by Tim Lebbon
That’s better, Marty thought. That’s much better. Laughter’s the second-best medicine. He took another drag on his joint and held the smoke down, breathing out slowly. He was relaxed again now, leaning back in his chair with his head resting against the window. The sun caressed his scalp, and it was good. Holden had fetched them another beer each, and he felt a warm glow, starting at the center of him and reaching all the way to his fingertips and the ends of his toes.
Dana and Holden were sitting close, and though they affected indifference, Marty could see that each time the swaying Rambler nudged them into each other it sent a thrill through them.
Lucky guy, he thought. Dana was cute as hell and a lovely girl. A beautiful girl. They’d been friends for over a year, and to begin with he’d believed that she viewed him as some sort of a joke. Many people did, mostly the shallow types—the plastic people, he called them—who spent more time concerned with what the outsides of their heads looked like, rather than bothering to care for the insides. But he’d soon come to realize that, though gorgeous, Dana was not like that at all. An intelligent girl, both deep and somewhat mysterious, she kept a distance from him rather than regarding him as a joke.
Maybe her parents had had a thing about drugs of any kind, and it was a hangover from that, or perhaps... but no, he’d stopped thinking that long ago. Perhaps it was because she felt something for him and was afraid to grow too close? Yeah, right. Looking at Holden and Dana now, he could see how distant she kept from guys she liked.
But out of their awkward beginning had emerged a strange, close relationship. Marty was sure that Dana knew what he felt about her, and how intense was the first impression she’d made upon him. And Marty was getting to know her more and more every day. Of all the friendships he’d made at college, this one felt as if it would last longer than all the others.
Lucky guy, he thought again, and when Dana caught his eye he glanced away.
“Guys, take a look,” Jules said.
Marty sat up and, with the others, leaned to look out the front windshield. To their right was a steep ravine, and ahead of them loomed the dark mouth of a tunnel set in the mountainside. It looked impossibly small. The ravine ended in a sheer, bare cliff face, above which rose a steeply wooded hillside, boulders, and rock spurs protruding between greenery like boils on a craggy face. And across the other side of the ravine, another tunnel mouth emerged onto a road ledge.
Must curve through the mountain, he thought, and he wondered who would have built such a tunnel instead of a simple bridge. “Hey,” Marty said, “do we really have to go—”
“Yep,” Curt said. He slowed the Rambler as they approached, concentrating, and turned on the headlights. The darkness was pushed back as they entered the tunnel, and to Marty it felt as if they were being swallowed by the mountain. It seemed like an incredibly tight fit, but there was no scraping or crunching, and Curt steered confidently into the darkness.
Marty closed and opened his eyes again several times, enjoying the brash contrast between darkness and the artificial lights of the Rambler’s dashboard. His friends were mere shadows in the barely lit cabin, and he knew that he’d look the same to them.
Halfway through the tunnel, when the faint glow of daylight started to show ahead of them, he suddenly sat up as the hairs on his forearms and neck stood on end. A shiver went though him, like a subtle electric shock, tingling his balls and tickling the insides of his nostrils. He immediately sniffed the joint, wondering if some alien substance had found its way in, and—
•••
Above the mountainside and ravine, a small bird’s free will took it along the route of the rough mountain track. It swept above the wooded mountainside, unconsciously following the tunnel as it rode thermals. Singing as it flew, stomach full from a recent feed, it struck something in mid-air, something that flashed into view for a second like a vast blue, pulsing grid, and with a shower of fiery sparks the bird plummeted, dead. Its wings were scorched, its insides fried. Its brain had been carbonized, and any thoughts it once held were more remote and immaterial than shadows.
Nothing made the bird fly this way, nothing urged it north instead of east or south or west, but it died nonetheless. Free will was, perhaps, its undoing.
•••
“Oh... oh!” Marty heard someone say, and he thought it was Dana. No one else spoke, but he felt the brief, intense level of discomfort in the Rambler; people shifted in their seats, and the silence grew heavier.
