Moonlight dimly illuminated the dirt road. Dense woods lined the path on either side, creating a claustrophobic effect, like being in a labyrinth. The pine trees stretched menacingly into the sky, casting shadows that crept along the forest floor. The branches swayed in the wind, leave and pine needles littering the ground. A heavy muffling silence lay upon the woods, and the darkened brush was hushed with a lack of animals. The dirt road stretched for miles, but eventually culminated at a single wooden cabin. The ancient building still retained its timeless structure, nothing more than a box with wooden walls and a slanted roof. The twilight painted the cabin pitch black, nearly melding it into the backdrop of the forest. Thick clouds drifted hazily across the darkened sky.
Headlights appeared in the distance. As the cones of yellow light grew closer, the rumbling of the car was audible. It tumbled down the dirt road, bouncing violently at the slightest bump. The car cast the headlights into the impenetrable darkness as it continued forwards. Eventually the faded yellow sedan reached the cabin and slowly came to a stop. The driver’s side door opened, and a young man walked confidently up to the cabin.
The door of the cabin creaked open, and the man strode in. The cabin’s interior was coated in a thick layer of dust, and the walls were covered with various hunting rifles, old power tools, and the mounted heads of several deer and a bear, mouth agape. The man casually sauntered around, looking at the rustic furniture, switching the lamps on and off to make sure they worked.
“Bruce, be careful in there!”
A young woman cautiously slipped in through the front door, bright blue eyes glancing around the room with trepidation. “It looks like no one has been in here in ages,” she exclaimed.
“Well,” Bruce said, examining a lamp made to look like the stock of a rifle. “The guy I rented it from said that he bought it pretty recently.”
“I don’t like it. It’s too spooky in here.” The woman sidled up next to Bruce, arms folded.
Bruce looked at her with his piercing brown eyes and leaned in to give her a quick kiss. He smiled disarmingly. “Don’t worry Jess, we’ll only be here for the night. What could go wrong?”
“Don’t say that Bruce, you’ll jinx it!” Jess’ ruby red lips smiled back and she slapped Bruce on the arm jokingly. She turned away and walked to the front door to close it. Bruce continued to meander around the room, picking up dust-coated objects and studying them.
“Hey Jess, check this out.”
In his hand, Bruce was holding a hefty leather-bound book. The front cover was entirely black, with a single circle of red inked upon it. Bruce flipped it open to a random page, and wiped away the layer of grime encasing it. The pages were frail and wrinkled, and the small black text was fading. Although the lettering was difficult to make out, Bruce could clearly tell that this book was not written in English. Jess leaned over his shoulder and frowned at the book.
“The alphabet is Latin, but I’ve never seen this language before in my life.”
Bruce continued to flip through the pages, but there were only lines and lines of strange words, interspersed with the occasional odd symbol. Weird, Bruce thought to himself. Something on one page caught his eye, and he flipped back to it. Two words had been hastily circled several times with red ink.
“Verru verrata,” Bruce muttered under his breath.
The effect was instantaneous. The walls of the cabin clattered and the window panes shook violently. Bruce dropped the book out of alarm, and Jess immediately clutched at his arm. A deep reverberating laugh filled their ears as the floor of the cabin began to rumble. Terrified, Jess began to scream, her fingernails digging into Bruce’s arm. Bruce remained rooted to the spot, his head jerking around as he searched frantically for the source of this horror. Branches whipped at the windows, scratching the glass as if trying to get in. One particularly large branch smashed the window, and glass shards scattered upon the floor. Wind rushed in through the opening, and the deep menacing laugh continued to pound in Bruce’s head as his hair was thrown about.
A petrifying scream escalated the noise, and Bruce’s arm was wrenched backwards as Jess attempted to hold on for her life. A thin tree branch that crept in through the broken window had wrapped itself, whip-like, around her ankle, and was attempting to drag her outside into the dark wilderness. Bruce stared, horrified, but quickly gained his senses and grabbed Jess’ arms in an attempt to pull her away from the possessed tree branch. Bruce’s hands slipped, and Jess was yanked out the window, her shrieks growing simultaneously more frantic and fainter as she disappeared from sight into the inky gloom.
And suddenly it was silent. Lamps lay cracked and broken on the floor. Rusted wrenches and hammers that were originally hanging on the walls were now strewn across the wooden floor panels. Bruce felt an eerie chill lingering in the air, as he carefully took a step forward, eyes wide, head on a swivel. The only sound was the broken glass crunching under his boots.
Suddenly the front door flew open, slamming against the wall with a bang. Jess stood in the doorway.
Relieved, Bruce began to make his way towards her. “Oh thank god you’re –“ But he stopped himself mid-stride.
Jess’ head was down, facing the floor, her hair draped down the front of her chest. Her arms hung limply at her sides, and her legs seemed to be barely supporting her, although she was standing completely straight. Her clothes were now ragged and torn, and she seemed paler, framed by the darkness of the forest behind her. Slowly, Jess lifted her head up to face Bruce. Black liquid leaked from the corners of her partially opened mouth and dripped off of her smooth chin. Her eyes were a milky white and stared straight ahead, directly at Bruce.
