The Cabin in the Woods by Tim Lebbon Read Free Book Online Page B

the window. The sun caressed his scalp, and it was good. Holden had fetched them another beer each, and he felt a warm glow, starting at the center of him and reaching all the way to his fingertips and the ends of his toes.
    Dana and Holden were sitting close, and though they affected indifference, Marty could see that each time the swaying Rambler nudged them into each other it sent a thrill through them.
    Lucky guy, he thought. Dana was cute as hell and a lovely girl. A beautiful girl. They’d been friends for over a year, and to begin with he’d believed that she viewed him as some sort of a joke. Many people did, mostly the shallow types—the plastic people, he called them—who spent more time concerned with what the outsides of their heads looked like, rather than bothering to care for the insides. But he’d soon come to realize that, though gorgeous, Dana was not like that at all. An intelligent girl, both deep and somewhat mysterious, she kept a distance from himrather than regarding him as a joke.
    Maybe her parents had had a thing about drugs of any kind, and it was a hangover from that, or perhaps... but no, he’d stopped thinking that long ago. Perhaps it was because she felt something for him and was afraid to grow too close? Yeah, right. Looking at Holden and Dana now, he could see how distant she kept from guys she liked.
    But out of their awkward beginning had emerged a strange, close relationship. Marty was sure that Dana knew what he felt about her, and how intense was the first impression she’d made upon him. And Marty was getting to know her more and more every day. Of all the friendships he’d made at college, this one felt as if it would last longer than all the others.
    Lucky guy , he thought again, and when Dana caught his eye he glanced away.
    “Guys, take a look,” Jules said.
    Marty sat up and, with the others, leaned to look out the front windshield. To their right was a steep ravine, and ahead of them loomed the dark mouth of a tunnel set in the mountainside. It looked impossibly small. The ravine ended in a sheer, bare cliff face, above which rose a steeply wooded hillside, boulders, and rock spurs protruding between greenery like boils on a craggy face. And across the other side of the ravine, another tunnel mouth emerged onto a road ledge.
    Must curve through the mountain, he thought, and he wondered who would have built such a tunnel instead of a simple bridge.“Hey,” Marty said, “do we really have to go—”
    “Yep,” Curt said. He slowed the Rambler as they approached, concentrating, and turned on the headlights. The darkness was pushed back as they entered the tunnel, and to Marty it felt as if they were being swallowed by the mountain. It seemed like an incredibly tight fit, but there was no scraping or crunching, and Curt steered confidently into the darkness.
    Marty closed and opened his eyes again several times, enjoying the brash contrast between darkness and the artificial lights of the Rambler’s dashboard. His friends were mere shadows in the barely lit cabin, and he knew that he’d look the same to them.
    Halfway through the tunnel, when the faint glow of daylight started to show ahead of them, he suddenly sat up as the hairs on his forearms and neck stood on end. A shiver went though him, like a subtle electric shock, tingling his balls and tickling the insides of his nostrils. He immediately sniffed the joint, wondering if some alien substance had found its way in, and—
    •••
    Above the mountainside and ravine, a small bird’s free will took it along the route of the rough mountain track. It swept above the wooded mountainside, unconsciously following the tunnel as it rode thermals. Singing as it flew, stomach full from a recent feed, it struck something in mid-air, something that flashedinto view for a second like a vast blue, pulsing grid, and with a shower of fiery sparks the bird plummeted, dead. Its wings were scorched, its insides fried. Its brain