THE CABIN

Peter Evans is a thirty-­two­-year­-old man working as an air traffic controller at Boston’s Logan Airport, or should I say overworking.  His job, plus the stress of his recent divorce, have him at his wits end.

 

Peter is taking his coffee break in the cafeteria  when he is approached by a co­-worker who looks vaguely familiar.  The co­-worker is one of those employees that every company has but no one takes notice of.  A man who melts into the background at every social event.  Middle­-aged, with that telltale paunch around the waist, a receding hairline, and black horn-rimmed glasses. What did his late Grandfather call these kind of people?  Oh, yeah “strange ducks”.

He asks Peter if he can join him, and Peter invites him to pull up a chair.

“I know”, said the man, turning his coffee cup around in his hands, “that stress is the name of the game around here, but you look terrible, if you don’t mind me saying so.   Frank Johnson is the name.”

Peter Evans responds “Evan,s but just call me Pete”’, thinking he should know this guy. What the hell thinks Peter, it’s only coffee, and he could use some company.

“OK Pete”, I might have just the thing for what ails you”, said Johnson.

“Scotch in that coffee cup”, said Pete, without cracking a smile?

“No, something better.  “Listen”, said Frank, “ there is an old hunting and fishing cabin a few hours up the highway that has been in my family for years.  I used to go up all the time with my wife and three sons.  It’s just sitting empty, and you are welcome to use it if you choose.”

“Why would you do this for me?”, asked Pete.  “We hardly know each other, and besides, my ex­wife’s lawyer has all of my money.” 

“Well, you’re in luck my friend.  I am not asking for any money, and, like I said, it’s just sitting empty anyway.  It’s the least I can do for a fellow worker.  Besides, I had better warn you, it’s not exactly the Hilton.”

“That’s very nice of you Frank, I could use a few days away from this place, and that empty apartment of mine, but doesn’t your family use it in the summer months?”, asked Pete.

“My wife and boys were killed in a boating accident ten years ago” replied Frank with a far­off expression on his face.

“I’m sorry”, said Pete.  “I didn’t intend to pry.”

“Don’t worry”, said Frank.  “It’s ancient history.  Besides, you know, life goes on.  I’m remarried now.”

“Under those circumstances you’re on”, said Pete.  “What have I got to lose?”

“Good, good.  Then it’s all settled .  I will print you out a map and  drop it off at your desk later today”, suggested Frank.  “Good hunting and fishing”, said Frank as he got up to leave. 

“Well”, said Pete.  “I don’t hunt or fish, but I have a lot of reading to catch up on, and it sounds like the solitude I could use right now.”

That Friday, with car packed, Pete made his way up the highway with lots of time to think.  No phones, no text messages or emails ,also no boss standing over your shoulder watching his every move.  He had always hated people watching his every move, from school teachers to the present.

After a few hours, and, according to the supplied map, he was getting close to his destination. He decided to pull in at the combination Gas Station, Restaurant and General Store for provisions.  Pete chuckled to himself when he saw the large sign, “Eat Here and Get Gas”.  I guess that’s New England humour at its best, thought Pete .  An old man with a plaid shirt, blue jeans with suspenders, a two­day growth of beard, and a thick New England twang, approached the car’s window.

“What can I do you for?”, he asked. 

“Fill it up while I get some groceries, and, by the way, can you direct me to the old Johnson Cabin?”

“The Johnson Cabin?  What the hell do you want to go there for?  The place is deserted.”

“For that very reason”,  answered Pete. 

“Suit yourself”, said the owner.  “You city fellers are sure strange.  I wouldn’t go anywhere near those woods, and I’ve lived here all my life.  I guess I like my creature comforts too much to be out there roughing it”, concluded the old man with a laugh. 

“Is there a problem with the Johnson cabin?” asked Pete, speaking to the lady behind the store counter with a note of concern in his voice.

“Is that husband of mine telling people stories again?  He should stick to pumping gas and keep his opinions to himself.  Since he started, it I might just as well finish it.  It was a local scandal at the time.  Johnson’s wife and three sons drowned.  They were identical triplets you know, losing her train of thought for a moment.  Well, anyway, after the accident the police did an investigation.  The row boat was found in the middle of the lake, upside down.  Poor Mrs. Johnson was lying face down in the water.  The police assumed that the boys drowned also, but even after dragging the best part of the lake, no bodies were ever found. The back of Mrs. Johnson’s head was fractured, but the autopsy report said it must have happened when she fell and hit her head while pushing the boat away from the dock. The boat tipped over and those poor eight­year­old  boys drowned along with their mother.

