What the Storm Dragged In

“I’m gonna kill that dog,” Matty muttered under his breath as he stomped down the muddy trail, rainwater and dirt soaking through his sneakers. Pepsi was too much of an adventurer and wanted to explore the vast Midwest countryside, even if it was starting to storm. Nothing scared the chocolate Lab, not even the sky's booming applause.

Almost had half a mind to let the dog run wild through the pouring rain, but his mom practically slapped a black windbreaker on him and shoved him out the door. After all, it was his fault that Pepsi escaped. The boy knew better than to leave the back door wide open. He was too excited to take pictures of the incoming storm on the new camera he got for his fourteenth birthday last week. One careless moment. Before he knew it, Pepsi darted past him and down the dirt road behind their house.

Thunder grumbled overhead as Matty trampled along, occasionally calling out for Pepsi. His tiny voice was instantly swallowed up by the crashing of rain that fell from the heavens. The longer he searched, the harder his heart pounded—a little too hard for a teenage boy who insisted he didn't care.

Pepsi was his older brother’s dog and everyone knew it. But when Mark moved away to college, someone had to take care of the filthy creature, so the responsibility naturally landed on the youngest brother. Just his luck.

After what felt like hours (though what was realistically only about fifteen minutes), a quick flash of movement in the treeline next to him caught his attention. Something moved inside the woods.

Frustrated by the dog’s playfulness, Matty let out a groan and threw his arms up in the air, water from his coat splashing onto his pale face. “Pepsi, get back here right now!” Suddenly he detected more movement, but it was further behind the trees. Perhaps the dog discovered a squirrel. There was unfortunately only one way to find out.

Heaving another sigh, he diverted from the muddy path and pushed himself past the brush on the edge of the woods. The deeper he went, the less the rain reached his messy brown hair. At least the trees offered some shelter from the relentless downpour.

Further and further he went, calling out for the animal every thirty seconds. The deeper he wandered, the more the forest swallowed the storm. Thunder became a distant rumble, the rain reduced to scattered taps against the canopy overhead. The silence underneath felt wrong, as if the woods were holding their breath around him.

A sense of unease trickled across Matty’s skin and soaked through to his bones. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and his mind kept repeating turn around, turn around, turn around. Just as he convinced himself the dog would eventually find its way home, something in the distance caught his eye.

A small cabin. In his woods? Impossible. Matty and his brother had explored these grounds for years, venturing as far as the river about an hour’s walk away. Surely he would’ve spotted the house before.

Then again, it had been about a year since Mark moved away. Perhaps the home was constructed very recently. It certainly didn’t look new.

The cabin sagged beneath the weight of time, its roof bowed in the middle as though one hard winter would finally bring it crashing down. Gray wooden boards, long stripped of paint, splintered outward like brittle bones. Moss and dark streaks of mildew crawled across the walls, while thick vines climbed the porch posts and disappeared beneath the warped floorboards. Several shutters hung crooked from rusted hinges, lazily swaying whenever the wind found them. The windows were so clouded with years of dirt and grime that they reflected almost nothing at all.

It looked less like a home and more like something the forest had been quietly reclaiming for decades.

Matty squinted through the grime coating the nearest window. At first he thought the pale shape inside was only his reflection distorted by the dirty glass.

Then it smiled.

A scream caught in his throat as he stumbled backward. Every instinct screamed at him to run, but he remained rooted to the spot, unable to tear his eyes from the figure as it vanished from the window. A few seconds later, the front door inched open with a long, mournful creak.

A thin woman stood in the doorway. She looked about the same age as his mother, though far more gaunt, her cheeks sunken and her skin ghostly pale. Black hair hung in thin strings just below her shoulders, matching the long black dress draped over her frail frame. And that smile... It stretched unnaturally wide across her wrinkled face, never wavering, never softening, as she held his gaze.

“Don’t be scared, little child.” Her voice was soft and airy, wavering ever so slightly, like a lullaby carried on the wind. It should have sounded comforting. Instead, it made the hairs on Matty's arms stand on end. “Won’t you come inside?” She gestured to the space behind her, never taking her empty eyes and creepy smile off Matty.

He shook his head. “No thank you.” He wasn’t sure why he answered her in the first place. His body seemed determined to ignore everything his brain was screaming.

