They found the road at sundown

Where the map began to fade

Black Pine Cabin in the distance

With the windows painted gray

Four friends laughing through the gravel

Headlights cutting through the trees

A cooler full of beer and candles

No signal past the creek

The camera watched the doorway

The porch light hummed and shook

The key turned in the silence

And the house began to look

It was caught on tape

A cabin in the pines, a face in the grain

A shadow at the window with a hand on the frame

No one saw the glass turn black

No one heard it whisper back

It was caught on tape

The first night smiling as the sky turned black

The door locked once, then the tape snapped back

Every room held its breath

Every wall learned their names

They played old songs in the kitchen

While the lake went still as glass

Someone joked about the cellar

Someone said the night would pass

Then the television flickered

Though the power line was dead

Showing trees from somewhere deeper

Showing someone’s empty bed

One chair moved across the carpet

One cup cracked without a sound

And a voice beneath the floorboards

Counted each of them aloud

The camera caught the hallway

Stretching farther than before

The bathroom mirror darkened

And would not reflect the door

It was caught on tape

A mouth in the static, an eye in the snow

A shape in the corner where the light wouldn’t go

The screen went white

Then the screen showed teeth

It was caught on tape

The lake rose black to the edge of the lawn

The trees leaned close, then the moon was gone

Something under the cabin

Started breathing underneath

At midnight, there were footsteps

On the roof above their heads

Then a dozen hands came tapping

Like the rain was made of dead

One of them opened the curtain

One of them whispered, “Run”

But the woods outside were crowded

With things that had no fronts

Tall bones wearing branches

White masks without a face

A dog with human fingers

A child walking out of place

The camera fell sideways

Still recording from the floor

The living room bent open

Into something like a door

It was caught on tape

A body-shaped shadow with too many joints

A choir in the pipes with impossible voices

The walls grew wet

The ceiling came alive

It was caught on tape

The hallway folded like a paper throat

The stairs led down where no stairs should go

Four shadows entered

But no one survived

Below the house, the cellar

Was a church of rust and bone

There were names carved in the rafters

There were names that were their own

The camera showed the future

In a trail of bloody frames

Every door led to the cabin

Every exit looked the same

Something huge moved in the blackness

Too old for shape or skin

It wore the dark around it

Like the dark belonged to it

The tape began to stutter

The faces dragged and smeared

The youngest one was laughing

But the laugh was full of fear

Pause the tape, they keep moving

Burn the tape, the ashes crawl

Cut the tape, the wound stays open

Play it back, it shows them all

In the woods, the antlers gather

In the lake, the pale things rise

In the glass, a second cabin

Fills with borrowed eyes

No prayer finds the ceiling

No scream reaches the road

The camera keeps recording

What the night was never owed

Do not open the cellar

Do not answer the screen

Do not follow the singing

Do not look between

The trees have fingers

The lake has lungs

The floor has hunger

The house has tongues

The tape keeps turning

The dark keeps fed

The door keeps knocking

With the hands of the dead

It was caught on tape

The cabin split open like a mouth in the rain

A god-shaped absence with a thousand names

The sky bent down

The earth gave way

It was caught on tape

The last light shaking in a forest of bone

The camera standing in the room alone

No car in the driveway

No tracks in the clay

It was caught on tape

Four came laughing where the black pines grow

Three ran screaming through the video snow

Two were heard

And one was seen

It was caught on tape

The final frame showed the cabin door

Then a hand reached out from behind the floor

And turned the camera

Toward the screen

At dawn, the cabin stood empty

The lake was gray and wide

The porch swing moved without a wind

The tape was found inside

No names were in the papers

No bones were ever claimed

But every time the tape plays back

The cabin looks the same