Her luck had officially run out when she felt her leg connect with a tall root arching out of the ground at shin height. Without so much as a second to curse, the young woman toppled to the ground in a heap, scraping along the dirt and leaves before coming to a stop in a moaning, defeated, miserable pile. Her fair skin was smudged with dirt; her long auburn hair was tangled in a mess of pine needles, twigs, and burrs. Her simple light blue dress was all but unrecognizable from all the brambles and scrapes she had endured in her flight. She knew these woods like the back of her hand and even in the dark, she’d know her way around if she were blind. But tonight she had gone too far, and even with the light of the full moon to guide her, as she laid on the forest floor nursing her bruised leg, she had to admit defeat.

She was utterly lost.

The girl had known this time would come, and while she also knew that escape was certainly hopeless, it was better than meeting her fate in the isolated ranch house deep in the forest that had become her prison ever since she married that man. That man, so seemingly suave and handsome in his city ways, his nice clothes, a man who could speak with a feather-soft voice one moment and bite into her soul the next. Just like the way his leather belt bit into her flesh. Three years she surrendered to his abuses, his tirades, his endless controlling of her. There were no friends to see the bruises, no family to see her tears; just her and that monster who made this poor young woman the sole focus of all the darkness in his blackened soul.

But no man, no matter how evil, brilliant, or forceful, can go forever without making a mistake.

That night, he had too much to drink; the firewater had made him clumsy and careless. She managed to trip him, stunning him when his head hit the wall, and, to her joy, the door had not been padlocked. With no hesitation and just the clothes on her back, she bolted into the night, his furious roars fading into the distance as she ran into the darkness.

She felt no small amount of relief when she found that, while painful, her leg was not broken, and she could put her weight on it. It was swiftly bleeding, however, and she’d have to get it seen to when she found a town.

If I find a town, she thought to herself. That would only come by sheer luck, for she had no clue where she was. Never in the past half of a decade had she ever gotten so far away from the house, and even if she had, the night masked everything in such a way that not only made her lose her way but made her feel small. It was all she could do to not curl up in a ball and cry.

“Ain’t no time for that,” the woman sternly told herself, speaking aloud for the first time in a while, no longer afraid of a backhand. “You’re a big girl, and big girls don’t cry. Big girls keep chuggin’ along.”

And, dusting off her blouse as best she could, so she did, albeit painfully as her shin had begun to swell. Her footfalls became heavy, as her endless sprint through the forest had taken a toll on her energy. And just as she finally crested a small hill, hoping to get her bearings, she felt that her legs would give out altogether. Then she saw it.

Ahead, in a little clearing of brush and tall grass, lined with tree stumps, was a log cabin. It looked to be little more than a big shed and was roughly built but looked solid. There was a single window by the sturdy-looking front door that pulsed with a dim but distinctive red light.

“I must be dreamin’,” the young woman said aloud to herself. “Shouldn’t be nobody for miles...”

Then, as she blinked to clear her vision as if something in her eye could be playing tricks on her, she saw a shadow move past the window. Someone was home.

Something must have come over her, for exhausted as she was, the woman began to stumble towards the little house, tears running down her face and stuttering incoherently as loud as she could. Reaching the door, she fell against the indeed-solid planks and iron hinges, pounding with her fist with all of her waning strength.

“Somebody in there? Please help me! Please! Somebody! Any-”

The door flew open without so much as a squeak of a rusty hinge, startling the girl into losing her balance. Falling backward, she landed on her rear and stared up at the resident of the cabin who silently considered her from his place upon the threshold.

The red light was dimmer than she thought, so most of what she could make out was his silhouette. He was not a big man; in fact, he had narrow shoulders, a slim build, and was not much taller than she was. His cheeks looked hollow with a hint of stubble, the bones of his face, what little she could see, were angular and sharp as if the skin of his face were drawn tight over his skull. His hair was short and unkempt, and he wore a loose-fitting shirt and pants. Yet, despite all this, the eerie light gave the man an offputting feeling. There was no doubt in her mind that this was a strange man.

One of his eyes was visible in the light, watery but with a flinty, cold stare that almost sent a shiver running up the girl’s spine. He looked her dead in the face with an almost dead expression.

“What are ya doin’ out here this time of night, girl?” His voice was coarse, very low and gravelly, the voice of a man who smoked a lot and always kept his voice to a whisper. His tone was so passive, the girl could not tell if he was angry or concerned.

“Please,” she whimpered, still sitting on the ground. “He’ll kill me if he catches me. I don’t know where I am.”

He did not move from where he stood in the door, nor did his eyes break contact with hers. “Run along, girl. You’re better off me not helpin’ ya…” with that he made to shut the door, turning away from her.

