The Cabin in the Woods

FOUR

And now, it was time for the betting to begin. Sitterson loved this part. The play had begun, and tens of thousands of man hours’ preparation had led to a single moment. Everything had gone smooth as clockwork up to now, and it looked as if they were going to pull through well.

There were some who had doubted his own seemingly lax approach to the job; they questioned his flippant manner, and the way he seemed to make light of the darkest things. But those doubters were here now with everyone else. Ready to bet. Gambling on souls. It was, as he and Hadley had discussed during many evenings over many beers, their own particular version of gallows humor.

Take this too seriously and you became withdrawn and traumatized, and that could only lead to mistakes.

Sitterson never made mistakes, and his naysayers had seen that soon enough. He might joke and bet, laugh and use sarcasm or innuendo as a defense, but when it came to holding down his end of the project, there were none who could be trusted more. Hence his position in Control.

“Last chance to post!” he called, stepping up onto the console. All eyes were on him and the wads of cash he held, and this was about the only time he liked being the centre of so much attention. “C’mon people, dig deep. Betting windows are about to close!”

The control room was bustling. Truman had fussed to begin with, hassled at having so many people entering the room. But they’d all passed muster with his card reader, so there was really little he could say. He’d refused to place a bet, peering at Sitterson with veiled disgust and shock when he’d been asked. And now he stood and scanned the room with cold eyes.

Hadley remained in his wheeled chair, but there were several people clustered around him, as well, holding out betting slips and cash for him to pluck away and enter into his notebook.

“Who’s still out?” Hadley called to Sitterson. Sitterson looked at his clipboard.

“I got Engineering, I got R&D, I got Electrical—” “Ha!” Hadley called. “Did you see who they picked? They’re practically giving their money away.”

“Yeah, you’re one to talk, Aquaman.”

A guy from the Chem department handed his form to Sitterson. He wore a lab coat that was stained a rainbow of colors across the stomach and up the sleeves, and Sitterson wondered what fumes the guy was leaving in his wake.

He looked at the form and frowned.

“I’m not even sure we have one of these.”

“Zoology swears we do,” the Chem guy said. Sitterson shrugged and took his money “Well, they’d know.” A few feet away he noticed a bit of a scene developing where a young man he didn’t recognize—a guy with ‘Ronald’ stitched onto the breast of his lab coat, though that made Sitterson none the wiser—was protesting loudly to Hadley

“No, no, I told you, they’ve already been picked,” Hadley said, slowly and patiently.

“What?” Ronald asked angrily. “Who took ’em?” “Maintenance.”

“Maintenance! They pick the same thing every year.” Hadley sighed theatrically and stood from his chair. “What do you want from me? If they were creative, they wouldn’t be in Maintenance. If you win, you’re gonna have to split it. You wanna switch?”

Ronald’s anger brewed, peaked, and then seemed to filter away as he looked past Hadley at the giant viewing screens and the blurred action they displayed. “Nah,” he said. “Leave it. I got a feeling on this one.” Hadley raised an eyebrow at Sitterson, who laughed in reply and jumped down from the console. With all of the bets placed, he wandered over to where Lin stood talking with the still-glowering soldier, Truman.

“Not betting?” she asked Truman just as Sitterson approached. “Not for me, thanks.” It was obvious from his expression that he didn’t approve of the idea. Strangely enough, she seemed to disagree.

“Seems a little harsh, doesn’t it? It’s just people letting off steam.” She nodded at Sitterson, then past him at Hadley. “This job isn’t easy, however those clowns may behave.”

“You should listen to her,” Sitterson said grave-faced. “She is wise.”

“Does The Director… do they know about it downstairs?” Truman inquired.

Hadley joined them, expertly shuffling a wad of cash into a neat pile in his left hand while his right folded a slew of betting slips. “The Director isn’t concerned with stuff like this,” he said. “Long as everything goes smoothly upstairs and the kids do… what they’re told…” “But then it’s fixed?” he asked. “How can you take wagers on this when you control the outcome?”

Sitterson and Hadley both glanced back at the screens, their work, their responsibilities and charges. Sitterson didn’t feel an ounce of regret at taking bets on them, and he knew Hadley didn’t either. Lin might be cool and prim, but she’d been right—they were blowing off steam. And there were worse ways.

