The Cabin

by Matt Shaw

  Right from when I could first remember, Ava had been fussy with her food, the last thing we needed was for her to be scared off meat just because her sister was trying to impress some lad she had only just met in class.

  “Did you want to get something else?” I reached into my pocket and pulled my wallet out. Jamie shook her head and started to eat her fries. I’m not entirely sure whether the fries are suitable for vegetarians but considering this is most likely, as Susan would put it, a phase - I’ll keep quiet. “How’s the chicken wrap?” I asked Susan. I don’t know why I asked her, I could tell by the expression on her face she wasn’t enjoying it.

  “It’s good,” she lied. “Thank you for insisting we stopped here. I can’t believe I nearly missed out on experiencing this.”

  Ooh, she nearly has the sarcasm as pinned down as I have. A little more practice and she might even be just as good as me.

  “See I take you to all the best places,” I said. I flashed her a smile after ensuring my teeth were suitably coated in the various sauces found in my burger.

  “Daddy!” laughed Ava.

  “What?”

  Susan gave me a playful slap on the arm and laughed, “You’re a dick!”

  “Language!” I whispered. I have to confess it felt good to tell her off as opposed to the other way round. I wonder if she gets as much joy when she has a go at me for my occasional foul-mouthed slip up.

  “Well at least your mood has improved,” Susan pointed out.

  Jamie stood up and moved out from behind the table.

  “Where are you going?” asked Susan.

  “The bathroom. That okay?”

  “Take your sister, please.” Susan ignored Jamie’s rolling of the eyes expression and turned to Ava, “Go with your sister.” She slid herself away from the table’s bench, so Ava could get out, and sat back down again.

  Just the two of us.

  “I’m glad your daughter has stopped whining,” I said.

  “Ava?”

  I nodded. “I’m not sure I could have taken that all day.”

  “Last I checked she was our daughter...”

  “No, she’s our daughter when she’s being good and your daughter when she’s being bad. She falls into the latter of the categories when she’s whining.”

  “She was just hungry. She didn’t eat much for breakfast. You seem better now,” Susan pointed out.

  “Was just the traffic. Wound me up. Listen, I’m sorry if I’ve been a dick recently. It’s just I’ve had a lot on my plate. My agent is rushing me to get this novel to them and...Well...I’m struggling to be honest. That’s why I wanted a quiet weekend down the cabin.”

  “It’ll do us all good to get out of the house for the weekend,” she said. She still didn’t take the subtle hint I wanted a quiet weekend down the cabin. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.

  A sweet gesture but an empty one as there was nothing she could do. Well nothing other than stay at home and that ship had sailed already.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I’ll figure it out. I have a good feeling about this weekend.”

  Susan smiled and took another bite of her chicken wrap. Her smile faded when she noticed a hair sticking out of the wrap’s salad.

  “See,” I said, “that could have been in my burger. I definitely have a good feeling about this weekend,” I laughed. Susan flashed me one of her speciality ‘angry’ looks as she hooked the hair from between the lettuce leaves and placed it on the side of the tray. I pushed Jamie’s nuggets towards her, “I don’t think Jamie’s going to be eating them,” I said, “not now she’s a vegetarian...”

  Susan pushed the nuggets away from her, clearly put off by the stray hair nestled in her wrap, “It’s just a phase...”

  2.

  “This is your fault,” Susan helpfully pointed out. She was referring to the bumper to bumper traffic we were sat in. “You jinxed us when you said you had a good feeling about this weekend.

  “Are we nearly there yet?” asked Ava.

  “I can’t even see why you want to come up here anyway, we could have gone to the coast. What’s so special about this cabin anyway?” Great, even Jamie was starting too.

  “The coast? I thought you people burn up in direct sunlight?” I snapped back. In the rear-view mirror I saw Jamie pull a face.

  “You’ve got such a lovely face,” Susan turned to talk to Jamie, “why do you have to hide it behind all that make-up?”

  “I’m in mourning for my lost childhood,” retorted Jamie. Credit where credit was due, that was a good comeback; quick, witty and remarkably inoffensive by her usual standards although I’m not entirely sure whether it’s from a film or not.

  Susan ignored her and turned back to me, “Why don’t you come off the highway? It might be easier taking the other route.”

  “Did you want to drive?” I snapped. The traffic was getting to me again and the damned air conditioning was broken. Too much pollution and noise, outside, to want to have a window open.

  “I’ll drive!” said Jamie with a flash of the excitable girl she used to be.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. Might as well kill off the excitable little girl once more, I’ve grown fond of my truck and don’t need her crashing it! Besides which, I’m getting used to the black ‘mourning’ make-up she seems to favor. I’d probably die of shock now if she were to come downstairs with normal make-up on.

