The Cabin in the Woods

SEVEN

Sitterson knew that Hadley would be panicking right now. That was just his style. Once the real game began, he became edgy and nervous, seeing the few obscure ways things could go wrong, instead of the many ways they were going right. It was Hadley’s way of working, that was all. How he kept focused, maintained his composure.

But that still didn’t prevent it from pissing off Sitterson.

Least they could do was enjoy themselves a little.

Hadley slumped down in his chair, one hand to his forehead.

“Calm down, I got it,” Sitterson said as he tapped some keys. “Watch the master work.” He brought up three new windows on his computer, then tapped a switch on his control panel array.

“There.” He sat back in his chair, hands laced behind his head, and glanced across at Hadley. “What?” Hadley asked.

Sitterson sighed and nodded at the large displays.

“Eyes on the screen,” he said. “The camera never lies.”

This is so fucked up, Marty thought. Things had gone from laughter to panic in a matter of minutes, and now there was running and shouting and screaming and dying, and he wasn’t sure just when things had changed. Seeing Curt outside, of course… bleeding, panicked raving… that had been when reality had become more terrifying for him. But he had a feeling that everything had begun to change much earlier than that.

Curt’s behavior with Jules had been so unlike him, and even earlier, down in the basement when they’d been looking through all that weird old stuff, something had seemed not quite right. The stuff down there was stacked and piled and stored so haphazardly that Marty couldn’t help but see some order in it all, as if it had been placed that way. Maybe he was the only one who could see that, and it was his laid-back approach to life that encouraged him to find order in chaos, but he thought not. Not completely, at least. There had been something more.

Something like design.

Now Curt was leading them to the back of the cabin to make sure all the doors and windows were secure and blocked up. And though Curt was the jock everyone looked up to and respected because he was cool, good-looking, and generally a great guy… even that felt wrong.

Holden and Dana moved close together, not holding hands but touching fingers as they walked. Marty coveted their security.

Thump! The thing hit the cabin again, and Curt came to a halt just at the beginning of the corridor, looking around as if suddenly lost.

“What’s the matter?” Dana asked, her voice terrified.

Curt seemed confused. He shook his head, frowning, running one hand through his hair and spattering a dozen tiny blood droplets onto the cabin floor.

“This isn’t right…” he muttered. Then he looked at the others almost as if he no longer trusted them, face hard but eyes afraid. He settled on Marty. “This isn’t right. We should split up. We can cover more ground that way.”

Hold on now… Marty thought.

Holden and Dana swapped a glance, and Marty saw something change in their stances. The fear was still there, the tension, but for a few seconds… it looked as if they were listening to something else. Some inner voice that whispered things they did not understand.

Are they hearing voices too? Marty thought, but even thinking it made him feel slightly ridiculous. He was the dope-head, as Curt was always so keen to tell him. He was the one who heard the fucking voices.

“Yeah…” Holden said, and Dana nodded at him. “Yeah, split up. Good idea.” “Really?” Marty asked. And behind them, the living room window exploded inward. He ducked and span around in time to see glass slivers jingling to the floor and timber frame shards spiking inward. And through the ruin of the window protruded big-zombie’s arm. His fist was clenched around a handful of glass and wood, but there was no blood.

Beyond, his shadow pressed close.

“I got it!” Curt shouted, running at the window. “You guys get in your rooms!” He shouldered into a bookcase and it started sliding toward the window, screaming across the floor, books tumbling, while the zombie’s arm thrashed to clear more broken glass and framing.

“Wait…” Marty said, but his voice was lost amid the chaos.

Dana and Holden shared a glance, a nod, and then Dana said, “Let’s go!” They headed for their separate rooms on the left, parting without even a hug, and for a moment Marty couldn’t move.

This isn’t right, he thought. He looked back at Curt, who was now shoving against the bookcase while big-zombie leaned in the window and pushed back, seeking entrance even while Curt strove to prevent it.

“Go!” Curt screamed at Marty, angry at his indecisiveness. So Marty went, because there was little else he could do. Maybe Curt was right. Maybe they should all check their windows and doors individually, then go back and help him fight that big fucker.

But even as he entered his room and dashed to the window, it was almost as if he could foresee what would happen next. We’ll be locked in, he thought. And he turned back to his door.

“Told you,” Sitterson said, perhaps a little too smug.