Up on the screens, the five kids were in the cabin’s living room now, having returned from the lake, showered, dried, and dressed again. The sound was muted for the moment, but there were still three people in the lower part of Control wearing headphones to monitor the conversation. They always had to be ready for any sudden changes.

“It’s not like that at all,” Hadley said. “We just get ’em to the cellar, Truman. They take it from there.” “They have to make the choice of their own free will,” Sitterson added. “Otherwise, system doesn’t work. Like the Harbinger: creepy old fuck practically wears a sign saying ‘YOU WILL DIE.’ Why would we put him there? The system. They have to choose to ignore him. They have to choose what happens in the cellar. Yeah, we rig the game as much as we have to, but in the end, if they don’t transgress… ”

He shrugged.

Hadley was counting the money, but he finished Sitterson’s sentence as if this little speech was well rehearsed. And it was. They’d given it to new doubters at least three times before.

“…they can’t be punished. Last chance, Truman. Window’s closing.”

“I’m fine,” the soldier said, shaking his head. Hadley and Sitterson exchanged amused glances, then Hadley turned back to the people milling around Control.

“All right!” he yelled. “That’s it, gang. The board is locked.” He handed the cash to Sitterson, who combined it with his own wad, tied an elastic band around it, and slipped it into a drawer in his console. It felt like a good amount this time, and he was pleased. Not only did that raise the excitement, it also meant everyone would be on the ball, focusing on their jobs. None of them could afford to have anything go wrong.

Sitterson looked at the screens again and shouted, “Let’s get this party started!”

Music thumped. Curt worked the keg filling plastic cups for them all.

They’d lit the fire upon arrival, as well as some oil lamps, and the back boiler was already pumping out water hot enough to cook a cat. After running up from the lake, sun slowly setting behind them and goosebumps speckling their skin, they’d taken it in turns ducking into the shower for a warm-up before dressing again.

Curt and Jules had gone first, and that’s when the music had been turned on—Marty, Dana and Holden had only been able to listen for so long to their groans and the banging on the wall. It had been uncomfortable, but funny as well, and the three of them had shared a smile and a few choice comments.

Holden had sat beside Dana on the sofa, towels wrapped around them as they waited for the shower, and their bare legs had touched without any awkwardness. They hadn’t even kissed yet, and still they were beginning to feel like a couple.

Holden was sitting opposite her now, and his skin was still tingling from the contrast between the cold dip in the lake and the hot shower afterward. All of them were showered and dressed. Marty sat beside him on the sofa with a beer between his knees and the ever-present joint pinched between slightly-yellowed fingers, unlit at present. As Dana leaned forward and picked up her cup, her still-wet hair fell forward to frame her face, and she smiled at Holden over its rim.

“Let’s get this party started!” Curt called, handing a beer to Jules. “Truth, dare, or lecture!” She danced across the room in time to the music that was pumping from the stereo.

“I’ve played truth or dare before,” Holden said, “I just don’t get the third part. What’s ‘lecture’?”

“Well, the lecture is our own addition,” Dana said. Her smile was softer than ever now, and he could tell that the beer was going to her head.

“It’s the X factor,” Marty said.

“It redefines the whole concept!” Jules said, still jigging.

“Come on,” Dana teased, leaning forward again and perhaps wishing that she and Holden were sitting together. But he was happy to forego proximity in exchange for eye contact. “You’re the newbie, so you ask first. We’ll show you how it’s done.”

“Okay, uh, Marty,” he said, still a little hesitant. “Truth or dare or lecture?”

Marty sighed, as if even that took too much effort. “I could go for a lecture about now.”

Holden smiled, but inside he sighed.

“Lecture. How’d I guess.” That was just the pressure he didn’t want from a room full of people he hardly knew. Eyes were on him, though, and he maintained the smile as he thought about what he could possibly say.

“Wait, hang on,” Marty added. He sat up slowly, plucked a lighter from his shirt pocket and lit the joint, taking a massive hit. For a moment he held his breath and seemed to stare at nothing. Then he nodded, waved the joint at Holden, and nodded again as if to say, All right, bring it on.

