The Cabin in the Woods

by Tim Lebbon

  •••

  Something was hammering at the door, and Sitterson knew it would soon be inside. Hinges squealed. Metal bent.

  Emergency power flicked on, and the lighting was low-level, most of the power being fed into life support. Ha! That phrase had flashed across Sitterson’s main computer screen and he’d choked on laughter. Life support!

  Truman stood his ground, gun in one hand and his microphone in the other, and Sitterson had to admire the guy’s persistence as he tried to call in reinforcements. Didn’t he see the fucking screens? he thought. But in a way he was jealous of Truman’s defense mechanism. Holding onto routine, and order, and procedure... they were insulating him against the terrible truth. That things had fallen apart, and their true descent had only just begun.

  The three large screens flashed to life again, and carnage appeared intermittently across them, images changing every few seconds and virtually all of them displaying something ghastly...

  A clown skipped and leapt toward a barricade behind which several guards hunkered down, firing again and again into the advancing thing. Bullet after bullet struck it, but its baggy clown’s trousers and tent-like shirt seemed to absorb the projectiles. When a few rounds took it in the face its head flipped back, but then its make-up seemed to flow as the holes disappeared and its gleeful, horrendous grin reappeared. It carried a large curved blade in one hand, but the image flashed away before Sitterson saw the blade put to use.

  “The door’s going to give!” Truman said.

  “Go get me a coffee!” Hadley called, his laughter high and desperate.

  A unicorn gored a scientist against a wall, its horn probing through his stomach and chest, grinding, tearing, and his spurting blood painted its gorgeous flowing mane red.

  “We’re fucked,” Lin said. There was a time not too long ago when Sitterson had intended doing just that to her, yes. He considered going to her and holding her now, but that would have seemed just foolish.

  A werewolf fell on a woman, dragging her down beneath a camera’s eye and standing again with blood and flesh across its face and the woman’s tattered scalp in one giant paw.

  “Top hinge has gone,” Truman said.

  “How many magazines you got?” Sitterson asked.

  “The regulation three.”

  Of course. The regulation three. Not like Truman to hide a few more around his person, was it? A grenade, perhaps? A secret nuke?

  A group of goblins drove one of the complex’s golf carts along a narrow corridor, running people down and reversing over them, aiming for their heads, bursting them, then stirring their extended fingers in the resultant mess before driving on, cackling gleefully and giving the camera the slimy finger.

  “Hey!” Hadley said, pointing at the main screen. Anna Patience Buckner emerged from an elevator into the bloodstained lobby.

  “Well, why should she miss out on the party?” Sitterson muttered. The mystery of how she’d found her way down from the surface really did not matter now.

  The door bent inward, and smoke started pouring into Control.

  “Time to go,” Sitterson said quietly. He nudged Lin and pointed at the carpet beneath his desk, which he pulled up to reveal a code-locked trapdoor.

  “But—” she said, nodding at Truman.

  “He’ll buy us time,” Sitterson said. Hadley joined them, a submachine gun nursed in the crook of his arm.

  “Where did you—?” Lin began.

  “Personal life insurance.” His voice was high-pitched and uncertain.

  “Just make sure I have time to open this fucking thing,” Sitterson said. “Oh look, the scarecrows are here.”

  Truman was firing into the face of a straw man who was climbing through a wrenched gap between door and frame. The bullets passed through the scarecrow’s head without any effect, and he lashed out with long bladed fingers, catching the soldier across the forearm. Truman cursed and stepped back, firing again at the creature’s chest. More climbed in after him, four in all, and as the soldier changed magazines one of them bit into his left bicep.

  He screeched and tore his arm away, losing a good weight of muscles and flesh in the process.

  Hadley let rip with the machine gun. A scarecrow danced and jittered as the bullets ripped through him, writhing like a marionette. then laughed and advanced on the shooter.

  “Our monsters have a fucking sense of humor?” he shouted. “Since when? I didn’t know about this!” He fired some more, concentrating on the scarecrow’s legs and amputating one at the thigh. It fell over and started to crawl.

  “I need ten more seconds!” Sitterson said.

  “Running out of time!” Hadley snapped back.

  “It’s on emergency lockdown! I’m bypassing...”

  “Come on, come on!” Lin said, pressing herself against his side, breasts squashed against his arm. He glanced at her and saw that her hair band had come loose, hair spilling over her right shoulder.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, “you’re gorgeous!”

  “Oh,” Hadley said from somewhere behind him. “Right. Grenade.”

  Sitterson glanced back at the melee by the broken main door. Truman had dropped his gun and was batting at the scarecrows as they sliced and bit him, and in his right hand he held a small black object. He bit away the pin and held it up.

  “Son of a bitch,” Sitterson mumbled, “that’s against regulations.” The grenade exploded.

  He sprawled across the trapdoor, Lin spilling from his back and crying out as she struck the console.

  Burning straw started to drift down around them and Lin looked past him at his desk.

  “Hadley!” she shouted.

  “What?” Sitterson snapped.

  “Blast... blew him over...” She stood, shaking her head as blood leaked from her left ear. Burning straw landed in her hair and she waved it absently away.