Then they were out the other end and heading across the mountainside, the steep drop still to their right, and the glaring sun cleared away any dregs of darkness.
What was that? Marty wanted to say. Weird magnetic field? Radiation from the rocks? Someone walking over my grave? But when he looked around at the others he saw smiling faces, and a growing excitement that they were getting closer to their destination. Curt and Jules were singing badly again, Holden was drinking, and Dana stared dreamily from the window.
So Marty took another pull on his joint instead, and he didn’t even look back.
They drove for another ten minutes. The ledge wove upward, turning back on itself and zig-zagging them up the mountainside. The view that was revealed alternately to their left and right was staggering, opening up across the ravine to expose miles of wooded countryside, hills peeking above the trees here and there, and dark green valleys hiding their secrets from view. After a short climb they reached a ridge, and then the track weaved them into a forest of towering trees.
Curt drove, Holden and Dana pretended not to notice where their skin touched, and Marty smoked. He was thinking about dynamite and digging machines, and men working with shovels and picks, and just how long it had taken to forge that tunnel around the end of the ravine, following the natural contours of the land except deeper inside. And the road that had twisted and turned its way up the mountainside; that wasn’t an easy build, either. He thought about stuff like this a lot. And sometimes, such thoughts ended with a simple determination to smoke some more.
He lit another joint and leaned back in his seat, dozing.
Curt startled him awake with a shout.
“Behold! Our home for the weekend.” Holden and Dana went first, squatting between Curt’s and Jules’s seats, and then Marty stood behind them, one hand on each of their shoulders to hold himself up. Dana gasped, Holden hummed in appreciation, and Marty had to admit to himself that, yes, this was quite a sight.
The lake lay to their left, surrounded by trees that cast stick-like shadows across the water from the southern bank. Elsewhere the sun glared off of the water, rippling here and there where fish or frogs jumped, shimmering with a million diamonds of light. There were a couple of small, bare islands sprouting low shrub growth, and on one a solitary tree cast its shadow over the water. A wooden jetty stood out into the water, a rough but sturdy-looking structure. There were no boats moored there, and taking a cursory look around the lake Marty could see several possible hiding places among the reeds at the lake’s edge.
It wasn’t huge, but the plant growth around its edges was lush. The stretch where the Rambler was now drawing to a halt must have been artificially cleared, and Marty found his attention drawn to the right to see why.
The cabin stood maybe a hundred feet from the lake, in a clearing that probed deep into the woods. For a few seconds Marty thought, Right, that’s like a timber store or something, and the real cabin’s behind it in the trees, because if that’s the place where we’ve got to sleep. But then he looked closer and saw net curtains in the building’s windows, and its allure slowly grew on him. They weren’t coming out here for a hotel visit, after all. No room service or gourmet restaurants here.
It wasn’t the most attractive building he’d ever seen, but it could easily be home. For a couple of days, at least. Single-story, with large eye-like windows on either side of the door. Several rickety steps led up to the wide decked porch area, where a small pile of firewood was stacked beneath the overha
ng to dry. Tall fir trees skirted the rear and both sides of the building, hiding it away from anywhere but where they were now parked. Curt killed the engine and opened the door and, without speaking, they all climbed slowly from the Rambler.
Bird song, a gentle breeze through the trees, their crunching footsteps, something splashing out on the lake... there was no other noise. No traffic grumble or roaring of aircraft high in the sky.
Nothing.
It was, Marty thought then, idyllic.
“Oh my god, it’s beautiful!” Jules said, leaning into Curt and adding quieter, “One spider and I’m sleeping in the Rambler. I mean it. Uno spider-o.”
“This house is talking a blue streak,” Marty whispered.