“Yeah, okay,” Hadley said. On the big monitors they saw the three kids dashing into their rooms as the fourth tried to hold back Matthew. Sitterson, humming, tapped a couple of keys and the views changed without a flicker, shifting to inside each room.

Dana entered her own room and dashed to the window, Holden stood in the center of his and took a few deep breaths, and Marty was the last, frowning, head shaking.

Curt was still battling Matthew the zombie.

Well, let him. Sitterson wasn’t concerned. His placing right now didn’t matter too much, and if things went too far at that end of the cabin, he could still be lured across to the other.

“Peas in separate pods,” Sitterson said, raising his hands in triumph.

“Lock ’em in,” Hadley said, and he was smiling as well. For now. He’d find something else to stress about soon.

Sitterson tapped a key and—

—Marty’s door slammed shut behind him. After the slam came the slide and thunk! of locks ramming home—not just in his door but in the others, as well.

He gasped and held his breath, listening for more. Weak light from the single light reflected from one half of the window, making the darkness outside even more complete. The other half stood wide open. He’d unlatched and opened it earlier when he was laid back on his bed smoking pot, having some vague idea that the fumes could spread through the air outside and chill the forest. It had been a little too looming for his liking, a little too forceful. Trees should be just trees, and shouldn’t wear the shadows of guardians.

Locked in, he thought. We’re all suddenly locked in. And glancing down at his door handle he couldn’t even see a keyhole. There was a handle, that was all. So the locks must be.

“On the outside,” he muttered. But that felt wrong, too. He tried to recall what the doors looked like from out there, and he was pretty sure they were the same— just a handle, nothing else.

No keyhole.

No lock.

In which case…

The cabin shook again with another terrible impact. Curt cried out from somewhere and more glass broke, and Marty’s window suddenly seemed larger than ever. He moved then, slowly to begin with, two small, quiet steps, and then in his mind’s eye he saw zombie-girl’s face intruding through the window. He leapt the last few steps, grabbed the handle and pulled it close, flicking the latch to secure it shut. Something shattered behind him and he shouted, turning around and hardly prepared for what he might see.

He must have knocked the table with his leg as he rushed by, and the lamp on top had wobbled and smashed after he’d turned the latch.

Not that glass and thin wood will do much good against—

He looked down.

What the fuck is that?

It was a moment that punched him in the gut. Amongst all the chaos, thumping, shouting from outside, and his own terrified panting, it was the sight of the smallest thing that finally succeeded in knocking Marty’s breath out of him.

The remains of the china lamp were splayed across the floor, and from its plastic heart a white cable led to the plug socket in the wall. The bulb had survived— shielded from impact by the bent-out-of-shape shade— and in its glare he saw a second wire.

It was thin and black, and there was something about it that seemed all wrong.

The wire snaked through the remains of the broken lamp, its end pointing directly at him. An end? Shouldn’t it be plugged in somewhere? Shouldn’t there be a fixture? But Marty’s bullshit detector was on full, and he knew this was something that shouldn’t be there.

He bent and picked up the wire, squinting at its end, and thought, fiber optic. The sense of being watched was suddenly very real. His place in things shrank to an almost infinitesimally small point. And he stood and looked around the room, thinking of the one-way mirror.

Curt’s weird behavior.

Jules’s brutal death.

“Oh, man,” he muttered.

“That’s deep,” Hadley said. “‘Oh, man.’”

“He’s not there for his philosophical insightfulness.” The guy’s face filled the screen now as he stared into the hi-tech camera, distorted by the closeness to the domed end of the cable, and for the first time ever Sitterson experienced a glimmer of fear.

It’s almost like he’s watching us.

He shoved it quickly down. He wasn’t here to empathize.

But he couldn’t ignore the obvious.

“Uh-oh,” he said, “that’s not good.”

Hadley flipped down the microphone on his headphones and flicked a switch. “Chem, I need five hundred cc’s of Thorazine pumped into room three, now—”

“No no no,” Sitterson said, because he’d seen movement elsewhere. Oh we’re just too fucking good, he thought, pointing at the large screen to the left. “Hang on.” And yes, the movement was manifesting into a shambling, pale thing in the darkness, passing between the silent statues of trees and seeming to emerge from the very darkness itself as it approached the cabin.

Sitterson checked a few settings and smiled.

“Judah Buckner to the rescue,” he said. And the brief pity he’d had for the kid was eaten away by the sight of Buckner’s zombified face.

He could have mouthed obscenities or flipped them the finger, but that wouldn’t do anything to help him right now.