“You guys really know how to party,” Holden said, chuckling as the others all raised a beer cup in toast. “Okay. Marty. I don’t like to, you know, lecture, but we’ve been friends for so many minutes now that I feel I can be honest.” He pointed at Marty. “You are not Marty. You are ‘Pot Marty.’ You are living in a womb of reefer and missing out on the real joys of life. I’ll tell you, I’ve learned a lot out on the football field. I’ve learned about achievement, teamwork, homoerotic butt slapping and good clean fun. Curt here, he doesn’t smoke weed. Because he knows it doesn’t make you a winner, and because it interferes with his enormous daily dose of steroids.”

“I eat them like candy,” Curt confirmed seriously. “Maybe, Marty, you should take a hit from the life-bong, and don’t take your finger off the life-carb till the chamber’s filled up with…” He waved at the air, losing track, searching for something, anything to help him through. “…with… with opportunity. For the love of God let me be done.”

“Yes!” Dana squealed.

“Bravo!” Jules said, clapping where she stood and spilling half of her beer. As the group’s applause continued, Holden let out a sigh of relief, smiling, and locking eyes with Dana yet again. They both looked away almost awkwardly, as if each glance was becoming more and more loaded.

That’s just the beer, he thought. And Marty’s pot fumes. But he knew that wasn’t all it was. He wondered if she’d been thinking the same as him as they’d sat listening to Jules and Curt going at it in the shower.

Marty exhaled a huge cloud of smoke.

“Thank you for opening my eyes to whatever it was you just said,” he said earnestly. “Jules! Truth or dare or lecture?”

“Let’s go dare!” she said. She and Curt were leaning on the back of the sofa now, arms around each other’s waists, and Holden could almost see the glow of love between them. He took another long swig of beer.

“All right,” Marty nodded, looking around the large room, thinking. “I dare you to make out with…”

“Please say Dana,” Curt whispered, “please say Dana… ”

“. that moose over there!” Marty said, pointing at the stuffed, snarling wolf’s head they’d all noticed upon first arriving.

Er, Holden thought, glancing from Marty to the stuffed head and back again. Maybe I shouldn’t be the one to tell him.

“Um, Marty,” Dana said, “have you seen a moose before?”

“Whatever that mysterious beast is—” “It’s a wolf,” Curt said.

“Yeah, it’s a wolf,” Holden confirmed, grinning.

“I’m living in a womb of reefer,” Marty complained quietly. “Leave me alone. Okay, beastie, creature, whatever. Jules, I dare you to make out with the wolf.”

Jules drained her beer cup in one huge glug, threw it over her shoulder and clapped her hands in an I’ll do it! gesture.

“No problem,” she said, and the group cheered.

As Jules walked away from the seating area around the fireplace and toward the stuffed animal head, she put on an exaggerated swagger, swinging her butt gently from side to side. She reached the wolf and walked on by, raising her head slightly in mock-aloofness.

Damn, she’s good, Holden thought, and he could see why Curt coveted her so much. Hot, and fun, but. But Dana still shone brightest for him. He watched her watching Jules, and enjoyed that, too.

Jules paused and looked back over her shoulder at the wolf, pointing at her chest. “Who? Me?” She cocked her head as if listening, then continued, “I am new in town, how did you know?”

The friends laughed, cheering her on with whoots and whistles. But Jules kept her back turned now; she only had eyes for the wolf. She twirled her hair around one finger and stood with a hip thrust out.

“Oh my god, that is so sweet of you to say,” she purred. “I just colored it, in fact…” That tilted head again, and she was such a good actress that her friends all went quiet, listening for the voice she pretended to hear.

“Yes, I’d love a drink, thank you,” she said. She took a step toward the wolf then tripped, stumbling slightly. “Whoops! I seem to have dropped my birth control pills all over the ground… ”

Holden clapped, the others hooted and hollered, egging her on and enjoying the great display. Dana glanced back at Holden to see his reaction, and her own eyes were alight. She turned back to Jules, and Holden checked out her back, butt, and legs where she was kneeling up on the sofa.

Jules caught his attention again, turning her back on the wolf and bending down as if picking something from the ground. She arched her back and swung her butt left and right, then stood again, backing up until the growling head was directly over her shoulder. She nuzzled the creature, cheek to cheek.

