No Way Back

The listing in the agent’s window was meant to entice passersby – baiting them, daring them to imagine a different life, a smaller life; a quieter existence. By its faded visage, edges curling around the cellophane tape sticking it in place, it had clearly failed to lure the right person. 

It’s been waiting, patiently biding its time. 

Until now.

Home. 

Home? You give a self-conscious chuckle at your inner-voice’s seeming sense of humor as you push through the office doors. An electronic buzz announces your entrance, as if the small rented space warranted such proclamation. Only one of the two desks are occupied in an area barely larger than your studio apartment back in the city. An elderly woman with a Q-Tip haircut, her short, white curls perfectly coifed, looks up with a practiced welcome. She pushes her pearl-framed glasses up the bridge of her nose with a twisted, swollen knuckle. The well-choregraphed smile, wide and lipstick-lined, doesn’t miss a beat but it’s too big to be authentic. It feels forced. Insincere. 

Disingenuous. 

You hook a thumb over your shoulder toward the cabin’s faded listing in the window and mention your interest. You watch the agent’s expert smile falter, then slip away entirely. Too late, she catches herself and attempts to regain her professionalism, to again bolster her smile’s footing but it can’t be rebuilt. The thing she throws up now is only a façade of its former warmth. Still forced, but this time you see that something else has snuck into its transformation. It’s there, then gone again, so fleeting you question if you even saw it at all, or if you only imagined her eyes flash wide beneath furrowed brows. A sharp intake through her nostrils; was that…trepidation? Anxiety? No. The pearls of sweat glistening across her lip, you decide, betray something deeper.

Fear.

But you’re an adult and decide that whatever might be going on with the woman, whatever thoughts on the matter she might have, was neither your circus, nor your monkey. You disregard her reaction as if you didn’t see it (mostly because you’re not sure you really did), and push on, regardless the impropriety. You aren’t in town to make friends. You’re not a sightseer. Not a tourist. 

You’re searching. 

For what? That is still unclear. You spent the past thirty hours on the drive up in ponder and self-reflection and still, you have no answer to what possessed you to leave everything you’ve known; away from all that’s familiar. 

No label. 

No name. 

And no inkling if you’ll even return.

Maybe that’s been the point all along.

Does it really matter?

You recognize it’s not that you need to disappear, you just need…space and before you ask yourself ‘space for what?’ you already know you have no idea. Reality? Life? The constant, repeat cycle of human dramas? That last thought hits harder than you expect and you quickly change the subject.

You ask if the cabin listing is still available. 

