Prologue 1

 What’s the phrase?

“Looks can be deceiving…?”

Yes, that’s the one.

From a bystander’s point of view the cabin looked innocent enough.  It had its walls, windows, rooms, and door, but that’s where the similarity ended.  This cabin was old…ancient, and it held within its walls secrets…many bad secrets.

No one knew the cabin’s origin.  Old mountain folk claimed it had always been there just sitting and waiting and waiting and sitting.  Of course, the locals knew better than to enter, but every once in a while, out-of-towners made the mistake of thinking it a nice place to set up camp.  They entered through its only door, the front door, and they were never seen again.

Superstition past down from generation to generation claimed the cabin was the epi-center for a demon virus that infested the surrounding forest.  Everyone took the long way around…it was a gamble no villager was willing take.  In fact, the fear of the cabin seemed to be intrinsic to each child birthed within the area.  There was never a need to say, “Stay away from the cabin.”  No, somehow…somehow, they just knew.

Of course, many a ghost story was spun down through the years.  They were told by the light of a campfire, and always barely above a whisper for they feared the wind would carry their voice to the haunted forest and deliver it to the cabin.

One such story tells of a father who is distraught that his son has caught “the fever.”  In that day there was no cure for the fever, and most who caught it died.  The father makes plans to take his son to an old hag that slept in the cave located on the other side of the mountain.

The old hag, known as Old Mad Molly, 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 witch by day, but at night, under the cover of darkness, the very same took their sick and begged her to heal them.

The father held his son close to his chest, and set out into the night for the old woman’s cave.  The path led to outer reaches of the forest that surrounded the cabin, and when the father realized this he stopped.  He could go around the cabin and its god-awful forest, but there was no time as his son was near to death.

Fear gripped the father’s heart like a vise, and his knees buckled beneath him.  He was paralyzed, afraid to move.  He called out to Old Mad Molly; his cries echoed long into the night.  No one was certain if the old hag had heard his pleas, but everyone knew she never came to help.

The father looked down at the dying son in his arms, and he listened to a tiny voice pleading, “…papa please…I don’t want 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.

The father laid the pale body on an old cloth.  The boy’s eyes were open in death and they stared at the father as he rolled his son into a sarcophagus of burlap.  He placed the body inside of the hole he had dug and began to cover his son with the freshly unearthed dirt.  With each shovel full of dirt, the father heard the ghost of his son begging, ‘…papa…no papa its cold…please papa help me…”

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

Now, the old folk claim on certain nights when the wind blows just right the boy’s cries can be heard screaming within the haunted forest.

“Papa it’s cold down here…papa…papa…”

 

(Fast Forward to Present Day)

 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 floors were dry and cracked and ached with thirst.

The cabin, like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, was in desperate need of a Renfield.  Renfield, Dracula’s insane but loyal servant, guarded his master’s coffin by day, and at night brought tasty treats to satisfy his master’s blood lust.

The cabin was confident it had finally found its Renfield within the body of the abomination.  The abomination had worked diligently to prepare the cabin.  Today he completed the finishing touches by polishing the silver “tools” and laying them neatly beside the chair he had bolted to the floor.  The leather straps at the end of the chairs arms and legs were crisp and new.  They needed breaking in, he thought…his mind went to his prey and he smiled.

He walked slowly to the bathroom and looked at his reflection in the mirror.  He watched his face disappear as he pulled the mask over.   The sinews of the burlap snaked their way over and around the contours of his bony white face…the jagged slits fit perfectly over the red eyes that stared back at him.  The burlap was so old its tattered places were stitched from the hide of pig that had been slaughtered years ago.

The abomination smiled beneath the mask.  He was happy with his new face.

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

 

Prologue 2

 The Abomination

The abomination grunted and almost fell beneath the weight of the naked woman he carried over his shoulder.  She was drugged so her body hung like a rag doll…her dead weight made heavier by gravity’s pull. The forest floor was littered with amber, red, and yellow leaves, and dried branches and acorns crunched harmoniously underneath his black boots.

Finally, he reached the sacrificial spot so he dropped the woman and postured her in a sitting position with her back against an ancient oak tree, and her legs he crossed Indian style.    A rope was tied tightly to each of her wrists and pulled snug around the tree like a pair of shoestrings, and tied together with a double fisherman’s knot.  Her head hung limp between her breasts, and her long blonde hair acted as a cover to hide her nakedness.

The abomination sat crossed legged in front her…his face so close to hers that their noses would touch if she lifted her head.  There was nothing left to do but sit and wait until the drugs wore off.  As he waited, he adjusted the burlap mask so the eye holes were in perfect position.  He wanted his view unobstructed because he knew the fear on her face would be delicious and he wanted to relish every second.  He sat in front of her patiently waiting for over an hour in which time he never blinked even once.  When he finally sensed the faint stirrings of the woman his lethargic heart quickened, and his pants tightened with the beginnings of an erection.

The woman moaned and his pants tightened even more.  Semi conscience she rolled her head left and then right.  She wondered why her shoulders ached and why her world was black.  Her mind grasped for any sense of reason and as the cobwebs began to clear she realized her world was black because she had yet to open her eyes.  Ever so slowly she began to open them.  At first the view was blurred with hues of brown and red.  She blinked several times to clear her vision…with the last blink she let them fall open.  Only inches away two red eyes, glared at her.  They were so close she could have licked the burlap that shrouded them. His glare bore deep into to her reaching the inner most part where she hid her soul.  Her soul filled with horror and it tried to escape with the scream that parted her lips.  The scream was so deafening the birds scattered; however, throughout the duration of the scream his soulless red eyes never blinked but grew wider in excitement.  Finally, the woman’s lungs begged for air, and so her screams turned to raspy gasps desperately searching for her lost breath.

The abomination waited patiently until the woman gained some sort of composure.  With his red eyes-only inches from her blues, he recognized what he had longed to see…her surrender.  He watched as her eyes welled with tears of acceptance, and he knew that she knew it was over.

“There now,” a sinister voice spoke from underneath the mask, “…isn’t it better when we agree?”  The woman knew this was not a question to be answered but rather a proclamation of his victory statement, and so she remained quiet, resigned to her fate.

“We both knew the day of reckoning would come.”  He chided.

“The Reaper has been waiting, and he’s anxious to begin.”

 

(Click Here To Go To Chapter 1)