At Your Own Risk

The journal drops from your hands. Suddenly, your insides feel like coming out. The water you just drank forcefully exits your mouth. A pinkish tint bleeds across the discharge. You cover your mouth with one hand only to see fresh blood running down it.

There is no question about it now. You don’t belong here. Someone is sabotaging the cabin to keep you away. Obviously, you knew it would be dangerous to come, yet you continued anyway.

You tell yourself to be smart from now on. You tell yourself that caution can ward off the danger. Because curiosity still drives you to turn the page. Curiosity compels you to claim some sort of revenge for coming here. To prove that your decisions hold no fallacy. You can no longer believe the words written by the other hand. To understand why you have come here and justify you sticking around. Instead, you read several more entries to check for any more misdirections.

Sept 10th:

A cold is starting to set in. The only way to keep warm is a junky, old furnace that seems to work depending on how hard I smack it. It’s barely enough to keep the chill at bay, to the point I feel unwell at times. A breeze seeps through the boards all around. Looks like plugging them up is my only option.

Sept 15th:

I feel unwell. Tiredness comes too easily. I swear I see things. Hear things. My stuff never seems to be in the right places. I am no longer sure if having people needlessly bothering my stuff is worse than this. I should be alone. Yet, an occasional voice beckons me to open the front door. A moment of relief in the night air comes as I find no one there. I can’t stay out for too long. The cold only serves to aggravate my symptoms, forcing me to retreat inside once again. If only it were warmer.

Sep 18th:

I am beginning to think this place is cursed. I woke up to demons today. They called to me from the windows and taunted me in my moments of weakness. I won’t let them get me! They seem to step back if I make a lot of noise. Bang bang boom boom! The crack of wood seems to scare them. Anything it takes to keep them at bay! Cowards, the lot of them! They disappear if I show a little courage.

If you are still reading this… this is your last chance to turn back!

Your eyes blink as the owner of the journal has apparently taken a turn for the worst. Perhaps, they may no longer be around. The fact that you now hold the journal makes you come to terms with that.

A scoff escapes your lips. Madness had clearly been their undoing. You think you know better as the supernatural is only fiction. You have seen no evidence of it around you. Only warnings of a lunatic and booby traps by someone sinister.

This conclusion solidifies your curiosity, so you proceed forward to the other rooms of the cabin.

The more you look around, the more you begin to question why anyone would want to disrupt the life of a hermit in the woods. You hardly find anything worth pilfering. The cracks and stains on wooden furniture show the same age as the cabin walls. What possessions not native to the setting are simple essentials for daily living.

An amusing thought emerges – a miser hoarding wealth away from pursuers, living in disguise. That would surely explain the paranoia and those chasing after. Maybe, you are one of those with such intention. If only you could remember…

Your steps take you to the bedroom, a place where valuables and information are equally likely to be stashed. Fearlessly, you open the door. You expect no one to be inside, as all the noise made before would have stirred anyone living to check.

A flash of motion betrays that thought. You are ill-prepared, throwing an arm up to shield your head. A heavy blow slams you across the room, where you crash hard into a blocking metal structure. Unsure if you’ve broken something in the front or in the back, you fight your feet to face whatever assailant is before you.

A dull knock of metal expanding is all that answers you, along with a growing warmth to your back. A slab of 2x4 dangles vacantly in the air, held up by a string-loaded arm.

Another trap, another sinister attempt to keep you away. You grimace at your foolishness. You’ve come this far already. What was a little more pain?

You look around the bedroom, and the first thing you notice are sticky notes. Not just a few, but all around and everywhere it seems sensible to place. You read a few of them next to you.

Check/Refill Pantry

Lock the Door

Write in Journal

Check the Seals

Add the Lime

Chop the Wood

They are all menial tasks, a to-do list of sorts. You laugh at how unorganized the owner must have been, or you would have, if it didn’t hurt so much to do so.

Just like the other rooms, this one speaks of bare necessity. However, you notice a large pile of crumpled papers in one corner. You bend down to grab one, flattening it for you to see. It is just another list, a collection of all the notes strewn about. However, you see check marks next to each item.

You uncrumple another to find a slightly different list, checked off like the other. In fact, each paper you examine shows nearly the same, like a daily ritual to confirm what is easily forgotten.

Questions pop in your head, but then, a flat paper on a dresser before a mirror calls out to you, its pristineness hinting at its recency. You look down and instantly recoil.

GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!!!

A voice suddenly whispers in your ear with the same lines. And for a moment, you think you see another in the mirror’s reflection, pen and journal in hand, as if walking into a curse fulfilled.

The mirror is lined with more sticky notes, but these say something entirely different.

This is your home.

Remember yourself in the mirror.

You can only depend on yourself.

Look around and make your daily list.

And never forget the journal in your hands.

Your vision starts to get shaky. It becomes harder to breathe. You aren’t sure if it’s that sinking feeling that has overcome you, or if it’s something else. Regardless, you want to drive off any realizations that enter your mind.

And suddenly, you hear pounding across the sealed-up windows. Something is coming for you. A familiar urge to escape wells up in your core, but you find your legs heavy.

Something invisible is strangling you, pulling the breath out of your lungs and the strength from your limbs. You think you see yourself, journal in hand, in a panic, telling yourself to ‘Get Out!’

You follow that apparition through the hallway and toward the front door, barely able to hold yourself up. You watch as it crashes through and outside. But once you reach the front door, you find it solid and unyielding. Despair puts another weight in your limbs.

You claw at the heavy bolts, your fingers too jittery to move them aside. Giving up, you instead put your entire weight into slamming the door open. However, it holds up too well. Your thorough handiwork has sealed you inside.

Your failed attempts consume the remainder of your vitality, and soon, you sink to the ground. Your vision starts to grow dark as you cannot keep yourself conscious.

And in a final moment of clarity, you regret that you had continued reading. You regret heeding the wrong voice. You regret listening to what they had to say.

For if you hadn’t read on, you would not have fixed the lock.

You wouldn’t have fallen into the self-made traps.

You wouldn’t have drunk poisoned water.

You wouldn’t have tripped the furnace.

None the wiser, you could have left and never put yourself in needless danger.

But curiosity has a way of forcing you to continue.