“Oh Mr. Wolf, you’re so big. And bad.” She nuzzled some more, then lowered her voice, so low that they all had to fall silent to hear what Holden was sure would be the climax of her little play. “No no no, there’s no need to huff and puff…” She turned and took the wolf’s head in her hands, thumbs stroking across the growling muzzle. “I’ll let you come in.”

And then Jules leaned in and gave the wolf a kiss so passionate that, for a moment, Holden swore they could have heard a pin drop to the floor.

Curt shouted, and the others followed, jumping to their feet and cheering, whooping and whistling. I shouldn’t have got turned on at that, Holden thought. I really shouldn’t.

Jules let go of the wolf’s head and turned to the group, performing an extravagant bow before spitting out dust, fur and the taste of who-knew what.

Holden stood beside Dana, and she leaned into him and said, “Bet Curt’s glad they got their moment in earlier in the shower.”

“Yeah,” Holden whispered back, “imagine competing with a wolf?”

Curt hurriedly poured Jules another beer and she took a swig, swilling it around her mouth before swallowing with a grimace.

“I didn’t know it was possible,” Holden proclaimed, “but I think you just officially won Truth or Dare.”

“Or Lecture!” Dana added.

“The night is still young!” Jules said. “Now then… Dana—”

“Truth!” Curt called.

Holden noticed Dana’s frown as she glanced at Curt, and immediately the atmosphere thickened a little. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“I’m just skipping ahead,” Curt said, suddenly realizing his misstep. “You’re gonna say ‘dare,’ she’s gonna dare you to do something you don’t like and then you’ll puss out and say you wanted ‘truth’ all along.” “Really.” Dana studied Curt, and Holden shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. Not like him to be a dick, he thought. Maybe his friend was drunker than he thought. Curt was the only person in the room he’d known before today, but suddenly he seemed like a stranger.

Curt nodded. “Or lecture.”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t want one of those,” she said tartly.

Holden looked around at the others. Jules had a somewhat bemused expression on her face, perhaps more to do with how things had moved on so quickly from her performance than at what was being said. And Marty was frowning, his usually relaxed expression troubled. He turned from Curt to Dana and back again, and seemed about to say something.

Curt, too, shifted and raised his head a little, mouth opening to speak, before Dana cut him off.

“Okay, Jules. Dare.”

Good for you, Holden thought, and then he cried out as a huge crash! came from the corner by the kitchen. Jules screamed, Curt span around, Dana stepped back into Holden, his hands grasping her arms automatically and squeezing. She huddled back into him and that was their first embrace, her shaking, his heart pounding, and neither as a result of each other.

Even Marty jumped, though a second after the others. A cloud of ash flowed down from his joint, speckling the front of his shirt and jeans.

“What the hell was that?” Jules exclaimed.

“It’s the cellar door,” Dana said. In the kitchen and dining area, just to the left of the dining table and close to the hallway leading back to the bedrooms, a rectangle of darkness had appeared in the floor. Holden blinked a few times, as if dust was obscuring his vision, because for a moment he thought it was simply an area of blackened boards. There’s nothing below us, he thought, but then sight of the shadowy, upturned hatch drove that strange idea away.

Dust motes, agitated by the sudden opening, drifted in the air, dancing around the ceiling lights and the several lamps they’d lit and stood around the place. The amount of light in the room made it seem even darker down there.

Dana shifted out of his embrace, but only so she could reach down and squeeze his hand. He squeezed back, taking comfort from the contact as well.

Spooky… he thought, and Holden was not someone easily spooked. As one, they moved around the sofa and other easy chairs and edged toward the cellar door. Jules glanced back at Dana, wide-eyed. She didn’t even acknowledge the fact that her friend was grasping Holden’s hand.

“I thought… it was locked,” Marty drawled.

“The wind must have blown it open,” Curt said.

Jules laughed nervously. “What wind?”

They gathered close to the hole and looked down. There was a set of wooden stairs leading into the darkness, the first three or four steps visible, the rest hidden away. The wall to one side of the staircase seemed to be lined with sacking of some sort, gray and dusty. The smell that rose from the hole was age, and something else, something…

Alive, Holden thought. But that was stupid. He was smelling rats and other critters, their shit and their dead, their lives hidden away beneath this dilapidated old place. That was all.

