The Cabin in the Woods

“I didn’t know it was possible,” Holden proclaimed, “but I think you just officially won Truth or Dare.”

“Or Lecture!” Dana added.

“The night is still young!” Jules said. “Now then… Dana-”

“Truth!” Curt called.

Holden noticed Dana’s frown as she glanced at Curt, and immediately the atmosphere thickened a little. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“I’m just skipping ahead,” Curt said, suddenly realizing his misstep. “You’re gonna say ‘dare,’ she’s gonna dare you to do something you don’t like and then you’ll puss out and say you wanted ‘truth’ all along.” “Really.” Dana studied Curt, and Holden shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. Not like him to be a dick, he thought. Maybe his friend was drunker than he thought. Curt was the only person in the room he’d known before today, but suddenly he seemed like a stranger.

Curt nodded. “Or lecture.”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t want one of those,” she said tartly.

Holden looked around at the others. Jules had a somewhat bemused expression on her face, perhaps more to do with how things had moved on so quickly from her performance than at what was being said. And Marty was frowning, his usually relaxed expression troubled. He turned from Curt to Dana and back again, and seemed about to say something.

Curt, too, shifted and raised his head a little, mouth opening to speak, before Dana cut him off.

“Okay, Jules. Dare.”

Good for you, Holden thought, and then he cried out as a huge crash! came from the corner by the kitchen. Jules screamed, Curt span around, Dana stepped back into Holden, his hands grasping her arms automatically and squeezing. She huddled back into him and that was their first embrace, her shaking, his heart pounding, and neither as a result of each other.

Even Marty jumped, though a second after the others. A cloud of ash flowed down from his joint, speckling the front of his shirt and jeans.

“What the hell was that?” Jules exclaimed.

“It’s the cellar door,” Dana said. In the kitchen and dining area, just to the left of the dining table and close to the hallway leading back to the bedrooms, a rectangle of darkness had appeared in the floor. Holden blinked a few times, as if dust was obscuring his vision, because for a moment he thought it was simply an area of blackened boards. There’s nothing below us, he thought, but then sight of the shadowy, upturned hatch drove that strange idea away.

Dust motes, agitated by the sudden opening, drifted in the air, dancing around the ceiling lights and the several lamps they’d lit and stood around the place. The amount of light in the room made it seem even darker down there.

Dana shifted out of his embrace, but only so she could reach down and squeeze his hand. He squeezed back, taking comfort from the contact as well.

Spooky… he thought, and Holden was not someone easily spooked. As one, they moved around the sofa and other easy chairs and edged toward the cellar door. Jules glanced back at Dana, wide-eyed. She didn’t even acknowledge the fact that her friend was grasping Holden’s hand.

“I thought… it was locked,” Marty drawled.

“The wind must have blown it open,” Curt said.

Jules laughed nervously. “What wind?”

They gathered close to the hole and looked down. There was a set of wooden stairs leading into the darkness, the first three or four steps visible, the rest hidden away. The wall to one side of the staircase seemed to be lined with sacking of some sort, gray and dusty. The smell that rose from the hole was age, and something else, something…

Alive, Holden thought. But that was stupid. He was smelling rats and other critters, their shit and their dead, their lives hidden away beneath this dilapidated old place. That was all.

“What do you think’s down there?” he asked.

“Why don’t we find out?” Jules said, shrugging. She seemed to notice Dana and Holden’s hands then, and smiled. “Dana?”

“What?”

“I dare you.” Jules pointed at the hole in the floor.

Dana looked around at everyone. She was nervous, that was obvious, but she was trying to brave through it. Curt nodded, Marty continued frowning, and she looked to Holden last of all. He squeezed her hand tighter, trying to communicate.

This is stupid, you don’t have to.

Then she let go of his hand and took a step toward the hole.

“Fine,” she said.

The group, the cabin, and the darkness below held their collective breaths.

This was the last thing she wanted to do, but there was no way she was going to lose. It wasn’t bravado or even a desire to impress Holden; it was what Curt had said. He’d made her out to be a whining wimp, and she wasn’t that at all. Not as wild as Jules, perhaps. Not as daring. But once dared, she had no alternative.

So she went down, but even as she did so, she wondered in the back of her mind if she should have simply refused and nailed the hatch shut.