Speaker 1: I bought the cabin because it was cheap, quiet, and
far enough from people that I could breathe properly for
the first time in years. The listing called it rustic,
which was a polite way of saying the porch sagged
and the chimney had a habit of coughing up soot
when the wind turned, but I didn't care. The locals
hadn't been subtle. When I signed the closing paperwork. One
of the county clerks asked if I brought salt, which
I thought was a joke until I looked up and
realized she wasn't smiling. Some One else called the field
tired land and made a vague sign with the fingers
that I couldn't place old superstition, I figured rural folklore.
I nodded, kept my head down, and drove the dirt
road alone. I wasn't there for company or to make friends.
Jasper was the only thing that mattered. Thirteen years old
and slowing down, but alert, still loyal in that quiet
way dogs get when they've seen you at your worst,
and staid anyway. He curled into the passenger seat as
we pulled into the gravel clearing in front of the cabin,
nose pressed to the glass, tail, giving a few tired thumps.
When he caught the smell of the wilderness, he stepped
out of the truck with the stiff dignity of an
old man, and padded round the porch like he was
inspecting it for me. The first few weeks were perfect,
cold in the mornings, warm by noon, natured lullabies instead
of sirens. I spent my time patching the windows, oiling
the door hinges, reading beside the wood stove with Jasper
snoring at my feet. We walked the perimeter every day
at dusk, his ears twitching toward the brush even when
nothing moved. He lighted it out there. I think we
both did. Then he was gone. It happened with no warning.
One evening he didn't come in for dinner. I found
him on the rug, still and stretched out as if
he had only just fallen asleep. There was no struggle,
no pain, at least not that I could see. His
body was warm and I touched him and cold by
the time I retrieved the shovel. I buried him behind
the cabin the next morning, just beyond the pine line
where the woods grow denser and the light takes longer
to reach the ground. The dirt was soft from the
spring thaw, and it didn't take long to dig. I
laid him down with his blanket and the age blew
collar he wore in the city, marked the spot with
a smooth riverstone, and carved his name with the tip
of my knife. I didn't say anything out loud, couldn't
just stood there with my hands in my pockets while
the wind moved through the trees and made it sound
like the whole forester's breathing in unison with me. I
convinced myself that even though he passed, at least it
was natural. He was old and tired. Maybe the move
was too much, maybe his body knew it was time.
But something in the back of my skull itched when
I thought about how quickly it happened. He had eaten that morning,
he'd wagged his tail at the porch birds. That kind
of sudden ending didn't feel right. Still, I didn't say
the word, not out loud. Grief made everything feel louder
than it really was. I stayed busy. I kept repairing
things that needed repairing, and then moved on to repairing
things that didn't. The cabin was still quiet, but it
was a different kind of quiet, now, one that knows
when you're down, as you can be when you've lost
the thing in the world that ever waited for you
to come home. And for a little while that was all.
There was, just silence and the weight of being the
only heartbeat in the house, and then from nowhere a whine.
I thought it was the wind at first. The cabin
settles differently at night. Rafters creak, the roof pops once
or twice as he releases the last of the day's warmth,
especially after my repair work. But this was softer different.
I had been drifting in and out of sleep when
it broke through the usual texture of the dark, that small,
drawn out whimper that dogs make when their dream of
something they don't like, when their paws twitch under their nose,
and they let out that sound because they need you
near by. I learned to stay alert for that sound,
especially and Jasper's later years. I sat up and listened,
heart thudding slow and tired. The fire had gone out,
the coals gave no heat, the trees pressed against the windows,
barely visible beyond the frost glazed glass. I waited it
came again, clearer, this time a whining at the door.
I didn't grab a flashlight. I didn't even put on shoes,
just padded to the front door of my socks and
opened it. Empty porch, still a hair, nothing moving, not
even the sound of branches. I let the cord slip
into my collar shirt, listening hard for any shuffle in
the dirt or crunch of dry pine needles. But there
was nothing, just me and the windless dark back inside.