“What do you think’s down there?” he asked.

“Why don’t we find out?” Jules said, shrugging. She seemed to notice Dana and Holden’s hands then, and smiled. “Dana?”

“What?”

“I dare you.” Jules pointed at the hole in the floor.

Dana looked around at everyone. She was nervous, that was obvious, but she was trying to brave through it. Curt nodded, Marty continued frowning, and she looked to Holden last of all. He squeezed her hand tighter, trying to communicate.

This is stupid, you don’t have to.

Then she let go of his hand and took a step toward the hole.

“Fine,” she said.

The group, the cabin, and the darkness below held their collective breaths.

This was the last thing she wanted to do, but there was no way she was going to lose. It wasn’t bravado or even a desire to impress Holden; it was what Curt had said. He’d made her out to be a whining wimp, and she wasn’t that at all. Not as wild as Jules, perhaps. Not as daring. But once dared, she had no alternative.

So she went down, but even as she did so, she wondered in the back of her mind if she should have simply refused and nailed the hatch shut.

“Dana,” Marty said as she stepped down onto the first tread. He plucked a small flashlight from above the kitchen sink and handed it to her. She switched it on and discovered that the light was weak and puny, so she wiped the front clear. That made no difference; the batteries must have been low, so she decided to turn it off until she really needed it.

“Yawn,” Curt said, and Dana didn’t even grace him with a look. What the hell was wrong with that dick? Too much beer, maybe. Or maybe back in the shower, Jules hadn’t been quite so accommodating as they’d all assumed.

The second tread creaked loudly, and the third, the creaks providing background to her journey down. The smell closed around her, and the heavy, warm atmosphere—heated, perhaps, by pipes passing beneath the floorboards to the cabin’s various rooms. She gasped, and the warm air she tasted reminded her of stale wet dog. She turned the torch on, but it was barely effective, the light serving more to deepen the darkness further around it than to illuminate close by.

“How long do I have to stay down here?” she called.

“Oh, you know, just ’til morning,” Curt said, and she cursed him silently. Prick. Later, she decided, she’d ask Jules just what was wrong with him all of a sudden. She only hoped her friend knew.

Half a dozen more creaking stairs and then she was at the bottom, standing on a rough, packed soil floor that was covered in dust and grit. Shining the light around she caught vague glimpses of shapes in the darkness, inanimate shadows, each of which seemed to possess a hulking, waiting stance. Even squinting she could not make out much: an old shelving unit, vague objects bundled here and there; a bookshelf leaning with damp, its shelves stacked with books whose titles had long since worn away; the flared mouth of an old gramophone.

She could see nothing more, yet she had a feeling there was plenty down there. She sensed the size of the room, yet even her breathing was dampened by the contents piled within.

So she moved away from the staircase and into the darkness, the torch her only companion.

Away from the stairs, the complete darkness gave the flashlight more power. Its beam penetrated further, and soon Dana confirmed just how packed this basement was, and how random its contents seemed to be. The light glinted from metal tools stacked against the wall and hanging from hooks along its length. Most were rusted, bright metal showing only here and there, and some of them seemed to be broken. She made out the gramophone in more detail, an old wind-up device that would likely fetch a decent price at an antique market. Beside it was a landslide of old musical instrument cases, some closed, most open to reveal their barren insides. Scattered across the pile like snowdrifts on a hillside, heaps of sheet music lay in silence.

Moving to the left, Dana’s heart leapt as the light fell across a humanoid shape standing behind a layer of thin, dusty net curtains. She held her breath and was about to flee when she saw that the shape had no head. She exhaled slowly and advanced, sweeping the hanging curtain aside. It was as light as a spider’s web.

Beyond, the decapitated dressmaker’s mannequin stood propped against a table, one of its feet broken off, as well. It wore a half-stitched dress, a lace affair that might once have been beautiful but which now was browned by damp and time. Dana wondered whom the dress had been intended for and how many times they had tried it on, standing motionless while a dressmaker pinned and folded, measured and cut. Whoever it had been, she guessed they were long dead now.

