Chapter Two
History Repeating Itself
Three feet of snow hugged the frozen ground. A misshapen stretch of water was frozen just beyond a little hill. It was the color of cold steel, of cruel grey eyes. In the one hundred and thirty-six years since Silvia’s death thirteen cabins had been built. Twelve had burnt down.
On December 25th, 1882 a family of four died shortly after completing the cabin. The mother and father had been driven insane. The father killed the two sons. They were fourteen and sixteen. Both had been stabbed to death as they slept. When this deed was done both mother and father set themselves on fire, taking their own lives and the cabin with them.
On December 25th, 1886 the Knight family died no more than a day after moving into their beautiful cabin. A cabin built where only four years before another had burned down. The family never knew it had happened. In truth they never asked. One day after moving in, Ebenezer Knight, aged sixteen, drowned his mother in the butter she had been churning. He killed his sister, aged nineteen, as she milked the family goats. He smacked her over the head with a rock. His father was killed with the same rock as he worked on the family wagon. Ebenezer Knight then doused himself in kerosene inside the cabin and set himself on fire. They burned together.
Nine cabins came after. Nine cabins burnt down. Nine families were brutally snuffed out by one or more members of the family. The twelfth cabin was built by a Christian family who paid no mind to the stories of slaughtered men, women, and children that had cropped up over the years. They paid no mind to the rumors or stories of a little girl dressed in two layers of plain winter clothing and a black hat who supposedly haunted the land.
The thirteenth cabin was completed on December 25th, 1980 by a family owned construction company known as Mason and Sons and sat unoccupied until Phil and Deborah Johansson could move down from Milwaukee with their daughters Cindy and Becky. Cindy was six and Becky was nine. On April 17th, 1981 the family finally managed to move in. They were never told about the locations history. Never told about the ghosts. Never told about the little girl with a predilection for driving families insane.
In a bizarre change of pace nothing happened right away. In the time Cindy and Becky lived at home there was only one major incident and it wasn’t supernatural in nature.
On Thanksgiving shortly after Cindy graduated from Monrovia High School—home of the Badgers!—her sister got drunk and told everyone in the family that she slept with the mail man when she was eighteen. Mom passed out from embarrassment. Dad got angry and threw the butter dish at Becky. It missed and hit the wall, landing on Buster the family dog. Buster—frightened but not hurt by the dish—shot off like a rocket and knocked over Cindy. Cindy fell and struck her head on the table. Blood was everywhere. That night ended with the entire family waiting in the hospital for news about her condition. In the end she would be fine, though she had to take a taxi home as her family had been forced to leave the hospital after their third verbal argument led to Dad throwing a chair down the hall and yelling at the top of his lungs that his daughter was a whore.
It wasn’t until two months later that things began to happen. It was the boredom of years and years with nothing to do that kept Silvia from working her wicked ways right away. She wanted to make it great. It took a long time for the cabin to be built and for the family to move in. To just kill them right away would ruin all the fun.
It was midnight when the wickedness began.
Cindy’s mother, Dawn, was sitting on the edge of her bed brushing her hair. Rain was pelting off the windows and metal roof in an unending drum solo. Her husband, William, was asleep. The brush had flown from Dawn’s hand to clank off the closed closet door and fall with a gentle thud onto the carpet.
William didn’t stir. His snores droned on. Dawn watched the brush rise up off the ground. It did a twirl, like a wand being flourished by an overexcited wizard, and began rapping her smartly about the head. Each strike came with a flare of heat and prickling pain. She yelped with each strike. William still slept on. Dawn grabbed the brush and struggled to yank it from the air as if someone was holding it. She stopped abruptly, seemingly struck dumb. Her eyes turned white and she wobbled on her feet. She shuddered from head to toe. Moving like a person possessed, like someone removed from the wheel and replaced with someone else, she ambled across the room, stopping at her bedside next to her husband. Dawn growled like a cornered pit bull. She took the pillow from beneath his head—he didn’t wake—and placed it firmly against his face. At first there was only the sound of muffled snores. Then William jerked, his hands were flailing for the pillow, legs kicking. His muffled screams did nothing to stop Dawn.
William was screaming, his cries no longer muffled despite him still being firmly beneath the pillow. His arms and legs were flailing with the fervency and immediacy of panic. The blankets whipped and slid from his legs to curl onto the floor. His pajama pants became soaked with urine. The smell of methane and waste filled the air as he shit his pants.
William went still. As calmly as though she was making a meal or doing laundry, Dawn picked up the blanket and placed it over her husband, stopping at the neck. She removed the pillow from his face and placed it back under his head. White spittle and a bit of vomit smattered his lips. His eyes were bulging in their sockets. They were bloodshot and distant. Walking around the bed, Dawn slid under the covers, rolled over onto her side, and was asleep within seconds. In the doorway Silvia was laughing hysterically.
Dawn woke in the morning and found her husband dead. She didn’t remember killing him, but knew that she had done it. She knew because a little voice in her head was talking to her, telling her she had done it. When it wasn’t laughing hysterically anyways. So Dawn did the only thing she knew to do. She went to the bathroom where she filled up the tub. She stripped out of her clothes and took a razor from one of her husband’s razor. Slipping into the bath she put razor to wrist and slit it. She never reached the second, as was always the case when a person properly slit their wrists. The impact from the loss of blood was too quick and too great.
It would be three days before they would be found.