The Cabin at the End of the World_A Novel

by Paul Tremblay

  Eric is to his left, stationed in front of Wen’s bedroom doorway. His left leg is free, but his right leg is snared in twisted, stretched-out rope still attached to a fallen chair on the floor trailing behind him. He swings Adriane’s flower-of-hand-shovel-and-trowel-blades-tipped staff in sweeping, menacing arcs. An inefficient machine, he sweats through his shirt and breathes in gulping hitches. His shoulders sagging and his spine curved, he grimaces before and after each swipe and whoosh of the weapon.

  Leonard stands in front of the couch and the darkened TV on the wall. He says, “Everyone, let’s calm down. Let’s talk, this isn’t good for anyone,” in that insufferable I’m-just-trying-to-help tone. It’s instantly clear to Andrew that Leonard—despite all the earlier talk about how they were running out of time—is perfectly content to let Eric work himself to total exhaustion. Leonard has his dual-tipped wooden staff, the one O’Bannon brought into the cabin, but he does not brandish it. It’s hidden behind his back like the world’s worst-kept secret.

  If Eric is a cornered lion tamer, then Adriane is the lion, stalking, pacing, and darting forward at Eric and then skittering back when he swings what was once her staff. She has a steak knife in each hand, the blades thin but serrated. The knives appear comically small and ineffectual compared to the other weapons.

  Andrew strays from the doorway, deeper into the room. Everyone else finally sees him. They stop moving and talking and they gape. Eric sways in place and he blinks like he doesn’t believe what he’s seeing or he’s seeing something that isn’t there. He lowers the bladed end of the weapon to the floor and holds his forehead with his right hand. Andrew can’t tell if this is an expression of relief or anguish.

  Andrew points the gun in the general shared direction of Leonard and Adriane. He wants to yell and scream and threaten and hurt; he yearns for both of them to hurt for this.

  He says, “Drop the knives,” to Adriane.

  She screams with her mouth closed, a terrifying sound, one that makes Andrew fear that he is nowhere near in control despite the gun.

  “Drop them now! Or I swear—”

  She exaggeratedly opens her hands and the knives clatter against the hardwood floor.

  “All right.” Andrew takes a deep breath and alternates pointing the gun at Adriane and Leonard. “Where is Wen?”

  Leonard says, “She’s okay—”

  “I’m not talking to you! Eric, where is she?”

  Eric points behind him, and Wen appears in the bedroom doorway. Her eyes are puffy and red, her cheeks streaked with dirt and tears. Her thumbs have retreated inside the home of her fists. Her fists seek sanctuary next to her mouth.

  A warm gust of wind at Andrew’s back locomotives through the front entrance, across the common room, and rattles the deck’s screen slider. Andrew is reminded that Sabrina is still out there and could be sneaking up behind him at any time. He tosses quick and uneasy looks to the front yard. He will not close the door, even though he probably should. Being reconfined to the cabin’s space is not an option.

  Leonard talks in an almost-whisper, the words too fragile, too strained with disappointment and melancholy to also burden with volume. “You’re dooming us all, Andrew. You’re dooming Eric and Wen, too.”

  “I’m done with you. I don’t have to listen to another goddamn word you say.” He imagines shooting Leonard in the thigh above the knee and the streamer of blood that would spurt out as he’s cut to the floor.

  “Andrew?”

  “Shut your fucking mouth!” He stretches out his arm toward Leonard. The gun doesn’t feel heavy, but his fingers twined around the grip and his pointer curled through the trigger guard are stiffening again, and there are twinges of threatening muscle cramps in his forearm.

  Leonard doesn’t react to the gun being shakily pointed at him. He’s more resigned than calm; the one who believes he sees the end coming.

  “Andrew?”

  It’s not Leonard speaking, but Eric. “Andrew? Let’s go now. We can go now. We’ll leave them here and we can go.” His voice is hoarse, raspy. How is he going to be able to walk anywhere if he looks and sounds as bad as that? They could try driving the SUV on the slashed tires, but it wouldn’t be long before the tires disintegrated and the rims got hopelessly stuck in the dirt road. It might not even make it out of the driveway and through the quicksand gravel. They are going to have to walk a big chunk if not all of the trip out of here, which if they were to walk all the way to the main road would take upwards of five or six hours. They could go in the opposite direction, deeper down the road that snakes along the lakeshore, and search out another cabin with people or a phone, but the nearest cabin is still miles—

  “Andrew?”

