Skeletal arms swinging like frantic pendulums, the figure flung themselves down the hallway towards me, an angered screech ringing out from an open mouth full of needle-sharp teeth much too long and acute to be remotely human.

What was the game here? Were my only options to either meld with the lodge, waiting like another tortured soul for the next victim to arrive, or to become an empty husk vulnerable to control at the end of a string, or even just to be torn apart to join the fragments floating around my ankles? Was escape truly not a fate I could follow? I didn’t want to accept that.

I considered the hanging frames in the mere seconds I had remaining before the figure lunged for my throat one last time. The past victims had been people seeking refuge, families wishing to spend time with one another, couples enjoying each other’s company, strangers joining together to reach a goal. All must have had a weakness, a pitfall, a deep desire to run away from the outside world beyond the clearing, and the lodge had gripped on hard to that feeling. A gradual cultivation of fear and judgement to twist one even further detached from their companions, to isolate them not only from society but from their family and friends, and then even from their own minds. How can you trust your own senses when everything and everyone states otherwise?

Then, the siphoning of strength - if madness was their only solace, then maybe they would take the others with them, or perhaps they too would simply stumble down the same dark path of whispering shadows and demonic mirages? Defeat, acceptance, and relief - the final moments before the lodge took its next meal, either by merging the flesh into the larger whole or by hollowing them out into a perfect carving of pure malice.

I lifted my chin despite the fatigued weight of my own head and met the long, claw-like nails of the figure with a stern determination. They dug and slashed through the tender flesh of my shoulder, slicing the muscle into a gush of blood and I grunted with the rolling pain as another flare of agony slammed against me, the figure felling me with a simple kick to the stomach.

“Let yourself go,” Adrian said, the static to his voice resonating through my skull. “Just relax and enjoy the lodge, Charlie.”

I gathered myself up, my limbs feeling too many and too long and too unmanageable as I stood, everything slow and heavy. “I’m going home.”

“You can’t,” the figure rumbled in Adrian’s voice, sounding like an engine throttling ice.

I looked past the figure, past the hanging memorials, past Adrian’s disquieting smile, and past the throbbing walls of the hallway to lay my eyes on the front door. It was open, the barrier I’d pushed against it vanished. The outside was dark, so very dark, as if the world had been plunged into vivid black ink with not even the moon to guide the moths to the flame.

I took a faltering step, my legs almost giving out beneath me, my hand reaching out to touch the slime of the wall. I wrenched my hand away, the heat of the beating gore tepid on my fingertips, tipped with oily blood. The figure snarled, rasping and threatening, looming over me ever taller and ever thinner.

Adrian strode out into the hallway, his clothing still pristine and smooth despite the blood and yellow-green fluid oozing and dripping from the ceiling above, always fading into tiny wisps of smoke before it landed on him.

“I’m going home,” I repeated. “I want to go home.”

“It’s too late.” He lifted his phone, the timer perilously close to the end of the countdown. Just how long had I been staring into the painting? How long had it taken me to stumble into the hallway? Did time flow as easily and simply as the blood streaming down the walls? “You’re too late.”

I watched the numbers fall as rapidly as my chances.

I straightened my aching spine, feeling the bruises forming eagerly down my back. “I’ve taken my week away,” I said. “And it’s time for me to leave.”

“There’s nothing for you to return to.”

“I think there’s plenty,” I responded, walking down the hallway. The figure snarled, snapping bones and needle-sharp teeth at me but not even grazing me as I passed. Adrian snatched out a hand to grip my wrist, yanking me towards him. His body was cold and yet it burned me, his face wet and soft-looking as if melted and malleable to the touch.

“Charlie…” he whispered, his gaze beseeching, imploring for me to stay. It would be so easy just to collapse, my body begged for me to give up. It took everything I had just to keep breathing, every movement another layer of pain with no energy to support it.

But I wasn’t ready.

“I’m going home now,” I told the lodge.

Adrian’s hand fell away, sorrow etched into his face like chiselled lines on a withered statue. He closed his eyes and the lodge convulsed around us, filtering memories of blood and stone, flashing static and bleeding limbs, festering wood and silver smiles.

I turned and dragged myself to the front door, stepping out onto the porch and spotting my car still awaiting me in the gloom.

