My grandparents bought their cabin in the spring of 1965. For the sake of privacy, I am going to be extremely vague while describing the property, but it is somewhere in the Rockies on a small and relatively undeveloped lake. There’s a smattering of cottages and cabins around the water, but it is mostly pristine and absolutely gorgeous. They were completely smitten and bought it after visiting once.
The cabin itself was relatively small and quaint but incredibly cozy with a stunning view of the lake. A single grand room with the kitchen in the left corner, on the right side were two bedrooms with a small bathroom in-between. A ladder in the corner led up to the tiny loft area where the kids always slept.
That first summer there was absolutely phenomenal, according to my grandmother. She was in love with the view of the lake and the handsome mountains in the distance. They were up almost every weekend, hosting parties and barbeques, indulging in a summer of swimming and bonfires and running the woods. She did admit there was one spot in the corner of their 10 acres that she never did like.
She stumbled upon it in the first two weeks while out exploring the property. It was in a small clearing in a sort of gully between two large hills at the back corner of the property, where their acreage butted against a state park. A feeling of dread washed over her as she crested the hill and looked down and saw a smear of gray in the clearing below. She felt her hackles rise and became acutely aware of a feeling like she was being watched. Carefully making her way down the hill, the feeling only intensified.
It felt dead. Everything was a little dimmer there, the forest sounds were hushed and the air felt heavy. The smear turned out to be an area, roughly a circle, about fifteen feet across. Any seeds which found it their fate to grow there grew small and twisted, failing to thrive. Even the squirrels and birds seemed to avoid it. Feeling something was very off, she hurried back up the hill. Worried it was a bear or mountain lion that made her feel so ill at ease there, she encouraged the children to avoid that area and always avoided it herself when she could.
She reassured herself by reasoning it was a geothermal phenomenon and put it firmly out of her mind.
Eventually summer gave way to autumn and my grandparents began preparing for a long winter of skiing and ice fishing. They chopped and prepared firewood for the wood burning stove in the main room, carefully stacking it in a small lean-to on the side of the cabin.
It was early November and there was finally enough snow for them to embark on the first ski weekend of the season and they were thrilled to be so close to several different ski resorts. My grandparents left the kids at home and went with their longtime friends, Bea and Al.
The couples arrived shortly before dark on Friday evening and settled in for a weekend of fun. They had dinner and drinks and sat around the table chain smoking cigarettes while playing cards. As my grandmother tells it, they went to sleep sometime around 10:30 as they wanted to be up with the sun and be ready to hit the slopes by the time the runs opened. They bid their goodnights and tucked into their beds.
It was at about midnight that everyone was awakened by a ruckus being made at the front door.
Fierce pounding, rattled the door on its hinges. Everybody convened in the living room to see what was going on, groggy and confused. They were in a very rural area, the driveway was over a half mile long and ran off of a rarely traveled dirt road. It was well below freezing outside and snowing, so a visitor of any sort seemed unlikely. My grandmother voiced what her mind went to thinking; it was a bear.
They stood in a sort of shocked silence as they watched the door jiggle from the force of whatever was on the other side. Suddenly, the banging stopped and a woman’s voice called out to them, “please! Let me inside! Please! It’s so cold out and I have my baby with me!”
Al stepped forward towards the door, reaching for the latch, but something about the tone, something about the entire situation had my grandma feeling suspicious. Something wasn’t right and she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“Don’t!” My grandma whispered fiercely to Al before he unlocked the door, he paused with his hand in midair, “something about this isn’t right, I don’t know what, but I really don’t think we should open the door.”
The room broke into whispered arguments, Al thought it was ridiculous to ignore a woman and child in need, Bea was backing him up, even Grandpa felt unsure about it, but he trusted his wife. She had been right about a lot of little things before, like the time she insisted on turning around and going home when they had not left fifteen minutes before because she had a feeling. They came home to a smoldering fire behind the refrigerator that surely would have burnt their house down if they hadn’t caught it when they had.
His guts twisted at the thought of whoever was on the other side of that door being as devastating as a house fire to trigger this reaction in his wife who normally wouldn’t hesitate to give a stranger the shirt off her back.
