Michael put his hand against the window, the thin layer of condensation dripping down his fingertips. The car rumbled beneath him in time with the rain on the rooftop. The radio was on, but only softly, they’d been losing reception ever since they entered the mountains.  The sun set behind the pine trees, its light bleeding into the horizon. His parents were in the front seat, holding hands and mumbling softly. His mother’s tinkling laugh drifted from the front seat, and she turned around to see him. Her eyes were blue and beautiful, his father glanced at him in the rearview mirror.
“How are you doing honey, are you excited?” she asked, her voice soft and smooth, like a warm blanket on a winter’s morning. It would be the only thing he’d have to remember her by when he grew older.
“How much longer until we get there?” he mumbled sleepily, his eyes already slipping closed.
“Not much longer, sweetie.” She turned to his father. “Can you stop somewhere? I have to go to the bathroom. What about there, it looks open.” Michael felt the car slow as his father pulled over to the side of the road. His father’s deep voice croaked from the front seat. “Should we bring him in or…?”
“No, let him stay. No reason to get him wet in the rain,” his mother answered just as Michael King drifted back off to sleep, the car’s heating keeping him warm and the rain lulling him into a dreamless stupor.

Michael woke up to water spraying his face. Somehow, his mother’s window had opened, letting the rain in. He grabbed his father’s book tucked into the seat in front of him. His father had given it to him for his tenth birthday. It was a fairytale book, full of monsters, and heroes, and damsels in distress. Michael’s favorite story was the one about the man and the beast. The hero had been turned into a ferocious animal by an evil witch and it took the beautiful damsel to reveal the kind-hearted man underneath the façade. His father read to him almost every night.
He struggled out from under his blanket and pushed open the car door, his little arms straining against the handle. Hopping out of the car, he put his arm over his head to protect himself from the rain. They were at a little rest stop right off the highway, ringed with trees on all sides with a little wooden storefront tucked up against the road. It was the kind of place you’d only notice if you lived here or were looking for a place to go pee.
Michael jumped out of the car and ran, his chubby legs pounding the ground, little flecks of mud flicking onto his inner calf and onto his brand new lace-up sneakers, which he’d forgotten to tie again. The stairs creaked as he climbed them but as he reached out to touch the door knob, he hesitated. He felt something stir in his stomach, like when he drank too much Slurpee on a warm summer day and felt like his head was imploding and he was going to puke. A deeply uneasy feeling that came from something about the place. The way the window sat just a little crooked in its frame and the way the steam kept him from seeing inside. Something about the cobweb hanging from the bulb overhead and the indecipherable etching on the brass doorknob. But he went forward anyway, turning the handle and letting go of it quickly, wiping his hand on his shirt like it was slimy. The door shut quickly behind him.
The main storefront was ringed with shelves on all sides, each holding little wood carvings ranging in size from Michael’s little finger to twice his height. A great bear was just to his right, paws frozen in mid-air, mouth open mid snarl. The carving was beautiful, intricate and exact in every way. Its eyes were so well carved and body so detailed that it seemed at any moment the bear would leap from its position and rake its claws across Michael’s face. He was just leaning in closer, hand almost touching the bear’s snout, when a voice rumbled from the other side of the shop and he jumped back. A man was carrying a small figurine in from a doorway behind the register. The carving was in the likeness of a great spotted toad, its neck puffed with air as though about to ribbet, back legs hunched as though prepared to leap.
“Well, hello there. Admiring my statue? That one took a great deal of work,” the man chuckled, “Do you recognize this one?” he asked, displaying the figurine. Michael shook his head quickly. The man shrugged, turning his head quizzically. “I thought you might have. No matter.” The man was of a simple sort, he wore drab clothes that seemed to blend into the walls of the shop and had dry sandy hair. Michael couldn’t quite place how old he was, older than his parents, he thought, but he couldn’t tell by how much. He had a wispy beard that stuck to his face in little white curls that reflected the light.
“My parents told me not to talk to strangers,” Michael said warily, still sneaking glances of the bear out of the corner of his eye.
The man nodded. “Very good advice, you must have nice parents. And where might they be?” The man turned to place the carving on the shelf, placing it lovingly next to other figurines, turning it so that it caught the light just so. Michael looked into the man’s eyes as he placed them and gasped with fear. The man’s pupils were large, much larger than they should have been, but what caught Michael’s attention was a little fragment of yellow, just to the left, a little off center, in the corner of his right eye. Like someone had cut out a little piece of the eye, giving him a peak of what was underneath. Michael stepped back quickly, bumping one of the shelves and knocking off a little carving of a horse. Michael watched as it crashed against the floor, its head snapping off and the wood suddenly dulling as though it had lost its varnish as it broke.
The man sagged, nearly staggering into the shelves, and took a gasping breath. “Mister, are you all right?” Michael asked. “I’m sorry I broke the horse, I didn’t mean to.”
The man straightened, holding onto his chest like he was struggling for breath. “No, no. That’s all right. Just,” he took a deep breath as though it hurt, “hold on a moment.” He walked behind the counter, grabbing onto the register as though to help support his weight, and staggered into the back room. Michael glanced around nervously, and wondered where his parents were.
Michael wandered around while he waited, staring at the little statues, but when the man didn’t come back, curiosity quickly got the best of him. Before he even knew what he was doing, he was slipping behind the counter and into the back room, holding his fairytale book close to his chest. The back room was almost barren, with only a single wooden chair pushed into a desk on the far wall with a few cluttered items on it, a single shuttered window, and a fireplace dominating most of the adjacent space. There was only the door he came from and a single other leading back farther into the cabin. For the size of the crackling fire, it was almost chilly in the room and goose bumps sprung up on Michael’s arms.
