The Cabin at the End of the World_A Novel

by Paul Tremblay

  Their progress through the common room is slow and spasmodic. Andrew and Eric continue to unleash a torrent of questions and pleas for Wen to respond. She tries to keep a tally in her head but they are talking too fast and she can’t possibly keep up, and even if she could, she’d be attempting to answer their questions for days and days.

  Wen tries her best, anyway. She speaks in clear and clipped sentences.

  “I don’t know who they are.

  Go look out the windows.

  He says they want to talk.

  There are four of them.

  The big one is named Leonard.

  He is very nice but started saying weird things.

  He said we have to help save the world.

  There isn’t any car.

  I think they walked here.

  They’re all sort of dressed the same.

  Jeans and same kind of shirts but different colors.

  I don’t know.

  They didn’t say anything to me.

  Only Leonard.

  He said we had to choose something.

  It sounded like something bad.

  The others are carrying big and scary-looking tools.

  Like scythes but not scythes.

  I don’t know.

  They look homemade.”

  Her dads want to know more about the scary-looking tools. Wen hears her own words as a dull hum coming from some faraway place, as though she’s outside of herself but not inside the cabin, and she’s confused and thinking maybe she imagined their questions and imagined coming to get them and instead she’s still standing out on the front lawn, frozen in place, spotlighted by the sun, and the strangers with the awful things they carry are there and walking toward her.

  Someone knocks on the front door. Seven knocks (Wen counts them); quiet, polite, and in rhythm. Leonard said seven wasn’t always lucky.

  Andrew and Eric split and flank the front door. Wen stays back, hovering near the table and the invisible line between the common room and the kitchen. Sunlight, relentless and unforgiving, pours through the glass slider behind her. She curls her thumbs inside her fists and squeezes them, a nervous tick that has replaced chewing her hair. Two of her teachers at Chinese school have caught her doing the fist-thumb-squeeze in recent weeks and after her reassignment from what school calls the emerging group to the basics classes where most of the other students are a year or two younger than she is. When Laoshi Quang, her Pinyin and grammar teacher, saw Wen’s thumbs inside her fists, she smiled and gently unfolded Wen’s hands without breaking from the writing lesson. Her history/culture teacher, Mr. Robert Lu (he lets all the younger kids call him Mr. Bob), asked if Wen was nervous and then told her a silly knock-knock joke so bad it was funny. Mr. Bob is nice but he also makes her want to cry; he’s so nice he makes her feel guilty. Wen wants to stop going to the Chinese school. The work is difficult. She isn’t picking up on the spoken words and written characters as quickly as the other students, almost all of whom have parents who are Chinese. She does not practice speaking nor does she do all her homework during the week. Wen can’t articulate the following but she harbors an inchoate anger at her biological parents for giving her up, and she’s angry at the country China itself that it is a place in which her parents would be allowed/forced to give her up. She also spends much of her class time daydreaming about all the fun Saturday things her regular-school friends get to do without her.

  From outside: “Hey, hello. My name is Leonard. I’m here with some friends of mine. Hello, in there?” His voice is muffled by the front door but clear.

  Andrew whispers to Eric, “Tell him to go away nicely. Probably just some religious freaks, right? Saving the world one pamphlet at a time.”

  Eric whispers back, “Probably. Probably. But Wen said they were carrying weird tools, something like . . . scythes, right?” He looks back at Wen and she nods her head.

  “Christ . . .” Andrew pulls his cell phone out of his pocket, turns it on, and then puts it back in his pocket.

  Wen wants to remind him cell phones don’t work out here and didn’t work when he tried to look up scythes yesterday. Her dads chose this place because there would be no Wi-Fi or cell reception so they could unplug and it would just be the three of them hanging out, swimming, talking, playing cards or board games without any digital distractions. Andrew said that it would be almost like camping, with a cabin instead of a tent. Wen wasn’t convinced of the merits of being unplugged, but she pretended to be excited about cabin-camping. Her phone is stashed in one of the wooden drawers beneath her bunk bed. She snapped pictures of the lake, the wooden ceiling beams she’d give anything to climb on/walk across, and her bunk bed when they arrived, but she hasn’t taken out her phone since. She isn’t sure why Daddy Andrew has his with him and so readily available in his pocket. Has he been using it when he wasn’t supposed to be? Were they lying about no Wi-Fi or cell service?

  Andrew sneaks up to one of the front windows on the left of the door, peels back a corner of the curtain, and looks outside. He reaches up and gently shuts the window and latches it. He whispers, “The guy on the front stairs is frigging huge.”

  Eric is practically spinning in place in front of the door. He finally says, “Hello. Hi, Leonard. We—”

  Leonard interrupts. “Are you Daddy Andrew or Daddy Eric? I met your delightful daughter, Wen, already. She’s so smart, thoughtful, kind. You should be very proud.”

