The Cabin in the Woods

Curt lunged forward again… and then felt the cool sharpness around his throat. He snapped his head back from the blade, connecting with something dry and soft that crunched as it broke, and then the blade was pulled tight against his throat, something hard pressed against his back, and he was pivoted from his feet. He struggled and thrashed, thinking of Jules’s gashed neck and trying to protect his own, but there was nothing he could do.

Not even scream.

He could only watch as big-zombie stomped on Jules’s back and pried the bear trap from her flesh, blood gouting into the night air. She was pleading and whimpering now, bubbles forming at her throat as she did so, and as the kid-zombie grabbed her hair and pulled back her head, she was looking directly into Curt’s eyes.

It’s holding me so I can see this, and then it’ll kill me.

Mother-zombie held the broken saw blade against Jules’s throat again, and Curt thought, This is when it ends, the joke, the trick, some freakish new TV show maybe, and the guys will come out from the cabin laughing at how easily we were taken in by a bunch of fucking zombies coming out of the woods and-

Mother-zombie began sawing at Jules’s throat. She struggled, her eyes rolling back and mouth working but saying nothing, but she was held fast. The saw hacked through skin and flesh, and Curt heard the flow of blood as her carotid artery was severed. Then he heard the first hard scrape of rusted metal teeth against bone.

“Oh God,” Curt whimpered, unable to close his eyes however much he tried, “oh God, oh God, oh-”

“-God,” Truman said, “oh God, shit, shit, shit…”

The sounds coming through the speaker were turned up, because it had to be that way. Wet, tearing sounds. The bubbly hiss of the girl’s last breath. The saw tearing into bone, catching, jarring.

From Hadley and Sitterson, only the uncomfortable shuffling of men who had seen this before, but who could never quite get used to it. Sitterson was looking down at his hands, which were hovering above the keyboard in case any last-second tweaks needed performing, though he knew from all he had seen and heard that all was going well.

The girl had stopped making those noises because her throat and windpipe had been cut through, and now came only the terrible scraping sound.

“This we offer in humility and fear,” Sitterson intoned, “for the blessed peace of your eternal slumber. As it ever was.”

“As it ever was,” Hadley echoed softly.

Sitterson pulled at the thin leather thong around his neck, lifting the pendant from beneath his shirt. It was made from white gold, cast into the shape of a five-pointed symbol. Not a pentagram, but something more arcane, something older. He glanced at it briefly, concentrating on one small arm of the deformed star, and then kissed it before dropping it against his chest once more.

From the corner of his eye he could see Truman watching, but he did not turn to face the young man. Why should he? There was nothing on offer there.

Behind him, Hadley had crossed to the mahogany panels at the far end of the room, built into the plain concrete wall and the ancient rock of the ground behind them. Sitterson turned slightly and watched his friend open the first panel, sliding it back on smooth runners, to expose the ornate brass apparatus. Without hesitation Hadley grasped the lever and eased it downward, pushing against pressure, and kept his hand on it until it clicked into place against the lower pin.

And deeper down in a place that could never be seen Sitterson knew what was happening: in the mechanism older than Man, a small metal hammer struck a glass vial, cracking it from top to bottom and releasing the blood retained inside. The blood ran into a brass funnel that extended into a long, long pipe, running even deeper through rock and dark spaces, emerging eventually into a place deeper still.

Here, the blood poured onto a slab of marble leaning against the wall, and in the total blackness it began to fill the intricate image carved onto the marble slab’s surface.

Sitterson opened his eyes, not aware that he’d been daydreaming. His heart was thumping.

I mustn’t go down there, he thought, not even in my dreams!

“The boy,” Hadley said, and Sitterson nodded, sniffed, wiped his hands across his face. He had to get himself together. This had only just begun.

•••

Calm, Curt thought, looking down at the blood-spattered leaves at his feet, and realizing with detached shock that his dick was still hanging out of his trousers. That seemed somehow sad. Stay calm, stay still, let them think I’ve given in, that’s my only chance…