The Cabin in the Woods

“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.