The Cabin in the Woods

“Ah! Fuckin’ zombie arm!” He kicked and stamped, and for a moment he thought it was his movement shaking the elevator. But then he stopped, the arm trapped beneath his foot, and instead of dying away the tremors increased.

“Now what?” he shouted.

“Another earthquake,” she said.

“Yeah, and you think it’s not connected?”

From above them came the sound of wrenching metal, and then a loud crack as something broke. Yet the elevator continued down at a slow, steady rate, apparently unhindered. “Something up in the room,” Dana said.

“Yeah.”

“Almost like they’re following us, driving us toward-”

“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “I should be dead. And so should you. Whoever’s been fucking with us, I’ve got a feeling we’ve stuck a monkey wrench into the works.” The thought made him smile grimly.

They descended for almost half a minute, then jolted to a halt. Marty turned full-circle to see which wall would open-one of the metal sides, or one of the glass-but then they started moving again. Only this time the movement felt different, and it took a moment for him to realize why

“Are we moving sideways?”

“Yeah…” Dana said, leaning against the glass wall. Marty looked around the elevator. The faint illumination came from behind an opaque screen in the ceiling, and there were similar panels spaced at regular intervals along the shaft. He looked down at Judah’s arm still flexing beneath his foot.

“You’re going home, dude.”

Then the elevator stopped. Behind Dana, Marty made out something strange. Another elevator? They were pulling alongside of it, and then-

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.