The Comfy and Cozy Cabin (Part 5)

I was back in the cabin. It was 2005. I knew this somehow. Penelope was standing on the very top rung of the ladder. She was painting the top of the wall. I was stressed. This little project of hers put us eyeball deep in debt. She looked down at me. Hey eyes were beautiful. Everything about Penny was perfect. Why couldn’t I see that before?

“Don’t worry about it Mark. We’ll make all the money back and more!” Her voice was so soft, so inviting.

I heard myself speak. “Look, Penny, we didn’t have money in our budget for paint this week. You could have waited until next week to do this.”

“The faster we get this done, the faster we can get people to stay here. It’s all going to work out, Mark. Grab a brush, we can go twelve dollars over budget, it doesn’t matter.” I could tell now that Penny was stressed as well, but she held it much better than me.

I stood there watching her paint. Her dad dealt with houses all his life. She had to have known something about making money with one. I didn’t think of that then, though. I was mad over the twelve bucks she spent without telling me. I then said the five words I’ve regretted saying the most in my life. “I’m going for a walk.”

The walk was nice. The sky was pure blue, a perfect spring day. It helped me clear my head. When I came back, I would find Penny on the ground, blood all around her head. She fell off the ladder, cracked her skull on the floor, and bled out. I would call an ambulance. She would be pronounced dead on the scene. Life would never be good for me again. I finished the renovations on the cabin. I felt it was what Penny would have wanted. People started coming in, word of mouth spread, and now I have to turn people away because the cabin is so booked up. She was right. It worked out. I hate having to come out to the cabin. It hurts every time I enter it.

Instead, in this little world Cindy is showing me, in this plane of existence, I walk to the door and stop. I turn around and say “I don’t really feel like walking.”

“Then come over here and paint! We still got a lot to do!”

So I did, I dunked a brush into the white paint, started to carefully coat the wall. The ladder Penny was on began to topple. I dropped the brush and grabbed the ladder before it fell.

“Holy shit! I could have taken a mean fall, there!” She sounded excited.

“I would have had to use the paint scraper to clean your brains off the floor!” She laughed. I did too.

The cabin would become a hit. Even more than it is now. I guess some people put more trust in a married couple. I saw myself turning down a couple from the small town of Alford, Florida. I told the Andersons that we were just too booked up, and we were sorry for not being able to squeeze them into this very specific time-frame they wanted. We had two beautiful children, Harry and Andrea Gray. Harry would make a modest living as an auto mechanic, and Andrea would become one of the best real estate agents in the south. She could have sold an igloo on the beach. I and Penny retired the cabin when it got too much for our aging bones to care for. We began to live in it permanently. Penelope was beautiful even in old age. I would die before her from some type of illness. The last thing I would have seen was my wife, my children, and my grandchildren.

Reality came rushing back to me. I didn’t want it to. I was speechless, wracked with depression. I would never experience those things, all because of an argument over twelve dollars.

“You didn’t save her! You didn’t save her!” Cindy immediately began taunting me.

I moved my light to the mantle. There was an old cast iron fire poker sitting on it. There wasn’t even a fireplace down here, but it made a nice decoration. I picked it up, it felt like it was made out of some kind of wood now, and walked over to the girl.

“I’m just a child!” Her voice became frail again. “You wouldn’t kill a child, Mark!”

“You’re not a child, you’re a monster.” I lifted the poker up. I was going to kill her for showing me what my life could have been like.

Cindy began screaming. It was a painful, terrified howl. I heard a terrible ripping noise. The split going down her body began to open up. The now massive hole in her body began to glow a dark purple color. The entire room lit up. I shielded my eyes and stepped back from the brightness, saw two emaciated figures walk out of the purple light.

Sam and Martha’s bodies were much paler than before. They were white as mimes. Their lips couldn’t close completely, so they had a constant grimace. Sam was smiling. His mouth went from ear to ear. They seemed to have an extra knuckle on each finger. Sam walked towards me. His claw-like hands outstretched. I swung my poker at him. Sam let out a screech. Martha seemed to respond to it. Her eyes were small, like a bird. She dove at me; her nails tore through my pants, and dug into my skin. I whacked her on the head with the poker. She didn’t let go, didn’t react to getting hit. I turned my head around to see Sam knock me square in the face with his long hand. I dropped my flashlight, but kept a tight grip on the poker. I fell to the ground. Martha issued a series of hisses and clicks. Sam replied in the same manner. Sam grabbed me by my jacket, Martha grabbed me by my legs. They began to carry me towards the light.