On the table beside the mannequin were several china dolls, their faces mostly broken and cracked. She found them more sad than troubling. Children had once played with these things and now, like the dress’s vanished owner, they were gone, leaving only their broken toys behind.

“Dana? Hey Dana.”

She moved further around the room, ignoring the soft calls from Jules. The cabin above was a different world now, a long distance in time and space from this trove of old treasures. Though disturbed, Dana also found herself entranced by this collection of a life’s leftovers. There was a toy chest with toys spilled around its base, including wooden animals, spinning tops, musical instruments, and gaily painted puppets. One corner seemed to be taken with a circus act’s equipment, and Roberto: The Limbless Man stared out at her from a billboard and several posters. Circus games, their origins and uses lost to memory, stood either side of Roberto’s posters, beautifully built, their garish colors fading down in the basement.

Bookshelves, furniture, hat boxes, mirrors, paintings, lamps, sculptured animals in wood and metal, a rack of movie reels—

And then the torch passed across a ghostly face staring right at her.

Dana screamed and dropped the torch, scrabbling to snatch it up again and backing against a wardrobe, its corner and joints soft and weakened by decay. Something fell inside the wardrobe—it sounded wet—and she slid away, torch and attention still fixed on the face.

Those eyes so probing so harsh so knowing!

“Dana?” Holden called from above. Footsteps rang on the stairs and timber creaked, and it sounded as if his voice and steps were coming in from a great distance, not just twenty feet away. Even as she realized that the glaring face was a portrait she was willing Holden to her, and hoping he would make the journey in safety.

Weird idea, she thought, and then Holden was by her side, holding her arm and looking at the portrait as well. It was actually a daguerreotype, she saw, of a young woman maybe fifteen years old. Her clothes were turn-of-the-century, and she stared with a grimness that typified portraiture of the time.

“You okay?” Holden asked. More clattering and creaking, and the others arrived behind him, even Curt looking concerned. Changed his tune, she thought. “Yeah. Sorry. I just… scared myself. It was stupid.”

“You called for help,” Curt said. “Voids the dare. Take your top off.”

Marty struck a match and lit an old oil lantern hanging on the wall, adjusting it so that the flame burned bright. It smoked for the first few seconds, burning off oil that had been coagulating for years, and then the orange light diffused through the room.

The others all gasped, and Dana caught her breath.

It’s even more amazing than I thought.

“Oh my God,” Holden muttered.

The basement occupied at least the floor area of the cabin above, perhaps more, and every dark corner seemed to be filled with creepy clutter.

“Look at all this,” Jules said, and she was the first to slowly start examining the piles of stuff.

“Uh, guys,” Marty said, “I’m not sure it’s awesome to be down here.” He stood at the bottom of the staircase, the oil lamp back on the hook beside him, and he looked as if he’d be darting back upstairs at the slightest provocation.

But the others weren’t paying any attention. Jules and Curt were off on their own, each focusing on different parts of the basement, and Holden still stood beside Dana, peering around in wonder. He took a step and picked up an ornate music box from the pile of children’s toys. Removing his glasses from his pocket and slipping them on, he turned the box this way and that before pausing, seemingly holding his breath.

“Dude, seriously, your cousin’s into some weird shit.” Curt was across the basement holding a conch shell in his hands, turning it this way and that, and he brought it halfway to his ear—You can hear the sea if you press an old shell to your ear—before changing his mind and quickly putting it back down. He picked up a melon-sized wooden sphere that lay behind it. It was inlaid with dusty brass rings and lined with angular joints, and he turned it in his hands as if trying to find a way in.

“Pretty sure this ain’t his,” he said. “Maybe the people who put in that window… ”

Dana couldn’t take her eyes off the portrait of the girl. It was propped on a hardwood stand, and a black sheet hung over the portrait’s frame as if it had once been concealed from view. On the small vanity table that stood before it was a variety of personal effects: an old hairbrush; a silver mirror; and a leather-bound book. “Some of this stuff looks really old,” she said. “Look at this,” Jules said. She had moved across to the dressmaker’s mannequin, less spooky in the lamplight but still strange with the unfinished garment still tight upon it. She touched something hanging around its neck, an amulet, and as she held it in her hand she said, “It’s beautiful.”

