Tim Lebbon - The Cabin in the Woods

The enraged werewolf smashed against the glass wall of its own enclosed box, mere inches from their own. The impact was loud, and Marty saw the glass flex, distorting both its appearance and the reflected image of Dana’s terrified face. She fell back into him, screaming, as the creature scrabbled and scratched at the glass. An inch of air and two glass walls was all that lay between them.

It was drooling. Its eyes were intelligent, and starving. Its teeth…

“It’s a fucking werewolf,” Marty said, but voicing the fact made it no easier to believe. “So… no.” He shook his head, and Dana turned to him and held his cheeks.

“Marty?” There was something about her voice, something calm and in control, to which he so wanted to submit.

Far too much bad dope, he thought. I’ll wake up in the Rambler in a minute with Curt driving and Jules preening in the front seat, Dana and Holden flirting and acting coy, and I’ll scream myself awake and they’ll laugh at me, laugh because…

He laughed then, high and hysterical, and the elevator started moving again. Another vaguely lit blank metal wall, and then the light from behind them changed. He and Dana turned together to see a second identical elevator revealed. This one contained a grotesque alien, straight out of the movie, all sickly suckers and flailing limbs. It leapt at the glass and stuck there, its grotesquely sexual mouth sliming and sucking as it tried to probe at them, impregnate them, and then they moved on again, descending before jerking to the side once more.

“Dana. ” he said, but she was already holding him, huddled in the center of the elevator, because they both knew what was to come. They’d seen two, and wagered that there would be many, many more.

And they were right.

On Marty’s side they saw a little girl in a ragged ballerina outfit. Her skirt was limp and torn, as if handed down from every little ballerina ever, and she had no face. In its place was a circular mouth, red-raw and ringed with vicious teeth. She stood on tiptoe and performed a surreal curtsey as they passed her by.

Next to her was a white-faced woman with smashed glass shards for hair and melting hands. She flickered at them in monochrome, flicking in and out of view as if seen on an old, old film.

On Dana’s side was revealed a tall man in a long leather coat. His skin was completely white and hairless. Across his scalp in a neat row were spinning buzz-saws, his forearms were ringed with tightly wrapped strands of barbed wire, and his teeth were spinning drill bits. He was all metal and blades, and he grinned at Dana, holding out his hand above which a strange wooden sphere flexed and warped.

“We chose,” she said softly, a note of understanding entering her voice.

“What?” Marty asked, but he was already making the connections, and they threatened to overwhelm the last dregs of sanity he had left.

I’m fine, I’m fine! he thought, but he didn’t think that was quite true. If he was fine—if madness hadn’t touched him—he wouldn’t have been able to do all the things he’d done. He’d be up there now, dead in the woods with Jules and Curt and Holden, not still alive down here with Dana. A little bit of madness never hurt anyone, one of his dope suppliers used to say.

In this case, maybe it had saved his life.

The elevator moved back into the shaft, sideways, down, and he readied himself for the shock of what might be revealed next.

“In the cellar,” Dana continued. “All that shit we were playing with. They made us choose. They made us choose how we die.”

“Yeah,” Marty said, remembering how nervous he’d been at the prospect of Dana reading the Latin in that little old diary. If he had stopped her, maybe Jules would have solved a kid’s puzzle and brought werewolves upon them. Or Holden might have smashed a bottle and brought them girls with teeth instead faces.

Holy fucking shit.

Dana started smashing at the glass with her fists. Her blows did no damage—they’d have to make the glass incredibly strong to contain all these things, he realized—but still she pounded, kicking as well, thrashing, and he had to hold her tight to stop her from hurting herself.

And it was like that, arms wound around each other, sharing the warmth of their bodies and the pain of their wounds, that they emerged into a huge underground space like a warehouse where countless elevators shifted left and right, up and down, running on almost invisible rails and columns and passing soundlessly across junctions, swapping position constantly. In each elevator was something of shade or light, and whether dark or light, it was always horrible.

Vampires, not of the limp, fluffy-collared variety, but with pale skin and too many teeth.

Three people—two adults and a child—with horribly cracked, blistered skin, beneath which lava seemed to boil.

A gorgeous naked woman with teeth in place of a vagina.

A man with six arms, each of the hands replaced with a grafted weapon of some kind, from a knife to a shotgun.

A screaming banshee with hair flowing around its head as if in slow motion.

Six elevators contained small babies that seemed to explode again and again, scattering bladed blood-red shards. A giant rabbit with oversized teeth, a woman with a scorpion’s sting curved from the small of her back, a child with three heads—vampire, zombie, werewolf—a shade of something terrible, a ghostly figure surrounded by fumes that must be toxic, a minotaur with a monstrous phallus, a woman with writhing snakes instead of pubic hair, a man with steaming pipes inserted into his chest and flames in his eyes, a dog with the head of an alligator…

The horrors were endless and almost beyond imagining, and Marty and Dana held each other tighter as their elevator was carried through the impossible space.

The creatures known and unknown seemed to recognize the intruders for what they were. Marty didn’t see them leaping or scratching at their glass walls to get at one another, but whenever he and Dana drew close they tried to attack.

We’re their meat, he thought, and though it was a horrible idea it stuck. Perhaps they were kept here like this, forever hungry, and when it came time to hunt…

The basement had been filled with lots of old, random stuff. And every shred of it had been linked somehow to something down here. He had no idea what it could mean, other than some sort of monstrous entertainment. But what lengths to go to. It was beyond belief.

“As soon as we stop,” he said. “We’ll get out as soon as we can.” Still they held each other, but they were beyond comforting. Their world had changed, not only their personal place in it, but their understanding of the wider reality.

Nothing could ever be the same again.

Control had cleared quickly. He hadn’t needed to shout at anyone to leave. As soon as Hadley replaced the receiver and muttered those few words, glasses and bottles were dropped, and everyone raced to try and put right whatever had gone wrong.

Sitterson could smell spilled champagne and there were potato chips crushed across the floor. Truman stood on guard by the door, upright and proper, and perhaps not really comprehending. All seemed normal.

Sitterson held back a giggle.

All seemed normal!

Lin was down in the lower area of Control, earpiece in place, tapping frantically on a keyboard and muttering to someone unheard. Sitterson and Hadley, chairs pulled closer than before, were scanning through the entire complex on their screens, moving quickly and efficiently. Hadley was checking corridors and stairwells, while on Sitterson’s screens were nine constantly changing views of the interiors of the elevators. He’d seen many of these things before, but some were new even to him. Still, he refused to let curiosity overcome the prime purpose of this search.