The Cabin at the End of the World

by Paul Tremblay

  That Eric will now have a real, legit scar fills him with unexpected happiness, and he laughs, but then he thinks about the next time he shaves and how Wen won’t need to inspect his bald head for nicks and fake scars that always fade away in a matter of hours. The scar will already be there, red and permanent. Losing that odd little post-head-shaving ritual with Wen is suddenly the saddest thing he can think of and his odd laughter morphs into a grotesque mix of manic, percussive cackles and uncontrollable, chest-heaving sobs. Having recently (and obsessively) read about the many, often undiagnosed concussive blows football and soccer players suffer, Eric is able to recall that having wild, unpredictable emotional swings is a symptom of a severe concussion, but it doesn’t help and doesn’t stop his tears.

  The woman behind him pats his shoulder and shushes him, saying, “It’s okay. You’ll be all right.”

  Leonard leaves the dustpan on the floor next to the plastic garbage bin and leans the straw broom against the refrigerator. He asks, “Is Eric cleaned up?”

  She says, “He’s cleaned up, yeah, but severely concussed.”

  “Awake?”

  “Yes, mostly.”

  The two of them continue a quick and clinical discussion of Eric’s condition like he isn’t there. Andrew whispers Eric’s name. Eric tries to give Andrew a smile, to let him know that he’s okay, but he’s still crying.

  Leonard tiptoes in from the kitchen and to the center of the common room. For a big man, he moves gracefully, but the floorboards betray him and creak under his weight. He bends from his great height and plants his hands on his knees. “Hi, Eric. Are you feeling better? Oh, Wen, I’m sorry.” Leonard deftly sidesteps to Eric’s left to keep from blocking Wen’s view of the TV. He says to Wen, “I’ve never watched this show before but I like it. And it seems like a very you show.”

  Eric says, “What does that mean?” He sounds so loud to himself. Is he shouting?

  Leonard clasps his hands together. “The characters are, well, you know, smart, and, um, good—”

  Redmond, still on the couch, laughs and shakes his head.

  Leonard gives Redmond a dark look and then crouches down so that his head is below Eric’s. This guy is young and he is someone who will always look young until the one day he doesn’t. “I get the sense the show teaches, or explores, empathy and tolerance.”

  Redmond says, “Makes me feel all squishy inside.”

  Andrew says, “Empathy and tolerance. Is that what you’re here to talk about now that you have the queers tied up?”

  Leonard stands up and says, “Andrew, I assure you that we’re not here with hate or prejudice in our hearts. Not at all. That’s, um, that’s not us, not who we are.”

  The others speak at the same time as Leonard. The woman behind Eric squeezes his shoulders and talks, but he only hears some of what she says. “—not one homophobic bone in my body.” The woman in the black shirt calls out from the deck/kitchen area, “I don’t hate anybody, just this friggin’ screen slider.”

  Leonard drones on. “Not who I am. You have to believe me on that. We are not here because—”

  Andrew says, “Because we’re fags?”

  Leonard blushes, like a teen trapped in a lie. He stammers, sounding less and less confident with each syllable. “I know how this looks and I understand you thinking that. I really do. But I promise you that’s not why we’re here.”

  Andrew isn’t looking at Leonard but at Redmond, who stares back at him with a cracked leer. He says, “You promise me, huh?”

  “Yes, I do. We all promise, Andrew. We’re just normal people like you, and we were thrown into this—this extraordinary situation. I want you to know that. We didn’t choose this. We’re here because, just like you, we have to be. We have no choice.”

  Andrew says, “There’s always a choice.”

  “Yes, okay, you’re right, Andrew. There’s always a choice. Some choices are more difficult than others. We choose to be here because it’s the only way we can help.” Leonard looks at a thick, black-banded wristwatch with a white face as large as a sundial. “Hey, everyone come in here, please. It’s almost time.” He holds a hand out, wiggles his fingers in a come-here gesture.

  Andrew asks, “Time for what? You don’t need us tied up. You’re here to talk so we’ll talk. All right?” He struggles against his restraints, pulling his legs up hard enough to make the chair jump in place. No one tells him to stop.