  “Yeah, all right. We’re going to tie these two up first. Only fair, right?”

  Eric nods slowly and closes his eyes. He still has one hand over his forehead like he’s holding something in, keeping it from escaping.

  Adriane asks, “Did you kill Sabrina?” Her hands open, and arms outstretched, frozen in their I-dropped-the-knives-like-you-said position. “She wasn’t gonna hurt you. We heard the shots—”

  “No. I didn’t shoot her.” Andrew regrets answering truthfully. Why let them think Sabrina might come to help them? He’s screwing this all up. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t shoot you.”

  Another breeze flutters into the cabin like a lost spirit and Andrew can’t help but take another peek over his shoulder to look for Sabrina. It’s only a glance, one that lasts two seconds at the most. When he looks back, Adriane is charging at him from a semicrouched position, teeth bared in a silent snarl and a suddenly not-so-dropped knife raised above her head.

  Wen

  One Sunday afternoon in late winter Wen’s dads asked her to come into their bedroom. They were superserious and had those half-amused, half-sad smiles they wore whenever she would tell them she didn’t like Chinese school. They told her there was something important they wanted to show her and talk about. Wen thought she was in trouble because they found out she was sneaking into their bedroom to look through all her baby pictures. She worried if they were mad enough they might not let her watch TV for an hour after dinner or take away her phone; both were things they had threatened but never enacted. She knew going into their room without asking was why they were mad at her, but it was their fault for keeping the pictures in there. She didn’t think it was fair those pictures were hidden away when they should be kept somewhere else for easier access, maybe even in her room. They were pictures of her after all. That was what she was going to say after telling them she was sorry for sneaking in and they were through being mad. But this meeting with her dads wasn’t about the pictures, not really. This was about Daddy Andrew’s gun and the gun safe hidden in the room (he wouldn’t say where). He held up a chunky black container the size of a shoebox that had some buttons on a front panel, but he didn’t let her look at it for long. They asked her if she’d ever found or seen it. They said she had to promise to tell the truth. She hadn’t seen it before. And that was the truth. Daddy Andrew said he got a new gun safe and he showed it to her. It was silver, smaller than the other one, and it looked like a minispaceship. (In the weeks and months after this family meeting, Wen didn’t say anything to her friends about having a gun at home, but she did tell Gita and Orvin that one of her dads had a special silver safe he kept in a secret place, and Wen and her friends spent a recess making a game out of guessing what he kept hidden in there.) Daddy Andrew turned around, holding the safe so she couldn’t see it, and when he turned back, the top was flipped open like the rear hatch of their car. Inside was a gun. She wasn’t sure what it would look like but she imagined it would be bigger, something she would have to hold with two hands. Daddy Andrew said it wasn’t loaded but it still was a very, very dangerous thing. Daddy Eric kept saying it wasn’t a toy and under no circumstances was she ever to touch the safe or the gun. He kept shaking his head when he talked like this whole thing was a terrible idea. They ex
plained Daddy Andrew had a special license and had taken a lot of classes to learn how to keep and use the gun properly. They never told her why he had it and she didn’t ask. They knew she was coming into their room and going under the bed to get her baby pictures. They weren’t mad and her looking at the pictures was of course okay; they were going to move the pictures and put them in the hutch out in the living room so she could look at them whenever she wanted. Wen was embarrassed they knew about her sneaking in for the photos, but the embarrassment quickly faded. Daddy Andrew took the gun out of the safe and let it sit in his open hand and it looked bigger and smaller, more real and more fake. Daddy Andrew asked her if she wanted to hold it, but before she could answer yes, Daddy Eric said he changed his mind and he didn’t want her touching the gun. Daddy Andrew didn’t argue. As he put it back in the safe and shut the lid, they said so many kids got hurt and sometimes killed playing with guns, usually found guns that belonged to their parents. They said she wasn’t allowed in their bedroom by herself anymore. Daddy Andrew said, “No more snooping around in here.” They said, even though it had a special lock and it wouldn’t open for her or anyone other than Daddy Andrew, she was never to move or touch the gun safe. They said these new rules were the most important rules ever.

