A Cabin in the Woods (Patreon)
Content
Inspired by a Reddit Writing Prompt:
A serial killer decides to murder a bunch of teens in a cabin in the woods. However these 'teens' have just returned from a magical journey thousands of years long and have dealt with much worse.
The cabin, set back in the woods, looked like any other. Joe called it the Honey Trap. It didn't look like much, especially not a trap, but like all traps it drew the prey in and made sure they couldn't leave before he got to them. To facilitate this, he had installed a highly illegal set of spikes halfway down the road; at the flick of a switch, they would spring up to shred the tyres of any vehicles attempting to escape his tender mercies.
Only for people leaving. Never for people arriving.
He liked it when people came to his cabin.
To make it even more likely that people came into the trap in the first place, he had notices advertising it for rent in the nearby towns. Once he ... dealt with ... the people who came to stay in the 'quaintly rustic holiday venue', he made sure to use their credit cards in the next town over, and the next town after that. Always to buy things in the stores without security cameras. Electronic trails were only as good as the cops following them, and the local cops weren't very smart at all.
Unfortunately, it was the quiet season now. The demand for out-of-the-way vacation spots was low, except for the occasional businessman trying for a weekender with his secretary, and those were no good at all. Nobody walked away from a six-figure salary for a piece of tail, after all. So he had nothing to quench his ... desires ... on.
Which meant that he may as well spend the time doing any maintenance that needed to be taken care of. Fix the loose shingles, check the plumbing, and so forth. Drudge work, to be sure, but the Honey Trap would be less appealing if it got run-down.
Muttering under his breath, Joe got in the old beat-up truck (ah, the stories it could tell about the many bodies he'd transported to unmarked graves over the surrounding hundred square miles or so) and started it up. A trip into town to buy the required materials, then a week or so to deal with whatever problems he could find.
As he started off down the road, his thoughts were foul. Whoever stumbled into the Honey Trap next was going to have quite a time before they died. He'd make sure of it.
----
Fifteen minutes had passed since the truck had burbled off down the dirt track. The cabin sat still and quiet. As evening encroached, the day-warmed timbers began to settle, with an almost imperceptible creaking. Birds and squirrels went about their business in the trees all around; nobody living in the cabin had ever hunted them, and many put out crumbs or scraps for them.
But slowly the pattern of movement began to change. As animals will react to an upcoming earthquake or storm, they began to pause in their movements, staring at the cabin. Whiskers twitched and feathers flicked nervously. There was an almost subsonic vibration, one that the woodland creatures had never experienced before, which was only to be expected. It had only happened once before on Earth, more than two thousand miles away. But it was unusual, and animals don't like the unusual. It generally precedes something with teeth.
The vibration began to intensify, accompanied by a sharp violet light glaring from within the cabin. The glass in the windows was beginning to vibrate. All the animals were still now, staring, trying to make out where the danger would come from, so they'd know which way to run.
The shaking began to cause the trees themselves to vibrate, shedding a gentle rain of pine needles. Some of the more nervous animals began to back away. Suddenly, one of the windows in the cabin shattered, breaking the spell. A bird sang out a danger call. Others quickly took it up. In their turn, the squirrels and other small furry animals chittered in alarm. As birds began to take wing, and tiny feet leaped from branch to branch, the violet light became positively actinic. A couple of shingles came loose and slithered down the roof, falling off to hit the ground.
And then, from within the cabin, there came a CRACK, as of lightning striking, accompanied by a strong smell of ozone. This was the last straw for those animals still lingering. With the rush of feathers, wings darkened the evening sky, and other critters swarmed over the forest floor. Moments later, nothing living ventured within a quarter-mile of the cabin.
Inside the cabin, the story was a little different.
They lay where they had fallen, all four of them. Two boys and two girls, each one on the cusp between childhood and the responsibilities of being adults. One of the boys was large and well-muscled; his cohort, slender and studious. The girls were both pretty, but the blonde obviously took much more care with her appearance, while the brunette had a similarly studious look about her.
The smell of ozone was strong in here, but it was slowly dissipating, aided by a gentle breeze coming in through the shattered windowpane. For the longest moment, nobody moved. Then the larger boy groaned and rolled over to lie on his back. "Are we dead?" he asked the ceiling.