  The woman in the white shirt steps out from behind Eric and stands next to Leonard. The woman in black walks in from the deck and slowly closes the screen door. Her care is overexaggerated and she says, “If it falls out again, I’m going to stab it dead.”

  Redmond says, “Tsk, tsk, such violent language.”

  She gives Redmond the finger, then says to Wen, “Hey, sorry. Poor choice of words and finger.”

  The woman in the off-white shirt—or pearl, at least compared to the bright, starched-looking white of Leonard’s shirt—steps up and says. “Hi, Eric, Wen, and Andrew. My name is Sabrina.” She smiles and waves at Wen. She’s young, too, younger than Eric’s and Andrew’s almost forty, anyway, and thin but broad shouldered. Her brown hair is between a bob cut and shoulder length, and curly at the ends. Freckles dust across the bridge of a long nose that dives deeply beneath her large, egg-shaped brown eyes. “I live in Southern California. You can tell by my tan, right?” She smiles, and it disappears immediately. She folds her hands behind her back and looks up at the ceiling as she says the rest. “I live in a town you’ve probably never heard of. I’ve been a post-op nurse for almost five years and was planning to go back to school to become a nurse practitioner. I, um, used most of my savings to come out to New Hampshire, to come here to talk with you guys.” She rubs her face with both hands and says, “I have a little half sister back home, my dad remarried like ten years ago, and, Wen, you kind of remind me of her.”

  Wen shakes her head no and continues watching Steven Universe.

  Sabrina walks behind Leonard, turns away from everyone, and holds a hand to her forehead and then down to her mouth.

  Leonard pats her shoulder once and says, “Thank you, Sabrina. Right, so as I think you know already, my name is Leonard. I’m good at catching grasshoppers, right, Wen?” He pauses, waits, and Wen nods. Leonard tilts his head and smiles. Andrew spasms in his chair against the restraints. Eric knows that Andrew wants to thrash this man for that smile and for making their daughter nod her head the way she did. “I live just outside of Chicago. I help run an after-school sports program at an elementary school, and I bartend, too. I love working with kids but the after-school program isn’t full-time yet and doesn’t pay a ton.” He pauses again, like he forgot the next line in a script. Sabrina, as far as Eric can figure, was telling the truth. He isn’t sure about Leonard. “I haven’t been to a cabin like this since my parents took me to the Lake of the Woods, which is up in Minnesota if you’ve never heard of it. Kind of a famous spot. We used to go there every summer. I read the Tim O’Brien book that was set on the lake in high school but didn’t like it very much.”

  Andrew says, “It’s a brilliant novel. One of my favorites.”

  Eric almost starts crying again because he loves Andrew for not being able to help himself.

  Leonard says, “Yeah, but it’s too dark and sad for me. Maybe it would’ve been different if it wasn’t set at my favorite place. This is a beautiful spot, here, too.” Leonard closes his eyes, like he’s lost in the reverie of prayer. “I’ve always wanted to end up in a place like this.”

  Redmond starts in, almost cutting off Leonard. “Okay. Me? Am I next? Hi there, my name is Redmond and I like long walks on the beach and I like beer.” He laughs long and loud at his own joke. The other three give him a look that glances off him to somewhere else in the room, anywhere else that isn’t Redmond. It’s a shared look communicating clearly they don’t like him.

  Leonard speaks in a voice that Eric imagines he uses with the kids in his after-school pro
gram, real or imagined. “This is important. We already discussed this. They deserve to know who we are.”

  Redmond jabs a hand toward Leonard as he speaks, “You’re so concerned what they think and feel when it doesn’t matter, not one bit.” He points that punctuating hand at Andrew and Eric. “No offense, fellas,” then back at Leonard, “And it doesn’t change what it is we have to do and it doesn’t change what they are going to have to do. So let’s stop pretending any of this bullshit matters and just get to it.”

  Leonard says, “When you say stuff like this and sound how you sound, you scare them, and make it less likely they’ll believe us and cooperate.”

  “I don’t know, Leonard.” Redmond says his name like he’s teasing, mocking him somehow. “Have you considered that breaking in, tying them to chairs, and then us standing here like a bunch of freaks, cleaning up, making house, grinning like dick-holes, and now introducing ourselves like we’re all at a goddamned family reunion or something, is what’s scaring them?”