  Wen reviews those most important rules and stares at Daddy Andrew and his gun. She wonders where he hid the silver safe. She didn’t realize the car had secret places in which to hide things.

  Andrew says, “Yeah, all right. We’re going to tie these two up first. Only fair, right?”

  Adriane asks, “Did you kill Sabrina?” She stands still and with her arms out like a scarecrow, one mad it can’t scare everyone away. It’s Adriane who scares Wen the most now. Adriane would’ve clubbed her with the shovel-bladed weapon if Eric hadn’t picked up Andrew’s chair and knocked the thing out of her hands. Wen wants to tell Daddy Andrew to not listen to her, that she might find a way to hurt him with her words.

  “She wasn’t gonna hurt you. We heard the shots—”

  Andrew says, “No. I didn’t shoot her.” He pauses and gimps forward half a step. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t shoot you.”

  Wen wants to dissolve back into the bedroom so she doesn’t have to see anything. She doesn’t want to see what Adriane will do when she drops her hands or when her dads tie her to one of the chairs. She doesn’t want to see Daddy Andrew shoot the gun.

  Wen tries to see outside the front door and to the lawn, but Andrew and the severe angle obscures her view. She again remembers the poor grasshoppers trapped in the jar and how horrible it must’ve been for them. Did they run out of air and die crawling and knocking into the lid? Did they wind down like little toys on juiceless batteries? Did they, like Daddy Eric said they would, get cooked by the sun, boiling to death inside their own exoskeletons? Maybe they’re still alive but barely and they are suffering. It’s all her fault and she quickly ticks off the grasshoppers’ names in her head, and another crying fit begins to swell.

  Andrew looks behind him, as though he hears Wen thinking about the jar left in the grass. As he turns, Wen sees the entire common room splayed before her and the adults animate, one movement begetting the next. She doesn’t understand or even have time to react to all of it, but her brain catalogs everything to be parsed and dwelled upon later:

  Andrew swivels at the waist, peering over his left shoulder. Adriane drops to one knee, snatches up a knife with her taloned right hand, and launches at Andrew. Leonard sprints away from the couch, triggered by Adriane’s springing forward. Andrew spins back around to face the room and Adriane is only one or two steps from being on top of him. Her knife arm is raised triumphantly over her head. Leonard thunders across the room shouting Adriane’s name. Andrew fires the gun. There’s a pop, or a crack, sounding to Wen like two cars smashing together; its punchy loudness is as jarring as its brevity and the silence that fills the vacuum after. Wen covers her ears. Adriane is stood up, jerked upright, and lifted and pushed onto her heels like the gun spewed out a magic invisible wall. Her shirt is black and there is no visible, telltale red staining the cloth, but the bullet must’ve hit her somewhere in her now drooping left arm or shoulder. Eric lifts what was once Adriane’s weapon and tries to run toward the others, but his foot is still snared in the rope attached to his chair and he trips. He falls hard and lands on top of the weapon. The wooden handle snaps near the base of the jury-rigged flower of blades with a weak, imposter gunshot crack. Leonard is almost to Adriane, and he stretches out a hand toward her. Adriane reraises the knife, but shakily, and her face is cleared of expression and emotion, rubbed out, erased. Andrew fires again. Underpinning the minidetonation of the gunshot, there’s a soft, wet, sucking sound. Adriane’s throat explodes into a geyser of blood. Leonard is close enough that blood sprays onto his face and the front of his shirt. Her arm drops and so does the knife. Then she falls, too, collapsing to the floor, landing on her back. Blood spurts and pumps from her neck in endless supply. Her gurgles become hisses fading in volume until there’s no sound at all. Eric flips onto his back and tries to kick the tangle of rope from his leg. Andrew’s mouth hangs open, his upper lip quakes, and his eyes are wide O’s. The gun lowers, pointed at the floor or at the dying Adriane. Andrew doesn’t initially react to Leonard’s changing course, charging past Adriane and at him. Andrew raises his gun but he’s too late. Leonard is right on top of him and with both of his hands grabs Andrew’s hand and gun. Andrew’s arms go above his head, pulled up by Leonard. The crown of Andrew’s head is only at Leonard’s chin because of the height difference. Andrew grunts and yells and rams his head into Leonard’s neck and chest, and he lifts his knees, bouncing them into Leonard’s midsection. Leonard doesn’t flinch and doesn’t let go.