When he took another step back and prepared to run away, her voice drifted into the air again, almost desperately. “But I found your dog. Don’t you want him back?”

Matty froze. Did she really have Pepsi? How else would she know that he was missing a dog unless she had him? Despite everything about her setting off alarm bells, she had to be telling the truth. “Can I have him back, please? My mom’s really worried.”

“I’m sure she is,” the woman nodded understandingly. “I had my door open and the poor thing wandered in. I've got him shut in the bathroom. Oh dear, why don’t you come in and take him?”

Before he could answer, the woman disappeared into the cabin, leaving the front door wide open. From the open door, he could see her vanish into another room. Matty swallowed hard, his feet refusing to cooperate. Every instinct screamed at him to leave the woods, forget the dog, and sprint home without looking back. But Pepsi...

Drawing a shaky breath, he forced one foot in front of the other. The porch groaned beneath his weight, each step answered by another slow creak from the weathered boards. He paused at the doorway, his fingers tightening around the hem of his coat.

A wave of stale air drifted out to meet him. It smelled of damp wood, dust, and something older he couldn't identify, like a place that had been sealed away for years.

"Hello?" he called, his voice barely louder than a whisper. No answer. With one final glance toward the safety of the woods, Matty stepped over the threshold.

The cabin was darker than it should have been. The windows were large enough to let in the gray afternoon light, yet the corners of the room remained swallowed in shadow. Faded floral wallpaper peeled away from the walls in long curling strips, exposing dark, water-stained wood beneath. Dust coated nearly every surface, untouched except for a narrow path through the middle of the room.

He made a mental note not to let the front door out of his sight.

Nothing about the cabin looked livable. There was no furniture in sight. No couch or table or chair. Only dust and spiders and an unpleasant odor he couldn’t place.

He turned to face the room that he saw the lady disappear into. As he peered inside, he could make out a similar theme in that room: nothing occupied the space. No bed, no lamp, no clothes. The realization slowly started to sink in that the woman obviously couldn’t be living in that place. It was abandoned.

And there was no bathroom to be found.

Movement in the corner of the adjacent room snapped Matty out of his petrified daze. At first all he could make out was a mass of darkness. Then the unnamed shadow shifted and gradually inched toward him. The figure crept closer until it finally passed through a strand of gray light spilling from the window.

It was the woman. She crawled toward him on all fours. Her skin hung loose from her face, mottled with decay, but the smile remained exactly the same. A familiar object wrapped around her frail neck, jingling with every move she made.

A collar. Pepsi’s collar.

“I’m so glad you found me, Matty.”

Those were the last words Matty heard before he turned and flung himself out the door. His feet never touched the steps leading up to the cabin because he flew over them instead, crashing to the wet ground and scrambling up and away.

He ran until he reached the edge of the woods, and even then he kept running. Heavy rain greeted him as he emerged from the shelter of the trees. He ran until his lungs burned, threatening to collapse. Even though his legs tremored and his body ached, he didn’t stop running. Even when he saw his house in the distance, he didn’t slow down until he was inside with the door locked behind him.

Of course his mom had questions. He laid on the living room floor, soaking wet and shaking like a frightened little puppy. It took him almost an hour to stop shivering. He blamed the storm for the streaks of water that stained his cheeks.

As his erratic breathing slowed, he heard the familiar jingle of Pepsi’s collar. Suddenly, the dog burst in from the kitchen and pounced, gleefully licking Matty’s face.

He stared in awe at the dog, his hands instantly reaching for the faded collar around Pepsi’s neck. “You found him?” he asked, voice hoarse and winded.

“Yeah, he came back about fifteen minutes after you left,” Matty’s mom explained, a concerned look still carefully directed at her son. “You didn’t have your phone on you, so I couldn’t let you know. What on earth has got you so worked up, sweetheart?”

But the boy didn’t hear her. He was too busy staring at the dog’s collar again. “This isn’t the collar he had on earlier.” No, that one was bright red. This was one burgundy.

His mom reached down to gently run her fingers along Pepsi’s damp fur. “No, it’s not. The little rascal must’ve slipped out of his collar while he was playing outside. He came back without it, so I fished out one of his old ones.”

Matty looked down at the burgundy collar wrapped snugly around Pepsi's neck. Somewhere deep in the woods, another collar was still jingling.