My cabin was my safe haven; the place I’d go when I needed to get away from everything. I bought it for next to nothing, mostly due to its more ‘rustic’ qualities. The place was decidedly a dump, but it had a good foundation, so I spent the next few summers fixing it up. The hot summers meant that I didn’t need heating, so I could spend a lot of time outside, making it a fun project all in all. I finished it last summer, and boy if it wasn’t the cutest little log cabin on earth. I loved it to bits, and spent all the time I could there. And with central heating and new pipes that wouldn’t freeze over, I could finally spend my first winter night there as well.
Once the cabin was finished, my friend Seth took a keen interest in accompanying me for a trip. I was unsure at first, it being my safe haven and all, but in the end I decided that good things ought to be shared. Winter was just around the corner, so I invited him along with the pretense that it’s good to have some help, were something to go wrong with the untested additions.
We arrived at the cabin in the early evening with the winter’s first snow in tow. The summers spent there had gotten me used to the chirping of birds and the rustling of leaves, so it took some adjusting for me to accept the snowed-in quiet that permeated the surrounding woods. Fortunately, once we got the heating on and sat down by the fireplace, its quaintness returned to me; it was innate, after all. Nothing really is better than to sit by the fire with a warm cup of tea as snow gently floats behind the windows. And to be frank, I didn’t mind the company either.
I’d always pegged Seth as more of a doer, but there, he seemed to calm down. That’s the magic of getting away, I suppose. He didn’t drone on about all his projects and try to propose new ones in spontaneous bursts of excitement, like he usually did. The acute twitching of his leg seemed to cure itself, and he was secure in not constantly holding a conversation just for the sake of it. I thought I’d bring him back there soon.
The firewood was beginning to run out, so we went out to the shed to grab some more. As we walked, Seth exclaimed “Look!” I saw him staring at the sky, his neck craned all the way back, like he was on the verge of tipping over. I looked up, and there I saw it: the northern lights.
I’d seen them before, but these specifically were exceptional in nature. Bright, almost nauseatingly green waves scattered across the sky, and much like rainbows, I couldn’t place exactly where they began and where they ended. They moved slowly, reaching around the dark sky and between dim stars, like the tendrils of God himself. It was hard to look away, but my neck began to ache from the strain, so I pulled my chin back down as blood rushed back into the frontal lobe, leaving a slowly fading imprint of the night sky above in my vision.
I walked over to the shed, grabbed some wood, and turned back to the cabin. Seth was still looking up, standing completely still, like he’d frozen in place and become part of the winter’s milieu; just another tree, waiting for spring’s blossom.
“I got the wood. Should we head back inside?” I asked him. Seth kept quietly staring up. I began walking towards him, and just as I was about to ask if he’s alright, his head dropped down violently, like someone had kicked it from the back. Slowly, he turned his head until he met my gaze.
“You okay, man?” I asked him. He kept staring at me, his newfound stillness now becoming unnerving. I didn’t remember him having such pure, vivid green eyes.
“I have seen it now,” he said, his voice flat and lifeless.
“You’ve seen what?”
He started mumbling, and his head slumped to face the ground. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. The most accurate way I could describe it is a frenzy of deep, guttural consonants. Like a dying pig that had its snout saran wrapped.
“Seth, you’re freaking me out a bit here,” I said. He lifted his chin and met my gaze again. He was crying, his face streaked with silent tears, his eyebrows slumped and his cheeks red from the cold.
“I’ve seen it, now,” he repeated, and in the same way that lightning and thunder accompany each other, he grabbed his face with his hands, and his index fingers started to penetrate his eye sockets, burrowing inside from the far ends. He pushed the fingers deeper, going around his eyes and into the sockets, his hands squirming to keep his head in place. Soon, his fingers were knuckle-deep inside, and with a silent pop, his eyeballs came out, drooping next to his nose by thin, fleshy cords. He grabbed his eyeballs gently, and then slowly pulled the cords taut until they snapped like rubber bands, sending them halfway back inside his eye sockets, leaving his hands to hold the severed, green eyes.
I couldn’t help but stare at the bare, bloody eyes. Even though they were severed from the machinery that produced the sense of sight, I felt like they stared at me. And for some inexplicable reason, I couldn’t say anything. Or maybe I just didn’t know what to say. I still don’t.
Seth’s muscles pulled awkwardly, like a cramp, and his palms turned to fists, squeezing the eyeballs into a pulp that started to extrude from between his fingers. I looked up at his face, which was coated in sheer horror, like whatever mad logic he had applied to his actions had failed him, leaving him, quite literally, stranded in darkness. The silent night was broken as he began to scream.
“I can’t unsee it, I can’t unsee it, there’s nowhere to go! It’s still there, how can I still see it?” He was moving around now, his feet taking hard steps that barely lifted off the ground, like a child learning to walk, smearing snow around with each stride. His arms were spread out, ready to grab onto anything that they touched; I wasn’t sure if he’d lean on me for support or try to gauge out my eyes as well, if I had approached him. He looked like a scared animal, cornered in the shed out back by a man wielding a sharp, rusted shovel of impending doom.
Stumbling over his feet, he fell down, his head hitting something hard, turning the snow around it red. He scraped the ground feverishly with his hands. His right hand soon ceased moving, and emerged from the snow holding a stick. His body became still, forfeiting whatever battle he was fighting.
Seth sat up, lifted the stick to his face, and plunged it into his left eye socket. He forced it as deep as it would go as a faint, wet squishing alongside the muffled cracking of the rotten, damp stick emanated from behind his eye socket. Once he’d jammed it as deep as it would go, he began to turn it in a clockwise motion, the circling motion slowly widening as the gray matter, or whatever he was stirring, gave way. Once he was satisfied with the quality of his work, he pulled the stick out, and blood began to drip from the gaping hole down his cheek, bringing with it an assortment of fleshy bits, like bodies descending a waterslide. He died sitting up, his torso limply hunched over his knees, as the snow around him was infected by the blood slowly dripping out of his mind.
I haven’t gone back to the cabin since. But it’s not the cabin itself I fear. I fear looking up, and seeing whatever Seth saw. I have constant nightmares of something green emerging from the void, consuming my mind with pure madness.