Today’s two word-prompt combination:

[WordPress:  Candid]  +  [Writer’s Block:  Virus]  =

The Cabin in the Woods

***

The cabin appeared innocent enough, but to be candid, it too was infested by the same demonic virus that ran rampant in the woods.

What’s the old idiom..  “…looks can be deceiving…” ?  

Yes, that was the one.

The cabin was just like any other cabin with its walls, doors, windows and rooms, but that’s where the similarity ended.  This cabin was old…ancient, and it held many secrets…many bad secrets…

No one could attest to the cabin’s origin.

The old mountain folk claimed it had always been…there.  There had never been a time before the cabin.  The horror of the cabin seemed to be inborn within each child birthed into the area.  There was never a need to say, “…stay away…”  No, somehow they…well, somehow they just…knew.

Of course many ghost stories were spun, down through the years.  They were told by the light of a campfire, and always…always told barely above a whisper.  They feared the trees around them would steal their voice and carry it upon the winds of the haunted forest and deliver it to the cabin.

One such story whispered in the night, tells of a father who is filled with grief  over his son who has caught “the fever.”  Knowing there was no cure, the father plans to take his dying son to an old hag that slept in the cave located on the other side of the mountain.

The old woman of the cave, spent her days foraging for plants, that others tossed into the fire, to be burned as weeds.  The sanctimonious, and “good people” of the village shunned the old woman.  They called her a witch by day, but at night, in the cover of darkness, the very same took their sick, and begged old Molly to heal them with her powers.

The father held his son close to his chest, and began his journey to see the old woman. The path led to the outer reaches of  the cabin, and when the father realized this he stopped abruptly.  He could go around the cabin and its god-awful forest,  but there was no time as his son was near to death.

It is said the father fell to his knees and cried  for old mad Molly to come and save his dying son.  His cries echoed long into the night.  No one knew if mad Molly had heard his cries, but everyone knew the hag never came to help.

The father looked down at the son he cradled in his arms, and listened to a tiny voice plead…

“…papa…please…I don’t want to…to die.” 

But the father was too afraid to go any further, and so he held, and rocked his boy until the cries for help ceased.   Like a zombie, the father rose, and took his son’s lifeless body home.

He laid the pale form down upon some old cloth.  The boy’s eyes were open in death, and they stared at his father as he was rolled into a sarcophagus of burlap.

Then he laid him inside the earth, and began to cover him with the freshly dug dirt.  With each shovel full, the father thought he heard his son’s pitiful cry…

“…papa…papa please…it’s cold …papa…papa please…” 

When the last shovel of dirt was emptied, the father went home and hung himself.

Now, the old folk, claim that sometimes at night, when the air is just so… the cries of the boy can be heard riding the upon the winds of the haunted forest….  “…papa…papa…please…I don’t want to die…”

***

Today, the cabin was hungry.  It had been long since it had eaten the bones, and drank the blood of a fresh kill.  The hardwood floor, dry and cracked like the sands of a desert, ached of thirst.

The cabin…like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, was in desperate need of its own Renfied.   Renfield had been the vampire’s insane but loyal servant, who guarded the coffins at day, and at night was ever faithful to prepare for his master tasty meals.

The cabin was confident it had finally found its Renfied within the body of Thomas Cain.

Thomas, also the loyal servant, had worked hard to prepare the cabin.  Today he completed the finishing touches, by polishing a bag of silver “tools” and laying them neatly beside the chair he had bolted to the floor.  The leather straps at the chair’s arms and legs were crisp and new.  They were stiff, Thomas thought…they needed “breaking-in.”  He thought of Amy, and smiled.

He walked slowly to the bathroom, and looked at his reflection in the mirror.  Thomas pulled the mask over his face.  He watched, as the sinews of burlap snaked their way over, and around the contours of his face, taking care to etch out the jagged openings needed for his eyes, nose and mouth.  The burlap was old, and so it stitched its tattered places with the hide of a pig that had been slaughtered many years ago.

Thomas smiled, again.  He was happy with his new face.

Another pair of eyes, hidden behind dusty rafters, had watched the transformation.  It blinked, and refocused its black eyes upon Thomas, and then a rotted smile split its face.

Soon, the fun would begin.

***