by Matt Shaw
I should walk in the morning. In the daylight, there’s less chance of tripping on something and doing myself a mischief. Also less chance of stumbling into a predator. Not sure what’s in these woods but I’m pretty sure there’ll be some kind of nocturnal creature which will look upon me as a snack. I turned back into the cabin - shit everywhere. Kind of wish I had managed to grab some of the cleaning products before I left the store. Not quite sure where I really want to sit in here!
6.
I took refuge on the living room’s chair having moved the single seater across the door again, blocking me in once more; for two reasons - the first was so it would keep the draught from blowing a gale through the wooden cabin and the second was because it looked eerie as Hell outside as a sudden fog seemed to have started to descend, weaving its way through the thick rows of overly tall trees.
I felt nauseous. I don’t know whether I’m simply tired, hungry or nervous about what the morning will bring with the Sheriff. What if he doesn’t believe me? Could I end up going to jail? What about my wife and kids? They’ll have to carry on living their lives with people looking at them and judging them because of what I’d done. At least, what everyone else will presume I’d done if I do get sent down for it. I know I didn’t do it. It was never my intention for someone to get killed.
Jesus, what was his name? That’ll probably end up haunting me along with the look on his face when he realized he had been hit. I had a hand in a man dying and I can’t remember his name.
I stood up and walked back over to the window, looking out into the eeriness beyond. I wished I still had my phone so I could call the Sheriff and get this over and done with. I had ages to wait before the sun would start to come up - enough, at least, to make it possible to see where I’d be treading outside. That’s hours and hours worth of time to build it all up in my head and panic that everything is going to go extremely wrong when I do finally get to talk to them.
I started to wish that I had stayed at home instead of coming out here now. I should have sold this damned place when my father died. I should have known it stood a high risk of getting vandalized. I suppose I should be grateful there isn’t anyone living in here. Mind you, having said that, if someone was living here then I wouldn’t have had a reason to go back to the store and the clerk would still be alive.
I can’t quite believe how my feelings for this place have changed so fast. At the start of the day I was actually excited about coming back here and seeing the cabin again. I liked the idea of looking around it and having memories of my dad pop into my mind once more but now, when I look around, those happy memories are tainted.
Outside the fog is getting heavier. Can barely make the trees out more than a few hundred yards away from the cabin. Never seen it so thick. It’s probably a good thing that Jamie and Ava have gone with Susan, they’d both be freaking about now. My little ghost story, in the car earlier, wouldn’t have helped with that. I might have had to tell them that I had made it up...Well, not made it up so much. Just added to it. The locals always used the story of the asylum‘s ghosts wandering around the area and the scream but I’m sure high stress levels and a poor diet were to blame for my dad’s eventual heart attack a year later. The timing was nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence.
I heard my dad’s voice in my head reminding me of the inmates, “They’d scream and scream, all night long in their tiny little rooms, banging their heads against the walls...For weeks their screams of terror, desperation and, of course, madness echoed through the corridors of the asylum driving the doctors to despair. Eventually, the doctors had had enough and they started performing procedures on the loudest of the patients whereby they’d cut down their necks and remove their vocal chords silencing them forever...” at the time my dad told me the story, he even demonstrated where the doctors would make the incision by running a pen down my neck. A move which would always make a cold shiver run down my spine. I remember my dad telling me what the locals had told him after he mentioned the ghostly footsteps and the scream whilst on a shopping trip, the following day, “You’d never see the ghosts, not properly. You’d only catch a glimpse of their shapes out of the corner of your eye and you’d hear their stolen, vengeful scream; an ear-piercing shriek to steal the lives of anyone who heard it.”
My dad always had a glint in his eye when he told that story and, when I grew up, I always wondered how much of his story was true to what the locals said and how much he had embellished. After all, being a writer, his imagination was more warped than that of the average man on the street and I’m sure he wouldn’t have wanted to miss the chance of putting his own stamp on the story.
As I continued staring into the grey night outside, I couldn’t help but feel a chill run through me as I remembered the stories my dad used to tell. The more I think back, the more I have to question whether this really was a father and son holiday time, as I used to believe, or just the chance to scare the living shit out of me without mum close-by, ready to shout at him for taking a story too far.