  “When are you getting to let me drive?” she moaned. “You’re so unfair!”

  Ah, I wondered when we’d get the ‘so unfair’ whinge from her. I had my money on actually being in Brattleboro before we heard it. I guess I just lost that bet. Thankfully she didn’t continue with listing the ways in which her mother and I were so cruel to her, like she normally does, instead she just sat back and continued staring out of the window at all the lucky people who have been allowed to drive.

  “Are we nearly there yet?” asked Ava once more.

  “Soon, baby,” said Susan.

  Why does she always insist on calling her ‘baby’? It’s no wonder she seems to be maturing slower than the rest of the kids in her class; the poor kid is probably confused. Mum calls her a baby so she continues to act like one.

  “I’m boreeeeed!” she whinged.

  “Shut up moaning!” Jamie snapped.

  “You shut up!”

  “You!”

  “BOTH OF YOU SHUT UP!” I snapped.

  “Honey...” said Susan with her typical disapproving tone.

  “What is up with this fucking traffic today? It’s not even rush hour yet! If we hadn’t stopped for McDonalds...”

  “...We’d be sat in traffic somewhere else. I’m sure it will start moving soon.”

  “Well I’m glad you’re so sure,” I said.

  True enough we did start moving. Not to a speed which could be considered ‘decent’ but I’d take what was offered. At least we were moving.

  “We still could have gone to the beach. We would have been there by now.”

  “Your father wants to visit his cabin,” said Susan.

  “I just don’t see what’s so special about a cabin.”

  “Tell them,” Susan urged.

  “They’ll just think it’s stupid.”

  “What’s stupid?” asked Jamie.

  “His dad used to take him to this cabin every summer. It just used to be the two of them for the whole weekend...”

  I cut her short, “It was nice.”

  I used to love the trips away with my father. Whenever he was at home he was always highly strung fretting about the state of the business and finances; worrying I had what I needed for my education and that mum was able to keep the cupboards stocked with decent food. When I was younger I never understood why he was always in a bad mood. I remember constantly feeling the need to tread on egg shells around him; tip-toe so as not to cause him to get angry. It was different when he took me away. It was almost as though our father and son holidays were his way of
apologizing to me for his moods. Just him and me. For those three days, sometimes four, he left all of his worries and stresses at home or in his office.

  I hadn’t been to the cabin for years. In fact I think I had only managed to get there once since Jamie was born, and that was when I needed to finish my first horror novel, ‘The Spider’s Web’. The first piece of many works I had written which was picked up by a literary agent; the book which finally got me a decent publishing deal and afforded us the luxury of moving to a better neighborhood. Every year I promised myself a trip out there to make sure everything was okay but every year there was another reason why I couldn’t go. It’s stupid, really, considering it’s only four hours away from my home.

  “Does it at least have a shower?” asked Jamie.

  “Yes, Jamie, it has a shower,” I said. At least it did the last time I was there. God only knows what state the place is in now. For all I know, we could end up checking into a bed and breakfast. I hope not. That won’t exactly help my writing; the real reason I’m even going to the cabin in the first place!

  “Is there a play area?” asked Ava.

  “There’s a nice Princess Tower you can visit,” I said.

  “Craig! Don’t!” Susan barked.

  “What? I didn’t do anything!”

  “You know what,” she said with a stern look on her face.

  “Jamie would love it there...I bet you anything.”

  “Love what?” she asked from the back of the car still trying to sound uninterested.

  “The cabin is a short walk away from a large, stone tower. It was built by patients of the Vermont Asylum in the late eighteen hundreds...”

  “So?”

  “Craig, they don’t need to hear this.”

  “At the time doctors believed hard labor could help patients regain some of their stability so some of them were made to build it as a nice, scenic overlook of the Asylum grounds. Rumor has it that, in the years following it’s construction, a number of patients threw themselves off of the top of the tower onto the rocks below. But, you know, you get those kind of stories at most derelict constructions. The thing, with this one, is that hundreds of people have reported seeing an airborne human-like form at the top of the tower which just suddenly disappeared into thin air and other people have come forward to speak of seeing ghostly shadows in the woods...All pretty creepy.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Jamie!” Susan snapped.

  “What? That’s bullshit! Clearly!”

  I gave Jamie a quick look in the rear-view mirror and her expression gave a different story to the false bravado in her outburst. She looked nervous.

  “It’s fine,” I said to Susan. I looked back to Jamie in the rear-view mirror again, “I said the same thing to my dad when he told me the story but then...ah, forget it. You’d just think I was stupid.”

  “No. What?” she asked. A clear look of nervousness on her face.