  Wen floats out of the doorway and into the common room, gravity sucking her into the orbits of the crashing bodies. She stares down at Adriane. Her eyes are half closed, and the skin of her face is a fancy doll’s white, glowing above the gaping red hole of her throat. Her already dark hair is blackened by the expanding pool of blood.

  To Wen’s right, Eric frantically kicks his tied-up leg, and the attached chair skitters around like a dog happy to see its owner finally returned home. Wen dodges the chair and crouches next to Eric. She taps his leg just above the knee. He sees her and stops kicking. She says, “I can help.” She tries sliding her fingers under the coils, but because of Eric’s flailing about the rope is wound tight and haphazardly, and she can’t find the original knot.

  Eric sits up and his hands join Wen’s. One of his hands is wet with Adriane’s blood and he smears red onto the rope. He doesn’t quite push Wen away, but he takes over tugging hard on the lines and pulling out knots and loops hidden within other loops. The rope begins to melt away, the tangled mass unwinding as though his leg is a spool. Wen leans back and sits perched on top of her feet. She folds her hands in her lap. Her fingers are pink with Adriane’s blood.

  Wen marvels at how much bigger Leonard is than Andrew. Despite the size difference, they continue to wrestle to a stalemate over the gun. Leonard lowers his right shoulder and drives it into Andrew’s chest. Andrew twists enough to avoid the brunt of the force, which throws Leonard off-balance, and the two of them crash into the wall next to the doorframe with a cabin-shaking thud. Their arms fall from over their heads like a plummeting castle gate. Their hands swallow up the gun, but as they sweep their arms left and then back right, the black eye of the short, stunted barrel is visible, sunken into the entangled tree roots of their fingers. Leonard twists and slams his weight back into Andrew, pinning him against the wall.

  Leonard yells, “Let go! Just let go!”

  Wen yells, “You’re hurting him! Stop!”

  Eric is almost free from the rope and chair.

  Andrew’s face is red, and his body shrinks under the assault of Leonard’s insistent size and strength. Andrew’s breaths are coarse and irregular. His feet slide and stab out from behind Leonard, desperate for purchase and a pa
th to freedom, but he isn’t going anywhere. Andrew drops suddenly—perhaps purposefully—to his knees as though his ankles and shins are made of thin cardboard and crumple under his weight. Leonard stumbles, loses balance, and bashes the side of his head against the wall’s wooden panels. He pops back upright and vigorously attempts to shake the gun free, yanking Andrew’s arms up and down, and side to side, and then Wen doesn’t see or hear or feel anything anymore.

  Bloody Like the Day You Were Born

  Five

  Leonard

  Andrew and Eric are with Wen’s body. They are huddled on the floor to his left. They hold her. They surround her. They shield her from Leonard. They wail and scream her name, and then they are just screaming.

  Moments ago, the gun and Andrew’s hands were nested dolls inside Leonard’s hands. Andrew was fatigued, weakening, and ready to yield. Leonard felt the waning resistance in Andrew’s quivering, failing attempts to push him away. Leonard was going to graciously accept surrender without judgment, without threat of reprisal, and gently guide the gun out of Andrew’s hands, and salvage salvation from ruin, but then Andrew wrecking-balled himself to the floor and pulled Leonard off-balance, bouncing his head painfully off the wall. Anger flashed like a bright and hissing road flare. He was not cold, blank, removed. Leonard was not not-him as when Redmond was killed. Leonard was as angry as he’s ever been and he wrenched and torqued Andrew’s arms like he wanted to rip them off, discard them, and tear the rest of the cabin and then the world into irretrievable pieces. Andrew’s hands were a fistful of hornets inside Leonard’s hands, and he squeezed, trying to crush them all. And when Leonard squeezed, he felt the subtle vibration and click of the trigger under his palms. (Leonard’s hands are currently pressed flat against the floor, yet he is still feeling that trigger click, which is now a physical time stamp delineating his brief history into before and after.) There was the gunshot and the jolt that reverberated up his arms. It was only after Wen fell that he noticed the heat of the passing bullet glowing on his fingers still wrapped around the gun.