Now, he needed answers, and perhaps some clue as to how the hell they could get the fuck out of Dodge. But…

As he pulled the wire taut and started following it around the room—across the floor, along the skirting to the corner, then up to where a small hole was drilled in the ceiling’s corner—the realization dawned that he’d been made to look like a complete dick.

He stared up at the ceiling and smiled.

Of course things had been out of kilter. The cabin was fake, maybe even the woods all around them were unreal, and everything they did and said was being monitored.

“Oh my God, I’m on a reality TV show.” Every breath they took, the booze they’d drunk, the almost biblical amount of pot he’d already smoked, the kissing couple on the sofa, everything was for public consumption. The stuff in the cellar really was a set-up, planted there by scene designers who must’ve had multiple orgasms when they saw what was required of them in the shooting script.

Those things outside, the zombies, Jules’s death and her head rolling about on the floor like that… all of that was thrown in just to scare the shit out of them. And it worked, he thought, but then he chuckled, too. Jules’s and Curt’s noisy fucking in the shower was probably the most-viewed clip on YouTube right now.

“My parents are gonna think I’m such a burnout.” And then he realized that he’d be the one they’d be focusing on right now, and if they didn’t want him to ruin everything for the others, they’d have to—

The window behind him smashed, and Marty aimed a knowing smile at the fiber optic cable still in his hand. They’ll have to come and get me.

He turned to the window, ready to see the cameras and the presenter, so sun-baked that he or she had passed tanned and entered somewhere into the orange spectrum. Microphones thrust at him, producers with fingers at their lips silently pleading for him to Keep the secret a little while longer, and there would be transport to somewhere from where he could view the remainder of his friends’ ordeal…

And though he felt cruel and immature even thinking about it, he couldn’t wait to see what a job they’d made on the fake Marty-Slashed-Up-And-Dead mannequin.

The zombie wasn’t quite as tall as the big one they’d seen outside, but his face was about ten times as horrific. Good job, guys, Marty thought admiringly, and then the zombie’s arm extended and his hand closed around Marty’s throat.

The fingers squeezed hard and Marty felt things grinding in there.

Not so tight! he thought, but he was already realizing his naivety.

What a dick.

The breath was shut off from his lungs, giving way to pain. The thing pulled him to the broken window, spun him around, closed an arm around his throat and tugged him backward.

As Marty folded at the waist and felt the jagged spikes of broken glass scoring and slitting his thighs and back, he was still cursing himself and his foolish thinking. There was no way this could have been reality TV There hadn’t been nearly enough sex.

How could he have been so stupid?

Marty screamed, and it felt as if he was shouting only for himself. The arm across his throat squeezed tighter as the thing tried to drag him backward through the window, and no one could make up that smell, no one could manufacture the fucking breath on that thing.

He struggled more fiercely, pulling himself back in a little even though the pain of the cuts on his back and legs was just starting to catch fire. The thing pulled even harder and Marty clung onto the window frame, refusing to let go or ease up his own pressure for even an instant.

These arms will not move however hard that thing pulls. Judah! Marty thought. That’s the father zombie out there, the father of Patience, whose image started all this down in the basement with Dana. It seemed to make sense, ridiculous though it was. And it seemed suddenly more real than any reality TV could be.

But the zombie pulled harder, tugging him so that his back creaked as he bent in half, hauled through the window, and as he lost his grip he reached around with his right hand for anything he could use as a weapon. He knocked clothes and a pouch of tobacco from the dresser surface, then his fingers closed around his thermos-shaped bong.

The cool night air suddenly kissed his bloodied skin as he exited the cabin. It seemed so much colder, and when he thumped to the ground and saw the thing standing over him, the idea that he’d ever thought it false was just so ridiculous.

Judah swung his hand down. Marty rolled, heard the harsh whisper of metal sticking into soil, looked at the zombie’s hand and saw the blade being tugged from the earth.

A second later and that would have been right through my head. He half stood, but Judah’s other hand knocked him across the shoulders, spilling him to the ground again. Marty didn’t have time to turn his head and watch the blade swinging down for another try, so he rolled to the right and saw Judah stagger as he stabbed the ground again.

Marty kicked out at the hand holding the knife and heard something crumple and snap. But it seemed to make no difference. The zombie pulled the knife up again and turned slightly, and Marty knew that if he didn’t find his feet he’d eventually be pinned to the ground with that cruel blade. And then…

“And then” he didn’t want to think about.