  “This is how it’s supposed to be.”

  “Ah, yes, right. I guess I didn’t get that particular memo.”

  “No, I guess you didn’t.”

  “Of course you’re the only one who did,” Redmond mumbles, a pouting child who isn’t getting his way.

  Sabrina says, “What are you talking about? We already told you that Adriane and I got the same message, too.”

  Redmond’s wide face flushes to the color of his shirt. “Whatever. It still doesn’t make—”

  Leonard takes a hard, floor-shaking step toward Redmond and the couch.

  Redmond jumps up and raises hey-I-surrender hands. “Okay, okay, my turn it is. Hey, I’m the local boy. Live in beautiful Medford, Massachusetts.” He exaggerates a Boston accent with the long aaaah sound in the front. “I work for the gas company making sure houses and apartment buildings don’t blow up. I’m single, if you can believe that. Sabrina and Adriane don’t seem to care, though. Ha ha, right? I’ve done some time, as they say. I did a lot of, uh, questionable stuff when I was young and stupid, but I’m much better now. And I mean that sincerely.” He pauses, presses the towel to his lip, and then holds his arm out straight to his right and drops the towel. It parachutes to the couch. “You know, my father used to beat the shit out of me, like Andrew just did. Would you believe me if I said I never deserved it? I wish I could go back in time and give the kid-me this thing.” He picks up the oar with the sledgehammer and trowel/shovel blades Q-tipping each end, shakes it, like he’s sizing it up for a mighty swing. He looks at Andrew, leans the weapon against the couch, and says, “Christ, guy, all my front teeth are loose, still bleeding. Remind me not to fuck with you again. But I knew you were lying about having a gun. So fucking obvious in so many ways that you didn’t have one. The funny part is—”

  Leonard shouts, “Redmond!”

  “Yeah, yeah, fine. So how’s all that?” He holds his arms out wide. “Me in thirty seconds. Damaged goods but I have a heart of gold; here to help save the world and all that. Can I get a hug now, Adriane?”

  Adriane walks past Redmond to the center of the room and says, “I’d rather work on that screen door for eternity.” She claps her hands and says, “I’m always the last one. I know this is so weird but—”

  Eric says, “Okay, hold on a second. We get that you guys are part of some group and it sounds like you want to”—his pause becomes a stammer—“er, what, fix things? Help?”

  Andrew says, “Eric, you don’t have to—”

  “No, I’m okay, a little scrambled, but I want to say this.” He takes two deep breaths and prays a silent please-God-get-us-out-of-this-safely complete with an Amen. “If you’re trying to recruit us, I mean, why else bother introducing yourselves to us, right?” Eric lets out a groan. He’s frustrated with himself because he didn’t intend to say the last part, to say exactly what he was thinking instead of sculpting his words into a pointed, purposeful statement. “If you’re trying to recruit us, or what, change us, make us different?” He’s again verbalizing what’s in his head and not curating something a bit more politic. Eric is supposed to be the great communicator, builder of compromise and consensus. He can do this; he just needs to concentrate harder. “This, all this, isn’t the way—”

  Eric is cut off by the vengeful return of the sun. Its rays burn through the cabin and his head and fill the rotten world with hateful, damning light.

  Wen

  Wen has seen this episode of Steven Universe before. Steven is called away from his favorite TV show by Peridot’s distress call. Steven and the Crystal Gems rush to the dangerous communications hub to take apart what Peridot had rebuilt without their knowing. Two of the gems, Pearl and Garnet, merge together (Amethyst is sad and feels left out) and form Sardonyx, a magician who also carries a war hammer, a long thin pole with two giant cube-shaped fists at the end. Steven and Sardonyx break the hub apart. But the hub is restored the next day and the day after and they keep having to return to tear the hub down. Pearl eventually admits she is the one who keeps rebuilding the hub because she loves how it feels to merge with Garnet and become the powerful Sardonyx.

  Eric’s voice is soft and high pitched. “Can someone put the curtain back up? The big blue one. Over the slider.”

