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syoddeye · 3 months

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the warren, part two

price x f!reader | 2.9k words

part one (prologue)

CW: blood (mentioned), dead animals, stalking

One bedroom. One bath. A screened-in porch. A carport. A woodshed. Fully furnished.

The old cabin in the woods is perfect.

No one answers the first call to the number on the ad, and the voicemail doesn't offer a clue as to who ought to answer. You leave a message anyway. After calling upwards of fifty places in the last week, you're desperate. The end of the month's coming up. Since you turned the motel manager down, he's wanted you out.

You fill out the rental application before hearing back, thank the gods there's no fee, and send it off with a sugary-sweet note and signature.

A woman calls back when you're in the middle of the supermarket. Congratulations, you want the place? You got it. It feels quick and surprising, but who are you to look a gift horse in the mouth? For the next four months, the cabin's yours. The landlady launches into details, forcing you to jot down directions on the back of your list. No GPS up here, she explained. The forest is too thick. Too many trees? Not a bad thing, in your opinion.

"Sure you're alright with sight unseen?"

"Yeah, I trust the pictures in the ad," You don't. "I'm itching to spend the summer in nature."

"Grouse Bay is a good spot for a getaway. You might not want to leave when the lease is up."

The sentiment makes you smile. "Sounds perfect."

There is no welcome sign for Grouse Bay. No indication you're close until you're right up on it, or rather, over it.

A thick quilt of pine, fir, and cedar hugs the gravel roadway. Asphalt disappeared some ten miles back, and you pray your car and its ancient tires stick out the descent into town. You're careful not to lean your full weight against the overlook's worn wooden fence. Below you, the road carves a series of switchbacks until it sweeps through a dozen or so lakeside structures. Thin tendrils of smoke curl up from more properties hidden by trees. With the blues of the lake and mountains on the horizon, it's a regular postcard.

Your teeth clatter, and the car shakes the whole way down. You pass a few gated forestry roads and private drives with quirky names before the road curves a final time and spits you out onto the main street. The only street.

We are not in Kansas anymore.

You don't miss a single building, crawling along at the posted speed of 15 MPH. There's a motel, a veterinary office, a grocer, and a water and sewer utility building, and where the road splits to continue along the lake or further up a hill into the woods is the Foxhole.

A rough-looking pub, your lip curls at the horrifically taxidermied fox in the window beside the door. You pull into a makeshift parking spot next to an old Ranger, collect yourself, and head inside.

Three heads swivel in your direction, two patrons and the barkeep. The men's expressions are unreadable, but the woman behind the counter offers a thin smile.

"Sit where you'd like."

The stale air smells like heat and cigarette smoke, and the ceiling fans do little to dissipate either. "I'm actually popping in to pick up a key? To a rental?" Your eyes flick to the men at the bar, not wanting to state precisely where you're staying in front of them.

The woman's smile turns knowing. "Right. We spoke on the phone. I'm Kate Laswell. I own the cabin."

"Owns half the town," One of the men snorts, pinching the neck of his bottle for a swig.

"Ignore him," Her hand disappears into her vest pocket and produces a carabiner with one key. "You got the check?"

"Yes," You pull out your billfold, carefully slide the folded paper slip out from between cards, and exchange it for the key.

Kate inspects it briefly, then dips her head. "Need me to wait to cash it?"

Your face heats at the implication. You hadn't listed employment on the application but assumed the bank's letter spoke for you. After all, she accepted you. "No. Cash it whenever you'd like."

"Alright then. Know where you're going?"

"Yes ma'am, I do."

"So polite," she chuckles, glancing at the men who grin at you. "Well then, enjoy. Call me if you need anything or have questions."

You hightail it out of the bar, and try to ignore the weight of three sets of eyes on your back.

The engine clicks as it cools, the only sound louder than the birdsong. Wedged between the open driver's door, you stand, feet firmly planted, yet feel like you could float. You made it.

The cabin is a deep red oxblood, faded by weather and time. The carport sags more than in the pictures, and the woodshed is nearly cleaned out, but it looks like a dream. Sunlight drapes over the front half of the structure, and a breeze catches a wooden wind chime over the exterior door of the porch.

Hauling your bags out of the backseat, you trek up the gravel drive. The key slots in easily, like the hardware's brand new. The door inches open, and the smell of musty, trapped air leaks out. Here we go.

You exhale a shaky breath. So far, so good. The pictures continue to match reality. The door opens to the dining and kitchen area with a honey oak table draped in a checkered runner, coordinating cabinetry, a towering glass-doored cabinet on the wall, and the back entrance dead ahead. To the left are a couch and armchair, with a low table and a padded woolen rug beneath. The door to the screened porch also sits to the left, with the entrances you presume leading to the bedroom and bathroom ahead.

Wood paneling lines every room. Others might think it tacky, but you find it charming and warm. It makes it a bonafide cabin, one you've pictured a thousand times. The bedroom is sparse, with a simple furniture set including a dresser, a nightstand, a lamp, and a vintage brass bed frame.

You make quick work of settling in. The space is tidy enough, though it's clear that Kate probably hasn't stopped in since you signed the lease. You open the windows for fresh air and do a little dusting. The dining table swiftly becomes the catch-all, with the miscellaneous other belongings you brought scattered over its surface, including the prehistoric laptop you handed a middle-aged woman a wad of cash for in the parking lot of a Walmart. You'd left in a hurry but planned meticulously. Aside from a few necessities and groceries, you have everything you need.