Well, to add insult to injury, a week later at the funeral who is sitting proud as you please in the front row but Frank Johnson with his young trophy girlfriend on his arm.”

“Trophy wife” I thought to myself, not realizing I had said it out loud.

“What was that?, asked the proprietor. 

“Oh nothing,  just thinking out loud”, I replied. “Is that why Frank has never returned to the cabin?” I asked.

“He’s probably too ashamed to show his face around these parts.  Although he doesn’t seem to mind other people staying there”, she replied.  “A lovely young couple stopped here and asked for directions just a few months back.  They must have enjoyed themselves.  Leastways they didn’t stop back here to complain.”

Pete popped the trunk and stored his groceries, and a bottle of scotch while the old man leaned against the gas pump watching.

At this point the old man’s wife pushed open the door and yelled for him to come in and help her stock shelves and she told her husband to quit bothering the customers.  “Lord knows we have so few of them”, she said.

Pete wheeled his car back onto the four­lane highway with thoughts of the accident running through his mind.  Losing your wife and three sons like that would be enough to unbalance any man, but, then again, it was ten years ago, and the airport wouldn’t hire him if he wasn’t alright would they?

The four lanes eventually turned to two, then to a dirt path leading into the woods.   He finally came to an old weathered post with a crooked sign that read “The Johnsons”.   Pete pulled in and parked next to a dilapidated cabin hidden almost entirely from view by a thick stand of pine trees.

The cabin was surrounded by a large porch on three sides, and was in a general state of disrepair.

Oh well thought Pete, I’ll only be here three or four days anyway, and the price is right. 

Pete tidied the place the best he could, poured himself a drink and took his book to an old rocking chair in front of a picture window with a great view of the lake.  The quiet of his unfamiliar surroundings was unsettling.  He was, by no stretch of the imagination, an outdoorsman, and the silence seemed deafening.

A thick carpet of dark clouds rolled in over the lake as darkness overtook the evening, followed by a lightning storm.  Spidery arms of lightning arched in all directions giving Pete an unexpected light show.  It began to rain heavily, and he decided to go to bed.

Sometime in the night a strange sound woke him, and he went into the cabin’s living room to see what it was.  The rhythmic squeak of the rocking chair greeted his ears as he strained to see in the darkness.  The full moon cast a grey dim light silhouetting the chair.  As Pete got closer he noticed the back of a lady’s head as she rocked.  Her hair was matted in congealed blood, and the entire chair sat in a pool of water on the floor. 

As he approached, the chair’s slow rocking stopped, and her head twisted right around on her body to stare at him.  She rose from her seat and slowly started to float towards him, her bony hands stuck out in front of her in a pleading gesture, and, in a forward motion, dragged her feet along the wooden floor.  Her face was a hideous skeleton mask, covered in tight, dark brown parchment skin.  Her mouth, in a sardonic grin,  was drawn back over rotting teeth.  She had empty sockets where her eyes had once been. 

Pete screamed, and fell back into his bedroom, bolting the door.  The next morning, in the cold reality of dawn, he was unsure whether he had dreamed the whole thing or not.  Probably that shop lady’s story, he thought.  He tried to put it out of his mind, but he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling .  What if it wasn’t a dream?

The next day, Pete decided to go hiking and investigate his new surroundings.  After a quarter of a mile, he came upon a small cave entrance.  He went in and was assailed by a foul odour. In the entrance was a bed of sorts made from the boughs of the local pine trees.  Further back, was a large pile of bones.  Some were small, and, most likely, squirrels and other rodents. Some were big and unrecognizable.  He turned to go and came face to face with a teenage boy blocking the entrance.  The young man growled at him in an animal­ like sound coming from the pit of his stomach, then  lunged at Pete.

Pete found himself in a fight for his life. While rolling on the cave floor, his assailant sank his teeth in Pete’s arm right to the bone.  In their struggle, Pete’s hand came upon a small hunk of wood.  He swung it, hitting his attacker on the head, and knocking him unconscious. 

Pete staggered through the woods back to the cabin.  It was already dusk outside.  He took off his shirt, poured straight scotch on the wound to disinfect it, and tore a spare shirt into strips to make a bandage.  Next he took a large drink to kill the pain.