  “Well...It’s just that...When we were at the cabin..I’d hear strange noises during the night...Like someone was walking around outside. I remember waking my dad up, to tell him, but he didn’t believe me. Not until he heard it too; footsteps walking along the wooden porch which lined the front of the building. They passed right by his bedroom window and stopped at the front door. We both heard them, clear as day. I remember there was the briefest of pauses before a loud knocking on the front door...” I knocked on the truck’s dash four times for added drama. “Dad told me to wait in his room whilst he went and opened the door, to see who it was, but he said there was no-one there. He just heard the loudest, most blood-curdling scream he had ever heard. He said it was as though whoever was doing it was stood directly in front of him yet there was no one. Scared the life out of him - and me when he told me. The next day he asked in town if anyone had experienced this and people got pretty nervous. Eventually we found out that, anyone who had heard the scream...A year later they were dead. And, as you know, a year later my dad had a massive heart attack and died.”

  “Is that what really happened?” asked Jamie.

  “Of course it is! I’m hardly likely to make something up about my dad, am I? Actually that tower I told you about...There’s a nice walk we can do which let’s us see it. Can head out there in the morning, if you want. See if we can see any shapes falling from the top.”

  Jamie didn’t say anything unlike Susan who, unsurprisingly, wasn’t impressed with my story, “That’s really nice! When the girls have nightmares tonight, you can go and sit with them and I’ll be the one staying in bed.”

  “And good news, kids, we’re now officially in Vermont! Not too much longer now!” I said as we passed a road sign for Windham County.

  “Can we see the Princess Tower too, daddy?”

  “Sure, sweetie,” I said.

  * * * * *

  I nudged Susan awake after I had stopped the truck, on the side of the road, next to the store. I’ve never known a passenger to fall asleep as much as her.

  “Are we there?” she asked; her voice still sleepy.

  “Hey! No. Not yet. Nearly.” I whispered, “I’m getting some supplies. Did you need anything?”

  “What are you getting?”

  “I don’t know yet. Probably just bread, milk, juice, potato chips, toilet paper...That kind of thing. Anything you can think of?”

  “Not off the top of my head,” she said. “Can always pop down in the morning?”

  “Okay. Sure there’s nothing you can think of now?”

  She shook her head again and closed her eyes, keen to get back to whatever dream she must have been enjoying. “Don’t be too long, okay?”

  I nodded, not that she saw, “The girls are with me,” I said. Had Susan paid attention, when I woke her up, she would have noticed they were already waiting for me outside. Susan didn’t answer back.

  I climbed from the car and noticed Jamie and Ava were chatting to some kids to the side of the store. Kids? Not kids. They look older than Jamie. Six of them in total, five lads and a girl. The eldest looking one standing uncomfortably close to Jamie. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to even if I could.

  “Jamie! Ava!” I called out. “Come on.” Ava came running over to me. She was excited to go into the store, no doubt, because she wanted to choose a chocolate bar. “Jamie!” I called again. I stopped by the store’s entrance and waited for her.

  “Dad, I’m chatting to some friends! I’ll be in a minute!”

  “Come on, Jamie, you don’t even know them!”

  “Be cool, dad, we go to the same school!” shouted the eldest of the group. “We’re in the same class.”

  “Oh, really, and what school is it you all go to?” I asked.

  “Dad, you’re embarrassing me!”

  I shook my head disapprovingly and walked into the store with Ava, who was practically dragging me in by my jacket anyway. Jamie’s big enough to make her own mistakes and it’s not as though I’m going to be very long.

  “Hi.” I greeted the shopkeeper, a podgy old man with white hair and a bushy white beard, as I walked past him towards the first aisle. It was quite weird seeing him, the last time I saw him he had jet black hair. He looked a lot slimmer back then too. The years have been unkind. Probably best if I don’t mention it. He looked at me the same way most small town shopkeepers look at strangers - a look of suspicion on his face. Obviously he doesn’t recognize me.

  “Help you with anything?” he asked.

  “I’m good thanks,” I replied as I continued into the first aisle where Ava was waiting, “just getting some supplies...”

  “Supplies?”

  “Staying at my old man’s cabin down the road from here,” I called back. “Just for a weekend with the family.”

  “Well the weather’s on your side,” he said.

  Ava ran over to me with a packet of toilet roll, “That one?”

  “It’ll do...Now see if you can find us some bread.” Ava smiled
and ran off down the aisle before disappearing around the corner.

  “You can put everything on the counter if you want; I’ll ring it through and bag it,” offered the old man. I wish I could remember his name. My dad used to chat to him for ages whilst I waited outside, kicking stones around impatiently. Although, when I was growing up, there weren’t as many idiots hanging around out there.