9 minute read
THE CABIN ON CROOKED CREEK by Ashley Tunnell
THE CABIN ON CROOKED CREEK by Ashley Tunnell
The carriage lay on its side a short distance from the stone that cradled Tobias Fuller’s head. One of the wheels moved lethargically, making a rough, scraping sound as it came to its final resting place and baptized the night in silence. After opening his eyes, he wearily pushed himself into a seated position. He winced as he touched his forehead, which he typically kept contained under a black felt bowler hat. Wiping something wet and sticky out of his eyes, he struggled to his feet. The moon was a discarded fingernail clipping, and Tobias used its thin light to scan his surroundings. He felt something warm seep down the side of his face, and he wrinkled his nose against the metallic smell of blood as he searched the densely wooded area for the horses; however, they were nowhere to be found.
The overgrown path was barely discernable in the dimly lit woods just east of the little town known as Crooked Creek. Stopping briefly at a cobblestone bridge, Tobias listened to the rush of the fast-moving creek after which the town was named. A thick layer of fog descended on the area and blanketed it in white and gray. The fog was too dense and the hour too late for travel. On the other side of the bridge, Tobias caught a glimpse of a small cabin in various stages of disrepair. He supposed that at one time the cabin may have been charming; however, it now stood in a state of melancholic decay. The walls were cracked and weather-worn, and ivy clung to the crumbling façade as though it were desperate to hold the remnants of the old cabin together. The fog rushed ahead with a mind of its own. Each particle of mist seemed determined to be the one to knock on the cabin’s weathered door and announce Tobias’s imminent arrival to its occupants.
The interior of the cabin was nearly as dilapidated as its exterior. Fragments of moonlight bled delicately through the gaps in the roof, and Tobias could see the ancient beams that sagged wearily above the remnants of the torn and faded wallpaper. The cabin drew a breath and watched as the scraps of wallpaper fluttered in its chilly breeze.
“Hello?” said Tobias. He was certain that he heard the walls of the cabin whisper his name as he entered; however, the only thing that answered his tentative greeting was the musty aroma of age and neglect. The outline of a wooden door was almost imperceptible on the opposite side of the room as Tobias began to cautiously make his way through the bowels of the cabin.
The moonlight reflected off a chandelier that stared glumly down from where it was bolted to the ceiling, illuminating a dining room table covered with a ragged tablecloth. It was set with tarnished silverware beside dusty plates for a long-forgotten meal. The fireplace, which had once been the heart of the living room, now stood cold and silent as its hearth embraced both dust and soot. A washstand stood at attention next to the wooden door. Its porcelain basin was cracked. The doorknob was rusted beneath Tobias’s hand.
He opened the wooden door, and the bones of the little cabin settled and seemed to softly whisper his name. “Tobias.” The bedroom was much darker than the rest of the cabin. Dim slivers of moonlight crept through the gaps in the roof, but there was not enough of it for Tobias to adequately navigate the cabin’s small bedroom. He stumbled ineptly towards the center of the room where the four-poster bed appeared bulky and too big for the size of the room. Weary from his travels and carriage accident, he collapsed gratefully onto the dusty coverings.
Tobias peered at the wall across the room from the bed. “What a strange portrait,” he said. The slivers of moonlight revealed a painting of a boy whom Tobias imagined to be the cabin owner’s young son. The boy’s heart-shaped face and flushed cheeks rested beneath a halo of wheat-colored hair, but it was the boy’s eyes that Tobias found most striking. The artist had poured into them all the power and authority that his paintbrush could contain, and they gazed coolly out of the portrait until its stillness was moved by their realism. The image in the portrait bore an uncanny resemblance to the beggar Tobias had encountered during a visit with Crooked Creek’s baker earlier that morning. The boy had clung to Tobias’s freshly tailored coat with grimy fingernails as he gazed pleadingly through red-rimmed eyes masked in a thick layer of filth.
“Please. Just one loaf of bread,” said the boy whose squalid, gray rags were steaming with a palpable odor.
“Let go of me, boy,” Tobias said.