“So let’s set up camp,” Holden said. “And the most important feature: keg.” He clapped Marty on the shoulder and grinned, and Curt accompanied them back into the Rambler to get the beer. They maneuvered it from the confined space and manhandled it from the vehicle, and by the time they’d deposited it on the cabin’s porch, Dana already was there, turning the knob.
The door swung open with a deep, grinding creak. You’re velcome to stay zer night, Marty thought, but as the others followed her inside he held back, appreciating the sky above him and the sense of space he still felt all around. In there they’d be... confined. He didn’t shiver—not quite—but something felt askew. Had felt that way since meeting that weird old coot at the tumble-down gas stop, then coming up through the tunnel and winding track. Shit, maybe his batch of weed was contaminated with something. He’d heard about it happening before.
Once inside and settled, maybe he’d think about switching stashes.
The main room beyond the front door was living room and kitchen combined, and Dana was walking around slowly, touching nothing, as the others entered. To the right was a dining table and chairs, and a kitchen counter featuring poorly crafted wall and floor cupboards with a retro-fitted sink, the single tap dripping steadily. At the end of the counter stood an antique wood-burning stove, probably built before Marty’s grandparents were even born. Its bulk and solidity seemed somehow out of place beside the rest of the kitchen, as if it was the only part that bled quality. “Oh, this is awesome!” Curt said.
“It is kinda cool,” Jules replied. “You gonna kill us a raccoon to eat?”
“I will use its skin to make a cap.”
To the left in the huge room was the living area, with mismatched sofas and chairs arranged around the large stone fireplace. It looked comfortable, but strangely unloved, as if it were a place used for necessity rather than desire. Hanging back in the doorway, Marty spotted a wolf’s head on the wall—courtesy of the old guy at the station, perhaps? It had been stuffed growling, and was just about one of the most vicious looking things he’d ever seen. That would get a shirt thrown over it before dusk, he was damn certain of that, by him if no one else. Its eyes seemed alive. Directly opposite the front door a bare, wide hallway ran to the rear of the cabin, with two doorways leading off from either side. Between it and the kitchen there was a rectangle in the floor that appeared to be a way into the cellar. A few worn rugs littered the floor. The window at the hallway’s end was obscured by nets and dust, and whatever lay beyond was dark, as if the woods back there cut out all sunlight.
Dana paused before the stuffed wolf’s head, then moved on. Her footsteps were soft and gentle, hardly heard, and Marty wondered what lay beneath the timber-boarded floor.
Jules strode confidently along the hallway to check out the bedrooms. She grabbed a doorknob and twisted.
“Dibs on whichever room is—OW!” She jerked her hand back and stared at the bubble of blood welling on her fingertip.
I’m still not inside, Marty thought. The others are and they’re fine, they’re at ease with the place, but I’m still not...
“Curt, your cousin’s house attacked me,” Jules exclaimed with mock severity.
“I smell lawsuit,” Curt said.
“When was your last tetanus shot?” Holden chuckled, and Marty noticed how close Dana had drawn to him. Not quite touching.
“Thanks, that’s very comforting,” Jules responded.
“Jules is pre-med,” Curt said sadly, stroking his girlfriend’s hair. “She knows there’s no coming back from this. I’ll miss you, baby. I’ll miss your shiny new hair.” Dana glanced around then and looked at Marty, drawing him into their group again. He blinked, a little startled. He’d been off in his own world again.
“Marty? Are you planning on coming in?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe.” But he waited until the four of them picked up their bags and headed down the hallway before he made his move.
Once across the threshold he sighed, looking around and listening to the others joking and chatting in their rooms.
He looked at the wolf and growled.
•••
Holden took the first room on the left, next to Dana’s. He was excited. It had been a weird journey up from the city, the lowest point being that ignorant fuck at the gas stop. But now that they were here he could feel them all relaxing, and it wouldn’t be long before they made this place their own.
Unpack, change, get the keg into the living room, sort out food for this evening, have a few more drinks... and maybe even one of Marty’s joints... and then the weekend would really begin.