He kicked out at Judah’s legs, and when the zombie took a staggering step backward Marty found his feet, swaying slightly as if the ground was dipping and lifting. Judah fell toward him, one clawed hand reaching for his throat, the other raising the knife to strike again.

Marty shook the thermos shape in his hand, and felt and heard the familiar click-clack as it telescoped out into the giant bong. He’d sure had some fun with this, and it seemed a shame to smash it. But choice had been taken from him. Maybe it had been stolen long ago. Or perhaps he’d never had any choice at all.

He swung the bong into the side of Judah’s head with all his might. The sound Judah made when he hit the ground was like a bale of hay dropped from several feet up; a crunch, and a few snaps. His hand still gripped the blade’s rotten handle, and he writhed briefly before starting to struggle to his feet again.

Fuck this, Marty thought, and he turned and ran for the forest. He could lose this thing out there, outrun it—hadn’t Romero said that zombie’s ankles would break if they ran? He was the expert, right?—and then double back to the cabin, get inside, and plan with the others just what the fuck they were going to do now.

The things were strong but mindless, just living-dead freaks that needed a good shovel swung at their necks or a fire set in their—

Something punched him between the shoulder blades. He gasped and staggered forward, losing his footing and wondering what the hell the zombie could have thrown to have unbalanced him so much. And then he sprawled in the mud and leaves as the cool kiss of pain drifted in, and he knew.

Knife…

The knowledge invited the agony to settle upon him and he gasped, never understanding that such pain could exist. He felt entered and violated, the foreign object probing his innards, heavy and hot in his insides. He reached around with one hand, the movement shifting the rusted metal blade in his flesh. Crying out at last, his fingertips brushed cool metal. But he couldn’t gain purchase.

He brought that hand beneath him and reached with the other, but was no more successful.

Get up and run! he thought. Don’t fuck around here, get up and run, if you can get… up… then do it and… run!

Marty heaved himself up on both hands, screaming as his wounded flesh flexed around the piercing blade, and then he felt hands closing around his ankles. They pulled, he hit the ground face first, and then Judah started dragging him into the forest. Leaves crumpled beneath him, sticks and rocks scraped his groin and stomach and chest, filth getting into his open wounds, and he could barely find the energy to hold up his head.

“Help!” he screamed at last. But his voice was pitiful, and he tasted blood in his mouth. “No! Noooo!”

Judah dragged him, not rushing, keeping a steady pace whatever obstacles he had to overcome. A fallen branch snagged on Marty’s clothing and the zombie pulled on, eliciting a scream from Marty as a sharp stick pierced his stomach and snapped off. He gasped, crying out again, and tried to reach a hand down to explore the new wound. But though he managed to reach a hand beneath him, the dragging prevented him from feeling how serious the puncture was.

Warmth was all he felt, and wetness. More blood leaking from him to soak into this unnatural forest’s floor.

Are they watching me even now? he wondered. The death and pain’s for real, but there was still that camera, so are they watching me now? Those controllers? Those bastards?

“Help me!” he shouted. “Please!”

They passed over a small rise topped with heavily thorned plants. First he heard them snagging in Jonah’s clothing and dried skin, and then they gouged and pricked at his own—thighs, scrotum, stomach, chest, and then his face, because he was feeling weaker with each second that passed by, and couldn’t hold it up. His back was wet and hot around the knife wound, cooler elsewhere as the night air whispered across the blood. He could smell it, and see it beneath him as he left a bloody trail across the forest floor.

Marty coughed and spat a dark mass. Tears burned his eyes. The darkness grew darker. “No… help me!”

And then the darkness grew deeper still as Judah went down. At first Marty didn’t understand, but as things started to feel and sound different—the ground was damper, his cries and the dragging noises muffled by something surrounding them—he realized what was happening. Judah had risen from a hole in the forest floor, and now he was taking Marty back down into it.

He started struggling with all the energy and determination he had left, digging his fingers into the soil, clawing, trying to gain purchase as the zombie continued to pull. Trees and sky were being drawn away and total darkness hauled him down, and he’d never wanted to be out in that weird forest as much as he did then.

“Help me!” he screamed again, voice swallowed by the ground around him. He could see each extreme of the hole now as it framed the outside, and the inside smelled musty and of old decay long given over to time. His strength was leaving him. The knife drained his life and poured it into the ground around him. He smelled wet earth and blood.