"I ... ugh ... don't think so, Brad," replied the studious girl, grunting with the effort of pushing herself to a seated position. "Not sure where we are. That damn shaman said we would need a place of great sacrifice to ground ourselves. This doesn't look like a temple."
"Holy shit, no, it doesn't." The blonde girl was also sitting upright by now. Leaning on one hand, she pointed at the window with the other. The last of the afternoon sun was shining through it, casting the room with an orange glow. "That's manufactured glass! When was the last time any of you guys saw glass like that?"
"Kate's right!" The skinnier boy clambered to his feet and staggered toward the window. Reaching out, he ran his hands over the woodwork, then over the intact panes. Finally, he turned, his eyes adjusting to the dimness, and dashed over to a cupboard. Wrenching it open, he reached in and took out a cylindrical object. For a long moment, he squinted at it in the dimming light, before he finally recognised it. "Guys ... we're back."
"Back?" asked the studious girl, who was also on her feet by now. "Back where, Scott? Telkennen? Poraster? That damned snake city?"
He turned to her, holding out the can of baked beans. "Earth. Home. Miranda, we're home."
----
An hour had passed. Scott had located light switches, which the teens barely recalled from their time away, and flicked every one he could. Now the cabin blazed with light; even as far back in the woods as they seemed to be, it appeared the owner paid his electricity bill.
"It's all starting to come back to me," Brad said, leaning back in the wicker chair he'd chosen. "Memories of Earth, of home. I thought we'd never get back."
"I always hoped we would," Miranda replied quietly. She sat forward on the sofa, sipping at a glass of water. "I'm just glad that stupid magical aura thing stopped us from dying of old age before we did."
Crackling arose from the fireplace where Scott was coaxing flame out of kindling and a couple of logs. "I knew there had to be a way," he said over his shoulder. "After all, Archmage Jallenan summoned us there, so there had to be a way to send us back. Which was why, after he died, I kept studying his books."
"I always thought you just wanted to be the next Archmage." Kate crouched next to him and held out her hands to the growing fire. "Oh, that's nice. So, do you have an explanation as to why we're wearing the clothes we had on when that pervy asshole abducted us?"
"Well, our clothing did vanish on the way," Scott said seriously, though with a hint of a grin. Kate's opinion of arriving butt-naked on a freezing cold flagstone floor in front of a white-bearded guy who had to be four times her age had always been ... acerbic. "But he wasn't that pervy. Once he established that we weren't supernatural beings who could help him, he gave us clothing."
"It only took us about a week to convince him that I was more comfortable in trousers," she shot back. "Yes, I like dresses. Not the concoctions they force their women to wear."
Brad began to laugh quietly, causing the other three to look questioningly at him. "What?" asked Kate. "Is it going to be some comment about me in a dress?"
"No," the larger teen said with a broad grin. "Just the look on Jallenan's face the first time you picked up a practice sword and started beating the shit out of the poor guy he had 'training' you."
Miranda leaned back on the sofa and took another sip from her water. "It turned out that we were the supernatural assistance he'd been looking for. Just not exactly what he thought we'd be. Stronger, more durable, unaging, healing extra fast, learning extra fast ... those Dromani assholes didn't know what hit them." There was a sense of deep satisfaction to her voice.
"Or Poraster. Or the other places that wanted to invade Telkennen." Scott dusted his hands off and stood up from the fireplace. "But Jalennan's dead, the Council was running Telkennen intelligently the last I checked on them, and we've managed to accidentally portal our way home. So what do we do with the rest of our lives? Assuming we start ageing again now, I mean. Or even if we don't."
Kate stood up also. "Well, I'm gonna figure out which way Brooklyn is, find out what date it is, and go home. And hope like hell I never have to pick up another sword in my life." Her eyes twinkled. "In the short run, I noticed a bathroom upstairs, and I haven't had a hot shower in about four thousand years."
Belying her previous lackadaisical nature, Miranda came up off the sofa like a striking snake. "Not if I get there first!"
"Don't you even dare!" Laughing, Kate darted for the stairs, with Miranda a split-second behind her. "I swear, I'll unleash the Seven Strikes of Sirassa on you!"