  Wen watches the show, but isn’t really watching. She can both watch and not-watch at the same time. She’s good at it because she secretly has two brains. One brain dreams of becoming Sardonyx and sweeping the four strangers into the garbage with her war hammer. With her other brain, she ignores the television and watches what’s happening and listens to what is being said in the cabin. She pays close attention, and despite how dangerous everything feels, she can hide and stay safe inside this other brain, while scheming, plotting, waiting for a signal or message from either one of her dads to do whatever it is they’ll need her to do.

  Everyone is talking over one another.

  “What’s wrong with Eric?”

  “When you have a concussion, you’re extremely sensitive to light.”

  “There’s nothing we can do about that now.”

  “He’s only going to get better if he rests in a dark room or if we make it dark in here.”

  “I don’t think we should move him until after we make our, um—”

  “Our proposal?”

  “Right.”

  “Yeah. Let’s make a deal. Door number three, man, it’s always door number three.”

  “You can’t joke about this.”

  “I can and I have to.”

  “Because you’re an asshole?”

  “Because I’m scared shitless just like everyone else.”

  “He might need to be in a darkened room for days, not just a few hours.”

  Eric stirs as much as his tied-down body allows. Wen lifts her head away from his legs. He says, “You’re not separating me from Wen and Andrew. I’ll be fine.”

  He doesn’t sound fine. Wen doesn’t want to look at him because of how not-fine he sounds.

  Andrew says, “Come on, just untie him. He’s not going anywhere.”

  “I’ll see what I can do with the curtain,” Redmond says and walks into the kitchen and the slider door’s frame.

  Adriane says, “If you knock out that screen—”

  “Yeah, I know, I get it. Do your intro thing so we can get this over with.”

  Andrew starts to say something, but Adriane interrupts and says, “We’ll answer all of your questions real soon. Just let me get through this. I’ll be quick.” She moves differently than the others, a weird combination of hyper and slow.

  There was one day during this past February school vacation week Daddy Eric worked from home. He spent most of the day on the phone, doodling on a cube of yellow sticky notes. Each doodle was a stick figure he penned in the lower right corner of a sheet. Its head had long stringy J’s on each side, which was supposed to represent Wen’s hair. He spent hours drawing the same figure over and over again, one per individual sticky note.
He was finished drawing at the same time he proclaimed his workday completed. She asked him what it was and he said he made a cartoon. He showed her how to flip the notes, bending the pad and using his thumb to let the individual sheets tick by. The stick figure waved, did some deep knee bends, three jumping jacks with her arms blurring over the stick-figure head, and then she jumped in the air and flew back and forth across the yellow pages like a superhero.

  The herky-jerky way the minimovie stick-figure Wen moved is how Adriane moves. It makes Wen want to watch her closely.

  “So, yeah, I’m Adriane. I’ve been a lot of things but right now, or before I came up here, I was a line cook at a Mexican restaurant in Dupont Circle, D.C. I could show you my forearms covered in burn marks.” Her hands are alive, flapping around, crashing into each other, sock puppets in a Punch and Judy show. There’s a thick black ring on the thumb of her right hand and she twists it or checks to see if it’s still there after all the hand waving. She talks with a papery rasp that pitches her voice, making it sound lower and higher at the same time. Wen decides that this is how all people who live in Washington, D.C., talk.

  “What else? Um, I have two cats, and you’d love them, Wen. Their names are Riff and Raff.” Adriane’s hair is longer than Sabrina’s and much darker. Probably fake darker. Her eyebrows are thin and arched, encroaching on her forehead. She looks like the youngest of the four from a distance, but the oldest when she’s close up because of crinkle lines that show around her mouth and eyes. “Do you like cats, Wen?”

  “You don’t have to answer her,” Andrew says, and he says it like he’d be mad at her if she did.

  She answers in her head. Yes, I like all animals.

  Leonard turns off the television, tosses the remote control onto the couch, and checks his watch again. “Sorry, Wen. Maybe I’ll put it back on later.”

  The room darkens as the sun continues to play hide-and-seek. Shade blankets the deck and seems to act as soundproofing for the surrounding forest, muffling bird chirps and insect wings.