The Cabin in the Woods

“I don’t think it knows about money,” Marty said. “I think it’s barter gas.”

Curt leaned left and right, stretching up on his toes, trying to see if anyone was around.

“Well, I need to pee,” Jules said again, heading around the side of the building.

“I’ll see if anyone’s home,” Holden said, looking across at Curt. His friend nodded, then glanced back at the Rambler. I’ll keep watch, his look said, and Holden nodded once. He was on edge… but not quite nervous enough to not watch Dana as she followed Jules around the side of the dilapidated building. She was wearing a fitted blue jacket, but it only came down just past her hips, and he could still admire the way her butt moved in her jeans.

As they disappeared around the corner he headed for the front door. It stood ajar, and looked as if it could never close all the way. The door didn’t quite seem to fit the frame.

It scraped across grit on the floor as he forced it open. He saw curved scrape-scars in the timber floor boarding.

“Anyone here?” he asked. But the building’s insides swallowed his voice, offering no echoes at all. He left the door open behind him to provide more light, and because he didn’t want to hear that pained scraping again, ventured inside.

“Hello?” Curt called outside. There was no answer from anywhere, inside or out. And as Holden’s eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, his sense of unease only increased.

“Holy shit,” he muttered. It seemed as if he’d landed in redneck heaven.

He thought that perhaps it had once been a shop, but he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to buy anything from this place anymore. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to stand in here, for more than a couple of minutes. The smell was rank, a spiced blend of fusty age and progressing rot, and flies buzzed here and there. Why are the flies in here? he wondered, and he had a sudden image of finding the proprietor dead and decaying on the floor somewhere, maggots crawling in his eye sockets and rats gnawing at—

“Hey!” he called, looking for movement, listening for acknowledgment. There was neither.

Wooden shelving and tables provided perimeter storage, and there were also two island units. Tinned goods were stacked here and there, the labels so faded by damp and age that he couldn’t make out most of them. Tomatoes, perhaps? Corn? From metal poles braced across the ceiling hung several animal pelts, and one table seemed to be taken with various experiments in taxidermy. Several boxes and glass jars held what might also be a part of the experiment; in one glass jar something floated, its shape and origins vague in the opaque fluid.

There were meat mincers and slicers fixed to another tabletop, flies dipping in and out of both, dark speckles marking the hardened remains of old meat. One shelving unit in the corner was stocked with glass jars, some containing pickled vegetables of some kind, another holding what appeared to be boiled animal bones. It was as if the shopkeeper had suddenly tired of selling food and fuel and taken to stuffing animals in his spare time.

“Gruesome,” Holden said to no one in particular. He walked to the rear, where a glass counter displayed a selection of hunting knives. He drew his finger across the counter, leaving a clear line of glass in its wake.

Well, this is nice, he thought. All we need now is some old fuck warning us not to go any further.

“Thar’s danger in them thar hills,” he growled, then he laughed, but the giggle he emitted was too high and nervous for comfort.

Fuck it. Time to go.

•••

“Why here?” Dana asked.

“Because I hate going in the Rambler!” Jules replied. “And besides, the keg’s in there. I can’t piddle next to what we’re drinking. It’s just… euch.”

She shivered. This place was spooky and grim, but exciting too. There was something about it that had her blood flowing. It was almost… exotic.

“You think the toilet here’s gonna be any better?” Dana asked.

“I don’t like to pee when all my friends are two feet away from me,” Jules persisted. They’d passed around the corner of the building now, and were threading their way through a scatter of old stuff lying all around. Leaning against the building’s wall to their left was a large roll of barbed wire, with some dried husk tangled in it. She tried to persuade herself it was a mass of old plant, but the tiny splayed claws testified otherwise. To their right a camper van was all but buried in a large bank of bushes. Its color was no longer discernible, the tires were smothered beneath plant growth, and the rear window was obscured on the inside by drawn curtains. The thing that spooked Jules most about it was the open side door. If it had been shut she’d have thought no more about it, but open seemed to suggest that the thing was still in use. That there might be someone in there.

Hello? she tried to say, but no noise came from her mouth.

“So you’re gonna pee in the Toilet From Out of Nowhere,” Dana said, a quaver in her voice.

Jules reached for a side door in the building, assuming—hoping—that it was the bathroom. She really needed to pee.

“I’m quirky,” she said, pulling on the handle. “At least this has gotta be— hoah!”

The smell hit her instantly, then the sight of the bathroom revealed behind the creaking door, and for a moment both robbed her of words. There was a toilet. and nothing else—no basin, not even a cistern. The walls were dark and coated with slime, the floor was wet with thick brown fluid… not pure shit, she thought, but an overflow of the stuff that filled the toilet. Thick, fluid, shifting, the sludge topped the toilet and dribbled slick down its surface, turning what might have once been white a uniform brown.

Behind her, Dana gagged.

Jules took a small step forward, fascinated, wondering just why the sludge in the pan was moving. And then she saw the scorpion, struggling in the fetid muck, slowly drowning. And unless that thing’s full of drowned critters, it’s weird that we open the door just in time to see this, she thought. It was almost as if.

She turned and looked around, past Dana, past the camper van buried in the undergrowth, along the lane that led away from this place up into the wooded hills, then back toward where she could just see the nose of the Rambler.

Dana watched her with raised eyebrows. Jules opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything they heard a muffled, “Fuck!” from somewhere around the front of the building.

“Seems we’ve found the attendant,” Jules said softly. Walking close together, she and Dana retraced their steps. Suddenly, her need to pee had abated.

•••

I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Holden thought, and he uttered another nervous giggle. Heading back outside, he saw Marty and Curt through the doorway, trying to work one of the pumps. Marty was holding the nozzle in the mouth of the Rambler’s fuel pipe, while Curt circled the pump, reaching out now and then to run his hands across the flaking painted surface. Looking for a switch or lever, Holden guessed, though he seemed to find neither.

“I don’t think there’s gonna be—” Holden began, voice raised to carry out as he approached the door.

Suddenly a shadowy figure filled the doorway, blocking most of the light, and a voice said, “You come in here uninvited?”

“Fuck!” Holden gasped loudly. “Dude… ”

“Sign says closed,” the attendant said, because that must have been what this man was. Tall and broad, old and weathered until his skin looked like a leather jacket left out in the sun too long, his left eye terribly bloodshot and swollen. His lips and chin were stained and glistening with chewed tobacco and drool, and he scowled in anger and disgust.

He blocked the exit completely, and that was what worried Holden the most, more than his grotesque face and pissed attitude. If I want to get out and he doesn’t want me to… He was just about to start looking around for an alternative escape—jump through a window, perhaps, or maybe he’d find a door hidden behind a pile of badly stuffed animals at the back of the shop—when the attendant grunted and turned