Brad watched them go, and shook his head fondly. "Miranda's braver than me. I wouldn't want to get between Kate and a hot shower."
"Kate's braver than the both of us," Scott retorted. "Miranda's the one who taught her the Seven Strikes, remember?" He nodded toward the kitchen area. "C'mon. Found something earlier."
"Yeah, what?" Brad got to his feet and followed on, watching as Scott opened a cupboard and pulled out a bottle full of a dark amber liquid. Two glasses came out as well. "Booze. You found actual Earth booze."
"Johnny Walker red label," Scott confirmed. "Guaranteed to be a lot smoother than Telkennen firewater or Poraster snake ale." He handed the glasses to Brad, then took the cap off the bottle. Almost ceremoniously, he poured each glass half-full, then put the bottle down on the sideboard. Taking one glass from his best friend, he clinked the other in a toast. "We're home, buddy. At long last, we're home."
"Here's to being back home." Brad walked with Scott back to the living room and they sat on either side of the table. "I can't wait to get back to civilisation."
Scott clinked his glass again. "To civilisation, where you don't get sorry bastards trying to kill you off, just for shits and giggles."
-----
Joe was still half a mile away from the cabin when he saw the light shining through the trees. His eyes narrowed. There wasn't anything else up there that could make a light like that, but ... there shouldn't be anyone in the cabin. They said nobody had rented it.
A slow smile spread across his face. Someone had fallen into the Honey Trap without bothering to notify anyone. Nobody knew they were there. I can take all the time in the world with them.
Shifting the truck into low gear, he flicked the lights back to parkers and eased back on the accelerator and let the vehicle find its way over the ruts and potholes, letting the dim lights show him the road, a few yards at a time. It was better if nobody knew he was coming. They were squatting in his cabin and knew it, so they'd be skittish. Better to come on them by surprise.
There was a surprise, all right, but it happened to him. Just as he was easing around a corner, the front wheels encountered an obstacle. An instant later, he realised what it must be, but it was far too late; even as he stamped on the brakes, the truck's inertia pushed it on to the vehicle spikes, puncturing both front tyres with a loud POP-HSSSSsss.
The truck jolted to a stop then stalled out. For a moment, he sat in the cab in the resultant silence, clutching the steering wheel and swearing under his breath. Of course if there were strangers in his cabin, they would've turned on every light they could find, and of course the spike trap was just another unmarked switch.
Fortunately, it wasn't that far to walk to the cabin, even in the dark. The lights made for a great beacon, and ensured that they wouldn't see him coming. Getting out of the truck, he reached behind the seat and pulled out a very old friend; a two-foot machete that he kept honed to a razor edge. He and that old machete had been together for a very long time, ever since his first kill. Then, he'd been clumsy and rushed. Now, he had his shit together. He knew how it went.
Killing was easy, if you knew how.
Smiling a particularly lethal smile, Joe started walking up the road, his boots making barely any sound on the pine needles.
----
"Oh, that's better. And hey. there's towels up there." Vigorously rubbing her hair dry, Miranda wandered down the stairs. She didn't bear any marks of battle, so it was plain that she and Kate hadn't actually come to blows over who had the first shower. She stopped as she saw what was on the table. "Kate!" she yelled.
"What?" came the reply.
"They found booze!"
"Tell 'em to keep some for me!"
Miranda tilted her head toward Scott and Brad. "You heard the lady. Keep some for her. Also, where's my glass?"
"Cupboard. Kitchen." Scott tilted his hand in the appropriate direction. His glass still had a quarter-inch in the bottom, while Brad had drained his and gone for seconds. Leaning back in the chair, he sighed. "I'm still trying to get my head around it. We've been gone for so long. Barely any time has passed here on Earth."
Brad frowned. "How do you know? I mean, thousands of years, man."
"Because this cabin is made of wood, and uses electricity." Scott rapped the table with his knuckles, then pointed at the bottle. "And they still make Johnny Walker whisky. But this is my point. We're still us on the outside, but on the inside, there's so much more we know."
Brad chuckled and shook his head. "What use is it, here? Did studying Jalennan's books give you any special insight toward astrophysics? I mean, you still want to finish your degree, right?"
