The Cabin That Hungers for Night

The Cabin That Hungers for Night

The road to the woods vanished behind a veil of needles, and there it stood, weathered and patient, as if it had waited through generations for someone foolish enough to listen. The cabin wore its age like a scar—shingles peeled back to reveal the grain, windows that glinted with a scavenged light from some forgotten season. I came because the town whispered of disappearances as if they were old legends you could step around, but the legend stepped toward you. The door greeted me with a quiet, almost polite welcome, a door that knew more than hinges and latch could tell, as if it had learned the art of listening from the trees themselves.

Inside, the air was thick with rain that had learned to linger, and the floorboards kept the time of a heartbeat you forgot you carried. The hunger here was not loud; it was patient, a slow hunger that fed on the pauses between breaths. It did not scream for attention. It coaxed. It invited you to sit with your own fear until your shadow grew heavy enough to be mistaken for a guest. The walls seemed to lean closer, not to press, but to lean in and listen as if they remembered every whisper that ever crossed the threshold and chose to forget only when someone listened back.

The first floor creaked with courtesy, as if the house were bowing to a guest it had long anticipated. On the kitchen table lay a note, damp with ink that refused to fade: “The cabin does not hunger for light, but for the ache of the night you carry within.”

I found a journal wedged between a teacup and a sugar tin, a brittle spine cracking with each turn of a page. The handwriting wobbled like a candle’s flame in a draft, yet the words burned steady enough to feel true: strangers come seeking shelter, strangers stay to learn what the shelter devours. The entries spoke of a pull—the moment when night stops being a habit and becomes a vow. The cabin fed on that vow, gnawed at it until it resembled a new memory, one that didn’t quite belong to the person who wrote it.

• Voices that begin outside the walls, then slide under the door like rain and insist on being counted.
• Shadows that detach from corners and drift toward the heart of the room, circling any spark of courage until it gutters out.
• Footsteps that echo differently when you listen from the ceiling, as if the house itself were walking above you.

As hours folded into a stubborn, unkind night, I understood the truth the journal hinted at: the cabin did not crave to swallow you whole, it craved your consent to remember the night forever. When dawn finally pushed a pale hand through the window, I tried to leave, but the door did not hurry to open. It preferred my hesitation, the delay that makes fear feel like a choice. The hunger settled around me, a quiet, intimate pressure that suggested I could walk away and still keep the night, tucked inside my skin, a little longer than anyone else could endure. And so I stayed, listening to the cabin’s slow, contented breath, the kind of breath that teaches you how to live with a shadow and call it home. The woods kept their secret, and I kept mine—two hearts beating in a place that hungers for night.