Their bickering was interrupted by the door banging, and again, a woman’s voice pleading at them through the thick wood planks, “please! Let me inside! Please! It’s so cold out and I have my baby with me!”
They all listened to this mystery woman as she repeated verbatim what she had said a minute ago, but now they were more aware of a flatness to her voice. An almost mechanical sort of rote quality to it.
Everyone stood very still and quiet, making eye contact that showed they understood now what had triggered my grandma’s suspicion.
“Please! Let me inside! Please! It’s so cold out and I have my baby with me!” the woman said in the same off tone, “wahhhh, wahhhh, wah-ahhh,” she began imitating a baby cry, pitching her voice up, but still the same bizarre monotony to it.
My grandma said she got an icy feeling in her gut and her face got hot as her heart began pumping adrenaline. Something was seriously wrong with whoever was outside. Everyone was frozen in place, eyes locked on the door; four Grecian statues in flannel pajamas and slippers.
Whoever it was began scratching on the door like an animal, “Please let me in! I know you’re in there, I can hear you all!” Her voice sounded like it was getting frantic.
The banging began again and she began screaming, “LET ME IN! LET ME IN! LET ME IN!” over and over again.
It took several minutes but eventually the banging stopped and she quieted down. Grandpa George suggested they all head back to bed and look around outside when it was light. They hesitantly shuffled back to beds, feeling a lot less cozy and comfortable than they had in the same position just fifteen minutes ago, they prepared for a night of restless sleep and tried to drift off.
The banging continued intermittently for the next few hours, but seemed to finally come to a stop. My grandparents fell asleep and woke around 7:30 when the sun was beginning to rise. They opened their bedroom door and walked into the main room and my grandma felt her stomach drop when she saw the door wasn’t locked anymore.
She felt furious with Bea and Al because one of them had obviously unlocked the door, she couldn’t believe the foolhardiness. She rapped on their bedroom door and swung it open before they even could respond, but only Bea was in the bed. She woke up shocked and obviously groggy, Bea had no idea what was going on. Putting on her robe, Bea came out into the main room with them, “what’s going on?” she asked.
“Did you or Al unlock the door last night?” My grandma asked.
Bea looked uncomfortable and stared down at her feet. She explained that Al hadn’t been able to handle the banging, even if something was off with the woman, she still deserved their help. He had thought my grandmother was being unnecessarily cruel to deny someone shelter in the cold and snow. Bea had begged him not to, but he got dressed and snuck out into the main room and had gone outside to help. Bea had tried to stay up and wait for him, but she eventually fell asleep until just now.
They checked the bathroom and the loft space, but Al was definitely not in the cabin. Maybe he had gone to the main road to help her with a car repair? Or helped lead her along the lake trail to another cabin with more accommodating occupants?
They quickly dressed and opened the door and they all stood in a distinctly distressed silence as they only saw a single set of footprints heading away from the cabin into the woods. There was no sign of a woman’s footprints whatsoever, just Al’s large boot prints disappearing into the treeline. My grandpa grabbed his shotgun and he and my grandma headed out to follow the tracks to try and find Al, leaving Bea behind in case Al came back of his own accord.
It was difficult terrain to navigate in the snow, some areas they had to wade through waist high drifts and struggled up snowy hills and down icy rocks. They had no idea how or why Al had done this on his own in the pitch dark and were honestly expecting to find him with his neck broken at the bottom of every hill they summited.
Unfamiliar with the stark winter appearance of her happy woods, it took my grandma a moment to realize they were heading closer and closer to the dead zone. Sure enough, they followed his footsteps to the top of a hill and they could see down into the gulley the clearing where nothing grew. Even in winter, it was still drab and gray, the snow seemed to melt from that area and gently steamed, reassuring my grandmother of its geothermal properties.
Far less reassuring was that they could see Al’s footsteps leading up to the dead spot, but no Al and no more footsteps anywhere else in the gully. It was like he vanished.