  Andrew pulls his phone out again, checks it, swears, and stuffs it back in his pocket like he’s mad at it. He crouches, his face almost touching the window glass in the lower right corner. He says, “There are more people on his left, I think. Can’t really get a good look at them.”

  Eric, still in front of the door, is turned so he’s facing Andrew. He has his arms down by his side and he leans to his right until his ear is only inches from the door. “This is Eric. Is there something we can help you with? We weren’t expecting any visitors. I don’t want to sound rude, but we’d rather be left alone.”

  Leonard says, “I know, and I am sorry to intrude on your vacation. Such a beautiful spot, too. Never been to this lake before. Believe me, up until a few days ago, the four of us, we never thought we’d be here at this lake. The four of us never thought we’d be here to talk to you nice people. But we do need to talk with you, Eric, and with Andrew, and Wen, too. It’s vital that we talk. I cannot stress that enough. I know you have no reason to, but you must trust me. I’m pretty sure Wen trusts me. I get the sense she’s a very good judge of character.”

  Eric looks back at Wen and his expression is blank, unreadable, but she wonders if he’s blaming her for all this somehow. Maybe this, whatever this is going to be, is her fault because instead of running inside as soon as Leonard and his big friendly smile showed up, she stayed and talked to him. She talked to a stranger when she wasn’t supposed to and anything that happens after that is because of her.

  Eric says, “We’re talking now, Leonard, and we’re listening. What do you want?”

  Andrew, his face still in the window, scuttles over to Eric and whisper-talks some more, but Wen thinks he’s plenty loud enough for Leonard to hear through the door. “There’s a woman carrying something; looks like a hoe and shovel mixed together. Why the fuck is she carrying that?”

  Eric asks through the door, “Who else is out there with you?”

  Leonard says, “My friends Sabrina, Adriane, and Redmond. The four of us are here because we’re trying to help save—save a whole bunch of people. But we need your help to do that. Help isn’t even the right word. We can’t do anything to help anyone without you. Please believe me. Would you mind letting us in? We just want to talk, tell you more, explain, and speaking through the door is making a difficult conversation near impossible—”

  As Leonard continues his filibuster, Eric slinks from the front door to the window on its right. He peels back a dusty lace curtain with two fingers, opening enough space for sunlight to shine on his forehead. Af
ter a brief look, he hisses and jumps back and away from the window. “What are they carrying? What are those things?”

  Andrew swaps windows for the new view. Eric returns to the front door, facing it, staring at the wood. His hands are on the top of his head as though he’s trying to keep it from flying away from his body.

  Andrew is past being subtle with his peering out the window. He throws the curtain over his head. He leaks a terrified groan, a sound that turns Wen’s knees into rubber bands and shakes the foundation of her once permanent state of belief that she is safe whenever she is with her dads.

  Wen says, “I’m sorry . . .” under her breath. She can’t explain why she is sorry, but she is.

  Andrew slams the window shut, locks it, then staggers behind Eric and looks around the cabin with eyes as wide and deep as wells.

  Eric asks, “What are they carrying? Could you see? Why are they here?”

  Andrew says, “I—I don’t know, but we’re not waiting around. I’m calling the police. Now.”

  “How long will it take for them to get out here?”

  Andrew doesn’t answer and jogs through the room and to the beige landline phone hanging on the wooden frame outline of the kitchen, adjacent to the fridge.

  Wen climbs into the love seat and crouches so that only her head floats over its back. She says to Eric, “Tell them to go away again. Please make them go away.”

  Eric nods at Wen and says loudly to the four outside, “Listen, I’m sure you’re all very nice, but we’re not comfortable letting strangers into our cabin. I’m going to have to ask you to please leave the property.”

  Andrew loudly replaces the phone in its cradle, then lifts it out and presses it to his ear, and repeats the cycle. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! There’s no dial tone. I don’t understand—”

  Eric turns around. “What do you mean? Is it plugged in? Check the connection, maybe it’s loose. There was a dial tone yesterday. I checked as soon as we walked in.” It’s true. He did. Wen checked the phone right after him, too, and she wrapped herself in the long, springy cord until Eric told her not to mess with it, that it wasn’t a toy. He checked the phone again after she was untangled.

  Andrew lifts the phone off the wall and inspects a translucent cord connected to the jack. He removes it and plugs it back in, then takes the phone out of its cradle. “I checked and I’m checking again but it’s not working. It’s not—”

  Another man’s voice, this one deeper and older sounding than Leonard’s friendly lilt. What he says has a hint of glee to it, as though what he’s saying is a terrifically funny joke you won’t get until later, or the kind of joke that is only funny to the teller, which is the worst kind.

  “We’re not leaving until after you let us in and we have our little chat.”

