The Cabin in the Woods
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There is a house, it’s dark and there are monsters. There is a basement where something horrible lives but nobody knows what or who that might be. The thing lives alone in an underground cellar—a dungeon—and it wants to kill someone who comes down into its lair. It has no eyes so we can’t see it as long as we stay on top of the stairs.
But when somebody starts walking down through the darkness we can feel it watching us. Its fingers reach out of the blackness towards our legs.
We start hearing it breathing—the rasping of dry leaves underfoot and a strange gurgling sound deep within its bowels, like water being sucked up by rocks until finally one day we hear this horrible laugh that echoes around the walls—just before we hear the crunch and crackle of bones being crushed beneath our feet.
We know something’s there, something terrible, something evil, something hungry and twisted inside these cold, dark halls, because everyone has heard about it. All the old people have talked about it—all the children have heard their parents talking about it. Everyone knows, but not all of us dare to come here at night.
Not all of us would want to walk into this place even if we dared. This is a place nobody ever talks about after dark. Everybody goes home and locks themselves in their houses because everybody’s seen enough horror movies to know how things turn out for anyone stupid enough to ignore good sense.
But some kids don’t care. They’ve never known anything else; they’ve never cared what happens to them, just as long as the next beer’s waiting on the table when the lights go down. Some kids aren’t scared of ghosts and goblins, witches, and werewolves, because they believe in their own power to control fear.
To make bad things disappear. And if you really want to scare yourself silly, nothing scares quite like the stuff your nightmares are made from.
So these teenagers sneak off together into the woods late at night and then run back home before anybody asks questions. If there’s going to be beer and pizza and a horror flick waiting for them downstairs once they get through the front door, who cares where the hell they’ve been?
Nobody will think twice about finding their cars abandoned outside town with the headlights still burning until they finally give up and go home. Who cares anyway? Nobody likes the loser who runs away from his friends.
It was one such evening, as the last light of the sun faded into dusk, that four young men set off into the trees behind the high school to find a place where they could drink without interruption. It had been a long week at work, especially for the guy whose boss was convinced he had a drinking problem.
So the boys went out looking for an isolated place far from their families and jobs where they wouldn’t worry too much about anyone seeing them.
Just a few days ago the cops came out onto the golf course near the country club because of all the beer cans left lying around on the fairways; it wasn’t clear exactly when the beer got there, but apparently, there’s been more than one occasion when someone decided that nobody needed to see any of them drunk at play.
The kids knew better than to mess with golfers, so they took a chance on the woods. After dark, the greenskeepers leave their machines in the woods. No one thinks to look for them there. That means there must be a couple of guys who do a little bit of moonlighting.
They were lucky, for the forest was quiet. Nobody saw them coming and there weren’t many other people around to see what happened when they found this old farmhouse hidden back amongst the pines. With the lights from the high school shining bright on the opposite hill, the group of young men didn’t bother with flashlights or anything fancy like that.
A little bit of light doesn’t attract attention. The first thing they did was grab a handful of beers from the truck and put them beside the door, then turned off the interior lights and climbed down into the basement. Two of the boys lit cigarettes while they waited. They were nervous and thirsty.
It would only take one of them to spill a drop of beer and then the rest would be pissed—so instead they drank. As they sat on the steps leading down into the cellar, trying desperately to forget why they’d gone there in the first place, they began to talk about their plans for the future.
None of them had thought about getting married—not until their wives forced them to sit down and think about life beyond college, beyond the bar they might have to work in someday. But this was different.
For each one of them, this was a chance to be someone else—someone powerful and special, someone capable of doing anything. When it started snowing hard, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for them to disappear completely.
One boy said that maybe he should be a priest. He liked to sing hymns at church and he was good enough, if not great, at playing the piano. “I know how to play Bach, too,” he told the others.
“Yeah?” another boy asked him. “What kind of Bach are you?”
The kid smiled. “You know, I’m pretty sure Bach wrote ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.’ That’s the real one.”
The first boy laughed and knocked over his beer. They all laughed.
After they calmed down, they started discussing music. Music was always part of the game. Once in a while, they’d try to outdo each other with a song or two—the best guitar player in the group would play something cool, then one of the drummers would join in, followed by the singer who had a voice to die for.
Sometimes they’d all play together like they did in the car after football practice. The bass guitarist was especially impressive when he played along. His hands moved up and down the neck of the guitar as naturally as if they were extensions of his fingers. He had to be the best of them all.
Then, just as they were settling down to listen to the bass player, there was a bang on the door and somebody shouted, “It’s open!”
“Shit!” The boys jumped up, grabbed the beer, and ran into the basement. One of them had forgotten to turn the lights on, which meant they couldn’t see where they were going. The lights from upstairs cast strange shadows throughout the house, making it seem as though things were moving in the darkness. There was no way to tell where the doors led, so the boys took turns running to each room.
As they raced through the kitchen, the one who’d knocked on the door stopped suddenly. “Holy shit!” he cried. The boys froze. In front of them, illuminated in the pale light from the kitchen, was the body of a woman lying on her stomach. Her arms and legs were spread out, and her head turned toward them.
She wore jeans and a sweater, so she must have come from somewhere close by—perhaps even their own high school. She had red hair but, unlike any of them, she wasn’t wearing makeup. It wasn’t like they’d ever seen anyone else who looked quite so natural, like some exotic animal trapped inside human skin.
“Jesus Christ!” one of them gasped. Another said that he felt sick to his stomach and threw up onto the floor. Then the lights went out. When the kids tried to move again, they bumped into furniture—a dining room chair, an end table. They could hear their friends screaming outside. They heard more banging.
When the boys finally found the light switch, they stood frozen by what they saw in the next room. The girl’s eyes were wide, staring directly at them. Her mouth opened slightly. She seemed to be pleading with them to help her. Then, without warning, her hand burst forth, like a snake emerging from its burrow.
Blood dripped from between her fingers—blood that fell like raindrops into the sink below. Before long her whole arm was covered in blood. It poured slowly down into the drain hole, disappearing like water. A few minutes later, the boys left their hiding place in the basement and ran back upstairs.
Their faces were white with fear, their hearts pounding wildly. They hadn’t been able to sleep since then; they couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was a mistake to go downstairs, they agreed. Even though none of them knew anything about electricity, they realized that the bulb had probably gotten hot.
If so, then it could have burned out. Or maybe it had melted, causing the fuse to blow. Whatever happened, something bad must have caused the lights to go out. Now they knew better than to play down there alone again.
The following night, after everyone had gone home, the lights came on in the middle of the living room. Nobody noticed because there were no windows in the room. The boys had never thought much of the lamps that lit the house every evening. To them, the light was only there to make the place look nice, nothing more.
But now, for the first time, they wondered how many times they’d stepped on a switch, pushing aside any doubts or misgivings. Each time they turned one of these switches, a little piece of the house died and disappeared forever.
The End