As his hands tightened on Tobias’s coat in desperation, the boy pled again, “Please.”
The flies had made their home in the boy’s unkempt hair. Tobias was disgusted as he roughly shoved the boy back onto the sidewalk. The dull, gray wall of the baker’s shop seemed to embrace the boy as he faded into it. Tobias tried to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He did not wish misfortune upon the vagrants of Crooked Creek. He just preferred not to see them. “I am not an evil man,” Tobias muttered to himself.
As Tobias removed his coat for the evening, the smudges of dirt left behind by the boy’s dingy fingers lingered like a distant and unpleasant memory. Wincing at a pain in his shoulder from his mishap with the carriage, Tobias shifted his body weight to his uninjured side and fell into a restless sleep.
“Tobias.” The voice was little more than a whisper. Tobias’s eyes snapped open, and he scanned the room. He supposed he must have dozed off. The moonlight fell through the cracks in the ceiling and spilled precariously across the dusty bedding. His gaze came to rest on the portrait, and he frowned. The boy in the portrait no longer appeared to be rosy cheeked and smiling. The lifelike qualities that unnerved Tobias before had been replaced by sunken eyes staring vacantly into nothingness. His smile was more of a grimace. Were those flowers in his hands before? Tobias told himself that they must have been.
“It must be a trick of the moonlight,” he said. His voice was no more than a whisper, but it seemed to echo hollowly throughout the drafty bedroom. The cold fog from his mouth chased the traces of moonlight in an ethereal race toward the wood paneling covering the walls. He wrapped his jacket tightly around his shoulders before lying back down on the grimy comforter and allowing sleep to take him.
“Tobias.” Again, it was little more than a whisper that woke him from his restless sleep.
The moonlight fell across the walls now, rather than the comforter. His gaze fell on the portrait, and his heart began to beat uncomfortably against his ribcage. The color of the boy’s skeletal eyes was no longer distinguishable, and his teeth were black with rot. The boy’s thin, bony fingers still clasped the bouquet of flowers, but they were mostly wilted with a few dried-out petals hanging like condemned men. Tobias blinked rapidly and rubbed the sleep from his eyes as the fog that had permeated the musty bedroom slowly dissipated to reveal the portrait. The portrait of the boy with the flushed cheeks and unnerving gaze peered back at him, unchanged from the first time Tobias had laid eyes on it only a few hours prior. Shaking his head, Tobias turned away from the portrait. “Portraits do not change,” he said.
Daylight could not be more than a few hours away, and Tobias wanted to leave the derelict cabin as early as possible. He told himself that he would waste no more time fretting over confounding portraits of strangers, and he fell into a restless sleep.
The moonlight had faded into a chilly sunrise. Tobias awakened slowly and peered blearily around the bedroom. Long abandoned cobwebs held the corners of the room together, and the air was heavy with dust particles. The hardwood floors were scratched and worn from the impression of countless footsteps. Time peeled the rust-colored wallpaper away from the walls in layers to reveal the intricate, graying designs of older wallpaper. The moth-eaten linens on the bed were the same rust color as the wallpaper. The pillows were lumpy and worn. The desk and the nightstand were elaborate and heavy. As Tobias took in the brightly lit room, the hairs on the back of his neck rose, and he ran from the home without taking the time to gather his freshly tailored jacket. The horses were tethered to a post by the cobblestone bridge. Tobias chanced a look over his shoulder at the cabin on Crooked Creek. It stood like a sepia-shaded soliloquy that would forever be whispered between the walls of a cabin that memorized the names and faces of forgotten people.
The horses knew the way to town, and Tobias found himself glancing curiously at the baker’s shop as they trotted by its window display. The walls hid the beggar well, and Tobias tried to refocus his thoughts on the long day ahead of him. He was exhausted because sleep the night before had been scarce. Indeed, Tobias Fuller would find sleep to be an elusive companion for the rest of his days. For when he woke up in the cabin on Crooked Creek, there was no portrait of a young boy. Instead, he found himself gazing through a dew-frosted window at grass-covered hills, rolling gently into the trees of a darkened forest.
of poetry and short stories.