One final scream and the outside was cut off from view, and Marty could do nothing but be dragged, and dragged, and dragged toward his doom.

The screen grew still as the screaming boy was taken underground. They had cameras and sensors down there too, but there was no need to check on what was happening. Old Jonah Buckner was good at his craft, and if he couldn’t extract the knife from the kid’s back to finish the job, he had plenty more. Down there. In the darkness.

Sitterson swiveled his chair away from the control panel and started whistling, glancing around Control as he did so. Truman stood beside the door just down the curved metal staircase, as he had since the beginning. His eyes were wider than usual, and Sitterson thought he saw a trace of sweat on the soldier’s top lip. But they’d have never been sent a raw recruit. Without even asking, he knew that Truman had seen action and had at least three years of combat postings behind him. He’d likely seen friends killed, and might have killed people himself. From a distance maybe, their deaths little more than clouds of dust and a quick dance. Or maybe he’d killed close-in, so he could look into the victim’s eyes as he or she died.

But none of the action he’d seen would have been like this. Sitterson was only glad the soldier hadn’t yet asked what lots of new ones tended to: But why, when they’re so defenseless? Mainly because the answer was so glib. They have to be.

Still whistling, Sitterson watched Hadley go to the second mahogany panel at the back of the room, slide it open and pull the lever inside. He closed his eyes and kissed the pendant around his neck, knowing that a process was being repeated around and beneath him, blood flowing, grooves and carvings and etchings being filled, all in darkness as ever it was.

Sometimes in nightmares he dreamed of that shape slowly being traced in blood, the primitive human figure holding a goblet and dancing, carved into a chunk of stone as old as the world itself, and on waking he’d feel a deep dread more basic than anything he’d ever felt before, fearing that he was the Fool. Much of the dread came from the knowledge of what he had almost touched, because even dreams were no way to draw close.

And some of the dread came from the mystery of how he knew about the blood, and the carving, and the shapes they picked out.

He had learned to simply accept. Much easier that way. So he whistled, and Hadley returned to his desk, and Truman looked at his feet for a few seconds because he knew it had only just begun.

A rumble passed through Control, and two of the three large screens flickered for less than a second. The sensation passed as quickly as it had begun.

“They’re getting excited downstairs,” Hadley said as he lowered himself gently into his chair.

Sitterson nodded and looked around at Truman, who was standing almost to attention again now, though his eyes flickered left and right as if searching for something.

“Greatest Show on Earth…” Sitterson said. Then he returned to his controls, tapped a few keys and brought up the next screen.

Another rumble filled the room as the last girl did her best to survive.

Somehow she was still functioning. Through all this the fear had clasped her cold around the chest, but she was still moving, still able to stand, still able to think. She had no idea how.

She looked at her hands pressed against the side of the tall dresser as she tried to push it in front of the window, and Jules’s blood was already crisp between her fingers and tacky across the back. Perhaps that was where her strength came from: she knew that Jules would never want her to just give in.

So she shoved, and the wooden base of the dresser squealed across the timber floor.

Patience’s mother was thumping against the window from outside. Two panes of glass had cracked, but the zombie seemed stupid, not realizing that she could shove her way through the glass. She pounded against the wooden frame and around the opening, mouth pressed against the glass, rotten tongue tracing grotesque patterns in the dust. If Dana could just get the dresser across the window.

She’d heard the screams and chaos from Marty’s room. Then the silence. She tried not to think about what that meant, but how could she not? How could she ignore the idea that Marty might have—

Jules’s dead eyes urged her to fight on, and the dresser slipped that much closer to the window.

“Keep bashing, bitch,” Dana muttered, and then the sound of Mother’s pounding changed. The whole room began to shake, dust drifted down from the ceiling, dark spidery shapes scurried to safety in shadows, and then the cabin swayed as a great grumbling sound filled the air. Dana looked around in disbelief.

Earthquake? You gotta be fucking kidding!

“What?” she gasped. “No! No, come on!”

The air seemed to vibrate and her vision blurred. She bit her lip—afraid for a second that she was fainting—but then the rumbling started to subside and the floor leveled beneath her. For a moment all was still and even the bashing from the window had ceased. Let the ground have opened up and swallowed her whole, Dana thought, but she was already shoving hard against the dresser when the pounding began again.