And there was Dana. He could feel the charge between them growing, and now he was certain that she felt it too. She was as keen to be close to him as he was to her. It felt a little awkward in the company of the others—he’d invaded their group, after all, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that Curt had brought him along as a potential fix-up. But he couldn’t deny the effect she was having over him.
He only hoped she’d brought a bikini.
He glanced at a picture on the wall—some old Victorian scene—then threw his bag on the bed and winced at how much it creaked. Sitting on the mattress and bouncing lightly up and down, he felt certain the resultant squeaking would attract bears from miles around. He hoped Curt’s and Jules’s bed wasn’t this bad, otherwise none of them would be getting any sleep. If what Curt claimed was true, they went at it like rabbits.
The room was an echo of the rest of the cabin— wooden walls, wooden furniture, with a few touches here and there to make it look more homey. There was a rug on the floor, one corner almost threadbare, and a woven cushion on the bed covers. He turned back the covers and shook them, pleased to see no moths exiting or spiders scuttling away. He ran his hand between the sheets and felt no dampness. At least that part of it seemed to be comfortable enough.
Looking around again, he found his attention grabbed once more by the picture hanging on the wide wall. He’d assumed it was an old horse-and-dog print, a country scene from a long time ago, maybe even imported from Britain. But looking closer, the detail started to stand out... and it was horrible.
It was a hunting party, and most of the members were shown dismounted, their faces flushed red with rage or freshly blooded, arms raised, hands bearing curved machetes that reflected gray sunlight where they weren’t also darkened with blood. At their feet were several big, vicious-looking dogs, reminding him more of the wolf’s head in the living room than the family pets he was used to. And at the focus of their attention was a lamb. Scarlet clefts had been struck into its back and flanks, and one dog had its slavering jaws clamped about the poor animal’s throat.
It was only a picture, but Holden found it repulsive.
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” he said, taking the painting down. He bent and leaned it against the wall, picture now facing inward, and when he stood again Dana was staring at him through a hole in the wall.
He jumped, letting out a nervous laugh.
She stared.
“Wow,” he said meekly, “I’ve heard about the walls being thin, but—” And then he trailed off when Dana bared her teeth at him, leaning forward as if to take a bite from his face. Frozen by the strangeness of this more than afra
id that she was going to bite him, he let his shoulders relax when he realized what was happening.
Dana was examining her teeth. She picked between the two front ones, turning slightly left and right to get the angle right to see toward the back of her mouth. Ran her tongue across her upper teeth, the lower. Stared again, at herself.
One-way mirror, Holden thought, and there was a creepy delight in the discovery.
He watched as she ruffled up her hair a little, pouted, and then she seemed to become distracted, staring beyond the mirror and through him as she dwelled on something for a long few seconds. A small smile tweaked her lips, then she shook herself from the reverie and returned to her bed.
She started unbuttoning her shirt.
“Oh shit, ah no, ahh... ” Holden said, torn between this golden opportunity and his common human decency. If he waited here and watched her strip, he could never tell anyone about the mirror. But if he made her aware, he might kick himself later.
Three buttons, four, that smooth plane of skin flowing from her neck down to her chest...
He had to make up his mind quickly, in the next couple of seconds, otherwise—
Five buttons, and the shirt fell open to reveal her tan bra, and if he waited another few seconds...
Holden cursed silently and banged on the wall. Dana froze, head cocked to one side, and Holden took that second to just look at her before calling through the wall, “Hold up!”
“What? Holden?”
“Dana... I just saw... come into my room. Bring the others.”
Dana closed her shirt and redid a couple of buttons, frowning as she left her room. Holden heard her calling their friends, and he backed away from the wall and turned to the door, preparing to greet them and feeling more ashamed than he should have. He’d told her, hadn’t he? Some guys would have watched all the way, jerked off and re-hung the picture, keeping the whole thing their dirty little secret. And some guys would have done that, then gone across the hallway to tell Marty.