The Cabin in the Woods by Tim Lebbon Page A

was a variety of personal effects: an old hairbrush; a silver mirror; and a leather-bound book. “Some of this stuff looks really old,” she said. “Look at this,” Jules said. She had moved across to the dressmaker’s mannequin, less spooky in the lamplight but still strange with the unfinished garment still tight upon it. She touched something hanging around its neck, an amulet, and as she held it in her hand she said, “It’s beautiful.”
    “Maybe we should go back upstairs,” Marty said. He was still standing at the bottom of the staircase, looking around nervously, hands clasped in front of him. He’s actually scared , Dana thought, and the idea disturbed her. When no one answered him he said, “I dare you all to go upstairs?”And then Marty froze, and a small smile crept through his fear.
    “Oh wow, take a look at this,” he said, and he walked a few steps to where a bunch of old film reels were stacked. Beneath them was a super-8 projector, and piled beside it several small suitcase-style containers that Dana thought might contain more reels. The plinth they stood on was circular and built up of regular stones, its tabletop a board of thick, roughly cut wood. It looked like an old capped well.
    Dana frowned, wondering what a well was doing in the basement of a house; or rather, why a cabin would be built around a well.
    Marty plucked a reel from its rack and started examining it.
    “Porn?” Curt asked, but Marty didn’t reply. He started unspooling it, holding the film up to the light and moving it slowly through his hand, mouth open in wonder.
    “What is it, Marty?” Dana asked, but whatever story was playing before his eyes, it seemed to hold him entranced and distant from them.
    So Dana turned and approached the portrait, staring into the girl’s eyes and trying to blink back the certainty that they stared back. Perhaps it was something to do with the way the portrait had been formed, the material behind it, or the manner in which it had been slightly faded by the basement air, but the girl’s eyes seemed so alive.
    She picked up the book and brushed dust from itscover, revealing the word “diary” in extravagant gold lettering. Opening the cover, she looked up, suddenly afraid of what she might read.
    I should close this , she thought. Put it back where it belongs, place it exactly in the rectangle of dust it left on the table.
    And we should all stop doing what we’re doing...
    She looked around at the others, all of them seemingly entranced by this place and consumed by the small part of it they were each examining. Holden was winding the small handle on a music box, and the haunting metallic music filled the air, pinging from note to note and somehow bringing tears to Dana’s eyes. Curt was frowning as he worked sections of the wooden sphere, pulling rings, sliding wood against wood, clicking sections into place as he worked on transforming it into something else.
    Jules had removed the golden amulet from around the dummy’s neck and was holding it to her own neck, staring into a dusty mirror to see how it looked, and Dana thought that in the mirror her friend looked as old as everything else down here. Jules searched for the clasp as if to try it on for real.
    Don’t try it on, Dana thought, her own desperation surprising her. She tore her eyes away and saw Marty unwinding more and more film, leaving it to stream around his feet as he watched his own private moments against the lamplight, mouth and eyes wide, and she knew that even if she shouted right then it might not be enough.The music box’s music filled the basement, an incidental theme to Marty’s movie, and Curt’s puzzle box, and Jules’s effort to undo the amulet’s clasp— Dana looked down at the diary and started reading, and from the very first word she imagined them being spoken by the girl in the portrait.
    Then she wrenched herself free.
    “ Guys!” she called. The music box stopped, and the others all paused