but the book was a little too heavy to be pushed by the wind. The snow seemed loath to come up on the porch, so I didn't think it would ruin it. When I closed the door, I hoped someone would see it before they opened it. I had added a little bit at the end, and as I sat shivering by the fire, I hoped they would notice the book and follow the instructions before barging in.
Knock three times and open the door. Under no circumstances come in. If the house is empty, run away as fast as you can. If I am here, hopefully you can help me escape.
---
Comments