A White Mountains Mystery: The Cabin, Chapter 2

"Don't panic," began Danny, first to find his voice. "That generator's a piece of junk. I'll get it going again in - "

Crash.

For the second time that minute, everybody jumped, and none among the five friends was able to supress a cry. The door had flown open, admitting little light but abundant swirls of tempest. Etched in the oblong of dimness was a dark sodden form.

It was Oscar.

His clean-shaven, city-boy face was rain-streaked and deathly white, the elaborately gelled hair above a catastrophic ruin.

With wide eyes he stared into the cabin as though registering nothing.

"Oscar?"

Megan's voice, starting to quaver, for it was clear to all that something was badly wrong.

"Oscar, where's Mason?"

Long seconds crawled by with no sound but that of the wind and rain. At last, Oscar croaked aloud in a dreadful voice barely akin to his own:

"The Québecois..."

He would say nothing else. Megan and Sarah made all haste to dry him off and usher him to bed in one of the bunks, while Grace, Danny and Carter rushed at once outdoors to yell Mason's name over and over into the teeth of the gale. Yet for all that they strove, it was futile. The storm was at its peak, and only the nearest treetops could be seen for grey-white walls of water. Rain drove down from the White Mountains as to wash the cabin away, and after a single shouting circuit of its log walls the trio stumbled inside again, hoarse and soaked to the skin. Working together with the last of their strength they heaved shut the flimsy door.

Presently Grace and Carter sat at the kitchen table, wrapped in some fusty old blankets they'd found, trying their best to warm up over tin mugs of instant coffee. Megan and Sarah came in from the bedroom.

"Oscar's in shock," reported Sarah. "Just keeps saying the same thing over and over again. He's asleep now, so let's hope that does him good."

"Out-of-towner," Carter remarked. "Told you he'd never hack it in New Hampshire."

Megan glared at him, and if ever a joke had fallen flat. It was a relief when the light came back on, breaking the tension somewhat, and a moment later Danny came back through. Duly he warned the others that a generator prone to sputtering out in high winds might at any time prove beyond his ability to restart it.

This Grace noted, and proceeded. Good old debate-society Grace had never been much of a party girl, but she could always be counted on to keep a level head in a crisis. Which, as the friends were rapidly being forced to confront, was what this was starting to look like.

"The first thing we need to determine," began Grace, "is the cause of Mason's..."

She hesitated, then continued firmly:

"...disappearance. Could there be another person here in the woods with us? And if so, who could possibly have any reason for going after Mason?"

"Sabretooth?" suggested Carter.

Everybody stared at him.

"I mean, us being out in the sticks like this, and it's his birthday," Carter elaborated. "What's the matter, don't you guys read Wolverine?"

Everybody looked away from him again, this time with expressions of disbelief.

Still the deluge hammered against the cabin windows. "How long can Mason last out there?" murmured Sarah hopelessly. "For that matter, even if there is an attacker or kidnapper, how can he?"

"Someone with paramilitary training could," Danny replied. "An escaped terrorist, for example."

"So...crazy renegade ex-secret services Canadian?" Carter slipped in. "Anyone else think this still really sounds like...?"

Danny cut across him. "And if we are being stalked by some nutjob," he pressed on, "we've no choice but to stand our ground. Escape isn't an option."

The others didn't know what he meant by this.

"That flooded creek," explained Danny glumly. "We couldn't take the car over it even before the rain. By now it'll be like the Mississippi. We're cut off, and anyone else who may by out there is stuck here right along with us."

Into the heavy hush that followed, Carter began to intone:

"This is how it starts. Then he comes for you, one by one..."

A sudden slamming noise brought hearts into mouths, but it was only Sarah, bringing her palm down hard on the table's surface.

"Look, Mikey from The Goonies," she vehemently addressed Carter. "This isn't one of your sub-Washington Irving campfire yarns. Meg's boyfriend's in deep trauma and Mason's who knows where. We don't have time for X-Men Origins from some wiseass wannabe who attention-seeks because his privileged parents wish they never had him."

Carter gazed back at his girlfriend, speechless for once. It would have been an awkward moment for the others, even in easier circumstances than these. When Sarah spoke again she was not quite so heightened, but remained unapologetic and cold.

"Our friends don't need to sit through it," she informed Carter. "Even if it's what I signed up for."

Megan beside her let out a tiny anxious whine.

"Don't pay any attention to that jerk, babe," Sarah went on. "Give Oscar a chance to sleep and I'm sure he'll be OK."

"It's not that," Megan replied, in tones of desperation. She was fidgeting in her chair.

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Again?" she exclaimed.

"Christ on a - " began Carter, but a sharp glance from Sarah stopped him.

"Don't make me go on my own," Megan pleaded. "I didn't like that creepy old outbuilding before. What's happened since hasn't helped."

It was just possible the rain was easing off, thought Sarah as she and Megan opened the back door a crack. The torrents looked a little less horizontal than they had done. Even so, Sarah pitied her friend for the short dash from doorway to outhouse this operation was going to demand.

"Oh," whimpered Megan, as one disconsolate. "And I used up all the paper last time!"

Sarah, having anticipated this, had brought her bag with her. Now she began to hunt inside it for a pack of tissues.

"Here's a scene that wouldn't make it into one of Carter's comic books," she muttered. "Unless it was intended for weird fetishists. So, OK, maybe this scene would make it into one of Carter's comic books."

While Sarah rummaged, Megan drew a deep fortifying breath, and thus resolved on her mission threw the back door wide.

Then she screamed, a long drilling shrill of terror without cease.

What was that figure, leaping from the outhouse roof? Sarah's staring eyes pinned a snapshot flash of lean but muscled legs and arms flung out in a flailing predatory descent like that of some monstrous spider, the head somehow twice as large as it ought to be. Despite the obscuring elements through which the shape plunged, Sarah perceived that in its hand it carried a coiled garotte-wire.

Her own hand meanwhile had closed on something cold and hard.

Sarah didn't stop to think. She thrust out her green aluminium can of bug-spray and discharged it into the thing's face, depressing the nozzle so her fingertip hurt and then keeping going until it was numb. Through the acid sweet-smelling white roils Sarah glimpsed human features in the throes of hideous contortions, or barely human, what little she could make out anyhow behind tangles of wild uncut hair and a thickly matted beard.

The noises it was making were about as civilized as its looks. Nevertheless, it reacted fast. For one never-to-be-forgotten moment, a pair red raw eyes streaming moisture pinned Sarah's own from out of the bug-bomb's fumes. Next second the wiry jumbled mass was crashing bodily to the forest floor, rolling sidelong commando-fashion, and springing upright again to vanish with a few final chokes and curses into the undergrowth.

It dawned on Sarah that the spray-can sounded different. Quieter. It was empty, pushing out only air. She'd given it a full clip.

Very slowly she relaxed her finger, until all there was to hear was rain.

"Did you bring a spare pair of panties too?" Megan asked miserably.

TO BE CONTINUED

You've just been reading Chapter Two of The Cabin, written for Judey Kalchik's Birthday Mystery Challenge! Next up is Ashley Lima, and the link to her Chapter Three will appear in the comments section below. So stay tuned, as some of Vocal's finest writers bring you more spills and thrills straight out of New Hampshire!