"Well, no, it doesn't." Scott snorted. "Most of it was about magic, but I could never make that shit work. Even if he could. But you know what we could do?"
"What's that?" Miranda wandered back into the kitchen with a glass in hand. "Booze me."
Obligingly, Brad tilted the bottle, filling her glass.
"Write a novel series that would blow Tolkein and Martin right out of the goddamn water, is what," Scott said flatly. "We've all lived fifty lifetimes. We've seen three separate empires fall. We contributed to the fall of two of them. Then we established the Telkennen Peace Accord. We did that. We've got the material for the biggest, broadest, most complete fantasy series anyone on Earth has ever seen. All of us, collaborating on this ..."
Miranda's eyes opened wide. "Yallanda, you're right," she exclaimed. "And if Tolkein thought Elvish was complete, we all know Telkennen, Poraster, snake-tongue, Dromai, right down to how soldiers swear around the campfires ... if we play this right, publishers will be literally throwing money at us."
Brad blinked. "Well, shit, I never even thought of that. I wonder who'll play me in the TV series?"
Laughter filled the cabin as the three young friends drank and threw ideas back and forth.
-----
Joe heard the laughter as he crept up to the cabin. On one level it offended him, but on another it filled him with glee. They had no idea who was coming for them, what was going to happen to them. Just a bunch of stupid teenagers with zero life experience. He'd seen the broken window as he came up the last stretch, and he now knew how they'd gotten in. They'll pay for that. Oh, how they'll pay.
Picking his vantage point behind a shrub near the door, he settled down to wait. Someone would come outside, and then he would make his first mark. Unbidden, in the dark, his thumb ran lovingly over the blade of the machete. One swing, one decapitation. That was all it ever took. The heads always lay there so stupidly, blinking up at him. Not even aware of what had happened, wondering why they couldn't feel their ... well, everything.
He hoped it would be a girl. The psychological effect on everyone else would be so much the better.
------
"Ooh, thanks." Kate accepted the glass of whisky from Scott and sipped from it. "Oh, that's the good stuff. We're gonna have to find out who owns this place and pay them back for their alcohol. It's only fair."
"Well, sure," Brad said easily. "Hell, we might rent this place out from them when we start writing."
"Writing?" Kate looked at him, one perfect eyebrow raised. "You? Are you sure you didn't swap bodies with Scott on the way back?"
Miranda giggled, partly due to the whisky and partly from the comment. "No, he's serious. Scott had the great idea that we could collaborate on a fantasy novel series about everything we've seen and done."
Kate blinked. "For real? We could do that? I mean, us?"
"For the girl who force-marched seventeen leagues at the head of the force to break the siege around Lassanan, that's a pretty wishy-washy response," Miranda said with a smirk. "When was the last time you asked 'can I really do that' instead of 'hell yes, I can do that'? I mean, really?"
"Yeah, but that was there and this is here," Kate said. She waved the hand not holding the alcohol in an attempt to convey her meaning. "This is the real world. I'm not an immortal goddess of war, here."
"I still say we can do it." Scott raised his glass to her. "The women of Poraster still sing praises to your name, a thousand years after we ended the slave trading."
"Yeah, but that was easy." Kate took a deep breath. "I'm gonna have to think about this for a bit." Taking the glass with her, she headed for the front door.
-----
One of the girls was coming outside. A blonde, he saw. Holding a tumbler of booze. His booze. A spark of anger shot through him. Break his window, drink his booze ... they'd probably even used his towels. They deserved everything he was going to do to them.
For about a minute, she stood with one hand on the porch railing, not six feet from him, looking out into the night. He heard her sigh. "Home," she whispered. "At last."
Draining the glass, she set it down on the rail and started down the steps. He kept extra still, barely breathing, as she moved closer and closer to his kill-zone. Inside, her friends were still chatting about some book or other. He tuned them out; his total focus had to be on his prey. Strike, take the head, melt into the woods. Leave them freaking out.
She stepped up alongside him, staring up at the night sky. "Orion," she sighed. "Thank--"
Now!