“Maybe we should go back upstairs,” Marty said. He was still standing at the bottom of the staircase, looking around nervously, hands clasped in front of him. He’s actually scared, Dana thought, and the idea disturbed her. When no one answered him he said, “I dare you all to go upstairs?” And then Marty froze, and a small smile crept through his fear.

“Oh wow, take a look at this,” he said, and he walked a few steps to where a bunch of old film reels were stacked. Beneath them was a super-8 projector, and piled beside it several small suitcase-style containers that Dana thought might contain more reels. The plinth they stood on was circular and built up of regular stones, its tabletop a board of thick, roughly cut wood. It looked like an old capped well.

Dana frowned, wondering what a well was doing in the basement of a house; or rather, why a cabin would be built around a well.

Marty plucked a reel from its rack and started examining it.

“Porn?” Curt asked, but Marty didn’t reply. He started unspooling it, holding the film up to the light and moving it slowly through his hand, mouth open in wonder.

“What is it, Marty?” Dana asked, but whatever story was playing before his eyes, it seemed to hold him entranced and distant from them.

So Dana turned and approached the portrait, staring into the girl’s eyes and trying to blink back the certainty that they stared back. Perhaps it was something to do with the way the portrait had been formed, the material behind it, or the manner in which it had been slightly faded by the basement air, but the girl’s eyes seemed so alive.

She picked up the book and brushed dust from its cover, revealing the word “diary” in extravagant gold lettering. Opening the cover, she looked up, suddenly afraid of what she might read.

I should close this, she thought. Put it back where it belongs, place it exactly in the rectangle of dust it left on the table.

And we should all stop doing what we’re doing…

She looked around at the others, all of them seemingly entranced by this place and consumed by the small part of it they were each examining. Holden was winding the small handle on a music box, and the haunting metallic music filled the air, pinging from note to note and somehow bringing tears to Dana’s eyes. Curt was frowning as he worked sections of the wooden sphere, pulling rings, sliding wood against wood, clicking sections into place as he worked on transforming it into something else.

Jules had removed the golden amulet from around the dummy’s neck and was holding it to her own neck, staring into a dusty mirror to see how it looked, and Dana thought that in the mirror her friend looked as old as everything else down here. Jules searched for the clasp as if to try it on for real.

Don’t try it on, Dana thought, her own desperation surprising her. She tore her eyes away and saw Marty unwinding more and more film, leaving it to stream around his feet as he watched his own private moments against the lamplight, mouth and eyes wide, and she knew that even if she shouted right then it might not be enough. The music box’s music filled the basement, an incidental theme to Marty’s movie, and Curt’s puzzle box, and Jules’s effort to undo the amulet’s clasp— Dana looked down at the diary and started reading, and from the very first word she imagined them being spoken by the girl in the portrait.

Then she wrenched herself free.

“Guys!” she called. The music box stopped, and the others all paused in what they were doing. When they looked at her, Dana saw some measure of relief in their eyes, as if they each had found their tasks challenging and draining and were glad to be distracted. “Guys, listen to this,” she said. The others came and stood around her, and then it was just Dana and the book.

She had opened the diary at random, and the words sprang out at her and clasped hold, taking her away from her own time and back to when they were written. Above her the cabin was different, and if she hadn’t had her friends around her she wasn’t sure she could have held on.

She took a deep breath and started reading.

“‘Today we felled the old birch tree out back. I was sorrowed to see it go, as Judah and I had sat up in its branches so many summers…’”

“What is that?” Jules asked.

Dana paged back to the inside front cover. She’d already read the inscription there, but she didn’t want to get any of it wrong.

“It’s the Diary of Anna Patience Buckner, 1903.” “Wow,” Curt muttered. “That’s the original owners, right?” Jules asked. “That creepy old fuck called this the Buckner place.” No one commented, no one questioned.

