by Sergio Gomez
More pause.
“Yeah, that’s why it’s billed as the ‘most secluded cabin in Pennsylvania,’ numb-nuts.” Gavin laughed.
Wayne wasn’t sure who he was talking to, but from the sounds of it he had some sort of trip planned for tomorrow. An idea popped into his head, and he ducked his head back into his room and ran to his bed where his cellphone was.
It was eleven at night here, which meant it was nine in Cabo where his parents were on vacation. They’d still be up. Even old people stayed up past nine when they were on vacation.
Wayne dialed his mom, and prepared his best “good boy” voice.
“Brooke is bringing her friend Vanessa—she’s some Instagram model or something—and her cousin.” Gavin raised his eyebrows, even though there wasn’t anyone around to see it. A lot of his antics, although others might have a hard time believing, were for his own amusement.
Gavin had taken his phone call down to the kitchen, where he was currently going through the freezer for something that would make a good late-night snack. He settled on one of the frozen pizzas, took it out of the box, and popped it into the oven.
“Like I told you, Fredster, I got the chicks covered,” he said, settling into one of the chairs and kicking his legs up on the kitchen table.
“That’s cool and all, but Noelle is coming,” Fred told him.
“Wait, what, she is?”
“Yeah, I didn’t tell you?”
“No. I mean, it doesn’t make a difference, but I bugged Brooke to bring friends. I wouldn’t have been such a—”
“Such an annoying prick about it?”
Gavin laughed. “You took the words right outta my mouth.”
“Seriously, though,” Fred said, “the more the merrier, right?”
“Bigger party. I like how you think.” Gavin smiled.
Fred was thinking more along the lines of, the more people there were, the more everyone would be distracted, and he and Noelle would have more one-on-one time. He didn’t tell Gavin that, instead he just said, “Yeah, that’s the whole point of this trip, isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah,” Gavin agreed.
“Okay, man. I’m gonna let you go. I’m tired.”
Gavin looked at the time on the front of the oven. It was pretty late, but he had to wait for that pizza to finish cooking and then eat it all before going to sleep. “Okay, yeah. See ya tomorrow.”
Fred got off the phone with Gavin after making sure for the fourth time this week that the plans hadn’t changed. They’d meet up at his place at eight-thirty to be on the road by nine in the morning, just as they’d agreed before, but with Gavin one could never be too sure.
Fred opened up his laptop and plugged it into the printer on his desk. He put himself in charge of the printout directions to the cabin because he trusted himself with the task more than he trusted Gav. He’d said he had them already, but again, one could never be too sure with him.
After going into Google Maps and printing out multi-page packets of directions, Fred decided to do a little more research into this place. He hadn’t looked at anything since the night he opened the link to show Fletcher, because as it turned out he’d picked up extra hours at the computer shop. The only day he’d had off he spent with Noelle and helping his father with yardwork and fixing up the back deck to get it ready for summer barbecues. There’d been no time for him to look into this Lakewood Cabin place until now.
It was the night before their trip, but whatever. Better than not looking into it at all.
He glanced at the first five results on Google. It was generic information on the cabin, trails around the area, maps to print out, activity suggestions, and so on. Fred scrolled down and hit the next page. The headline of the first article at the top caught his attention:
COUPLE NEVER RETURNS FROM ‘MOST SECLUDED CABIN IN PA’
Fred scanned the preview of the article to make sure it was about the same cabin. It was.
“Holy shit…” Fred whisper-screamed because it was late at night and his parents were asleep in the next room. Before he could click the article open, his phone buzzed.
Noelle was calling.
Fred closed the laptop and picked the phone up. “Hey, what’s up?”
He crossed his fingers, hoping she wasn’t canceling on him.
“Hey, not much,” she said. “Sorry I called so late. I just can’t sleep.”
“That’s okay. Me neither,” Fred said, and chortled into the phone. He felt his face flare red with embarrassment. For some reason, he always found talking to girls on the phone more nerve-wracking than in real life.