I didn't sleep. I lay there and stared at the
ceiling beams until the sky lightened behind the curtains. In
the morning. I told myself it was just a dream,
and it wouldn't have been the first one. The next
night it came again. This time there was scratching, not frantic,
not aggressive, a slow scrape, three soft drags across the wood,
then silence. I stayed in bed that time. I didn't
go to the door. Whatever was out there sounded too
real to be my imagination. Patting footsteps right, left, pause,
then the other set, sometimes faster, sometimes careful, but always
with that soft friction of nail on floorboard. I started
watching the door during the day, even slid the couch
a few inches so I could see it from where
I read in the corner. It stayed shut, no marks
on the frame, no scratches. I could photograph, just the
same door knob, the same warped weather seal, the same
small crack at the bottom with Jasper used to nose
when he wanted out. Before I was ready to get up,
on the fourth day, the sound had moved. I heard
it skittering about around three in the more that same whimpering, louder,
now morgaitural, not sharp, but clearer as it round it
under my bedroom. I sat up, turned my head toward
the hallway, held my breath. Four steps a pause. Was
it looking for a way in? Then nothing. At that
point I'd grown tired of these things that seeped from
my nightmares to the waking world. So I got up
at dawn and walked out to the grave. The dirt
hadn't shifted. It wasn't Jasper. The marker still stood still,
smooth from where I carved his name. The trees around
it didn't move. No poor Prince, no frost disturbed. Back
at the house, the bushes around the house were disturbed,
like something large knocked into it. But it could have
been the weather making it hard to determine the cause.
I poured myself coffee and didn't drink it. Sat at
the table for an hour, watching the doorway. I didn't
tell anyone, who would I tell? What would I say?
Grief echoes, It taps through the cracks and plays itself
back through memory. I had read that once the mind
hears what the heart wants to keep, that's all it was.
I told myself this over and over, even when I
stopped looking out the front door at night, even when
I caught myself silently praying for him to return before
I turned off the lights. I went into town the
next morning, not because I needed anything urgent, but because
I needed motion. I needed fluorescent lights and linonium floors
and the sound of strangers bumping into displays of canned soup,
the same things i'd ran away from the cabin had
been too quiet. I needed to be somewhere with voices.
The general Store sat at the edge of Main Street,
still the only place in town that sold everything from
dog food to windshield wipers to seasonal snow chains. I
parked the truck in the usual spot, let the engine
run for a few seconds, longer than necessary, and stepped
out into the air that smelled faintly of diesel and grime.
Inside the place was warm and humming. Missus Cray stood
behind the register, hands wrapped around a ceramic mug that
probably hadn't left a grip since the sun came up.
She was one of those town fixtures you don't really know,
but everyone calls by name. She probably owned the store
since the seventies, or maybe she just haunted it gently.
She looked up when I came in. Well, now there's
the quiet man. I gave a half smile, tried to
shake the edge off my posture. Morning. You look tired,
she said, not unkindly, long nights, something like that, I muttered,
grabbing a basket. I wasn't even sure what I needed yet. Crackers,
more canned beans, maybe fire starter, something to make the
trip feel justified. She didn't press right away, just sipped
a drink and watched me walk the aisle. But when
I passed the front again, she said softer this time.
Is everything all right out there? Long enough for her
to notice, then said it's probably nothing, just been hearing
things at night. She blinked slowly, the way people do
when they don't want to be the first to name
the thing out there on that lot by ridgeback run. Yeah,
the cabin of the slope, the cheap one, I admitted,
smiling dry her mouth tightened. She set the mug down
carefully and leaned forward. Just a little voice hushed, that land,
it's thinned, I waited. She tapped one finger against the counter.
Used to be bury or land or something similar before that.
No one's really sure. There's stories. Some say it's where
the boundary between here and somewhere else where through. That's
why it's so quiet out there. The land remembers but
doesn't talk until it's hungry. I didn't reply, just watched
her watch their eyes move, the way people do when
they're sifting memories they aren't sure they should be sharing.
She went on slower. Now, people don't stay out there
for long. Sometimes they disappear, sometimes they come back different.