To himself, he wondered what had happened.  The boy was more animal than human.  Pete remembered learning about feral children brought up in the wild by animals, but surely, those stories were just urban legends, or an early explanation for insanity.  He knew one thing for sure, he had to last the night and make his escape by car in the morning. 

Pete found a tin of nails and a hammer in the shed behind the house.  He next broke up the furniture for the wood to board up the door and windows.  When he felt that the cabin was secure, he built a huge fire in the fireplace so the boy could not enter by the chimney.  He grabbed the fireplace poker for protection and settled in to await the dawn. 

In the night he heard footsteps on the porch, and the rattle of the doorknob but Pete kept the fire stoked.  Finally he was rewarded with the first light of the day.

Pete pried the boards off the front door and looked around.  He was in pain from the onset of infection, and had lost a lot of blood.  With his poker in his good hand, he edged along the porch to the car.  He decided to drive to the gas station and ask them to call the police and an ambulance.  But, when Pete reached the car he found all four tires slashed.  He got behind the wheel anyway and decided to drive the 10 miles to the highway on the rims, and try to hitchhike to the station from there.

Pete turned the key in the ignition.  Nothing happened.  It  was then he noticed the hood had been pried open on one side.  He pulled the lever under the dashboard, and opened the hood all the way.  The ignition wiring had been ripped out.

He heard rustling noises coming from the woods and quickly went back into the cabin re­securing the front door.  He tried to think of a way out of this trap he found himself in.  After all, wasn’t he the intelligent one in this predicament, and not some illiterate man/boy?  The teenager may have once belonged to a local farm, but then it dawned on Pete  that, considering the boy’s age, he wondered if the boy was one of Johnson’s sons who had made it out of the lake after the accident and raised himself. 

The boy was not only wild, he was homicidal.  What could have done that he wondered?  Had he witnessed his father, the philandering Frank Johnson, with the young girlfriend waiting in the wings, bludgeon his mother and push the boat out into the lake to drown the boys?  That would certainly be enough to unhinge anyone, let alone an impressionable eight­year­old.

Pete peered through the cracks in the boards covering the window, and caught glimpses of the boy stalking around the treeline.  In an instant, everything became perfectly clear to Pete. The boy intended to kill him.  Then he remembered the bones.  In his hunger, Pete thought the boy had sunk to the lowest level of human depravity.  He had  become cannibalistic.  Pete disinfected his arm and rebandaged it, but the infection had spread almost to his hand.  Soon he would be too weak to do anything at all, and would die from his wounds without antibiotics. Pete resolved that, if he were to survive, he would have to kill the boy that night, and walk to the highway while he still had strength to do so.

Pete devised a plan.  He had noticed a can of kerosene in the shed he could use to refill the lamps, and he brought it into the cabin.

That night it began to storm again, with thunder and lightening pounding the countryside.  Pete poured a large quantity of kerosene just inside the door on the floor of the cabin.  He pried the boards off the door and opened it, just leaving the outside screen door closed.  He pulled the rocking chair around to face the entrance, and, with matches in hand, awaited the visitor he knew would come.

Pete heard footsteps on the porch slowly approaching the screen door.  When the man­ beast came crashing through the screen, Pete decided he would strike a match, kill him with a sheet of fire, then make his escape through the back window.  The footsteps came on slowly and, just before the doorway, they stopped.

Come on you bastard, thought Pete, I have a big surprise waiting for you.

 

There he was standing outside the door and studying him like a spider before it pounces on a fly. Pete had to time this just right, or he would go up in flames with the building.  The boy’s eyes flashed with rage and hatred.  He charged through the door just as Pete struck the match.  It lit for a second and fizzled out before he had a chance to throw it.  Pete panicked, jumped from the rocking chair and turned to run out the back way.. 

As he tried to escape, he came face­to­face with the two remaining feral triplets.  Behind them was an open trap door in the floor.  His last thought in this world was he hadn’t secured everything after all.  They all swarmed him like lions bringing down a gazelle, and his screams could be heard echoing across the lake. 

 

Frank Johnson entered the cafeteria at work.  He noticed the company’s newest employee, a newlywed not used to the stress that went with the air traffic controller’s job.  Frank approached the young man and sat down. 

“You know, I have a solution to all of your problems”, Frank said. “If you have a minute, let me tell you about my cabin in the woods.”

By:  John P. Stoddart