Tim Lebbon - The Cabin in the Woods

“On the outside,” he muttered. But that felt wrong, too. He tried to recall what the doors looked like from out there, and he was pretty sure they were the same— just a handle, nothing else.

No keyhole.

No lock.

In which case…

The cabin shook again with another terrible impact. Curt cried out from somewhere and more glass broke, and Marty’s window suddenly seemed larger than ever. He moved then, slowly to begin with, two small, quiet steps, and then in his mind’s eye he saw zombie-girl’s face intruding through the window. He leapt the last few steps, grabbed the handle and pulled it close, flicking the latch to secure it shut. Something shattered behind him and he shouted, turning around and hardly prepared for what he might see.

He must have knocked the table with his leg as he rushed by, and the lamp on top had wobbled and smashed after he’d turned the latch.

Not that glass and thin wood will do much good against —

He looked down.

What the fuck is that?

It was a moment that punched him in the gut. Amongst all the chaos, thumping, shouting from outside, and his own terrified panting, it was the sight of the smallest thing that finally succeeded in knocking Marty’s breath out of him.

The remains of the china lamp were splayed across the floor, and from its plastic heart a white cable led to the plug socket in the wall. The bulb had survived— shielded from impact by the bent-out-of-shape shade— and in its glare he saw a second wire.

It was thin and black, and there was something about it that seemed all wrong.

The wire snaked through the remains of the broken lamp, its end pointing directly at him. An end ? Shouldn’t it be plugged in somewhere? Shouldn’t there be a fixture? But Marty’s bullshit detector was on full, and he knew this was something that shouldn’t be there.

He bent and picked up the wire, squinting at its end, and thought, fiber optic. The sense of being watched was suddenly very real. His place in things shrank to an almost infinitesimally small point. And he stood and looked around the room, thinking of the one-way mirror.

Curt’s weird behavior.

Jules’s brutal death.

“Oh, man,” he muttered.

“That’s deep,” Hadley said. “‘Oh, man.’”

“He’s not there for his philosophical insightfulness.” The guy’s face filled the screen now as he stared into the hi-tech camera, distorted by the closeness to the domed end of the cable, and for the first time ever Sitterson experienced a glimmer of fear.

It’s almost like he’s watching us.

He shoved it quickly down. He wasn’t here to empathize.

But he couldn’t ignore the obvious.

“Uh-oh,” he said, “that’s not good.”

Hadley flipped down the microphone on his headphones and flicked a switch. “Chem, I need five hundred cc’s of Thorazine pumped into room three, now —”

“No no no,” Sitterson said, because he’d seen movement elsewhere. Oh we’re just too fucking good, he thought, pointing at the large screen to the left. “Hang on.” And yes, the movement was manifesting into a shambling, pale thing in the darkness, passing between the silent statues of trees and seeming to emerge from the very darkness itself as it approached the cabin.

Sitterson checked a few settings and smiled.

“Judah Buckner to the rescue,” he said. And the brief pity he’d had for the kid was eaten away by the sight of Buckner’s zombified face.

He could have mouthed obscenities or flipped them the finger, but that wouldn’t do anything to help him right now.

Now, he needed answers, and perhaps some clue as to how the hell they could get the fuck out of Dodge. But…

As he pulled the wire taut and started following it around the room—across the floor, along the skirting to the corner, then up to where a small hole was drilled in the ceiling’s corner—the realization dawned that he’d been made to look like a complete dick.

He stared up at the ceiling and smiled.

Of course things had been out of kilter. The cabin was fake, maybe even the woods all around them were unreal, and everything they did and said was being monitored.

“Oh my God, I’m on a reality TV show.” Every breath they took, the booze they’d drunk, the almost biblical amount of pot he’d already smoked, the kissing couple on the sofa, everything was for public consumption. The stuff in the cellar really was a set-up, planted there by scene designers who must’ve had multiple orgasms when they saw what was required of them in the shooting script.

Those things outside, the zombies, Jules’s death and her head rolling about on the floor like that… all of that was thrown in just to scare the shit out of them. And it worked , he thought, but then he chuckled, too. Jules’s and Curt’s noisy fucking in the shower was probably the most-viewed clip on YouTube right now.

“My parents are gonna think I’m such a burnout.” And then he realized that he’d be the one they’d be focusing on right now, and if they didn’t want him to ruin everything for the others, they’d have to—

The window behind him smashed, and Marty aimed a knowing smile at the fiber optic cable still in his hand. They’ll have to come and get me.

He turned to the window, ready to see the cameras and the presenter, so sun-baked that he or she had passed tanned and entered somewhere into the orange spectrum. Microphones thrust at him, producers with fingers at their lips silently pleading for him to Keep the secret a little while longer , and there would be transport to somewhere from where he could view the remainder of his friends’ ordeal…

And though he felt cruel and immature even thinking about it, he couldn’t wait to see what a job they’d made on the fake Marty-Slashed-Up-And-Dead mannequin.

The zombie wasn’t quite as tall as the big one they’d seen outside, but his face was about ten times as horrific. Good job, guys, Marty thought admiringly, and then the zombie’s arm extended and his hand closed around Marty’s throat.

The fingers squeezed hard and Marty felt things grinding in there.

Not so tight! he thought, but he was already realizing his naivety.

What a dick.

The breath was shut off from his lungs, giving way to pain. The thing pulled him to the broken window, spun him around, closed an arm around his throat and tugged him backward.

As Marty folded at the waist and felt the jagged spikes of broken glass scoring and slitting his thighs and back, he was still cursing himself and his foolish thinking. There was no way this could have been reality TV There hadn’t been nearly enough sex.

How could he have been so stupid?

Marty screamed, and it felt as if he was shouting only for himself. The arm across his throat squeezed tighter as the thing tried to drag him backward through the window, and no one could make up that smell, no one could manufacture the fucking breath on that thing.

He struggled more fiercely, pulling himself back in a little even though the pain of the cuts on his back and legs was just starting to catch fire. The thing pulled even harder and Marty clung onto the window frame, refusing to let go or ease up his own pressure for even an instant.

These arms will not move however hard that thing pulls. Judah! Marty thought. That’s the father zombie out there, the father of Patience, whose image started all this down in the basement with Dana. It seemed to make sense, ridiculous though it was. And it seemed suddenly more real than any reality TV could be.