They made their way down the hill and canvassed the area, they saw no sign of him. They looked all over, calling for him for over half an hour before they decided they needed to head to town and get the police involved. It took almost an hour for them to make it back and Bea was frantic with worry when she saw them come back without him.
A day that was supposed to be filled with skiing and Hot Toddies by the lodge fireplace had turned into a nightmarish blur of police interviews, organizing search parties, and canvassing every square inch of the property and surrounding park trying to find any sign of Al or the supposed woman who had been banging on the door.
By the time it got dark, my grandparents were exhausted. Bea got taken into town by the police because she didn’t want to stay at the cabin. Honestly, neither did they, but they were too exhausted to make the drive to a hotel and they wanted someone to be there in case Al miraculously reappeared. They slept with the shotgun by the bed.
Banging on the door woke them up at about midnight. Their hearts felt a few moments of elation believing it might be Al, when instead they heard, “Please! Let me inside! Please! It’s so cold out and I have my baby with me!”
Spirits brought back down to Earth, they held each other and listened, as sporadically through the night, whatever it was, tried to plead its way through the door before it apparently gave up and they were finally able to sleep.
The next day went very much the same, scrambling over snowy acres with a search party looking for any trace of their friend and finding nothing. My grandparents had to go back home and they left begrudgingly, feeling like they’d failed their friend by not being able to find him, for taking him up there, for not hearing him leave and stopping him; layers of guilt anyone involved with a beloved friend’s disappearance would naturally feel.
After a few days, the search party was called off as it was presumed Al was dead by this point and the terrain was rugged and dangerous for the crew. My grandparents went sporadically through the winter to continue searching their property and the state park. They never heard from him again, but they did hear from the woman at the door. It only took a few trips that winter for them to give up on finding Al and to be too scared of that flat demanding voice coming from the outside.
They seriously discussed selling the place, seeing as it would be permanently blighted by Al’s disappearance and the crippling fear they felt whenever they heard that imitated baby cry through the door. My grandma was hesitant, though, she really had fallen in love with this land and the cabin. Looking at the mountains over the lake made her feel like her heart was soaring through the clouds, it was such an intense and pure beauty that it made her heart ache in a deliciously wistful way. She felt like she would regret passing this place on to other people, both for what she would lose, but also what she would be exposing an innocent new buyer to.
They didn’t return until spring when all the snow had melted.
The first night back up there, my grandma lay awake anxiously awaiting the banging to start around midnight, but it never came. Nor did it come the next night. They came back up for a few more weekends, but they didn’t hear from the lady at the door. After that, the anxiety faded away and a sense of security was restored. They all slept peacefully in their beds after days galavanting about the lake and through the woods.
Eventually the snow fell and they went up for another attempt at a ski trip, but the first night there with snow on the ground, the thing came back and began going through the exact same motions. They winterized the cabin the next day and didn’t come back until spring.
So, that became the tradition. The family was never made privy to the tragic disappearance of Al, he became a hidden chapter of my grandparent’s lives. They didn’t tell their kids for fear of scaring them. Us grandkids didn’t really question growing up why we never went in the winter. My grandma just told me it was too cold and drafty up there and that it was far more pleasant and cozy at the ski lodge when we wanted to indulge in winter sports. That worked until I got into college in the early two thousands and word got out in my friend group about my family cabin on the lake. I was able to avoid anyone asking to use it until my friend Cody got it into his head to convince me to sneak up one December to use it as a base camp for a weekend of skiing.
No one will know, he said. We can invite girls, he implored. It’s sitting empty, he whined. I was nineteen at the time and knew nothing about Al’s tragic disappearance or any spooky door banging at the cabin during winter, so regrettably, I caved.
The plan was for Cody and I to go up Thursday night and get things set up at the cabin and shovel. We were going to skip classes Friday and snowboard until it was time for the girls to get up in the evening, where we would greet them and officially start the weekend.
We got there and I was awed by the stark beauty of the terrain in winter. I’d never seen the lake frozen, how serene it was in the cold sunlight. The cabin looked quaint and cozy with the snow piled around it. We both pointed and laughed in delight at a woodpecker fluttering from tree to tree around the cabin, banging away at the dead trees in the afternoon sunlight.