“You guys still picking me up at eight?” she asked.
Fletcher had volunteered to drive his Jeep up to the cabin, and he was going to pick Fred and Noelle up before they swung over to meet with the rest of the group at Gav’s place. It didn’t make too much sense, considering they’d have to drive past the turnpike exit to get to Gavin’s neighborhood, but Gavin insisted on this and no one wanted to argue with him.
“Yeah,” Fred said. “I actually just got off the phone with Gav about it. We’re sticking to the plan, as of right now.”
Noelle laughed. “What does that mean?”
“Oh, I won’t be surprised if Gav doesn’t wake up before nine.” Fred let out a short chuckle, grateful that this one came out much more naturally than the last.
“Well, if anything changes, let me know. I’ll probably be up all night.”
“You have insomnia or something?”
He’d meant it as a joke, but Noelle’s response came out flat—suggesting it wasn’t her going along with the joke. “Hm, something like that, I guess.”
“Oh, shit. That…that sucks. Sorry.”
“It’s alright.” She laughed to try to lighten the mood.
“You excited about the camping trip?” Fred asked her, hoping a change of topic would erase his stupid blunder of a joke.
“Yeah. I haven’t been camping in a good while. Not since I went with my sister two years ago.”
Fred knew all about Noelle’s younger sister, and how she’d died in a car accident two winters ago. It was an accident that involved both of them that only Noelle survived. That was all he knew, but it was info enough to darken the mood of the phone call.
He swallowed, more nervous to talk to a girl on the phone than ever. “Well, hopefully you have fun on the trip.”
“I hope so too.” After a few seconds of silence, she added, “I’m sure I will.”
“I’ll try to make it fun for you.”
“Thanks,” she said, and then yawned.
“You should try to get some sleep,” he suggested.
“That’s probably a good idea,” she said. “See you tomorrow?”
“Bright and early,” Fred said, giving her an exaggerated groan. He was glad the conversation was out of delicate territory.
“Alright. Good night,” she said.
“Good night, Noelle.”
The call ended, and Fred immediately realized how exhausted he was. He locked his phone screen and shoved the laptop into the corner of his desk, then went to the bathroom to prepare to go to sleep. When he was done with that, he collapsed into bed and fell right asleep.
The article of the missing couple at Lakewood Cabin wouldn’t cross his mind again, not until he saw just how secluded the woods they were going into were.
Chapter 11
Noelle lied in the bed, wide awake. The last time she’d looked at the clock it was two AM. It’d been two hours since she spoke to Fred on the phone, and she hadn’t gotten even a wink of sleep.
The anxiety—it wasn’t insomnia as Fred Meyers had suggested—wouldn’t let her mind rest. She couldn’t stop thinking about Rachel. Noelle hadn’t meant to bring her up and make the conversation with Fred awkward, but her damn anxiety sometimes took over her mind. The tidbit about the last time she’d gone camping being with her little sister had flown out of her mouth before she realized she was saying it.
And
once it’d been out there, there was no taking it back.
Noelle turned to her side. It was a more comfortable position, but she still wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep.
Not until the anxiety ceased…but before that would happen, the hallucinations would have to begin and end.
They started fifteen minutes later.
Rachel was leaning by the window, the one with the blinds always open because Noelle enjoyed seeing the sunlight cutting through the room first thing in the morning. Rachel’s skin glowed, and Noelle wasn’t sure if it was from the streetlamp outside the house or a part of the hallucination.
Noelle was very much aware that it wasn’t her little sister in the room, and it wasn’t a ghost either. This was her mind tricking her into seeing a physical manifestation of the guilt she still held onto in the form of her sixteen-year-old sister—at least, that’s what the psychologist told her.
Just because she was aware of that, it didn’t make seeing Rachel feel any less real.