“A car broke down just along that dirt road,” my old man had whispered once as I laid, as an eight year old boy, in bed with the duvet tucked around me, “the driver, a man in his forties, turned to his wife, a pretty lady in her late thirties, and told her to wait right there whilst he walked back to town to fetch help...She begged him not to go and leave her because it was dark outside, just as it is now, but he insisted. He said they couldn’t spend the cold night sitting in the car hoping for someone to stumble upon them. He kissed her on the forehead, reminded her that the town was only about half an hours walk back in the direction they had come, and whispered that he wouldn’t be long. Half an hour passed. An hour came and went...Two hours passed and still there was no sign of her husband. On the third hour there was a bang on the roof of her car... BANG! and then another... BANG! as though something heavy was being smacked against the car’s metal roof. She froze with fear as the heavy thuds continued to rain down upon the car and felt a huge sigh of relief when she noticed oncoming headlights in front of her. As the car neared the thuds on the roof got louder and heavier and more constant...BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! She didn’t move, though. She desperately wanted to climb from the car and run towards what turned out to be the Sheriff’s patrol car. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! on the roof. The Sheriff jumped from his car and called for the lady to get out of the vehicle and walk towards him...He told her, whatever she does...She mustn’t look back...”
BANG!
Something heavy hit the wall of the cabin behind me and I jumped from my memories back to the present. I span around to where I thought it had hit. Whatever it was, it sounded so hard, I thought it could have come through the wall. What the Hell was that?
BANG!
I looked out of the front window again. It doesn’t look windy out there. I thought, perhaps, it could have been a branch knocking against the wall. If anything, it looks stiller than I’ve ever seen it before.
BANG!
“Hello?” I called out. I waited...
BANG!
“Hello?”
BANG!
Curiosity got the better of me and I pulled the single-seater away from the cabin door and stepped outside into the darkness. This would probably be easier with a torch. I walked down the porch, which ran the entire length of the front of the cabin, and turned down the side of the building. From out here, I couldn’t hear the banging anymore. Even so, I continued to the back of the building. Nothing there. Not even any trees close to the back wall which could have been knocking against it had there been a sudden gust of wind. Weird. I peered into the darkness to see if I could see anything but it was too dark and, even if it hadn’t been, the fog was almost impenetrable.
“Hello?”
Nothing. Another chill ran down my back. A grown man and I’m getting creeped out by the woods and a little fog. My dad would be laughing in his grave if he knew the effect his stories were having on me. I about turned and hurried back to th
e cabin’s living room. Once inside, I pushed the single-seater against the door again and took a step back.
BANG!
I jumped again. It came from the same place, on the back wall. I walked over to where I thought it came from and placed my hand on the wall. I jumped again when whatever it was banged against the wall once more. Whatever it is, it feels heavy. I bet, if I check in the morning, there’s a mark against the wall. What could it be? I held my breath as I waited for another impact but there was nothing. A minute passed and still there was nothing.
BANG!
It came from the next room; the bedroom just off the living room. I ran through, stopped in the middle of the room, and waited. Come on, you son of a bitch. Where are you?
BANG!
Back in the living room. I hurried back through and pulled the single-seater away from the cabin’s front door. Had I stopped to think about it I would have realized what a stupid idea it was, to try and catch whatever it was banging against the wall. For all I knew it could have been one of the inmates from the asylum...Don’t be so stupid. Within seconds I was stood out the back once more but there was still nothing to see.
“Hello?”
Leaves rustling in the wind were the only thing to respond to my call out. Nothing else.
“I have a gun!” I shouted just in case there was something else, other than the dancing leaves, out there. I waited a moment longer than entirely necessary giving whatever it was plenty of time to reveal itself yet nothing came and nothing happened. Thinking of the gun, as much as I hate them, I’m kind of glad I have it. I returned back to the inside of the cabin and retrieved the gun, from the side where I had placed it earlier.
I pushed the door to but didn’t block it with the seat this time. I want to be ready if the noise happens again. I don’t want to give whatever it is any idea that I’m coming for it. I’ll just run out there and squeeze a few rounds off into the darkness. Perhaps I should do that anyway without waiting for the noise to happen again. If there is something out there it will soon disappear if I start firing bullets. It would show I’m not afraid to use the gun and that’s not a bad thing to reveal even if I don’t really want to kill anything. A couple more minutes went by with nothing happening and I started to relax a little - well, as much as I could given the circumstances.
BANG!
It came from the kitchen area of the cabin. I ran out the front of the cabin and ran to that side of the building with the gun raised high in the air - pointing to the black sky.
“Fuck you!” I yelled. I pulled the trigger twice letting off two rounds into the foggy air. With the gun still raised I froze and waited, listening for the sounds of something running from me. Nothing. Either there really is nothing out there and I’m going mad, hearing things, or - whatever it is - it’s not scared of bullets. If it’s the latter, I really don’t want to know what it is or what it wants. A few more silent seconds went by. I lowered the gun and walked backwards, towards the cabin’s entrance, keeping my eyes on what I could see of the tree line.
Back in the cabin I moved the larger of the living room’s seats in front of the broken door. I slid the single-seater across the room from where I had pulled the larger one. With that done I closed the curtains to the windows. Seeing outside was only fueling my childish thoughts of monsters in the fog. With everything done I dropped down in the single seat once more and rested the gun in my lap.
“You know there’s nothing out there,” my dad used to tell me on the nights where I was so scared I couldn’t fall asleep because of his stories; the nights when he pushed it too far.