With one last effort she heaved the tall item of furniture before the window, standing in front of it and pushing so that it was flush against the wall on either side. As if that was a signal, Mother turned her attention to the glass and soon smashed it out, and Dana felt the dresser starting to rock. She leaned against it for a moment, absorbing the impacts, but they were turning harder and harder as the zombie became more determined to gain entry.

Timing the blows, Dana darted to the bed and dragged it up against the dresser, trying to wedge its feet against differing levels in the floorboards in the vain hope that it would jam the dresser in place.

But it was like putting sticking plaster over a compound fracture. It was only a matter of time until the bitch found her way in, and Dana already knew that the room offered nothing that she could use as a weapon.

At least I’m still working, she thought with unnatural calm. She was amazed that her heart hadn’t exploded with the terror and her limbs hadn’t simply ceased to function.

The dresser rocked and the bed’s legs screeched as they were driven against the floor. Dana went to the door and tried it again. She’d heard the heavy bolts thumping in as soon as the door had slammed behind her, but before she’d been able to investigate the ghostly shape of Mother appeared at the window and started hammering. So who the hell locked me in? she wondered, working at the handle. It turned, but the door was stuck fast in its frame, with not even an inch of give. Solid, like a wall.

Now Dana started kicking at the door’s wooden panels, aiming the heels of her trainers at the corners. The feel and sound of each kick was all wrong, as if the wood was simply a veneer, and beneath lay something solid, like metal. She felt panic starting to well up— Keep calm, calm, I’ve come this far—

—and then the dresser tilted against the bed, scraping it across the floor with its leaning weight, and around the side of the dresser she saw Mother’s gray weathered hand clasping at the room’s air.

Dana had to make a quick choice: stay and fight with the door, hoping she could get out before Mother got in; or try to kill the zombie before it killed her. How the fuck do you kill a zombie? she wondered, and a hundred images from a hundred horror movies flashed across her mind. Destroy their heads, destroy their brains, burn them, decapitate them, take off their arms and legs and they’ll still come at you, jawing themselves along the ground in their search for your flesh, your heart, your braaaainnnns.

She plucked up a bedside lamp and, as Mother peered from behind the leaning dresser, smashed it across her face. The zombie barely seemed to notice. She looked at Dana and continued working her way from behind the tilted furniture, two hands free now, torso, and one leg lifted clear and planted against the bed, ready to kick up and launch herself through the air.

Dana backed against the wall, because she was out of options. She closed her eyes briefly and thought of Jules, and wondered how much it would hurt.

Something thumped with a loud impact, and a shower of glass scraped across her shoulder and past her face. She gasped and jumped, looked down, and saw the bizarre hunting picture, face up on the floor. Then she heard Holden’s gasps and grunts.

She pulled back a little and he knocked out the rest of the glass from the one-way mirror, using a lamp base as an impromptu club. He didn’t smile when he saw her, only looked past her at Mother. From his room Dana could hear thumping, as well, but there were no zombies in there.

Not yet.

She let out an explosive sob and Holden looked at her at last, offering a brief smile. “My door’s stuck,” he said.

“Mine too!”

“Come on.” He held out his hand and Dana took it, and as she climbed through into his room she expected to feel Mother’s hand clasping her ankle at any moment, the skin cold and rough, the strength impossible. But she fell through onto Holden’s floor, wincing as errant glass shards sliced her scalp and scratched across the bridge of her nose. Holden slipped on something and went down with her, and for a moment they were close and she could taste the panic on his breath.

She checked out his room and saw the pile of furniture stacked against his own window.

“That didn’t do much good for—” she began, and his wardrobe tilted inward and crashed to the floor. It threw up clouds of dust and shook the floorboards, and as she and Holden helped each other up she saw big-zombie standing in the shattered window frame.

“That’ll be Matthew,” she said, and giving the thing a name seemed almost stupid enough to laugh. Almost.

“Well he’s big enough to—”

“The bed!” Dana said. And as Holden tipped it on its end and she helped him shove it against the window, she knew that it was futile. Matthew thumped at the mattress as they pushed it close, and she thought he was perhaps being playful, like a cat knocking a mouse around with only a shred of its full strength before killing it.

They leaned against the upended bed, looking at each other, and the sense of hopelessness was shattering. I haven’t even had a chance to take a breath, she thought, and for a moment she almost kissed him. But that, too, would have felt so stupid, and so final.

So instead she looked around for something else they could use—as a weapon, or to help secure the bed against the wall—and that was when she saw the trapdoor.