“About time you come to see me, again,” Noelle whispered, aware that if her parents heard her speaking to her hallucinations in the middle of the night, they would start to worry even more about her mental state.
Rachel looked away from the window, and Noelle almost jumped off the bed. The skin on the right side of her face was hanging off, revealing all the veins and tendons underneath it. The hallucinations always came with injuries—sometimes the ones her sister actually sustained during the accident, sometimes fictionalized. But by now, Noelle couldn’t remember which were which anymore.
“What? Do I have something on my face?” Rachel said. The part of her face that was intact smiled.
Noelle shook her head. “No, Rach. You look fine. You look beautiful.”
Rachel grabbed the edges of her beige dress and did a small curtsy. “Thanks. Remember this dress? It was yours.”
Tears filled Noelle’s eyes, but she was smiling. She nodded.
Of course she remembered. She’d let her sister wear the dress on her first day of high school after years of Rachel begging her to let her wear it to the mall. She was convinced that it would complement her skin well—and she’d been right. Even back then, Rachel was always the more fashionable of the two.
Rachel crossed the room and lied down on the bed next to Noelle, her good side up. She swiped a thin finger under Noelle’s eye to clear the tear away. “Don’t you have to be up early tomorrow?”
“I do. But, you’re here, and I miss you. I miss you every day, Rach.”
“I miss you too, but you’ll be miserable in the morning if you don’t get some sleep. Like that one time before school when we were fighting for the bathroom and you chucked a hairbrush at my face.” Rachel laughed. It was soft and almost-wheezy, just as it’d been in real life. The hallucinations got even that right.
“Didn’t you get a black eye from that?”
“Yep. You big jerk.” She laughed again.
“I don’t think I ever apologized for that.” Noelle’s eyes dropped down to the mattress.
“That’s okay.” Rachel put her hand on Noelle’s shoulder and guided her to lay down flat. “You don’t have to.”
“There’s so much…” Noelle was flat on her side again. “Rachel, there’s so much I should’ve said to you before…before the accident.”
“Don’t worry about it, Noelle. Everything’s fine.” Rachel touched her cheek. Her hand was soft and small. “Just sleep, okay, sister? Sleep, and everything will be A-Okay.”
“You promise?” Noelle asked, feeling like she was the younger sister.
Rachel nodded. “I promise.”
Noelle closed her eyes and said, “I love you, Rachel.”
She couldn’t hallucinate that her sister said it back to her, because a second later she was fast asleep.
Chapter 12
“Did you sleep on it?” Molly said, sitting down in a chair in front of Emeril.
They were in the hotel café, sitting by the window. A few of the people walking by on the sidewalk glanced a little too long at them as they tried to figure out what their relationship was. Some thought they were a father and daughter duo, while others probably thought Emeril was a rich old man who scored a much younger woman. Both were wrong of course, because they were nothing more than business partners.
Emeril closed his laptop and put it to the side. “I stayed up researching these Camp Slaughter rumors.”
“And?” Molly said, making a mental note of him not answering her question and to ask it again if he didn’t come around to it.
“There are others besides Mister Buckley who think the cannibal story might be true,” Emeril said.
“Okay, well, what’re you thinking, Emeril?”
He tapped his fingers on the table. The vibrations caused the black coffee in the mug in front of him to ripple. “I think we’ve got an even more interesting film on our hands than we thought.”
Molly leaned back in the chair, realizing for the first time what she’d been hoping his answer would’ve been. They’d started out venturing to this small Pennsylvania town thinking they were making a documentary about haunted woods, but after their meeting with Harold Buckley, even Molly, who was the skeptic in the pair, was thinking this was all too coincidental.
Something strange was indeed going on in the woods around here, evidenced by the pages of research Emeril had shown her when first proposing the idea for the movie. And if she had to gamble on the truth of the matter, she and Harold Buckley would be betting on the same horse.
