The Cabin in the Woods (10 page)

“
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.