The agent’s answer is a less-than-enthusiastic nod; hesitant, as if her conscience and possible commission were dueling behind her eyes. You ask if the price is negotiable. She tells you to make an offer and then the both of you settle down to business. 

~~~

Documents signed, she hands you the key on a dated macramé keychain and mentions again, the cabin’s extreme remoteness. Her tone suggests you arrange a hotel room in town for the night but you ignore her hint. At that moment, you have no way of knowing that turning down her suggestion is a fork in the road from which your future hinges. 

Forty miles down an overgrown dirt road that’s barely more than a trail and you never pass a single car, tractor, abode, hunter, or any other sign of humanity. The agent’s parting words to you as you left her office, key in hand, “There’s a storm coming”, sounded less weather-related and more like a general warning. You ask what you should know or do to prepare for inclement weather. Other than stay indoors. Don’t wander around in it. 

Don’t lose yourself in the tempest.  

She only responds with a tight-lipped, “There’s things in these parts – especially those mountains - that can’t ever be prepared for, only prayed about.” Her words follow you out the door.

After a stop for some supplies, you head out of town toward the shadowed hills, noting the pavement’s constant incline. How the clouds seem to come down to meet you. How the color of the sky reminds you of gunmetal. Or decomposing flesh. The agent’s cryptic words had introduced a palpable tension that refuses to fully dissipate. Trees loom over you, forming a thick canopy that blots out most of the moody sky. Daylight fades, the air drastically cools. You notice a damp, earthy, musky smell of wet soil, decaying leaves and something a little more…feral coming through your cracked window. You quickly lever the window up all the way in case something is out there, running beside you in the shadows.

Pacing you.

The first tendrils of dread begin to creep into your thoughts. This was a mistake. An improper impulse. A dangerous whim. Second-guessing your decision becomes the theme for the next several miles.

However, upon your arrival to the cabin, your doubts and concerns are momentarily suspended. You’re sure you can reclaim the small, once-quaint structure and refurbish it with some time and labor. The fern-lined walk leading to the porch is overgrown and choked with weeds, but you tell yourself you can tidy it in a weekend, once you send for your things. You notice that at some point, someone had hung delicate lace curtains in the cabin windows in an attempt to make the place feel less abrasive, but upon closer inspection you find they’re not lace at all, but tattered and rotting fabric dingy with age.

The agent claimed the cabin was formerly a family home, until an undisclosed tragedy struck. After, it passed through multiple hands, bought and sold as a hunting cabin, an artist retreat, a man’s off-grid attempt at self-sufficiency. It was unclear what happened to him.

Now it belongs to you. At least it will when the paperwork is cleared on the agency’s end.

You acknowledge the only things you know about living in the woods comes from watching YouTube videos on your computer and you chuckle at the irony. A solar-array sits in a small clearing, its outdated panels staring at the sky and you hope not in vain. You need to locate an inverter and batteries. Firewood leans in uneven rows against the cabin’s wall, bristling with tufts of grass and twigs—nests for unseen rodents scurrying within the cabin’s walls, you’re certain. You’ve an inkling the handpump by the front steps is your water source. 

A stone chimney dressed in moss protrudes from a roof missing several tiles. The place is rustic, but has all the amenities you think you’ll need – power if you can get it running, water if it’s potable, heat and silence. Two weathered steps lead up to a rough-hewn porch that spans the length of the cabin. The boards beneath your feet groan like the pained exhalations of an old man.

You notice the railing is worn smooth, as if countless anxious hands have gripped it while gazing into the forest. That’s when you spot a vertical stone with a curved top sitting askew among the trees—it looks unmistakably like a headstone and now you’re curious. Who died here, how did they pass and why. You’re fairly certain the real estate agent was required by law to disclose such things.

Knapsack over your shoulder, the few bagged groceries you stopped for dangling heavily off your wrist, you use the key to let yourself in. Just as you’re about to push through the cobwebs stretched across the door, you pause, noticing the symbols crudely carved into the transom. Your eyes—either naturally, or by a will not their own—gravitate to the same symbols etched into the support beams on either side of the steps holding up the porch roof.

You’re not sure if you’ve seen these markings before, but they somehow feel familiar, like your soul recognizes them from an earlier incarnation. They’re carved grooves in wood yet they feel like more than that. Like something ancient. Like something important that should never have been forgotten.

That you don’t know how to decipher them somehow sparks an unexplainable panic in the center of your chest. They might be intended as a welcome, but the viciousness with which they’ve been slashed into the wood feels a bit too threatening. Every cell of your body suddenly wants – nay, needs, to be indoors, out of view of whatever you feel watching you from the woods.

Inside, faded maps and sketches of animal tracks cover the walls showing trails long forgotten and surely overgrown. Antlered deer skulls hang above the door and window like stationed guards. You swear their glassy eyes track your movements around the room. A dusty bed with a sunken mattress sits along one wall. Everything is covered by a thick mat of dust. Your boots leave prints on the floorboards in your wake.

As if expecting your arrival, the storm outside kicks up a wicked wind, bringing the woodland alive with shadows, each one shifting and dancing in the dying light. Every rustle of leaves, every creak of branches gives you a heart-pounding start. That unease you felt previously comes rushing back. Maybe it was a mistake coming all the way out here after all. In hindsight, hunkering down in a hotel for a couple of weeks with the do-not-disturb sign on the door might have been a better option.

You know it’s only your mind playing tricks with you, but the forest seems to crowd closer. You can’t escape feeling as if their gnarled, skeletal branches are reaching out to you, wanting to pull you into their darkness. Moths flutter around the feeble glow of the porch lamp, above a pile of winged corpses—a gruesome collection whispering of the light’s lethal allure.