  Sitterson stood and leaned over his ruined console, resting his hand in something that had once been part of Truman. Down in the main control area, smoke drifted as the main door fell open, and Hadley was crawling slowly for the stairs back up to Control.

  But something followed him. Something dark, swimming through the smoke as if passing through water, a fin breaking the surface, black hair visible here and there, black eyes, its wet black mouth opening wide, and Sitterson knew what was to come. If it hadn’t been so ridiculous he might even have laughed.

  The merman closed on Hadley and turned him over, placing a huge webbed hand around his throat.

  “Oh, come on!” Hadley said, and the creature bit off his face.

  Hadley’s gone, Sitterson thought, falling to his knees and turning back to the trapdoor. “Steve’s gone.”

  “So will we be if—” Lin said, and then the trapdoor gave an electronic buzz and its red-lit panel showed green. “Got it!” he swung the heavy trapdoor open and turned to Lin with a grin, about to say, Ladies first.

  A tentacle appeared from the gloom and wrapped around her throat, constricting so quickly and powerfully that her tongue protruded, eyes bulged, and she spat blood as she was whipped back out of view. Sitterson fell sideways into the hole, hands around his head to lessen the impact.

  He landed in a small chamber and stood quickly, reaching up to close the trapdoor, expecting something to fall on him at any moment and go about destroying him. We were so close, he thought, and he actually felt tears welling as he swung the trapdoor shut and locked it from within.

  Maybe he was the last one left. Control was gone, the whole complex was infested, but the Virgin and the Fool might yet be alive.

  “I can stop all this,” he whispered. The chance was minimal but it was still there. And he had nothing left to do.

  To his right, a ladder led through a hole in the floor. It would take him down into the deep corridors, into places he had been watching on the screens as they crawled with monsters and impossibilities. But he had no alternative. He had to find the Fool and kill him, before he himself was killed.<
br />
  He lifted the pendant from within his shirt and kissed it. Perhaps they would view this as their greatest entertainment, and he would be lauded. But he shook his head as such foolishness. Nothing about him mattered. Whatever the outcome, things had changed beyond redemption. Even if he did manage to reverse the situation, there would be a whole new set of rules and demands after this.

  He began his descent, sliding down four long, staggered ladders before landing in a tunnel. To his left it disappeared into the gloom, and somewhere down there he saw shadows flexing and heard things feeding. So he took off his shoes and turned right, padding softly to a corner and sweeping quickly around, thinking what he would do when he saw—

  The Virgin. He ran right into her, and she set a fire in his stomach. He looked down at her hands. They were wrapped around the hilt of Judah’s blade.

  “I...” she said. “I’m sorry...

  Behind her, the Fool stood aghast. They were both covered in blood, their own and others, and the boy was badly wounded. Sitterson couldn’t help feeling some measure of respect for their bravery

  But this had never been about bravery.

  “Please... kill him...” he said to the girl, nodding at Marty as he felt his knees giving way. “Please!” The pain possessed him, stealing his sight and smell and leaving him only with hearing as the darkness came for him. He fell, the blade still protruding from his stomach.

  Could have been worse, he thought. The kids’ panicked breathing faded away, even though he was sure they still stood over him.

  Yeah... I could have died a whole lot worse.

  TWELVE

  He grabbed the pendant around his neck before he died.

  Dana bent to the dead man and turned his hand so she could see it. A weird, five-pronged thing, it stirred something in her that she couldn’t quite understand.

  “Come on!” Marty said.

  Dana looked down at the knife still in the guy’s stomach. She’d done that. However accidental, it was her hands on the knife when it had gone in. She closed her eyes but felt no shame.

  I should, she thought. I should feel—

  “Hey! We have to find a way out before everything else finds a way in.” Marty touched her arm but she couldn’t take her eyes from the dead man’s face. He looked almost relieved.

  Dead puppeteer, she thought.

  “Dana!”

  She looked up at him and nodded, and they started again along the tunnel. They passed a ladder that led up, but there were sounds coming from there that they had no wish to put a name to. Further along the tunnel lay the remains of a dead woman. Parts of her had been eaten and then apparently regurgitated, and in the six globs of chewed material small shapes squirmed, busy gathering bloody flesh to their infantile mouths.

  The route curved down and to the left, sometimes with rough steps carved into the floor. Other times they had to hold each other to prevent themselves from slipping on the slick, smooth rock. They were far from the metal-lined corridors now, but there was still a string of bare bulbs dangling from the rough stone ceiling.

  We’re going deeper, that’s all, Dana thought, and she felt the weight of the world around her. There was no sense that they were escaping the complex they had entered, only that it was changing. They no longer heard the sounds of monsters running and people dying, but in some ways what replaced that was worse.

  The air around them was a held breath.

  The ground shook again, a single violent shrug. Dana slipped and fell on her side, bringing Marty down with her. He landed on his back and cried out, and she noticed just how much he was still bleeding. He looked pale.

  “None of us deserved this,” she said, and Marty only shrugged.

  “Only the good die young.”

  “Are you good Marty?”