Lunging up out of cover, Joe swung the machete. Already anticipating the bite of metal into flesh, the crunch through bone, he reached to catch--
The blade was only just starting toward its target when she whirled toward him, faster than anyone he'd ever seen before. One slim hand intercepted his machete arm at the wrist, the other grabbed him by the shoulder. Her knee drove deep into his stomach; he would've doubled over, but her grip was implacable. The lights of the cabin whirled up and around him, and he landed on his back with a thud that drove the breath from his lungs. The machete was gone from his hand, sliding on the ground a little distance away.
And then she let him go and jumped back. "Shit, sorry," she said. "I didn't mean--you just came out of nowhere--hey, is that a fucking machete?"
But he was already rolling away, scrambling to his feet, staggering for the darkness, his lungs wheezing for breath. Behind him, he heard her voice rise. "Guys! There's someone out here!"
----
In the semi-darkness, Brad's face held the same implacable expression that he'd worn in the darker days in the other world. He held the machete with an easy grip--that same hand had wielded everything from a dagger to a two-handed war-axe, and old reflexes were hard to let go--as he studied it.
"This isn't used for cutting brush," he said quietly. "The guy keeps it clean, and he keeps it sharp. I think he came up here to kill us."
Miranda nodded, not looking at him. Like Scott, she was keeping an eye on the darkness. "Figures. If this guy is a serial killer, it might fit the pattern for a 'place of sacrifice'. I wonder how many people died around here?"
"Too many, if he's this bold." Scott tilted his head toward Kate. "Hey, you okay?"
"Pissed is what I am," Kate snapped. "I'm back here two hours, have one hot shower, and I fucking nearly let down my guard for a stupid garden-variety mass murderer. One without any magic, to boot. I can't believe I let him get up, much less get away."
"Okay," said Brad. "It looks like we aren't gonna be starting that book quite yet. Let's get inside. We need to secure the building and make sure he hasn't sneaked in the back way before we start making our plans." In his tone was the voice of the warrior who had engineered the fall of the Dromani, two thousand years ago and an infinite distance away in an impossible direction.
Raising the machete, he hurled it. Turning over once, it thunked deep into the wood of a pine tree on the edge of the light coming from the porch. Then he turned and led the group into the cabin. The door closed behind them.
------
Crouching in the darkness outside the cabin, Joe stared at the machete. That college boy had some throwing arm, he decided. He'd thrown the machete over twenty feet, and it was still buried six inches into that damn pine. But why had he thrown it? To show off? It made no sense.
The trouble was, if he tried to get it back, he'd be there for some time just trying to lever it out of the wood. If anyone looked out one of the windows, they'd see him.
Maybe the college boy was smarter than he looked.
With a sneer, he eased off down the road. They didn't know about the truck, or what he had in it. The way that girl had reacted, it was like she'd trained all her life just for that moment. But all the kung-fu bullshit in the world would not protect her from a high-powered rifle round.
When he got to the truck, he opened the door and reached in to the rifle rack. He'd never used the scoped Winchester for any previous kills, mainly because if the stupid local cops visited, he didn't want to have to explain away bullet holes in the walls. But these assholes were different.
There was a box of bullets in the glove compartment, and he fumbled for them in the dark. If he had to, he'd fill the damn cabin with bullet-holes. The rifle would carry right on through, from front to back. Anyone in the way would be just plain dead. Then he'd torch the place ...
"Dammit," he muttered. "Where are those damn bullets?"
"Looking for these?"
The cool voice from behind him nearly made him jump out of his boots. Turning, he saw in the dim interior light that the four of them were standing right there, in a semi-circle around him. As he watched, the brunette held out the box he'd been looking for, then tipped her hand to let the glinting copper casings tinkle to the ground at her feet.
"What the fuck?" he gasped. "Where did you come from? And how did you get those?"
The young woman sighed. "I backtracked you. You leave a trail like a wounded elephant, by the way." She snorted. "I should know."
"You should've kept running," said the slender young man. In the almost-dark, he looked ... sinister. Deadly. "We might not have caught up with you, if you ran fast and far enough."
"But you tried to kill one of ours," the big guy rumbled. "We've been friends for a very long time, and we kind of take that sort of thing personally."