The first fat raindrops announce the storm’s arrival as night settles over the woods. Shadows grow longer; more sinister. The dense forest surrounding you seems to press in closer, the trees murmuring secrets in the dark. An icy wind howls through the darkness, pounding against the window as the tempest rages with unnatural fury. 

You build a fire in the woodstove and daringly step outside to fill a rusty kettle you find in a cupboard from the handpump. The night seems anxious around you, as if it waiting for something you’re yet unaware of. You try not to slam the door when you rush back inside.

While the kettle warms, you find what you’re looking for in your knapsack. A cup of tea will surely calm your jangled nerves. You’re just unclasping your travel mug from your knapsack when a violent gust slams against the cabin wall, rattling the windows in their casings. 

By the light of the woodstove, you strike the kerosene lamp you find on the table left there by a former occupant. The lamp’s flame flickers erratically, casting eerie shadows to dance on the walls. 

That’s when the smell hits you. 

Not just the closed-in, feral mustiness you picked up earlier on the drive up. This is something else layered on top of all that – something thick and organic. Like wet fabric left to rot. Like a buried corpse exposed to air. It fills your nostrils with each inhale, heavy and cloying; that sweet, unmistakable stench of death. A prickle of unease begins to slither down your spine.

You take a deep breath to settle your nerves and mentally talk yourself down from the rafters. You’re in a new place, you tell yourself, you’re tired and not used to…nature. You reconstitute a freeze-dried meal you bought earlier as the storm outside intensifies. The need for sleep overcomes you, overrides your anxiety, and you’re finally able to settle down for the night. You unfurl your newly purchased bedroll on the floor in the glow of the woodstove. 

The wind howls around the cabin like irate banshees. Your sense of isolation feels complete. This is what you wanted. What you sought. The call you unknowingly answered but the cabin, once a hopeful escape, now feels like a character in its own horror story. You do your best to remain calm, but you can’t escape knowing the comfort the cabin might have once promised now feels like a complete and utter lie. A sham. A trap. Four walls and the forest watching you with unseen eyes, waiting for the right moment—

A sound emerges from the night, one your mind desperately wants to dismiss. The sound of tiny claws, scratching. Rodents from the woodpile? You try to tell yourself that’s what it must be and even as the thought passes through your mind, you know it’s another lie. Like the cabin. The sound is too big for a mere mouse or even a pack rat. Maybe a racoon or even a porcupine. A skunk probably.

Deep down you know none of that is true. It’s something bigger. Something worse.

Clawing. Shredding. Ripping. The sound grows louder and more insistent with each anxious pulse of your thunderous heart. Your stomach churns as panicked bile threatens to rise like the undead. A thought clenches your heart— did you lock the door?

The irrational fear of drawing attention to yourself in the dim light dares you to breathe. Your nerves fray as sound moves ominously from the door, to the window beside you, then back to the door again. The wind’s howl is unsettling enough, but this deliberate, incessant noise—it’s not just the storm. Something is out there.

The sound shifts yet again, this time coming from the roof just above you. Gone is the scraping sound of claws; it’s been replaced by the sound of small feet running – not scurrying, not paws —footfalls. Whatever is out there is toying with you. But that’s not the realization that sends ice through your veins.

It seems to want to get inside with you.

The scratching on the walls and door returns, this time even more insistent, but you force yourself to remain calm. To remember to breathe. You try to convince yourself it’s just the storm and how irrational fear can mess with the mind. It takes you two attempts before you gather your rationale and get up to wedge a chair under the door handle for good measure. 

Returning to the woodstove, you sip the remains of your tea, usually a sunny tisane, now just a cold pool at the bottom of your mug. The scent of chamomile and rose petals, orange peel, lemon balm, and lavender, normally a comfort, only amplifies the foul stench seeming to emanate from the walls themselves. You notice the deer skulls’ eyes glinting unnaturally, as if alive. Talking yourself out of your illogical paranoia, you convince yourself you’re just tired and try to sleep. 

The scratching follows you into nightmares of being buried alive in the forest, roots coiling around you.

By morning, the storm has passed. Only the scatter of tree boughs and flotsam reveal the truth. The cabin now feels somehow…smaller, the walls closer than they seemed the night before. You find fresh scratches on the inside of the front door. You’re certain they weren’t there before; you would have noticed. Last night you could have sworn you were under attack but in the morning light, you laugh it off. Stress and sleep deprivation, you mark it up to, and laugh at yourself as you step outside for a breath of fresh air. 

That’s when you notice something you should have when you arrived. Or maybe you had, but something kept it from registering. 

The headstone among the trees, though weathered as if carved decades prior, clearly bears a name. You squint into the forest’s shadows; sure you can make out letters. The longer you squint, the longer you stare, the more realization cements itself like a cinderblock, dragging you under. You can’t fight the sinking current. It’s your name.

 Panic sends you off the porch, slamming the cabin door behind you. Car keys in hand, you rush to your vehicle. You can barely control the shaking of your hands as you attempt to thread the key into the ignition. Your tires kick up dirt and rock as you accelerate back down the dirt road at bone-rattling speed, telling yourself you can escape. 

You must escape.

 But the forest seems to have come alive with a life of its own. It twists the road, and you end up right back where you started. 

You notice the front door standing open when you step out. The cabin’s key on its worn macramé keychain, appears in your cold, trembling hand and everything is suddenly clear. The air hums with damp earth and decay, the forest breeze whispers your name. Shadows shift beyond the fern-choked walk, eyes glinting from the dark. 

The cabin looms, its rune-scarred wood welcoming you back home…

© Dani Clifton /Witches Brew