We set to work and started shoveling off pathways and started a fire inside to warm it up. Something I hadn’t considered was the pump to the well being shut off for the winter, so we would have to use the old outhouse. I hoped the girls wouldn’t mind, but using a cold outhouse would quickly fall to the bottom of my concerns after night fell and I found out why we don’t use the cabin in the winter.
Cody and I were still up at midnight, drinking beers and playing cards, when we both flew out of our seats as the door started banging so hard I could hear the jamb creak against the pressure.
Chests heaving, we both stared at the door in shock. Neither of us had heard a car or any footsteps outside. It was so quiet out, you could easily hear a car driving on the main road a half mile away, let alone someone’s footsteps crunching in the snow outside.
We heard a woman on the other side of the door, crying and yelling.
“Please! Let me inside! Please! It’s so cold out and I have my baby with me!”
Something about the way she said it sounded too weird to me, I felt goosebumps shoot down my arms. Cody made like he was heading towards the door to open it and before I could even think about it, I made a quick “tsk” noise to make him look at me and vigorously shook my head for him to not move towards the door.
He vigorously nodded his head back at me and jerked his shoulders up and motioned to the door with both arms and an exasperated face, like, “come on man, it’s some chick with a baby!”
I couldn’t shake it though, I couldn’t believe neither of us hadn’t heard a thing as she came up to the door; no cars, no snow, no boots on the porch…
We were interrupted by more banging on the door as whoever was on the other side proceeded to plead their case, “Please! Let me inside! Please! It’s so cold out and I have my baby with me!”
“We cannot open the door, I have a really bad feeling about this,” it would have been obvious to anyone outside there were people in the cabin, but I instinctively wanted to stay quiet and had leaned in to whisper to Cody, “I don’t know if this is a trap for a robbery or what, but let’s just go to bed, man.”
The banging continued and I think the bizarre nature of this whole exchange sunk in for Cody a bit and he nodded his head in agreement.
We tiptoed to our beds and tried to fall asleep with the weird commotion on the front porch. I had just drifted off when I thought I heard the door latch shut. I wrote it off and thought Cody must have been using the bathroom, but I never heard him go back to his bedroom. Suddenly feeling suspicious and more awake, I got up and checked, the front door was no longer locked and Cody was nowhere in the cabin.
I opened the door and with the porch light, I could just see what I thought was a man sized figure disappear into the treeline across the yard. Wondering what the fuck Cody was thinking, I quickly threw on some jeans and boots, grabbing my coat, hat, and a flashlight as I ran out the door to go after him.
It had begun snowing, which obscured what I could see, but I noted there was only one pair of boot prints heading out the door and through the yard that I began following into the woods.
It was very rugged terrain and quite difficult to follow his path. I couldn’t fathom what he was doing out here by himself. I tried to move along as quickly as possible, he had only a few minutes’ lead on me, but I couldn’t even see him through the falling snow and thick trees.
Eventually, I crested a hill and finally saw Cody standing down at the bottom. What I was seeing didn’t make sense to me, though. It looked like he was wearing a cloak of some sort, it obscured his head like a hood and draped down his whole body, and he was standing in front of a circle of black in the ground where the snow didn’t accumulate.
As my brain struggled to figure out what was draped over him, the ground shuddered and a gaping hole in the black earth opened up right in front of Cody. Adrenaline kicked in and I half slid and half ran down the hill, trying to get to him and pull him back. When I got up to him and shined the flashlight on him, I realized the “cloak” was pink and slimy looking. The inside of the sinkhole that had just opened in front of us looked similarly pink and slimy.
A reek of death and rot filled the air in the gulley.
Confused, I reached for his shoulder with my free hand, touching the cloak, and swung Cody around to face me. The texture of the slime and tissue that surrounded him made me think of saliva and a tongue. A massive tongue to a massive creature.
I saw Cody’s face and gasped. It looked like he was being digested.