“Wait!” She tried to stand up, but winced in pain and instead sat up straighter, reaching as far forward as she could. The man stopped and turned to her again, this time eying her up and down. His eye finally drifted to her leg, which was visible in the dim glow, and he saw her wound. He looked back at her face, then to her leg and, for a moment, she could have sworn she saw the look in his eye soften a little.

Letting out a sigh, the man swung open the door again, standing aside to let her through. “Best get inside, then. Can’t have you limpin’ around the woods all scraped up like that, can we?”

The girl could not get inside the house quick enough. Standing up, successfully this time, she hobbled into the home and plopped down onto a roughly built stool the man provided for her. Now inside, she got a better idea of the cabin’s layout. It was sparsely furnished and all with what looked to be hand-made furniture. There were two stools, some crates, a small stove, a table, a pile of wood, and a bed in the farthest corner from the door. On a small box next to the bed was a lamp, its glass case coated in some kind of red paint that tinted the light it gave off.

The man shut the door behind her but did not bolt it, and he turned to face her, now with the light fully upon him. He was indeed not a big man; he was very thin and his face was the most haunting that she had ever seen. His eyes were sunken, irises so blue they looked almost white, and he looked like he had not shaved in a week. Dark bags hung under his eyes, and his unkempt hair only added to the image of a very bedraggled creature. He looked like he should have been in his late thirties, no older than the girl, but the air about him made him seem incredibly old, weary, spent like a dying old mule.

He advanced to within short range of her and knelt to examine her wound. He brought his face close to it and sniffed it a couple of times, and she felt his hands clench a little tighter for a moment before loosening their grip. She was surprised at this, but he seemed to pay her no mind.

He poured some warm water from a kettle on the stove over the wound and began to dab at it with a handkerchief he withdrew from his breast pocket. The water felt soothing and his hands, while knobbly with spindly fingers, were very gentle. As he worked, without looking her in the face, he spoke up for the first time in what felt like hours that she sat there.

“Ya didn’t answer me, girl.”

She snapped back to reality, having nearly dozed off. The night’s events had taken their toll on her. “Beg pardon?”

“What’s a girl doing out in the woods on a night like this? With a hurt leg, no less?”

She was not sure whether or not to trust the man with the truth just yet. Something about all this still left an uneasy feeling in her belly. “I got lost, hit my leg on a root or somethin’ while runnin’ around like a fool.” This was, of course, true, but not the entire truth. She could not know if this man knew her husband, after all.

“Indeed,” he muttered. “That don’t answer ‘why’ though, don’t it?” He looked up at her face from where he knelt by her leg, and that passive, chilling look had come over again. Something in his eyes was compelling, hard to resist like a steam train bearing down the iron tracks. Forcing herself to look away, she continued.

“My man, you see. He’s a right heartless bastard. Beats me like a dog some days. Says awful things to me, chokes me half to death. Marryin’ him was the stupidest thing I ever did. Finally escaped tonight, and here I am.”

His face did not change, but his head tilted slightly to the side as he considered her story. “That so?” The man did not sound disbelieving, nor did he sound surprised. He almost sounded disinterested, distracted like a busy parent trying to humor an excited child. He tied the handkerchief around her leg, not too tightly, and stood up. His stance was slightly stooped, in a way that made him look incredibly tired, yet as he stood over her she felt dwarfed by him. “Well, it’d be a shame if he caught you out there, then. Sounds like you're quite the lucky little lady.”

With that he turned and went over to the stove, casting a shadow over the girl. Her eye glanced over to the door. Next to the door frame, there was a large wood axe leaning against the wall.

“You wouldn’t know my man, would you?” she asked tentatively.

A raspy, almost wheezy chuckle came from the man’s throat. “No, girl, I wouldn’t. Matter of fact, I came to these woods to be alone.”

“Why’d you want to be alone?” However, it was not his isolation that worried her, but rather her own. At that moment, she had never felt so far from salvation.

“Cause I ain’t like most people, girl.” He still was not facing her, but something about his tone of voice was unsettling. There was almost a touch of excitement to his words that grew as he spoke. Perhaps the loneliness had gotten to the poor man.

“See, ever since I was a boy, somethin’ happens to me on nights like these. Somethin’ awful.” The man began to turn, and her blood turned to ice in her veins when she saw the look in his eyes. Eyes that seemed to have lost all pupils and were turning into a milky white. His mouth was beginning to twist into an evil smile as he slowly rotated to face her.

“And when it happens, I get this urge, see?”

He took a step towards her, causing the girl to squirm instinctively in her seat. The grin stretched across the man’s face was inhuman, and his neck began to twitch. She could have sworn that, suddenly, he had grown in stature right in front of her.

“This fire in my belly, it starts to burn me up from the inside out. I feel like I’m dyin’, I gotta get what I need. And ya know what I need, girl?”