I wrestled my weary self across the clearing, the stare of the lodge watching my every step as blood stained the ground beneath me, paving the path I weaved with gleaming crimson. My bloodied palm thudded against the glass of the car window as I heaved myself into the driver’s seat, grappling in the dark to find the rattle of my keys. I shook the keychain out, barely managing to turn them in the ignition with the feeble tremble of my hands.

I glanced in the rearview mirror to see the red brake lights set the lodge alight in a warning scarlet, the figure swaying in the treeline where it belonged, and Adrian on the porch. The entire lodge pulsed with life, sleek and grotesque in shape and memory, and then it blinked away to a simple lodge in the forest, no sign of man or monster watching me as I pulled out of the clearing.

I drove, a danger to myself and all, until the green welcoming lights of a petrol station promised normality and I swerved in, haphazardly parking the car in a bay, positioned completely out of the lines. The man behind the counter inside glanced up curiously as my car engine still rumbled away, but his own exhaustion from a late night shift soon made his eyes fall back to the bright screen of a handheld console, repeatedly smashing buttons with little active thought.

I had no phone to call the police or an ambulance, my mobile abandoned on the kitchen counter with likely no remaining battery. Another vehicle rolled into the station, stopping at one of the fuel pumps. An overweight man clambered out of the van, rubbing a bullous hand over his grey beard as he filled the tank. The man behind the counter flicked his gaze upwards before returning to his game, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand.

I switched the engine off. I got out of the car, stumbling towards the small glass panel the man sat behind. I knocked a fist against the window and the man turned towards me, not lifting his attention away from his game.

“What pump?” he asked through the tinny speaker, although he surely knew which pump the van had been filling up at and he’d seen me park up.

“Please,” I said, my voice breaking and grating on a thousand blades of rust and dry sand. “Help me.”

I heard a gasp from behind me, the van driver finally coming to pay with his wallet grasped tight in his hands. His eyes were wide, his jaw fallen open as he took in the wretched visage of blood and wounds before him.

The man behind the counter finally looked up, his game beeping through the speaker as first his gaze froze on the bloodied smear on the glass, and then swung towards me.

“Please…”

“What the hell happened to you?” the van driver asked, suddenly standing next to me. Concern furrowed his brow and he reached out a hand to steady me, quickly retracting it when I flinched away. “Hey, hey. I won’t hurt you.” He nodded at the man inside the station. “Call an ambulance, lad.”

I don’t know if he did, because when I next blinked my eyes didn’t open again.

-

A Week Later

I awoke to the persistent beep of a machine, the consistent yet muted bustle of people, and the sting and ache of a dozen healing wounds.

I opened my eyes half expecting to find Adrian sitting in the chair beside the hospital bed and was relieved only to see a nurse tending to the IV bag leading into my arm.

I tried to speak, a croak all I could muster, but the nurse snapped her attention to me as if I’d shouted. “Oh!” she grinned, big and gentle, happy and caring. “Oh, no, don’t move. It’s okay, relax. You’re safe now. We’ve got you.”

I winced at her words, scanning the room for bleeding walls and silently screaming faces, for sinister smiles and haunting shadows, and found only chemically clean white surfaces and the rush of doctors and shuffle of patients.

A brush of fingertips on the underside of my wrist drew my eyes back to the nurse, landing on the bandages wrapped around my arms. I felt the ache and sharpness of pain that reminded me of the other wounds; the keen and deep agony of my shoulder, the bruised throb of my spine and stomach, the pain of my broken nose and raw chest, the sting of battered bones and a dozen cuts, and the twinge of skin peeled away.

“Is there anyone you want me to call for you?” the nurse asked softly.

I shut my eyes.

The nurse took my silence as an answer. “The police will want to speak with you.”

I nodded, immediately regretting the motion as my head panged.

“I’ll get you some more painkillers,” she said, her hand still resting carefully on my wrist. “You’ll be okay.”

I opened my eyes again. “Yeah,” I said. “Thank you.” I will be okay. I have a life to grab hold of, a world to make my own, and a promise to live within it.

Have a week off, they said. Take a break away from everything, they said. Spend it at this rental lodge far detached from the stresses of daily life, they said. You’ll feel refreshed, they said.

I smiled weakly.

A week away, they said. A week away that could have ended it, only to step out ready for many more.

It's going to be okay.