  Wen imagines the man saying it while he’s staring through the door and cabin walls and looking right at her and his hands are wringing the thick wooden handle of his weapon. She has decided it is a weapon, something only a bad person or an orc would dare construct and carry.

  Outside the cabin there’s a rush of harsh whispers descending upon the not-Leonard man who spoke. Maybe under different circumstances the four strangers might’ve sounded like a strong breeze rustling through the forest.

  Leonard says, “Hey, I’m sorry. Redmond is as anxious and . . . passionate as we all are, and I can assure you his intentions are pure. I can only imagine how nervous you all are, and understandably so, at our arrival on your doorstep. This isn’t easy for us, either. We’ve never been in this position before. No one has, ever, not in the history of humankind.”

  Eric responds, coolly, and without hesitation, “We’ve heard you, Leonard, and we’ve been very patient thus far. We’re not interested.” He pauses, runs a hand over his neatly trimmed beard, and adds, “We’d like you to leave now. It doesn’t sound like any of you are in trouble or anything like that, and I’m sure you can find someone else to help you.” As calm and as Daddy Eric as he’s been before now, there’s a fissure somewhere beneath his words, and it opens wide enough for Wen to tumble down into the hopeless dark.

  Andrew must hear the same change in Eric’s voice too as he sprints across the short expanse of the room, steps in front of Eric like he’s shielding him, and yells, “We said no thank you! Leave now!” He shifts back and forth on the balls of his feet and pushes up his sleeves over his elbows.

  From behind, Eric slowly curls an arm around his husband’s chest and pulls him away from the door. Andrew doesn’t resist.

  There’s no response from Leonard or from any of the others outside. The silence lasts long enough to feel hopeful (maybe they are leaving) and menacing (maybe they are done with talking because they are ready to do something else).

  Leonard says, “I do not intend this to sound like a threat, Andrew. It is Andrew, right?” Leonard pauses. Andrew nods his head yes although there’s no way Leonard can see him. “We aren’t leaving until we get a chance to talk, face-to-face. What we have to do is too important. We cannot and will not leave until that happens. I am sorry but we can’t change this situation. We have no choice. We all have no choice but to deal with it.”

  Eric says, “Well, you leave us no choice. We are calling the police. Right now.” His confident, stentorian voice, the one that makes people listen and makes people want to talk to him and be with him, is gone. He sounds shrunken, diminished, and Wen is afraid she’ll only ever hear this new voice.

  Andrew reaches up and gently squeezes Eric’s arm, the one still wrapped across his chest at the shoulders.

  One of the women says, “Hey, hi, um, we know you can’t do that. Call the police, I mean. No cell service out here, right? My phone hasn’t worked since somewhere way out on the Daniel Webster Highway. I’m sorry but I had to cut your landline. I’m, um, I’m Sabrina, by the way.” The awkwardness of her introduction is as chilling as the cutting of the landline admission.

  Eric and Andrew slowly back away from the front door. If they keep going like this, they’ll fall over the back of the couch.

  Eric says to Andrew, “Did you check your cell phone?”

  “No bars. Nothing. Fucking nothing.”

  Eric says, “Wen, can you get your phone, turn it on, and tell us if it works?”

  Wen scoots off the love seat and instead of running to her room for her phone, she walks in front of her retreating dads. She screams at the front door, “Leave us alone, Leonard! You’re scaring us! You’re not my friend! Go away! Just go away!” She hopes she sounds in control and angry instead of frightened. She likes to believe that she has Daddy Eric’s voice inside of her somewhere.

  Eric and Andrew step forward together and crouch down to Wen’s level. They both hug her, squeezing her between them, and they say what are supposed to be soothing things. Eric’s arm is sweaty on the back of her neck and Andrew is breathing fast, like he’s been racing her around the cabin. Wen doesn’t listen to her dads and instead strains to hear Leonard’s response.

  Leonard says, “I know, and I’m sorry, Wen. I am. I truly am. And I am your friend. No matter what happens. But we can’t leave. Not yet. Please tell your dads to open the door. Everything will be easier if they do.”

  Andrew shouts, “You don’t get to talk to her!”

  As Eric is shushing her, Wen yells again, “Why do you have those scary weapons with you? Why do you need those?”

  Leonard says, “They are not weapons, Wen. They are—tools. If you open the door now, we’ll drop them on the ground and leave them outside. And—please believe me—I promise they are not weapons.”

  The other man yells, “Don’t worry. They’re not for you.”

  Her dads quickly confer, speaking so quickly and in hushed, grunting tones Wen can’t tell who is saying what:

  “‘They are not for you?’”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “I—I have no idea.”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “No phones.”
/>   “Check the cell again.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know. Stay calm.”

  “We’re not letting them in here.”

  “No. We’re not.”