The thought that they were going into some sort of cannibalistic deathtrap made her uneasy. It almost made her want to tell him they didn’t get paid enough for this shit (which was true) and walk away from the project, but she couldn’t do that to Emeril. They were business partners, and on some level even friends.
“You’re thinking something.” Emeril said, picking up on her discomfort.
“It’s just—well, the cannibal stuff. The ears, and all that. What if we’re just jumping onto a cannibal’s dinnerplate?”
Emeril smiled. “You have a way with words.”
“Seriously, Emeril.”
“I’m serious, too. You have a funny way with words.”
“Are you going to address what I said, or keep dodging?”
“Every movie we’ve done before took us somewhere dangerous. If Bigfoot didn’t get us in the Pacific Northwest, there were plenty of known predators that could’ve gotten us.”
“That’s different.”
“Why’s that?” Emeril challenged.
“Because the chances of Bigfoot ‘getting us’—to borrow your phrase—are nil. And the wild animals are a threat people have been dealing with for years.”
“You’re saying there’s a higher chance that the cannibal stuff is real than not.”
“I’m saying that cannibals have existed in human history, but humans haven’t been in contact with enough to know the proper way to fend them off.”
Emeril took in a deep breath. At the same time, he took his chauffeur hat off and wiped his brow with it. “Sometimes I forget you’re not a believer.”
That statement, coming from anyone else, would’ve made Molly laugh. “I’m just saying, Emeril, the danger seems more plausible out there than anywhere else we’ve investigated.”
“I understand,” Emeril said.
There was a pause between them. Emeril picked his coffee mug and took a sip to fill in the silence.
“So,” he said, swallowing the coffee. “You don’t want to do the movie?”
“I’ll do it,” Molly said. “I’m just airing out my concerns to you.”
“Sure. Feel free to anytime,” he said, nodding.
Molly felt like there was something he wanted to say but hadn’t yet. Or maybe wouldn’t say was the right way of putting it. Either way, she felt like there was a gap in the conversation that hadn’t been closed.
Emeril opened the laptop and made a circle over the trackpad wi
th his finger to wake it. “Besides the research, I’ve been communicating with our pal Harold Buckley.”
He turned the laptop to face Molly. Gmail was opened on the screen with a chain of emails between the two of them. The last message that Harold sent to Emeril was the one that caught her eye:
From: [email protected]
I’ve got some possible locations of where the camp is. Let me know if you’re interested. $150
“The idea is, if those pictures of the ear necklace are real, then the location of the campsite would lead us to the cannibal’s hideout.”
“Right,” Molly said. “But that’s quite a steep price he’s asking for. Especially if his maps lead us to nowhere.”
“Indeed,” Emeril said. “We’ll take it out of my royalties.”
Molly saw the gleam in Emeril’s eyes. The man wanted to find this cannibal hideout. All of the movies they’d made before turned out to be debunking the myths of the area, but this one he felt was a winner. Because somewhere deep down inside, maybe in the deepest recesses of his heart, Emeril didn’t believe in this paranormal stuff.
But this one… This one had a possibility. This was the Moby Dick he’d been chasing. If they could uncover some cannibal’s lair out there in the woods, all the time he’d spent chasing ghosts and aliens would be vindicated in one moment. This meant more to him than the $150 (or $250, counting what he’d paid Andy Cameron), which in the grand scheme of things wouldn’t mean anything if they found the cannibal hideout.
“Alright, Emeril,” Molly said, fidgeting in her seat. “Get the maps from him. Let’s find out what’s really out there.”
Chapter 13
Gavin was waiting for them at the front of the house when Fletcher pulled the Jeep up to the curb of the cul-de-sac. He had an expression like someone had just thrown sweaty socks at his face.
“What’s wrong with you?” Fred asked through the open passenger window.
“Got bad news,” Gavin said, shaking his head.
There was a collective sense of worry from the three kids in the vehicle, thinking it had something to do with the cabin rental and their trip was off.