"Plus," said the blonde, "if a nobody like you had killed me, I never would've lived it down." She pointed at the truck. "Turn the headlights on. Now."
This was going to fast for Joe. "What ... what for?"
Suddenly, his machete was one inch from his left eye. "Lights. Now." Her voice was hard and sharp. A command. He felt himself already moving to obey before he knew it.
Leaning back into the truck was awkward, but he managed it. His fumbling hand sought where he'd left the keys in the ignition. If he could turn them, start the truck, jolt the transmission into reverse ....
His scrabbling fingers found nothing. A moment later, the dark-haired girl leaned in through the window above his head. Metal jingled as she waved her hand. "Looking for these?"
Shit. Moving his hand, he found the headlight toggle and pulled it. Yellowish-white light washed into being in front of the truck. The group stepped back, and the blonde waved the machete. "Out in front."
Still unsure about what was happening, he stumbled around to the pool of light. "What now?"
The blonde stepped into the light with him, and tossed the machete to the ground. "Pick that up. See how brave you are against someone who can see you coming." Her lip curled in a sneer. "I bet you've never faced one person over their own blade. People like you make me sick. Attacking from ambush. Cowards, the lot of you."
A voice in the back of his head told him that picking the machete up was a bad idea, but he pushed it down. He knew now she was good at martial arts, but he was bigger and stronger than her. And a man with a blade always beat a woman without one. His experience to date had told him that.
Crouching quickly, he scooped the weapon up, welcoming the smoothed grip to his hand. Holding it, he felt complete. Feeling on top of the situation once more, he eyed the girl. Once he took her down, he would finish the rest of these assholes. Hunting teenagers through the woods was always a thrill, no matter how big they talked. How smart could they be? They'd given him his machete back.
"I've been away for awhile," she said almost conversationally. "There was a ... monastery, you might call them. All women. Miranda and I trained with them. Or rather, Miranda trained with them, and I trained under her. They were called the Sisters of Sirassa."
He wondered if she really was as stupid as she sounded. Lunging forward, he swung the machete. Barely even seeming to move, she swayed back out of the way of the blow. Her hand struck, and blinding pain flared up his right arm. The machete dropped to the ground.
"Pick it up," she ordered. She waited until he complied with his left hand--the right wasn't obeying him at all--then continued as if the interruption had never happened. "They specialised in a particularly vicious method of bare-handed combat. The Seven Strikes of Sirassa. There's more than seven strikes, of course. But those were the important ones."
He advanced on her; she gave ground. If she was worried, she didn't show it. A swing of the blade, once more evaded by a gentle sway backward, then she stepped forward, through his guard. A straight-forefinger strike drove into his gut, and he doubled up, gagging.
"Three strikes are used to disable," she said, almost gently, right next to his ear. "Three to cause excruciating pain. Pick it up."
Stepping away from him, she gave him time to realise he'd dropped the machete again, and scrabble it up. Stumbling to his feet, he glared at her, too angry to be scared. Nobody had ever manhandled him like this before. She was going to die.
"Do you know what the last strike does?" she asked, turning away from him. Taking her eyes off him.
Jumping forward before she could correct her mistake, he swung the machete around in a fast, lethal arc--
She spun, so swiftly it appeared to be a blur. Her fist, folded oddly, lashed out. With a dull sense of inevitability, he came to meet it. His last thought before impact was, she played me all the fucking way.
Crunch.
He found himself lying on his back, on the ground. He couldn't breathe, or even feel anything from his neck down. The blonde leaned down over him. Her lips parted. "It kills," she whispered.
And then there was nothing.
----
"Well, okay, then," said Brad as Kate stood up. Kicking the tip of the machete, he caused it to flip into the air and caught the blade between two knuckles. "Dibs on not being whoever hikes into town in the morning to tell the local cops what happened here."
Kate snorted and elbowed him in the ribs. "You wish. Who else do you think they're gonna think laid out the serial killer with a lucky punch to the throat? Not little old me, that's for sure."
He rolled his eyes. "That's right. Make me do all the heavy lifting. Four thousand years you've been doing it, so why did I ever think it might change after we get back home?"
Still bickering, the four friends strolled up the road toward the cabin in the woods.
Overhead, the cold stars shone down on a dead man.