Dana continued reading from where she’d left off. “‘Father was cross with me and said I lacked the true faith. I wish I could prove my devotion, as Judah and Matthew proved on those travelers…’”

“Uh, that makes what kind of sense?” Marty asked. “You know,” Holden said, “it’s uncommon that a girl out here was reading and writing in that era.” “‘Mama screamed most of the night,’” Dana continued. “‘I prayed that she might find faith, but she only stopped when papa cut her belly and stuffed the coals in.’” She stopped, breath held, and looked up at the others. No one said a word. The silence was heavy and loaded, and she wanted to read on. She looked back down. “‘Judah told me in my dream that Matthew took him to the Black Room so I know he is killed. Matthew’s faith is too great; even Father does not cross him or speak of Judah. I want to understand the glory of the pain like Matthew, but cutting the flesh makes him have a husband’s bulge and I do not get like that.’” “Jesus,” Marty gasped, “can we not—”

“Go on,” Curt said.

“Why?” Marty asked.

“Suck it up or bail, pothead! I wanna know.”

Dana looked around—at Curt, her friend who still seemed to have become a dick, and the others—and finally at Holden. He gave her a small nod.

We should have closed the hatch and nailed it back down, she thought, and then she flipped forward a few pages and continued reading.

“‘I have found it. In the oldest books: the way of saving our family. I can hear Matthew in the Black Room, working upon father’s jaw. My good arm is hacked up and et so I hope this will be readable, that a believer will come and speak this to our spirits. Then we will be restored and the Great Pain will return.’” She looked up, breathing a sigh of relief because she was almost at the end. “And then there’s something in Latin,” she said.

“Okay, “ Marty said, “I am drawing a line in the fucking sand here—do not read the Latin.” He frowned, looking around as if a bee had buzzed his ear. “The fuck…?” he said, waving one arm around his head. Marty started across the room toward Dana, face set, hand coming up to snatch the book from her hand.

Curt stepped forward, planted a hand on Marty’s chest and shoved him back. He went sprawling, crashing into a bookshelf and covering his head as books fell on him in a shower of dust and dead, curled-up spiders.

“Fucking baby!” Curt shouted.

“Curt…” Jules said.

“It’s a diary!” he shouted, louder. “Just a diary!”

“It doesn’t even mean anything,” Dana said, desperate to defuse the situation. Marty looked scared, and Curt looked… he looked mean. Tall, angry, and mean. “Look,” she continued.

“Dana…” Marty said, voice tinged with hopelessness.

Dana shook her head and tried to laugh, but it didn’t work. So she simply read the inscription to show Marty—to show all of them—that they’d been creeped out for no reason. Get this done and get the fuck out of this basement, she thought. Yeah, that’s right. Get the fuck out and…

“Dolor supervivo caro. Dolor sublimes caro,” she intoned. The words read, she closed the book.

Nothing happened.

Someone sighed, then started quietly sobbing. And when Holden gently took her arm and guided her back up the staircase, she realized that it was her.

Outside the cabin, in the forest where free will could not hold, there was movement.

The forest floor was soft with layers and layers of old leaves, those on the surface still almost recognizable as such from the previous fall, those deeper down little more than mulch. Deeper still, soil and mud, through which things crawled and ate and mated and died. There was no breeze and yet the surface leaves shifted, pushing upward in a small mound and then breaking apart as something forced through. Gray and gnarled, a hand, fisted around the haft of a rusted knife.

It rose further and bent at the elbow, lying flat across the ground as the body below heaved itself upward.

Elsewhere, rising from shallow graves, other bodies came. One, a boy, carried a scythe. Another, an obese woman, bore a broken, ragged saw. A man, followed by a huge form—a zombie, by any commonly recognized definition, dead people rising again under unnatural animation—which shrugged itself free of leaves and mud. The journey up from the ground had not been difficult. The graves were not deep, the leaves above them not so old.

A final shifting in the forest gave birth to a one-armed girl. In her one good hand, a hatchet. Anna Patience. Her eyes were far deader than those of her likeness.

They stood for a while like trees, and from a distance in the early evening darkness that was what they resembled. Dead trees, perhaps, broken off below the branching, just stumps, home to insects and spiders and slugs, waiting to rot and crumble and fall. But though some of that was true—they were home to small creatures, and all had gone some way toward eventual disintegration—the image of trees vanished quickly when they began to move.

Anna Patience was the first. A stumbling step, her one good arm swinging and slashing the air with the hatchet it bore.

Her teeth bared by the shriveling of her lips, she made for the light of the cabin.