The snow fell from the mountains coating the world in a blanket of white. The two brother's Alec and Grant stumbled through the woods lost, alone and scared. Alex was 17, his younger brother Grant had just turned 11. They had been playing in the woods at their Grandparent’s cabin where they went for the holidays. Shivering from the cold they saw a house, lit by candles burning by the windows. Fighting off the cold they entered and attempted to regain warmth. The house was old but still seemed to stand steadily up against the elements. Inside a fire burned in the fireplace warming the frost from their skin as they entered.
"Hello?" Alex, the older brother called out in the house. His voice seemed to echo off the walls but was only greeted with silence. The fireplace was burning, the candles were lit, yet not a single person was here. It puzzled Alex.
"Alex, do you think it's alright if we look for food? I’m starving. It's not stealing right?" Grant asked his older brother crouching by the fire for warmth.
"It's alright, someone should be around, they'll help us. You stay here in going to look around the house for anything to eat." Alex turned towards the dark rooms of the house. He grabbed one of the candle holders from the window sill before delving deeper into the dark.
The house was strange, decorated with odd knickknacks, stuffed animals mounted with odd expressions, dozens of books scattered and open on the tables and floor of the kitchen. A pantry sat in the corner. Alec opened the wooden doors but found only dust. Closing the door Alec turned to leave and exit to the fireplace and Grant only to stop as the light of the candle lit a something strange. The dust, that had been thick and had coated the dining room table had been disturbed.
"Teg tuo ehilw ouy llits nac."
Alec held the light close. The dust had been disturbed recently. A chill ran down his spine. Slowly he reached out and with his fingers had traced the words, each letter into the dust right underneath the message. Puzzles like this were how he spent his time at home. This one was one of the more simple ones. The letters were simply switched backwards. Sometimes he would write different codes like this to his brother when he learned them from their Dad who was a detective for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Codes were sort of his specialty. Alec stopped his fingers tracing reading the unscrambled words. The air seemed to get colder.
"Get out while you still can." The words were clear as day now. Alec turned to the entrance and began towards the fireplace. He had to get back to his brother.
As Alec entered the room he realized it was empty. The fire still crackled, the light illuminating the room in wavy shadows.
"Grant! Grant!" Alec called out now, not caring if anything or anyone heard him. His brother was missing, gone. Vanished into thin air. Alec looked around the room, hoping his brother was trying to play a trick on him.
"Grant! This isn't funny!" Alec's voice was cut short as he saw something in front of the still burning fireplace. A small leather-bound notebook left open facing opposite of the fireplace. It's pages were old, crisp and yellowed from age. Each page felt it was ready to turn to dust itself.
The page was cluttered with diary entries. Of those who had lived in this house. Some of the entries were over several decades old. Alec read the open page but something felt off. The letters were wrong. Not just wrong but badly wrong, as if they were intentional. His Father had made it a point to think that nothing was unintentional. If a mistake was made someone wanted you to know it. This was no exception.
Help had been spelled with a b instead of p. The m in me wasn't anywhere close to an m. If it haven't been for those small errors he wouldn't have felt the anonymous pressure. Why purposely misspell those two words? Like a constrained writing pattern, simple yet easy to find if you knew how to look. Just read the misspelled words in order together.
"Help me..." he whispered under his breath.
Alec closed the book with a startle. A faint tapping grew in the woodworks of the house. At first it was barely noticeable, but soon it grew too a tapping until reaching a loud pounding. Wide-eyed Alec held the book in his hands listening to each tap. Morse-code. Just like his Dad would do. A collection of dots and dashes, tapping that created letters which created words. Just like a puzzle.
The tapping was always the same. Every single time.
Alec whispered under his breath.
"Dot, Dash, Dot. Dot, Dot, Dash. Dash, Dot."
Alec struggle to remember each Morse code but the table came to his mind from so much repetition.
"R. U. N."
Alec felt his blood chill again. The tapping had stopped. I was silent except for the silence of the crackling fire. But then he felt it. That feeling you get when something is right behind you. He could feel it. A powerful entity watching him, reaching out for him. Every instinct was followed with a growing fear. Alec's instincts took over. Fight or flight, and he flew. Right out of the door. Right into the snowstorm without a second thought.
The police discovered the missing teenager early in the morning half dead from hypothermia while also suffering from mass hysteria and delusions claiming something had taken his brother. While these claims may sound reasonable it is to be noted that the teenager's parents, the one's who reported their son missing have no other sons or daughter. Alec had been an only child.