The Cabin Is Always Hungry

LAST RESORT

Part 19

Vivian kept both hands on the wheel, knuckles pale, eyes on the winding asphalt as if she could hold it still by will alone. Beside her, Xavier sat with his arms crossed, shoulders jammed up near his ears, his gaze fixed on the black shape of the tree line.

The boy had been gearing up to speak for the past ten minutes. She could feel it—like the shift in air before a storm. That restless throat-clear, the way he adjusted in his seat, exhaled like he was trying to push the words out by force. She wished he’d just choke on them.

“I didn’t mean what I said,” Xavier finally blurted, his voice rough and slightly squeaky. Like a child who didn’t want to confess to an embarrassing mistake. “About Mom and Dad.”

Vivian didn’t look at him. She just reached forward, turned the volume dial until the low hum of some old late 90s R&B song swelled between them, a soft barrier between them.

Five minutes ticked past. The music faded into the background, replaced by Alicia Keys, and her mind went drifting into the place she didn’t like to linger.

They were dead. Her parents were dead. That part was undeniable. And maybe—probably—the stories on the news were true, too. That they had worn some creepy satanic robes (she didn’t know if this was even true), went into the woods with knives, and murdered a bunch of kids including a schoolmate of theirs, Mark Castle. That there had been a massacre in the woods that was partially their doing. That they also killed their neighbors. That it hadn’t been random.

But there was a fault line in her belief, and she couldn’t let it go. She couldn’t picture her mother, who made her favorite chocolate cookies almost once a week, to slitting a stranger’s throat. She couldn’t imagine her father, the one who cried at cheesy romance and Pixar movies, to kidnapping kids and took them into the woods.

Then Xavier’s voice cut through, pulling her out of the depths of her thoughts.

“Um, Vivian?”

She blinked back to the present.

“We’ve passed that before.”

“Huh?”

She followed his finger. A sagging sign, half-swallowed by pine, read: CEDAR PINE SUMMER CAMP. White paint flaking like skin.

“So?” she said.

“No, you don’t get it.” His voice was high now, riding a tremor. “It’s the same one. We’ve passed it like four, no, five times now.”

“What? Are you—”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Just look at it.”

Vivian shook her head. “That’s impossible.”

“No, I’m telling you! Same bent corner. Same crack through the word summer. Same—” He cut himself off, twisting in his seat to watch the sign shrink in the rearview.

Vivian’s stomach knotted, the air in the car thickening until it felt like she was swallowing cloth. She realized she hadn’t found the road’s exit yet. When she took the ramp to head into North Cedar Lake and drove to the manor, it barely took ten minutes to reach the property from the highway. She should have passed the gas station by now and found the overpass and the south ramp to the highway.

Her fingers flexed against the steering wheel. The song on the radio had reached the end, Alicia Keys drawing out the last note until it sounded almost like a breath in the backseat.

She checked the GPS on her car. It said she was three minutes away from the exit lane. “See? We’re almost to the highway,” Vivian said.

“Are you sure?”

“Says the GPS.”

“Viv,” Xavier lowered his voice, “the GPS hadn’t moved a second closer. That’s weird as fuck.”

“It must be a glitch or something.”

“But that’s not it though.”

“What is it then?”

“We’ve been driving in a straight line for fifteen minutes.”

Unbeknownst to the Yates kids, about twenty minutes ago, Ray Klein opened the werewolf door in the manor. Unfortunately, their names were automatically added into the delving list by the System. The players had to find their way out by themselves from now on, thanks to the dungeon’s Core upgrade that I purchased weeks ago, which was now in full effect.