He began to move closer, and, in her panic, the young woman fell off her stool and began to back into the corner of the cabin. Even the screams she so desperately wanted to release were frozen in her throat.

“Ya ever been so hungry, ya feel like ya got live coals in ya belly? Like ya got boilin’ water in ya veins? Like molten iron in your skull?” The man moved slowly but inexorably, pinning her in the corner with no escape. “Ain’t no one ever been that hungry but me! God, it hurts!” His voice climbed in volume and pitch, the excitement and fervor in his voice building so high it threatened to burst the top off of the house.

“I told ya, girl. You’d have been better off lost in the woods. But don’t worry, at least it won’t hurt ya as much as it hurts me!” He raised both hands towards her face, only inches from grabbing her with those long fingers of his.

Her eyes flicked futilely to the door, and the breath hitched in her throat.

The door was open, having swung open noiselessly and the axe was gone.

There was a sickening crack like the sound of a breaking tree branch, and, for a moment, the strange man’s eyes returned to normal as a look of shock came across his face. He groaned once and collapsed to the floor, dead as a doornail. The axe, its handle still quivering, was buried deep in the middle of his back, the blow had fallen dead center on his spine.

The momentary warmth of relief froze as cold as ice when she looked up and dread robbed her of any words of thanks when she saw the face of her savior.

Her husband stood there panting and furious; his eyes were still bloodshot from the drink and the sheen of sweat glistened on his face. He had always been a burly man, a naturally strong specimen, vital and overpowering like the whiskey he guzzled almost every night. Compared to the stranger, who he had just killed with their own axe, he seemed like a giant. Fuming, he grabbed her by the collar of her dress and yanked the girl to her feet.

“Nice try, you silly little bitch. Gave your man an awful scare, something could’ve happened to you!” His tone was mocking with not a tinge of concern to be heard. “You know what this means when we get back home?”

She struggled as best as she could, clawing against his grip and trying to squirm out of his grasp, but even drunk his hands were like iron clamps. She may as well have been trying to wriggle out of the stocks. She kicked at his shins, distinctively hitting bone with her shoe and earning her a pained grunt. He released one of his hands and delivered a backhand to her face that blasted stars across her vision, knocking her to the floor all the way at the other end of the room. She tried to sit up and shield her eyes, but the room seemed to swim. He towered over her like a tree; she might as well have been resisting a mountain.

In her despair, the girl could have sworn she saw something move in the corner behind her husband. He leaned down to grab her again, and she shut her eyes, bracing herself for the pain of another attack.

“Ya know what’s worse than feelin’ hungry?” said a raspy voice.

She opened her eyes again, and the husband froze in place. The stranger’s hand twitched, then clenched, placing its palm on the floor and pushing upwards with the sound of splintering bone. He arched his back and got to his feet, the axe falling out of his spine with a squelch. The eyes were now almost glowingly white, and a scowl covered the man’s face, revealing a set of sharp teeth. In the red light, the girl must have misjudged the man’s height; now he stood a head taller than her husband. His limbs seemed longer than she remembered, his long arms and legs and now small body made him look like a huge, crooked, bipedal spider.

“Makin’ me angry!”

Before the girl’s vile spouse could react the stranger grabbed him by the neck with both hands, lifting the sputtering, choking abuser as if he were made of straw. Those limbs, spindly and thin as they were, must have been hopelessly strong. He struggled against the stranger’s grasp like a fish on a hook, the life rapidly being choked out of him as he kicked against thin air.

As the husband squirmed and writhed with what strength he had left, the creature looked down at the girl whose head had now cleared, and only sat on the floor watching in sheer horror, the shock having robbed her of words or flight. The scowl turned into a small smile as he regarded her.

“Best be runnin’ along, girl…”

It looked back at her husband, whose eyes were bulging in their sockets as his windpipe was being crushed, and a distinct crunching noise could be heard as those long fingers drew even tighter.

“...‘fore I finish the main course!”

Releasing his grip with one hand, the creature brought back his arm and plunged his open free hand into the husband’s chest with a sound like a hammer hitting a watermelon, crushing bone and sloshing past flesh and muscle as he felt around the man’s ribcage. The husband gave one last twitch and then hung limp as wet laundry left out to dry. As the girl got up and made to leave, just before she left that cabin for good she saw the creature retract its arm and withdraw with it her husband’s steaming, sopping-wet heart.

As she sprinted away in the night, never to see her husband or that strange man, that creature, ever again, in that moment of shock, a fit of laughter came over her. The woman struggled to breathe as she ran and ran, over hills, through the trees, around boulders, but almost the whole way she laughed and laughed. As the forest gave way to flatlands and the forest floor gave way to a dirt road, she saw the lights of civilization on the horizon. It was then that she stopped and wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes and chortled to herself.

“Hahaha, well, I guess the bastard had a heart after all.”