A flash of gold caught his attention from underneath the desk and he squatted down to look. Hidden behind the legs of the chair was a pair of glasses, one of the lenses had popped out and was lying next to them. His father’s glasses. It was with trembling fingers that Michael picked them up and popped the lens back into place. The door that led to the rest of the cabin creaked open and Michael spun around, his father’s glasses in one hand and book in the other.
The Wood Carver was standing in the doorway, he had regained his breath and the color of his beard had sharpened to an almost brown, but Michael assumed it was just the light. In his hand he held a new figurine, this one carved to look like a crane caught in midflight, wings outstretched and poised to soar out of the man’s hand. It was so perfectly made that Michael could have sworn that it was only the Wood Carver’s strong fingers that kept the bird from escaping.
Michael’s voice shook as he spoke, “Who are you? Where are my parents?”
The man glanced down, his eyes alighting on the glasses in Michael’s hand. “You should not be back here, child. It was unwise of you to come.” He stepped forward and Michael stepped back, his hand falling onto the desk and knocking one of the objects. A small golden music box tinkled a few brief notes and the man stopped midstride, his eyes suddenly growing wide with fury and, perhaps, with fear.
“No! Stop!”
The fire roared as new flames escaped from the grill, the window sprung open, shutters flying back. Wind howled into the cabin. The Wood Carver was frozen, eyes darting around the room, tensed and crouched as though preparing for a fight.
Michael’s breath heaved. “Is something wrong? Is it something I’ve done? Was it the music?”
The man turned slowly, as though still expecting something, the yellow sliver in his eye glinting in the fire light. “What do you want, boy? Your parents are not here! Leave. Leave, now!” The fire leaped, if not so greatly as before. The wind whispered through the now open window to chill the boy’s arms.
Michael’s breath came short and he started to cry, tears dripping down his face. He held his father’s glasses and his book close to his chest and bent his head, making a move to leave. But the shoe lace on his brand new lace-up sneakers had gotten caught under the leg of the chair and he stumbled as he walked, knocking the desk.
Everything seemed to stop. The music box as it teetered towards oblivion, the boy mid-stagger, the Carver in his turn. The mountains held their breath, the very earth seemed to pause as though waiting for some great blow. The rain stopped in its deluge like the clouds were wary of letting their loads loose. The animals stopped mid-flight and turned their heads towards the cabin, snow avalanched down the mountain in angry swirls, yet all was silent as everything waited.
Gravity took control and the music box tumbled right off the edge of the desk and then everything happened in rapid succession. The music box glittered as it fell, the Carver screamed, Michael hit his head on the ground, and the box smashed into a thousand tinkling pieces. The world exploded. The fire split from the fireplace and roared across the room, figurines tumbled off the walls, the avalanche charged towards the cabin and split in two like a river split by a rock, avoiding the cabin but making it shake and rumble with the force of a thousand tons of snow. The cabin roof caught fire and from somewhere in the shop something roared. Pandora’s Box scattered across the floor.
The Carver’s face was ashen as he ran towards Michael, grabbing him by the shoulders and screaming, “Who are you, boy?! What are you here for? What devil do you serve? I know my demons and you aren’t one of them!” Sounds were pouring out from the shop front, tweets and growls, even what sounded like an elephant’s trumpet. Fire was dripping across the floor, smoke filled the room.
Michael coward behind his book and the Carver reached forward, ripping it from his hands and casting it into the flames. As soon as the first tendril of heat reached it, the book exploded as though rigged to burst, blasting the Carver into the shop and Michael’s head against the windowsill. His father’s last gift for him.
Michael was slumped over, blood trickling from his temple, but the Carver was mostly unharmed. The Carver stood slowly, he was ringed on every side by all those figurines, every one he’d ever made, every traveler he’d ever met. A thousand, a hundred thousand, living creatures made of wood, their life forces released out of the box they’d been trapped in.
The Wood Carver stood up and yelled a battle cry that was quickly answered by the thousands of little animals. At first, it seemed as though the Carver would win. He cast the smaller figurines into the fire as fast as they came at him and he put the fireplace in between himself and the larger ones. Until, all at once, the great bear charged forward and leapt over the flames, knocking the Carver off balance and onto his knees. Oh how they came, then, all those statues. Drowning him in his own creations, they buried him under their mass. The flames licked over the angry ball and something caught, exploding in a screaming barrage, threatening to bring the cabin down on top of Michael’s unconscious body. Before it could, two figurines swooped forward, a little swan and a spotted toad, and threw themselves before the flames to protect his prostrate form. It seemed that they became greater in that moment, two beaming rays of light against the Wood Carver’s final act, and the flames roared, the beams crashed, but nothing touched Michael.
So ended the life of a Wood Carver, an old man, and a devil.

Michael King lay in a pool of his own blood, the fire raging around him, but he sat in a circle of sanity and order, no flames breeched its invisible walls. The figurines were gone, or mostly so, disintegrating into ash. There was a sound, like a whisper on the wind, words that almost spoke of a thousand ‘thank-you’s whispered in Michael King’s ear. It was a sound like a sigh of relief, a sigh of freedom.
The world turned, fog rolled over the mountains like a great snake strangling the snow-capped peaks, a lone wolf howled deep in the forest.
Something thick and oily, black as tar, accumulated in the wreckage of the old cabin. An ancient spirit, born in the ashes of the wooden figures and the smoke of the burning corpse, searched for the cause of its near destruction. It attacked, whatever protective bubble surrounding the boy broke, and it filled up the boy’s prostrate form, ripping at his soul. Michael’s eyes snapped open, a yellow sliver glinting in the firelight.