She threw her head back and cackled into the air, a gut-wrenching noise. Suddenly she snarled and flew forward at Bruce, hovering over the floorboards, arms outstretched and clawing at the air. Bruce quickly sidestepped, but not before her gnarled black fingernails tore into his cheek. Bruce yelled, throwing his head back, blood spattering his clothing. Jess spun around and slowly licked the blood off of her fingernails. She looked at him once again with a menacing smile that seemed to stretch from ear to ear as Bruce’s bright red blood intermingled with the thick black fluid dripping down her face. Bruce stood, transfixed with terror at the horrific sight of his demonic girlfriend. She flew at him once more, and this time Bruce did not have time to react. She grabbed his torso, lifting him up with superhuman strength over her head, screaming as she did so, exposing grey, decaying teeth. Bruce yelled, flailing his arms and legs in an effort to get free, but her grasp was vice-like. Jess threw Bruce with ridiculous force, slamming him into the opposite wall. Bruce felt a rib crack as he collided with the hard wood, his head snapping back.
Bruce groggily forced himself to his feet, a blurry Jess hovering on the other side of the room, cackling and screaming, clearly savoring his pain. “You’ll never leave this place alive!” Her words, deep and mechanical, were ingrained with a malevolence that struck Bruce’s soul. Rallying all the strength he had, Bruce quickly looked around him for a weapon, as Jess was beside herself with a sick, twisted happiness, hair whipping rapidly around her contorted face. Various tools and equipment lay around Bruce’s feet: hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers. But then Bruce’s eyes alighted upon something.

An old rusty chainsaw lay several feet away. Bruce prayed it still had gas in it and he immediately snatched it up. Jess stopped her insane cacophony of laughter and her head snapped to look at him. She began to snarl; her grey lips exposing a dark, drooling mouth. Bruce quickly primed the saw, as Jess slowly began to approach him. Bruce pushed in the throttle, and yanked the starter cord as hard as he could. The chainsaw fired, but did not start. Jess was getting closer and closer, licking her lips and reaching out with her claws. Bruce yanked again. Nothing happened. Jess’ feet dangled several inches above the ground as she advanced. He yanked a third time. It fired, and then died. Getting panicky, with Jess creeping closer and closer, Bruce pulled the cord with all his strength, throwing his arm back. The chainsaw fired and then started, filling the cabin with a satisfying buzzing.
Jess continued her approach, seemingly undisturbed by Bruce’s newfound weapon. She screamed and lunged at Bruce, diving for his neck with her claws. Bruce ducked to the side, swinging the saw and disengaging the safety throttle in one fluid motion. He felt the saw encounter resistance as it connected with Jess’ left arm. Bruce pushed the saw down, hard, as Jess shrieked loudly. A thick black fluid shot out of Jess’ half-severed arm, coating Bruce’s face and shirt, as the chainsaw met bone. With one final tug, Bruce brought the saw through the rest of her arm, leaving a nasty, black stump that shot black liquid all over the interior of the cabin like a sprinkler. The severed arm dropped to the floor, twitching and scratching at the wood. Jess screamed louder than Bruce thought possible, as she spun around the cabin, flailing her stump of an arm, spurting her black tainted blood everywhere. Bruce wiped the blood from his face, with a determined look in his eyes. “This ends now!” He roared, as he lunged at Jess with the chainsaw aimed squarely at her throat.
The saw tore viciously through Jess’ pale neck, its chain coated in black blood. Bruce closed his eyes and felt only the vibration of the chainsaw and the spattering of liquid on his face. It was cold. Finally, there was no more resistance. Jess’ deformed head dropped to the floor, her face frozen with a wide-open mouth and angry white eyes. The headless body dropped to the floor, limbs splayed on top of the puddle of black liquid that was spreading to every corner of the room. Bruce took the saw to her other arms and her legs for good measure, scooping together the body parts and tossing them into a burlap sack. He dragged the sack out of the front door into the eerily silent darkness. Bruce dragged it a suitable distance into the woods, moonlight shining upon him. There was no wind, and Bruce could only hear his own footsteps and the muffled dragging of the bag behind him. He returned to the cabin and grabbed a shovel off the floor, nearly slipping upon the variety of rifles, hammers, and screwdrivers that were haphazardly strewn about. The intermingling of Jess’s black blood with Bruce’s bright red created pools of crimson liquid that seeped outwards in all directions.
Bruce, panting from exhaustion, unbelievably relieved to be rid of his possessed girlfriend, yet disgusted with his actions, returned to where he placed the burlap sack, ready to dig a grave for her mutilated corpse. However, the sack was not there. Bruce’s heart dropped into his stomach as a deep laugh echoed through the trees.
The black, leather-bound book remained on the floor of the cabin where Bruce had dropped it. The red circle on the cover glowed brightly.