Hidden There

You find it in an old patch of woods, set way back from the hiking trail. Actually, you had to climb over a fence, past signs saying 'Do Not Enter'. But something compelled you, so you did it. And then you come upon that old cabin--really a shack standing there in all of its glory. There is a battered blue tarp hanging over the open end which the wind ruffles as you stand, looking. The wood is weather beaten and dark, probably rotting away. But it seems so sinister to you, bile starts coming up to your throat and your heart starts to thump so hard on your chest wall and so fast-- for what? Because an old shack stands where it shouldn't be, out in the woods? But with urgency now, you have to go, get away now and you turn and run away from that feeling, the feeling of something awful there--not chasing you down, but that something regrettable is just there and you have to get away from it as fast and as far as possible and you don't stop running until you are over the fence and down the trail while people going the other way are staring at you open-mouthed and pop eyed as you lurch sweating and gasping back to your car.
You push the incident to the back burner of your mind until one day at work a friend sends you an email with fall news. You open it absently, hoping for a distraction from the afternoon drudge march of paperwork. You read the text and scroll through the pictures of children with Halloween pumpkins and in superhero costumes but the one that does it is of a small child lying on a neat pile of leaves with his eyes closed and you realize wetness has exploded from your mouth a moment ago and it is now dripping down the monitor to the keyboard.
You return to the park the next day while everyone thinks you have the flu. You climb over the fence, you take the same direction you did before until you see it, that derelict shack that started it all or maybe just again. You force yourself to step closer this time, step again and again towards it, the hammering inside is so loud it sounds like a jackhammer outside while the roaring in your ears sounds like white noise from a TV turned up all the way but all you can see is it and it and how ugly and sinister and putrescent it is.
You are now right in front of the flapping blue tarp and you can't look, can't look, have to look and so you pull it back and there is an absence, it is empty, empty except for two old bottles and a moldy blanket. It feels like relief for a moment, it seems like a lifting sensation, but now you are just angry there isn't a good reason for this. Nothing to make it worthwhile and how it is just an ordinary squatter's shack out in the woods. It isn't what it could’ve been, there is nothing to see. And so you strike a match and put it to the dry wood, because you don't want anyone else to know this dread. And you walk away feeling the heat sear your back.