“Er… Holden,” she said, nodding to the side. It had been hidden beneath the bed up to now, and already she was thinking of all the stuff down there in the basement that they could use as weapons. Those tools, the chains, maybe even something from Roberto the Limbless Man’s circus. And all the other stuff, the weird stuff.

That picture of Patience staring with dead eyes…

Mother appeared at the shattered mirror. She stood there for a moment, hands clasping at the jagged glass still stuck in the frame’s sill, staring in at them. Don’t let her smile, Dana thought. I don’t think I could handle a smile.

But Mother did not smile. She started to climb instead, clumsily trying to shove one leg and her head through the small gap at the same time. It wouldn’t take her long to figure it out.

“Go,” Holden whispered, and Dana went to the trapdoor. She grabbed the small rusted handle set in one edge and pulled, fearing it would be jammed tight, and falling back in surprise as it swung up and open without even a squeak from the hinges.

Oiled recently, she thought. There was nothing but blackness below, and the smell of age. She looked up at Holden.

“Better or worse, you think?” she asked.

“Lamp,” he said, nodding at the small table beside where his bed used to be. It was still plugged in, so Dana leaned out and grabbed its shade, glancing back over her shoulder as she did so. Mother now had both legs over the mirror’s sill and was trying to press her head through, as well, straggly hair caught on glass shards above. She was growling and keening.

Dana lowered the lamp, holding the cord and letting it dangle when it reached its extreme. She leaned down and looked into the basement. It was empty, just a dirt-floored space below the room. Maybe it connected to the main area they’d been in, somehow, or maybe not, but right then it seemed not to matter. She didn’t think they had any choice.

“It’s empty,” she announced.

Holden shoved the bed into place one last time, glanced across at Mother still struggling at the smashed hole in the wall, then moved to his door.

“Curt!” he shouted. “Curt!”

Moments later the door knob twisted left and right, the door not moving at all. “Unlock your door!” Curt called, and Dana never thought she’d be so glad to hear his voice.

“I can’t, it’s locked!” Holden shouted. “Got Dana in with me. Get down to the basement, we’ve got a way down from here!”

“Okay!” Curt called, and Dana saw the doorknob fall still as he let go. Holden took a quick look down into the barely-lit blackness, sat on the edge and tipped forward, holding the floor and flipping himself over to land on his feet. For a moment Dana was left alone in his room, Mother halfway through the jagged mirror and forcing herself past the remaining spears of glass, and Matthew shoving at the bed, its metal frame scoring the timber floor as it shifted with each impact.

Then Holden called to her and she sat at the trapdoor’s edge, easing herself down into his arms.

It was suddenly quiet in that dark part of the basement, as if the noise from above was meant only for the bedroom. She heard Holden’s breathing and felt his thumping heart next to her own, and he was holding her tight even though her feet were on the floor. She was glad. And then she looked around and saw why he was holding her, and knew they had made a terrible mistake.

The only light was from the lamp still dangling to their left, and it was barely bright enough to illuminate the whole room. But it showed them enough.

It was a torture chamber. A chair stood against one wall, fixed with rough metal clamps to the wall and floor. Thick leather straps protruded stiffly from the arms and legs. Chains and shackles hung from metal rings in the floor joists that made up the low ceiling. Several chains ended in cruel hooks, and others bore manacles, some of them set swinging by the sudden invasion of this place. The chair’s seat seemed stained dark, though that might have been the light. Against one wall stood a table, and on the table was a vast array of terrible, brutal tools and implements of pain. Saws, hammers, hooks, knives, chains, wooden stakes, pliers, branding irons, axes, cleavers, nails, bolts. A fine film of dust lay over everything, blunting the knives and dulling the intended use of some instruments, yet the small underground room seemed to echo with the horrors it had seen.

“This is the Black Room,” Dana whispered. “What?” Holden asked.

“From the diary. Remember? This is where he killed them.” She was shaking now, not cold but terrified, because everything was coming together. Guilt made her feel sick, and the fear of what was to come strove to empty her of hope. “This is where he kills us.”

“What are you talking about?” Holden asked. “This is just some sicko’s—”

“I brought us here,” she whispered, and the weight of responsibility was crushing. She could hardly breathe, thinking of Jules’s head in her hands. Her vision swam as she replayed Marty’s screams. “I found the diary, read from it, conjured them, and… you’re all gonna die because of me.”