The skin on his face was melting off in clumps, revealing the musculature underneath. His left eyebrow dripped off. The tissue surrounding him pulsated. He let out a small whimpery moan, and before I could even process, he fell into the steaming pit with the tongue still wrapped around him.
The ground quickly snapped back shut, like it had never happened, except for a gentle steam in the air. I stood in shock for just a moment before I began running. I scrambled back up the hill and ran all the way back to the cabin, my mind racing. It was snowing so hard by this point, our footprints from the way in were already becoming obscured.
I thankfully was able to find my way back in my panicked state before the snow completely covered our tracks. It wasn’t until I got back to the yard that I noticed my hand burning and realized the slime from the… whatever that was, was still on my hand. I frantically washed my hand in the snow, horrified at the thought of my skin melting away like Cody’s. I lost some skin on my palm, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
I took a moment to compose myself before I ran inside, grabbed my keys, started up my shit box Ford and raced down the driveway as fast as the snow would let me.
I was grateful the closest town was on a popular trucking route, so there was a 24 hour diner with a payphone I could use. I froze when I got to the payphone, before I called 9-11, I decided to call my grandparents and be forthright about this. A kid just got swallowed into the earth on their property and I felt they deserved to know before I called the cops and a shit show started for them.
It was probably 4 am at this point, I was exhausted and traumatized and the second I heard my grandma’s sleepy and concerned voice on the other end of the line, I lost it and began crying.
I admitted to using the cabin without her knowing and just said my friend disappeared in the night and I had to call the cops. She was very quiet for a moment. She told me to stay put at the diner, to contact the police, get a cup of coffee, and that her and Grandpa would be there in a few hours.
I called the cops next and sat at the diner nursing a cup of coffee while images of Cody’s face melting off kept replaying in my head. What the fuck was that thing? Did it hunt by luring people out using sympathy? Was it seriously a dismembered six foot long tongue banging on our door last night? I couldn’t tell the cops about this, they’d either think I was a loon or that I’d killed Cody myself.
The police came and took my statement. I kept it streamlined. I just said I woke up, heard the door close, saw Cody walk into the woods by himself in the middle of the night, and that I tried to follow, but had to turn back because of the weather and terrain. It was decided with the state of the storm that they would wait until daylight and for the snow to let up before taking me back out to the property to show them where he’d walked off to.
A while after, my grandparents showed up and I burst into tears again. We sat in the sticky diner booth with cups of coffee in the pale morning light and I was able to explain the whole story. I felt embarrassed for telling them such a wild story, but I almost had to say it all out loud to someone else to make it real for myself, too.
Amazingly, my grandparents looked very grave the whole time I talked and didn’t chastise me for telling tales. I thought I saw a knowing glance between them when I mentioned the banging on the front door. My grandmother’s face turned white when I described where and how Cody actually died.
That is when they finally shared with me their side of this story and when I learned about Al disappearing the same way decades ago.
Grandpa George lamented their lack of transparency with the family, but was grateful in a way to finally have closure. Grandma stayed quiet. I was honestly relieved that they believed me and had experienced the same events at the cabin.
After a while, the snow let up, we all got into my grandpa’s truck and made our way to the cabin to meet with police. When we got there, Grandma wandered away to look at the lake and I followed her. She looked austere, facing the mountains in the distance across the ice.
“I lied. I’ve lied for years. I always knew that thing was there,” she spoke to me softly, “I knew there was that evil here, on this land. The first summer I was up here, I witnessed it eat a full-grown buck. I tried to convince myself it wasn’t real. After Al was taken, though, I tried to kill it. Tried to blow it up with dynamite… it didn’t work.”
She continued to gaze out over the fresh snow, blinding white in the morning light. I watched her steel herself as she took a deep breath.
“I knew that evil was here, I didn’t want to believe and now we’ve both lost friends to it…” Grandma trailed off for a moment before she continued her thought with conviction, “but this view is just fantastic.”
I reached out and held her hand as we gazed out over the lake and mountains together. A woodpecker flew overhead. Behind us, I could hear the police arriving and talking to Grandpa.
My eyes filled up with tears.
“Yeah, Grandma, the view is awfully fantastic, isn’t it?”