But always it starts with voices, sounds that don't belong
to the air, and if something's trying to get through,
she paused, I found myself leaning in. Don't invite it,
she finished. I let the silence settle, then cleared my
throat manage to chuckle. I it's probably just the fox
under the floorboards, Missus Craig, or a loose gutter. I'll
take a look at it. Eventually, her expression didn't change.
I appreciate the heads up, I said, turning to leave.
I walked out with a bag of things I don't
remember picking up, and got a creeping weight that clung
to my ribs. The truck felt colder than when I
got in. I didn't believe in these thin places, as
she called it. I didn't believe in burial land or
haunted soil or lingering spirits. But that night, when the
wine started again and the scratching came from inside the walls,
I hesitated before I whispered his name, and I didn't
open the door again. On the fifth night, the same
low whine, barely there at first, blew from under the
door frame, like a draft, not a distant sound, but
something with weight. As usual, I didn't move at first,
I just listened. I gave myself the usual rundown of excuses.
I always did a wind shift or a pipe breathing
out its fatigue. But the sound came again and again
and again, sad and urgent. I heard it the same
way you hear a baby crying through a wall, impossible
to ignore, even harder to explain. Then the porch creaked,
something stepping on it. This never happened before, and so
I focused harder, became alert. The slam came fast after that,
hard and flat against the side of the cabin. It
made the picture frames jitter on the hallway wall. I
stood up, heart pounding, and made it to the window
just in time to catch nothing, not even a shadow,
pulling away from the siding. The porch light flickered, then held,
then flickered again. I tried the switch, but it was unresponsive.
The bulb just twitched in its casing, like something was
breathing on it from above. The next night it escalated.
I had settled into bed late, book still open in
one hand, my eyes were half way closed when I
caught it, a flash in the mirror across the room.
I turned fast enough to make my shoulder ache, but
there was nothing there but outside. Beyond the glass of
the bedroom window, I saw it, a figure, tall, narrow,
still just standing on the other side of the pane,
facing the mirror's reflection. A whirled to face the actual
window and already reaching for the lamp, but it was gone,
vanished clean, no sound of retreat or movement, which made
it worse. Because the bedroom window is on the second floor.
The next few nights blurred together in a sleepless fog.
The sounds became more obvious, like I was being mocked
for not taking action. Heavy breathing outside the walls, not
the sharp inhale of a person, but long, raspy exhalations,
as though something too large for the house had draped
itself across the shingles and was waiting for the structure
the book. Sometimes from beneath the floorboards, I'd hear whispers,
not words, not quite, just the suggestion of syllables that
evaporated the moment I tried to focus on them. I
felt wrong to listen too closely. I stopped sleeping in
the bedroom altogether, dragged a blanket and rifled to the
couch downstairs, and kept the hallway light on. That seemed
to keep it at bay for a while, until the
morning I opened the door and found claw marks. They
started at the base of the porch steps, deep grooves,
five parallel lines carved into the wood. The spacing was
wrong for any dark or mountain lion I'd ever seen.
Each mark was longer than my forearm and spaced almost
two hands apart. One set of gouges tore up the
side of the railing and curved toward the door. Another
set stopped inches from the threshold. I followed the path
with my eyes out past the porch and across the dirt.
Nothing in the soil, no prints, no draglines, just those marks.
I tried investigating them more, but the truth was I
wasn't knowledgeable in these sorts of things, and if anything,
considering what had been transpiring these past few days, having
something real and physical to show for it felt good.
Having proof that this was some sort of animal gave
me a sense of safety. The whining returned that night
like clockwork, but this time it didn't come from the porch.
It came from the other side of the house, near
the back, near Jasper's grave. I didn't go out to check.
I stayed on the couch, one hand on the rifle,
the other clenching the fabric of the blanket like a tether.
Whatever was out there, whatever animal had crossed into this place,
I'd be safe as long as it didn't get to me.
Some days passed, and a storm had come in, hard
and sudden. No wind all afternoon, not even a breeze.
But by nightfall the clouds were heaving against each other
and pushing fists of rain against the roof. Thunder cracked
once every few minutes, no rhythm to it, just violent punctuation.
