Tim Lebbon - The Cabin in the Woods

“Monsters, magic…” Truman said, his voice trailing off.

“You get used to it,” Lin said, and she almost smiled. “Should you?” Truman countered. Lin did not reply, Truman returned to watching the screen, and Sitterson turned his back on both of them.

He’ll have plenty of sleepless nights after this during which to philosophize, he thought, recalling again his first time. Plenty.

He walked across to Hadley, who was staring up at the screens, despondent now. Sitterson knew exactly what was eating him.

“I’m sorry, man.”

“He had the conch in his hands !”

“I know. Couple more minutes, who knows what would have happened.”

Hadley sighed, frustrated.

“I’m never gonna get to see a merman.”

“Dude, be thankful,” Sitterson said. “Apparently those things are terrifying. And the clean-up on them’s a nightmare.” Hadley nodded and shrugged, but Sitterson knew that he’d react like this every year until he had his way. Still…

“So, the Buckners, huh?” Hadley said, pointing at the monitor.

“I know,” Sitterson muttered. “Well, they may be zombified pain-worshipping backwoods idiots, but… ” And he smiled.

“They’re our zombified pain-worshipping backwoods idiots,” Hadley said, grinning again as they walked back to the control panel.

“Yeah! And they have a hundred percent clearance rate.”

“True. We may as well tell Japan to take the rest of the weekend off.”

“Yeah, right,” Sitterson said, laughing. He glanced over at Lin. Still not smiling! Maybe she really is a fucking robot. Has one of them escaped? “They’re Japanese. What are they gonna do, relax?”

“I don’t know,” Hadley said, sitting back down at his console. “Maybe they can do some group calisthenics or something.”

“Ha!” Sitterson said. “So, let’s see how they’re doing then, eh?” He went to his desk and accessed his computer, and a moment later the big screen in the middle of the wall flickered from an image of the cabin’s basement to a clinical, well-lit school room.

There was movement at the top—it looked like a black and white mass shifting and throbbing in the corner of the room—and then several Japanese school children broke from the mass, running terrified as a young girl floated through the air toward them. It looked as if she was hanging from an invisible noose, but Sitterson knew better.

Her bloated, pale face and black eyes spoke volumes, and her long black hair, sopping wet and dripping as though soaked by an invisible hose, dragged along the floor behind her, shimmering as if with a life of its own.

The school kids tried to open the classroom door but it was locked.

Behind the floating girl, in the far corner, several black and white shapes were also splashed with red.

“Hmmm,” Sitterson said. “Looking good.” But he couldn’t help feeling a simmering jealousy.

He tapped a key and brought the image back to the cabin. The kids were back up from the basement. The blonde was slipping a CD into the stereo. The basement hatch was down, the dining table and chair dragged to sit on top of it.

As music blared, Sitterson spoke.

“And so the end begins.”

Marty took the armchair. He was alone, after all. He puffed determinedly on his joint, watching everyone else through a haze of smoke, and wondered what was going on. Closing his eyes, he tried to move back from where he was. Concentrate on things without the pot affecting his judgment. But still the music pounded through his senses, and the impact of dancing feet vibrated through the floor, and he opened his eyes again without arriving at any conclusions.

It was some blandly modern rock crap that Jules had slipped into the CD player. Marty didn’t even know the band’s name, though he’d heard the music enough times, blaring from the music systems of those who didn’t know better. Its members were probably multi-millionaires who owned six houses and who finished each and every gig in the shower with a dozen girls each, all of them willing to do something different. A production line of sex. He chuckled silently to himself, but the idea seemed more disturbing than funny. Music without soul and balls was not music at all, it was noise.

Dana would think the same. He watched her on the couch, reading the book she’d found and leaning against Holden, but the frown on her face had nothing to do with the vacuousness of the thundering vibes. It was something altogether different, and Marty sat up straighter as he tried to translate her expression.

She knows there’s something weird going on, too , he thought. He took another toke on the spliff, and for the first time in a long while wondered if he was smoking too much.

Jules was dancing around the large room. She sure could move, he’d say that for her. She had a gorgeous body—which he’d once had a brief opportunity to explore with his own two hands, though his memory of it, as with most of his memories, was somewhat hazed—and she was working it now, thrusting out her chest, shaking that long newly-blond hair, wiggling her ass, stomping her feet, then using the MTV-friendly guitar solos to grind her hips and work her groin. There was a film of sweat on her face which only made her glow more, and she’d popped a couple of buttons on her shirt to expose more cleavage. Her bra was visible, and the mounds of her breasts moved heavily in time with her movements.

“Sweet,” Marty muttered, his voice lost to the music. But maybe it was too sweet. Jules was cute and all, a little air-headed maybe, but generally decent and honest. He’d never thought of her as desperate.

Curt was dancing with her in that awkward, self-conscious way most guys had. He wasn’t a natural mover, but he was doing his best, following behind Jules and cupping her butt when she wasn’t writhing and twisting too much, squeezing, and running his hands up and down her stomach and chest from behind when she gave him the opportunity. She was the seductress and he was the poor, led fool. It would have been pitiful if Marty didn’t know Curt well enough. Last thing he was, for a fact, was desperate. He was going along with it because he wanted to go along with it, and that was that.

Jules moved into the seating area, knocking the table slightly with her legs and spilling a slick of beer, arms raised and hands entwining each other like dancing snakes, hips twisting. She moved in front of Holden and performed a quick, suggestive lap-dance for him, bending over to wave her ass in his face, then turning and stretching one foot up onto the couch’s back right next to his head. She flexed to and fro, running both hands along her leg to her foot and back again.

Dude, you look so awkward , Marty thought as he watched Holden. The guy was looking anywhere but at Jules—though Marty thought he did see his eyes flicker just briefly to her cleavage a couple of times, and once to her crotch, denim shorts stretched tight by her movement. He looked sidelong at Dana, who was still involved in the diary but obviously not too thrilled at the display.

“Go baby, oh yeah!” Curt called. “That’s the goods right there, fuck yeah!”

“This is so classy ,” Marty said.

“Like you wouldn’t want a piece of that,” Curt scoffed.

“Can we not talk about people in pieces anymore tonight?” Marty held up his joint, raised his eyebrows as if to make a point, then took another puff.

Jules slipped away from Holden, and his relief was obvious. She turned on Marty this time, moving luxuriously, running her fingertips up her stomach and over her chest. Her nipples were obvious against the strained shirt.