Decay

the road always leads back

Prompt by Labyrinthia Mythweaver

The cabin holds many secrets.

Hands press against the window.

Are they trying to escape?

Trying to warn you?

Trying to let you in?

What story does this image conjure for you? 🥀

Bette saw the hands first.

Pale palms flattened against the cabin window between the trees.

“Alex, stop the car.”

Rain hammered the windshield hard enough to blur the mountains into shifting gray silhouettes. Alex slowed, headlights sweeping across wet pine and crooked fencing before settling on the cabin.

It sat too far back in the woods to look like it belonged there.

Sagging porch.

Dark windows.

One weak porch light flickering against the storm.

And hands pressed against the glass.

Fingers spread wide.

Bette felt panic move through her. For the woman or for herself, she couldn’t tell.

Then lightning flashed, and they were gone.

Alex frowned. “Did somebody wave at us?”

“I don’t think so.”

The words left Bette as almost a whisper.

Uneasily.

The clock on the dash read 11:14 PM as she was getting out of the car.

The front door stood slightly open when they approached.

Rainwater dripped steadily from the roof. The cabin smelled of soaked wood and mold. Something stale sat thick in the air.

Alex knocked first.

“Hello?”

No answer.

They let themselves in.

Inside, dust covered the furniture, yet nothing looked abandoned. A tea cup rested beside a chair. A cardigan hung neatly over the couch. Family photographs crowded the walls.

Bette stepped closer to one.

A woman stood smiling beside a man and two children.

The others’ faces had been burned away.

Blackened holes curling outward through the paper.

Only the woman remained untouched.

“Jesus,” Alex muttered.

A floorboard creaked upstairs.

Both froze.

Another creak followed.

Then silence.

Alex lifted his flashlight slightly. “Hello? Do you need help?”

Something knocked against the front door behind them.

Three soft knocks.

Bette turned sharply toward the door. The window right next to it.

Two pale hands pressed silently against the glass from the outside.

She gasped.

Alex yanked the front door open.

The porch stood empty beneath the rain.

No footprints.

No movement.

Nobody standing at the window.

Only dark woods stretching endlessly beyond the yard.

“We should go,” Bette whispered.

Neither argued.

•••

The road twisted through the mountains for what felt like hours.

Rain never stopped.

The trees never thinned.

Bette stared blankly out the passenger window until their headlights swept across a familiar porch.

Her stomach dropped.

The cabin stood beside the road this time.

But it was the same porch light.

Same sagging roof.

Same pale hands pressed against the window.

The clock on the dash read 11:14 PM.

Alex slowed unconsciously.

“No,” he breathed.

The hands struck the glass once.

Hard.

Alex accelerated away.

•••

They drove through the forested road until their headlights found the cabin again. This time the front door stood wide open.

11:14 PM as they got out of the car.

Rainwater pooled across the floorboards inside.

One of the family photographs had changed.

Now only the woman remained visible at the dinner table.

The others had become blackened silhouettes around her.

Bette stared at the image.

“Was that there before?”

Alex answered too quickly. “I don’t know.”

Something dragged slowly across the floor upstairs.

Like something heavy being pulled room to room.

They left without checking.

•••

After that, small things began slipping.

Bette couldn’t remember the last town they passed.

Then she realized she could not remember seeing another car for hours.

Or days, maybe.

The dashboard clock never changed.

11:14 PM.

11:14 PM.

11:14 PM.

The next time they stopped beside the road, Alex rubbed both hands over his face.

“Have we done this before?”

The question settled heavily between them.

Because something inside Bette already knew the answer.

The cabin waited ahead through the rain.

In the light of their headlights, hands pressed patiently against the window.

•••

The forest began feeling wrong after that.

Too quiet.

Never ending.

Sometimes lightning illuminated distant shapes deep between the trees.

Structures set in odd shapes.

For brief moments Bette thought she saw lights far off in the mountains. Other houses. Other windows glowing faintly in the storm before darkness swallowed them again.

Once, she thought she heard screaming somewhere deep in the woods.

Until it stopped abruptly.

Alex pretended not to hear it.

Neither mentioned it after.

•••

11:14 PM

This time when they entered the cabin, muddy footprints crossed the ceiling overhead.

Upside down.

Another photograph showed Bette standing upstairs at the window.

Hands pressed against the glass.

Gaze looking out.

Alex tore the photograph from the wall and ripped it up.

•••

The next time they entered, it had returned.

Framed.

Covered in a thin layer of dust as though it had been there a while.

•••

Panic arrived in bursts.

Bette realized first that she could no longer remember where they had been driving to before the cabin.

Alex couldn’t remember either.

•••

“I’m hungry,” Bette whispered one night.

Alex stared ahead at the road. “Me too.”

Neither of them could remember the last time they had eaten.

Or slept.

Or anything except the cabin.

Rain lashed violently against the windshield.

The road curved.

The cabin appeared again in their headlights.

11:14 PM.

This time dark streaks stained the front steps.

Blood.

Old and browned against the wood.

The hands struck the window hard.

They ran back into the car.

Alex swore and slammed the car into reverse.

Trees blurred past them.

Mud sprayed beneath their tires.

The road twisted sharply through the forest...

... and the headlights landed on the cabin again.

Waiting for them in the rain.

Hands pressed themselves to the window inside.

Gently this time. Almost inviting.

Bette began crying.

Sobbing.

Exhausted beyond fear.

•••

After a while, they stopped asking questions.

The cabin always returned.

Sometimes close.

Sometimes far.

Always waiting.

Hands always in the window.

Sometimes gentle.

Sometimes violent.

And each time, more of the cabin revealed itself.

Blood smeared in the shape of hands across doorframes.

Wet footprints leading toward the cellar.

The smell of rot growing thicker beneath the staleness.

The sound of footsteps and dragging continued upstairs.

As muted sounds under the floorboards began.

Quick, panicked breathing.

Scratching.

Once, Alex pulled open the cellar door just enough to peer inside.

He slammed it shut immediately.

Bette was too afraid to ask what he saw.

He refused to go near it again.

Refused to acknowledge what it means.

•••

The road carried them onward.

Rain.

Trees.

The cabin waiting somewhere ahead.

Again.

Always.

And far beyond the mountains, beyond the black forests and endless roads they were trapped in, other nightmares looped in the dark.

A woman drowns forever beneath frozen water while flashlights searched the shore above her, never finding her.

A man wanders endlessly through an empty hospital finding himself in the same bloodied room over and over again.

A child hears scratching beneath her bed every night before a face smiles back at her from the dark.

Loop after loop after loop.

All different.

All trapped.

Some prayed.

Some ran.

Some begged.

But none ever understood they were already dead.

Their worlds repeating endlessly around the moment that had taken their last breath.

And among them, beneath rain and pine and rotting wood, Bette and Alex drove toward the cabin again.

•••

11:14PM

Beneath the cabin, under packed earth and rotting beams, two bodies lay tangled together in the dark.

Time had softened them.

Decaying skin clung wetly to bone.

Mouths frozen open in their final screams.

Rain falling steadily just outside as the cabin groaned softly in the storm.

And upstairs at the window, pale hands pressed against the glass.

Dirt and blood packed beneath broken fingernails.

The woman smiled faintly into the rain as headlights appeared once more between the trees.

•••

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