Dropped into silence. The house grew cold in an instant.
I had no fire going, just the space heater humming
low in the corner. But even without flame, the chimney
began to belt smoke, thick, choking curls that spilt sideways
across the ceiling and slid down the walls. I got
up to check the heater, wondering if the chimney flew
had somehow reversed. Draft, took one step toward the kitchen
and froze. The front door burst open. It exploded inward.
The hinges tore free, slamming the door against the far
wall with a cracking rapport that echoed through the beams overhead.
Splinters fanned out across the entryway. Winds surged in behind it.
But I knew, instantly, with the gut certainty that only
comes every once in a while, that I was in danger.
That door had been solid, bolted shut with two deadlocks.
A shape low at first, dragging itself across the threshold
on hands and knees, Its limbs bent wrong, joints high
and sharp, like the bones had been putting backwards. It
was fat, impossibly so. Each fold seemed like a rib
straining under gravy, glistening skin draped over its shoulders with
something that hung in strips, rotted canvas, or maybe cloth
soaked too long in something. It clung to the creature's
back in tatters, dragging behind it in silent folds. It
moved quietly for something that size. Its arms barely touched
the ground, claws tapping once every few feet to orient itself.
Every movement was measured, yet chaotic. At the same time,
it didn't seem lost or confused. It had come inside
to find something, and it was already halfway across the
room before I remembered to move. I ducked behind the couch,
scrambling into the narrow space between it and the fireplace.
The floor was slick beneath my palms, wet from rain
or something else. The smoke from the chimney was curling lower,
now sinking as if pulled downward. I could hear the
thing sniffing, not through nostrils, through mouth, A soft, wet
intake of breath repeated in slow intervals. It was tasting
the air. The flashlight was still on the side table.
My rifle was propped near the back door, too far
to reach. I held my breath and waited, muscles cramping
with tension. The tapping of claws began again, closer, this
time across the hardwood, then on the stone of the hearth,
then right behind the couch. A hand, long and narrow
fingers tapering into sharp, splintered nails, rested gently on the
couch cushion above me. It pressed down just enough to
test the weight. My heart was so loud it felt
like it had a physical effect on the air around me. Obscene.
Surely it could hear that, and it did. Then the
hand lifted, and in its place her face appeared not
fully just enough, her chin sharp and crusted with pale grime.
A wide mouth, not animal but entirely human, except it
had no lips, just yellow teeth worn down to uneven ridges,
locked open in a soundless exhale. The smell hit me,
then mold in death, something that had been buried and
unearthed too many times. It leaned closer. The smoke in
the cabin thickened, my eyes burned, my chest clenched. The
thing was breathing me in, slow and steady. I snapped
threw myself backward, knocking the couch forward. With the motion.
The creature screeched, a sound made not from the throat
but from the lungs themselves. I fell, shoulders scraping across
the floorboards as I scrambled for the fireplace tools. My
hand closed around the iron poker. I swung blindly caught
something solid. The thing hissed and reared back. I didn't
look at it. I stumbled toward the back door, nearly
slipping on the wet rug, crashed into the doorframe, and
stopped because behind me, over the roar of the storm,
I heard something else, a growl. Low. In all the confusion,
I didn't even have time to be scared. I just
closed my eyes and prayed that I'd somehow be safe,
considering that I had another one of those things in
front of me. I didn't notice it at the time,
but I wasn't the only one that froze. The thing
behind me did too. Then a snarl, teeth meeting flesh,
a cry inhuman and terrified, and above it all, the
sharp rhythm of barks that sound so familiar but equally
as strange, caught my attention, and I turned round just
long enough to see only a picture of movement, at first,
fur and shadow, and the black shape being dragged toward
the broken door. Claws raked across the rotted canvas of
the creature's shoulder, Teeth sank into its mid section, and
for the first time, it made a noise that was
unmistakably fear. The weight of the impact drove its sideways,
smashing it into the far wall. Floorboards cracked beneath the
two figures, limbs tangled, snapped apart, re formed. I saw
the thing struggle, lashing out with claws that earlier paralyzed
me with dread, but now they meant nothing. The thing
that had attacked it it was winning, and I saw it,
really saw it, only for a few seconds, caught in
the flicker of the storm light, but enough. A dog,
no something shaped like a dog, broad shoulders, legs, low,
embraced like a wolf of batter pounds, but its edges
shimmered faintly, not translucent exactly, but less than solid. Its
fur moved without wind. Dark patches swirled across its ribs.
