text: I awoke in Anna’s dark wood cabin on the mountain. The rain was showering down outside. I tried to pull myself together, to think about how I got there. All I could remember was that I was hiking on holiday with my girlfriend, she looked up at the sky and it began to rain. “It’s boiling around my cabin, wanna roast some kittens?”, remembering Anna’s dark humour telling me what the forecast was made me smile. Whatever lay before me and her, this heavy rain, didn’t fit into place. It seemed to be planned. I felt the wall and found a light switch which I flipped on. Looking around the cabin, I saw that I was the only human presence in the place save the news reporter on the TV talking about the disappearances around the county. I couldn’t ever stand the news, so I grabbed the remote and turned it off. Once I had silence I sat down on the sofa I woke up on to see if I had any messages on my phone. Damn, nothing. Where Anna could be was beyond me, she should have been there in the Cabin. I had no way of calling her, the heavy rain made the signal virtually non-existent. But even more alarming was that looking around, I could see a note on the front door reading“Find me”. I had no idea if this note had a hidden meaning but it made the matter of getting to her all the more pressing. I had promised to take Anna on this holiday so I could calm her down. Over the last couple of weeks, the life un-expectedly started to drain out of her. Also her humour got progressively darker which, admittedly, I enjoyed. And now it was possible that she had been taken by someone. I wasn’t prepared to leave Anna in danger, so I got up from the sofa to make an effort to find her. There was a cupboard next to the back door of the cabin. Upon going to it and looking inside, I saw that among some un-organised house trinkets, there was a sturdy blue golf umbrella. Not much in the way of explaining the situation but certainly a valuable tool right then. As I approached the front door, I peered out of the window to assess where I would go. My heart sank as I looked at the landscape to see it was completely different to the view of the serene village I had been in only a day prior. The cabin on the mountainside was instead overlooking an endless pine forest, the tips of the dark trees against the dark blue sky made the place look agitated. The hairpin bend path lined with steps going down the mountain led to another, ancient looking building appearing to be a mansion. In the dark I couldn’t make out much about it. It was situated in the pine trees next to the mountainside. I would not have gone to the intimidating building save for the fact that the lights were on, which meant hope for finding Anna. Opening the front door of the cabin, I was met with a huge bluster of wind and rain spitting on my face. As the rain hit my skin I began to worry, the hope drained out of me and I nearly went back inside. Closing the door behind me, I opened the umbrella before starting down the mountain path, unusually making my angst fade. While walking in my bubble of protection the umbrella offered me from the desolate sea of rain, I reassured myself I was acting like a hero for Anna. ‘We’ll be together soon. I’ll have her in my arms’ I thought. Just then as I thought that, my phone vibrated. I immediately looked at my phone, to my surprise, to see I still had no signal of any kind. I opened the message, it was from Anna. “We’ll be together forever” I was definitely startled by this, where she could have been was far beyond me. Obviously she or whoever was really sending me messages knew something I didn’t about this miserable place, so I pressed on for the mansion in the cold showering gloom. Finally, I had turned the last bend and was walking the path to the front entrance of the un-inviting mansion. I found it strange that the front entrance should be facing the mountainside, expecting people to come from the Cabin. Because I was closer in the rain and now able to see all of the features, I could see that the mansion was more rough looking than I originally believed it to be. It was covered in messy, frustrated brambles that also loomed their way through the garden. At the same time, whoever lived here had very expensive and very acquired taste. The garden surrounding the path leading up to the entrance had a crowd of immaculate stone carvings of people. All of the figures looked terrified, as if they were afraid of being smitten. Some of them looked as if they were suffocating. I arrived at the front door and knocked, looking at the lit room beyond the blurred glass on the top half of the door. After vaguely hearing some feet shuffling an extremely frail looking figure with strings of long hair coming down from the scalp appeared in the hallway, piercing the brightness of the room beyond. The figure came to the door and rattled with the lock a little before opening it. As the figure opened the door, it looked at me menacingly with jittering facial features. “Anna”, I said. “What happened to you, you look like you’ve aged a hundred years”. Anna coughed and one of her teeth fell out before forming a smile “I do look pretty good don’t I?”, said Anna in a voice withered with age. “Anna who took you here, who did this to you”, I asked. “Me, this is my house, it’s all mine. I have to say, I didn’t think I’d make it much longer this time”. “Anna, babe, what happened, what do you need”, I said with confused adrenaline running through me. “I need you, I’ll die if I don’t have you”. “But what do you need from me”. “Life”, said Anna with a curve forming on her lips. At that moment I found it unbelievable that I had laughed at that same darkhumour so many times. “Babe, I don’t know what’s got into you but we need to leave now OK, your cabin’s on the mountainside, maybe we can get back that way”. Anna wheezed and slowly raised her meatless arm to point towards her cabin. Looking towards it, myhope shattered to see that the cabin was nowhere to be seen, neither was the mountain. It was just us two in Anna’s real home surrounded by endless empty forest. “You’re not Anna, who are you?”, I demanded. Anna’s face then shifted to be more sinister. “Rain”, upon her saying this, her bodily features all began turning to water before my eyes “Don’t you recognize me?”. Her face faded into liquid and she was finally a blob. I did not care where I would go, but I dropped the umbrella and ran. A foolish mistake though as once I was exposed to the rain again I felt shameful and weak. In panic, I scrambled as fast as my feet would carry me, sympathising with all of the stone figures surrounding me. Darting left, I could see an opening in the pine trees that I immediately went for. The rain however, made me hesitate and I tripped on what can only be described as water that wouldn’t move. As soon as I had realised this, the rain was engulfing me. When it had done so from head to toe there was a surge of pain going through my nerves and I could feel the life being drained out of me. I regained consciousness later on to find that I had joined the other stone figures, I was one of them. I was still alive although it seemed all the substance of my life had been robbed from me. The downpour had stopped and the sun was shining. I could see that the messy brambles were gone from the garden and it actually looked like an inviting place to be. I did not see the rain, but instead Anna standing before me. She looked younger than when I had first met her and she was awkwardly turning one of her feet on its toe in the dress I got her for her birthday. “I am so sorry I had to do that”. And supposedly just as innocent as when I had first met her too. She definitely got what she needed from the trip. The colour was back in her face and life seemed to have returned to her. I didn’t have enough of my life in me left to feel anger of resentment at her, I still don’t. And so I stand here, a stone figure with the memories of a person. Remaining idle until the rain gets hungry again and claims another un-suspecting fool.