Something in my brain went nuts. I did not want to go to wherever the hell they were taking me. They didn’t seem to notice that I still had the poker with me. Or they didn’t care. I swung the poker at Sam, smacked him right in the face. He didn’t even flinch. I had no options. They were going to drag me to that place, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

I saw it. Saw it rapidly moving in the purple glow. Cindy’s heart was still inside her. It was beating really fast. Those stupid fuckers didn’t realize the predicament they put themselves in. Sam was halfway into the light, and I was at the edge of it. I swung the poker at Cindy’s heart as hard as I could. The organ exploded. I heard several inhuman screams. Everything went dark. The world felt like it was melting. My head got dizzy, and I forgot who I was for a brief moment.

I woke up. It was dark. I crawled around on my hands and knees until I found my flashlight. I turned it on, and looked around the area. Cindy hung limply on the chains, her body was pretty rotten. It smelled terrible. Lying beside her was the top half of Sam. The other half of his body must have stayed in that place. In the corner of the room, the pale, beady eyed Martha sat. She was breathing heavily and quaking. It was as if she was suffocating. I watched the creature slump over and stop moving. I poked her body, she was dead.

I needed to get away from this smell. I moved my flashlight around, noticed that the windows and doors existed again. They were just sealed up with particle board. I excitedly walked to the staircase where the void was.

It was gone. Stairs filled the void. I ran up them as fast as I could, opened the door. There was light! Just a small amount, though. It was coming from the front door I smashed opened earlier. I ran outside. I was free. I never thought I would see the sun again! I dove into my car, and chugged the bottle of water I had in the cup holder.

The led clock on the dashboard said it was 6:13 P.M. I laughed. Laughed like a madman, laughed until I cried.

It had been two months since I went to that place, since I had a good nights sleep.

I finally stirred up the courage to go and clean the cabin. I thought it might be cathartic for me to rip away all the boards from the windows. It wasn’t.

I was in constant fear during my short stay at the cabin. I was scared that I would once again get swallowed into that dark, cold place that looked like the cabin. Scared that I would not be able to leave, and would slowly freeze to death in a place I would never understand.

When I got downstairs, I had to deal with the bodies. I put trash bags over my arms, and dragged the bodies outside. Maggots had started to writhe in them, and Cindy’s body was so rotten, my fingers went right down to her bones. I threw up several times.

Worst of all, though, Martha was still alive in some capacity. Her small, beady eyes followed my every move. I tried to ignore it. I dug a deep hole in the flowerbed, and placed the bodies inside. I poured kerosene in the hole, making extra sure Martha was completely doused, and set the corpses on fire.

I ran back inside. I couldn’t watch them burn.

The next few days were spent cleaning the cabin. When I absolutely had to sleep, I went to my car.

Once I was done, I sped off with no intention of ever returning. I haven’t opened the cabin back up for business yet. I don’t know if I ever will.

Occasionally, I’ll see shadows moving around my house, and might glimpse a pale hand pressing against one of my windows. When I’m in bed, there are times when I can feel them standing over me. I do not have the courage to open my eyes.

I don’t know what they want from me, but part of me wishes they would get it over with so I could stop living in total terror.

I have constant, reoccurring nightmares now. Most of the time, I’ll dream about an endless field of pale, dead eyed people staring at me. Another common dream is of me stuck in a cold, dark room, screaming for help. My eyes are gone.

The worst dream of them all, though, is the one that shows me the life I could have had with Penny. The life that Cindy let me know I missed. It always begins with me saving Penny from the ladder fall, then it cuts to various moments of our life that could have been real had I not gone on that walk. I’ll wake up, and throw my arm over to Penny’s side of the bed, to hold her close, to tell her that I love her. Every single time, though, my arm hits the cold, empty bed. Every single time, I sit up, realize it was all a dream, and start crying.

[END]