The eyes glowed, not bright, but steady, like coals after
a fire had burned out. Its mouth opened wide, larger
than any living dogs ever could, and closed over the
creature's throat. The black figure howled, but the sound fractured
halfway through, splintered into the air, like it couldn't hold
form anymore. The dog didn't let up. It drove the
thing back through the wrecked door. Each stepped forward, pushing
it farther out. The rain had nearly stopped. Only mist remained,
curling like smoke across the field. I staggered forward, heart
pounding against my ribs. My legs didn't want to obey,
my breath stung in my chest. I wasn't running. I
had to make sure of something in spite of my
body commanding me to escape. Jasper, that's who it was,
or what it was. Twisted Sharper larger, but the shape
was his, the motion of the shoulders, the way he
braced before a strike, Even the faint bend in his
front paw with a joint never healed right after the
fence incident when he was a pop. He turned just
once after the thing vanished into liquid below him, looked
at me. My mouth went dry. If I had been
afraid of the thing that broke down the door, then
whatever this was, this other thing that tore it apart
without effort, should have turned me to stone. Every instinct
screamed at me to hide, to run. It was too big,
too powerful. But I was sure that it was my boy,
And as if to confirm it, he didn't growl, didn't tense.
He tilted his head slightly, not like an animal checking
for a threat, more like someone remembering something. The posture softened,
his ears dropped just a little, not to mission but recognition.
He looked at me the same way he used to
when I came home after a long trip. Then he
simply vanished, just gone, the same way morning fog lifts
from a field. There one moment, gone the next, and
you're not sure where it went or when he had left.
I stood there in the ruined cabin, rain tapping softly
across the roof, the front door hung from one hinge,
scratches an ash smear the floorboards. The storm was over,
but I wasn't alone the way I thought. I was
somewhere out there, just beyond the trees. Jasper was still watching.
The door never sat right. I spent two weeks trying
to fix it, shimmered the frame, plane, the edge, replace
the hinges, and the dead balt. No matter what I did,
it always leaned a little to the left, just enough
to stay cracked unless I wedged it shut, and even
then a strong breeze could push it back open. Eventually
I gave up trying. These days, I just let it
hang ajar. That inch of space where the cold seeps
in feels more like a signal than a floor. The
house has been quiet since the storm, since the door
shattered and Jasper came back. Whatever had been trying to
get in hasn't come back. Or maybe it has, but
it hasn't gotten far. I still hear things sometimes, when
the wind's heavy and the woods go quiet. I hear
slow movement on the porch, like something's pacing waiting. But
I don't panic any more. I don't hide or fumble
for a weapon. I don't need to see what's out there,
because I know what it hears. Good boy, that's the
rule now, I leave it open on purpose, not wide,
just enough enough for Jasper to come and go, or
whatever version of him still watches this place. I never
saw him again after that night, but sometimes in the
snow I find poor prints circling the cabin, too large
for any dog that's ever been my companion, pressed deep
into the ground, like something heavy had passed through. Sometimes
the ball near the fireplace is moved. Once, I swear
I heard nails clicking across the floor. I was in bed,
half asleep and didn't even open my eyes. I just
whispered it again, good boy, and the sound of something
thumping on the hardwood floor could be heard. Jasper was
always territorial, and now I think whatever's left of him
has decided that this place is his to protect, even
from the things that don't have names. I keep his
grave clean, brushed off, no flowers. He hated the smell,
just the stone and the grass and the wind coming
down from the ridge line. I don't know how long
it'll last. I don't know what happens when even ghosts
get tired. But I haven't locked the door in six years,
and I'm still alive.