  “Yeah,” he said, frowning slightly, then nodding firmer. “Yeah, I think so. And so are you.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “I know you well enough.” His face softened, and she could almost have loved him then. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s see what we can find.”

  They went deeper, and at the end of the rocky tunnel was a heavy wooden door.

  We don’t want to go through there, Dana thought, but Marty started trying to turn the handle. It moved a little both ways, but he groaned as his wounds pained him.

  “Here,” he said, handing her the gun. She took it. It was warm from his grip. She hated guns and had never held one before, but she remembered the mutant he’d shot, and knew that they’d be dead without it.

  “Let me,” she said, but Marty grunted with effort.

  “Nah. Got it.” The handle slipped and something in the door rumbled and clicked, and Marty tugged it open.

  A breath of air washed out over them, warm and damp and stinking of something she could not identify. Something living, she thought, but that wasn’t quite right. It had the scent of potential; of something not quite living, whether that meant newly dead or yet to be born. She shook her head. Weird thoughts.

  And Marty took her hand and led her inside.

  They passed through another tunnel and descended a dozen deep steps, emerging into a stone chamber thirty feet across and seemingly without a ceiling. Darkness hung heavy above them, and the chamber was lit by five large flaming torches fixed equidistant around the walls.

  Dana gasped.

  “This is somewhere we should never see,” she whispered.

  “Yeah,” Marty said. “I feel the same. But check the freaky stonework.” Below each torch was a large stone slab, free-standing, maybe twelve feet square and inlaid with intricate carvings. The etchings of four slabs glittered with reflected light, and Dana identified at least part of the scent that troubled her: blood. They paused in the center of the chamber and she turned a full circle, and as she saw each carved stone a sickening dread settled deeper over her.

  “Oh, and...” Marty said, nodding down. “Look familiar?”

  It did. Inlaid into the floor in different colored stone was a representation of the five-armed pendant. The guy she’d stabbed had made an effort to grab that before he died, and she’d seen the tension on his face as he willed himself to remain alive long enough to hold it in his hand. It had eased him into death, that pendant, and now they were standing at the place on the floor where the five arms merged.

  Each arm pointed at one carved slab, and each slab was lit by a burning torch. But Dana knew that this chamber was more than just a place for display

  It was much more important than that.

  “Oh, suddenly I feel a bit seasick,” Marty said, glancing over his shoulder. “Look, back where we came in.”

  At the bottom of the stone staircase they’d crossed a small bridge that spanned a space maybe four feet across, and that space circled the rest of the chamber. Even behind the upright slabs there seemed to be no connection between the floor and the walls.

  “I’m liking this less and less,” Dana said, edging over and peering down into the void. The flaming torches lit the rough rock wall a little way down, but beyond that was deep, heavy darkness. It looked solid, almost as if she could fall in and it would ease her fall, holding her suspended like a cartoon cloud in a kid’s imagination.

  She closed her eyes, swayed, and stumbled a few steps back.

  “Deep?” Marty asked.

  “Can’t see the bottom,” she said. “But there seemed to be something...”

  “Don’t tell me,” he said.

  “Something moving down there.”

  “Okay. That’s it. I officially want to cut this vacation short.”

  “I don’t think we ever could have, even if we’d wanted to.” She turned a slow circle again.

  “No way out,” Marty said.

  “Look at these. Five of them.”

  “Weird. What are they?”

  “Us,” Dana said. “I should’ve seen it like you did. All of this: the old guy at the gas station, the out-of-control behavior, the monsters... this is
part of a ritual.” “A ritual sacrifice? Great! You tie someone to a stone, get a fancy dagger and a bunch a robes. It’s not that complicated!”

  “No, it’s simple. They don’t just wanna see us killed. They want to see us punished.”

  “Punished for what?” Marty asked, and then there was movement on the stairs. Dana gasped and raised the gun, wondering what monstrosity they’d see coming through... demon or zombie, alien or mutant.

  “For being young?” the woman said. She was tall and elegant, calm and reserved. She might have been beautiful, but Dana sensed a pressure of responsibility on her shoulders that seemed to crush her sense of self. She was like a mannequin given life, her beauty a suggestion rather than something she carried well. “Who’re you?” Marty asked.

  “The Director,” Dana said, answering for her. “It’s you we heard over the speakers.”

  The Director nodded affirmation, then continued. “It’s different for every culture. And it changes over the years, but it’s very specific. There must be at least five.” She pointed to one of the slabs, the blood-filled carving showing a woman standing erect, holding open her robe to reveal her nakedness. “The Whore.”

  “That word...” Dana muttered, remembering the way the spooky gas station guy had muttered it when he looked at Jules.

  “She is corrupted, and she dies first.” She pointed to the other slabs one by one, naming them. “The Athlete. The Scholar. The Fool. All suffer and die, at the hands of the horror they have raised. Leaving the last, to live or die as fate decides.” She pointed at the last slab, and this one looked different, the etching there not so defined.

  Unmarked by blood, Dana realized.

  “The Virgin.”

  “Me?” Dana snorted. “Virgin?”

  “Dude, she’s a home-wrecker!” Marty said.

  “We work with what we have,” the Director said, shrugging. “It’s symbolism that’s important, never truth.”