Holden grabbed her upper arms and shook slightly until she looked at him. So strong, so solid, so there, even behind his fear she saw determination and strength. For a second she almost let it make her feel better.

“Nobody did this,” he said. “Okay, it’s bad luck. Horrible fucking luck. But I’m not gonna die and neither are you. We just gotta find the door.” “There isn’t one,” she whispered, and even though she hadn’t looked she knew she was right. This wasn’t part of the basement. It was a different place, and the distance between here and Holden’s bedroom above seemed endless.

He glanced around, and Dana watched him searching for the door. Bet he wishes he’d never tagged along now, she thought, but she couldn’t even smile. He turned back to her and nodded.

“Yeah. Nothing obvious. But there must be something in the wall. Just look.”

His optimism shook her a little, and she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Maybe he’s right, she thought. Maybe we can’t just give in. And she moved to the table. She didn’t want to spend too long looking at the tools and dwelling on their uses, so she picked up something that looked like a small crowbar and started running it along the walls, tapping. She listed to the sounds it made to see if they changed—anything that might indicate an alternative material in the construction could mean something different beyond.

She tapped and tapped, but found nothing.

“Curt?” she shouted. If he’d made it down into the basement by now, perhaps he was on the other side of one of these walls. She concentrated, trying to position herself in relation to the outside wall of the cabin, but the geography of the room above them had become confused.

One or both of them will be down here soon, she thought, and the seconds seemed to tick away like memories of her life.

“Anything?” Holden asked.

Dana shook her head.

“No.”

He crossed the room toward her. He’d been tapping, too, and she saw a shadow fall over his face even though he tried to fight away his own desperation. He’s doing it for me, she realized. He’ll never say it’s hopeless.

“Hidden rooms were a staple of post-civil war architecture,” Holden said. “There’s gotta be a—” And when he was directly below the trapdoor a shadow swung in, a spiked metal smile on the end of a long chain, catching him beneath the left arm and across the back of his shoulder.

Holden’s eyes went wide and he screamed.

Dana reached for him as the slack chain tightened and he was lifted from the floor. He swung a little as his feet left the dirt and knocked her back, and she clasped his hands and pulled. Above and behind him she saw up through the trapdoor where Matthew’s huge shadow loomed, shoulders flexing and arms working as he pulled. The rusted teeth of the bear trap were embedded, it was only going to take a couple of seconds to haul Holden from the basement room, and then…

And then there’ll just be me, Dana thought. She did not want to die alone.

She tugged at Holden’s hands, knowing that each movement would be jarring those cruel metal teeth gripped within his flesh. But if she let the zombie drag him up and out he was finished, and Holden knew this as well.

Teeth gritted and bared he jerked his shoulders, stretching forward to help Dana each time she tugged. On their third try the shadow above them slipped and fell forward, and Holden dropped to the floor.

Matthew’s girth lodged him in the trapdoor, his upper body hanging in the basement, hands still reaching for Holden where he’d fallen. The lamp swung wildly beside him, and the shifting light danced shadows across his face, almost as if he had expression. But there was no expression there. He moaned slightly, but that was the only sign of effort as he twisted and turned, futilely reaching for his prey.

Holden had managed to tug the broken bear trap away from his back, dropping it to the floor and slumping over weakly, when one of Matthew’s questing hands snagged a fold of his ripped pullover. Holden’s eyes went wide as he was snatched backward, and Matthew hissed in triumph.

“You like pain?” Dana asked. She stepped around Holden and stabbed hard with the crowbar. It punctured Matthew’s face amidst the remains of his nose, driving him against the wall and pinning him there. Dana screamed into his face, “How’s that work for ya?”

Holden fell free.

Matthew’s hands grasped at the bar and started pulling, and Dana heard the sound of metal scraping against bone.

He’s not dead, she thought, bar through his head and he’s not dead, not yet, not dead, not yet—

She plucked a long carving knife from the torture table and stabbed at Matthew’s chest, neck, throat, face, head, hacking at him a dozen times, shaking with rage. She went for his heart, not knowing for sure that it beat; his brain, uncertain of whether he even thought in the normal sense. His hands finally swung down and he hung limp, but she kept stabbing anyway. She was furious at his lack of blood. If he’d bled, perhaps she would have felt… happier?

She wasn’t sure; didn’t think she could ever be happy again. She buried the knife deep in his left eye and hung on, exhausted.

“Remind me… never to piss you off,” Holden said. And through everything, Dana finally managed a smile.