“There’s nothing out there,” I repeated his words out loud. “Nothing out there.”
BANG!
* * * * *
It’s been about twenty minutes or so and everything’s gone quiet. Whatever it was, out there, must have got bored and wandered off. It was probably the people, or person, responsible for all of the graffiti and general damage. I expect they came back and saw me here...Probably tried to scare me off so they can take refuge in their den.
“See I told you everything was okay,” my dad would say once he’d proven there was nothing outside waiting to get me as soon as I closed my eyes. I wish he was still here to reassure me - not that there’s nothing outside, despite my over-active imagination, I know there’s nothing outside. At least, nothing waiting to get me. I just wish he was here to reassure me that everything’s going to be okay when I see the Sheriff tomorrow. I’d give anything to hear his voice. Anything.
Yesterday I couldn’t wait to come to the cabin for some peace and quiet. Some isolation. Now I just want to disappear, though. The isolation paired with the guilt I’m feeling is killing me and reminding me more and more of memories I’d sooner keep buried. This cabin was supposed to remind me of the good times with my dad, as well as give me the peace needed to write, not drag up the shit I’d rather forget.
“How long have you been seeing her?” I had asked dad after I burst into his study; a small room where he used to sit and write his novels.
I remember how my dad swiveled around, in his chair, to look at me. He didn’t even get up to talk. Just sat there and tilted his head down so he could peer at me over the top of his black-rimmed glasses. Already he had had a look of denial on his face but his eyes gave him away just as they always had when he was guilty of something or simply bending the truth to put himself in a more favorable light.
Mum had suspected for years that dad was seeing the other woman. Every year he’d get the Valentine’s Day cards, penned in the same styled handwriting as the birthday cards he thought we never knew about; the secret cards he’d stash in his office despite putting all the others out on display in our front room. Why else would you hide something away other than to conceal a guilty conscience? What made it worse is that she wasn’t even that special, this woman he chose over my own mother. Just a cheap tart who liked to dress herself up in high market clothes and designer jewelry to try and make herself look important. Even then, the jewelry was most likely paid for by my father. No matter how you paint a turd, though...A turd will always be just that.
I never told mum. I never told her how I found the notes between dad and this woman. Dad hadn’t been around. He must have popped out to pick something up or run a chore and simply forgot to lock his study like he normally did. He often went out without locking it but would always remember it and come back to close it up as soon as he possibly could, even if it made him late for meetings. This time he wasn’t there, though, and a constant ringing of the alarm was annoying me so, despite knowing he didn’t like people going in his study when he wasn’t there, I went in. There were notes scattered all over his desk. Most of them seemed to be about a new book he was working on but one in particular caught my eye. Obviously I was going to take a closer look. I’m only human. I wish I hadn’t. If I had just ignored it I’d have never seen the messages backwards and forwards with this woman. This piece of shit friend of the family. The most two-faced human you could possibly imagine. Numerous messages where they declared their love for one another and called each other by their sick-inducing pet names.
Despite bursting in on my dad and confronting him, I never told him I had seen the notes. I wanted him to be man enough to admit to me that he was cheating on my mother. His wife. But he couldn’t even do that. Not man enough. It’s funny, I always thought he would have been given his dislike of anything less than ‘honest’. Maybe it’s the way I burst in on him? Maybe if I had handled it differently he would have responded truthfully? I was young, didn’t have much control over my emotions back then. Especially when it came down to people, or things, hurting my mum.
I’d never forgive my dad for what he had been doing behind my mum’s back but I’ll always regret not being able to establish some form of relationship with him again before his heart attack. The last words we had were said in anger and it tears me apart inside. I sat back in the chair and wiped a tear from my eye. So much for reminis
cing about the happier times.
I closed my eyes and tried to block it all out; the guilt from what I had been a part of earlier in the day, the deep feeling of regret at not being able to patch things up with my dad before his heart attack...I was even feeling guilty about how I had been treating Jamie this past year. She was obviously going through a difficult time, trying to discover who she really is, and I’d just take the piss out of her if I’d even comment on it in the first place. More often than not, I’d simply shut myself away in my own little study and work on my own pieces of fiction. With things feeling a little strained, from time to time, between Susan and I as well...Am I turning into my father? I hope not. I promised myself I’d never do that. I promised myself I’d be a better father and a better husband but at the moment it feels as though I’m failing on both accounts.
As soon as I see them again, I’ll start to make amends.
Another promise to myself.
7.
A gentle knocking on the cabin’s door stirred me from my unexpected sleep. There was no light coming through the cracks in the curtains so I couldn’t have been asleep for long. Was there even a knocking or did I imagine it? I didn’t move. I just stayed rooted to my seat with the gun still in my lap and my hand close by, ready to grab it should it be needed.