In the screened porch, you discover a glider and ottoman needing new upholstery and a lacquered wooden sign with lettering spelling out The Warrens. It rests on a windowsill, covered in a thin layer of grime. You think it must be from the former owners and leave it out of an odd sense of respect.

An hour later, the place aired out, you shut the windows, clip the car and cabin key together, and hesitate at the door. What's the protocol out here? You've never lived anywhere that didn't require multiple deadbolts. The town's simplicity and the woods' peacefulness - you can't even see the end of the property's driveway from the step - make you think it's probably okay…But then you think of the men in the bar. They didn't look bad, but the bad ones rarely did.

Mind made up, you lock the door.

The walk from the main thoroughfare to the cabin is ten, maybe fifteen minutes uphill. Sandals weren't the move, a reminder you tuck away for the next trip. Your focus stretches back to Grouse Grocery and its shopkeep, and you swallow hard at your naivete.

"Aw, I didn't know you could feed the deer like this."

"It's bait, sweetheart."

Lingering humiliation propels you up the slope to your newfound sanctuary. It doesn't help the grocer's handsome. His eyes are the same color as the lake, his face framed by a beard and mustache, punctuating the mountain man look. Tall with a broad chest and shoulders that taper into a trim waist. Burly arms dusted with hair, chest too, far as you could tell through the open uppermost buttons of his shirt. Your mind fills in the blanks of what his bootcut jeans and flannel covered. Something peculiar to him, though, and you can't put your finger on it.

I'm overthinking this. It's a small town. I'm not used to it, yet.

Not weird, just different.

The four words become your mantra when odd things start within days of your arrival.

As you told the good-looking grocer, you are an animal lover through and through. The child who toted frogs home from the playground pushed their nose to the glass outside pet stores and braked for ducklings. You dabbled with a vegetarian diet, failed, and overspent at farmers' markets in weak absolution. But you had never been a pet person. Life never allowed for it.

Which is why the cats are bewildering. Within the first week, three feral cats traipse about the property. By the end of week two, you count nine. Lounging in the woodpile, hiding beneath your car, or sitting on the step like they own the place. They skitter and hiss when you approach and don't touch the scraps of food you leave out to curry favor.

Then there are the 'gifts' they leave you. Headless birds, mice, and other small mammals. Entrails and viscera steaming on the cement step in the high noon sunlight. The Internet says it's normal, you say it's disgusting.

You read cats leave dead animals when they believe their human is helpless. That they see humans as big, furless, and inept hunters whose survival is in peril because they lack the innate ability to track, pursue, and kill.

Scraping the latest offering off their altar, you shrug off such notions. They're probably upset that their favorite place to squat is now occupied.

Then, the carcasses quadruple in size. One early morning, you decide to walk down to the lake to read with a cup of coffee, only to drop the mug and book into the dirt. A gutted doe is not fifteen feet from the front door beside your car. Black eyes lolled skyward, pinna flopped over its skull, and legs akimbo. After sprinting and vomiting into the kitchen sink, you call Kate.

"Sorry that's happened, I can send someone up to remove it in the next half hour. You ought to know that you might see more stuff like that, kid. Area's rich in wildlife - bears, cougars, bobcats, wolves, hell, even eagles drop half-eaten marmots from time to time."

You remain on the kitchen floor, repeating your new mantra, and not fifteen minutes later, tires on gravel announce someone's arrival. Mercifully, no one comes to the door. Whoever it is doesn't even kill the engine. You hear footsteps crunching on rock, the doe's body hitting the bed of a truck, the slam of a door, and the person pulling away.

Mustering the courage to stand, you stare from the front door, eyes transfixed on the blood left behind. You pray for rain.

It doesn't come.

The front light won't turn on. You swap the lightbulb with a spare from the cupboard and zip. Nothing. You call Kate, whose patience seems a deep well. She promises to send the local handyman and gets off the phone in a hurry. Annoyingly, you don't get a name or a time.

It's noon when a red pick-up arrives the next day. You're on your feet, off the glider and its ottoman on the porch, and barefoot when the door to the truck swings open. The practiced smile you wear falters a little when a familiar cut of a man steps out, sizes up the cabin in a glance, and then turns to grab a toolbox from the bed.

You meet him at the door.

"You're the handyman, too?"

The crow's feet by his eyes tighten with a smirk. "And the locksmith." His chin lifts to the sconce. "This it?"

"The one."

"Right, I'll get a stepladder and it'll be in working order within the hour. Mind shutting off the power in the meantime?"

"Of course. Need anything else from me?"

His smile's a waxing crescent, mouth twitching like he's got something clever to say. You've seen it before on the mugs of men trying to get fresh with you, but he keeps whatever it is locked behind his teeth.

"No. I'll let you know when you can turn the power on."

The hum of the refrigerator dies with the electricity, leaving the cabin completely quiet. You return to the glider and book, thumbing through to find your place. Convenient, the screened porch catches the fleeting hours of direct sunlight that hits the cabin. It also allows you a chance to watch and listen to him work.

"Name's John, by the way," He says after a while, voice clipped, meeting your eye through the screen when you look up. "You didn't ask."

It's off-putting, the way he speaks. It wasn't as if he conducted himself with overt kindness at his store, but you hadn't expected him - John - to take a tone with you, a stranger. A newcomer. Your smile is eager to smooth things over, a beat faster than any instinct to fight, always has been. "You're right, how rude of me."

His focus returns to the light, giving a slight roll of his shoulders as if your apology lifted a weight off his back. "S'alright, reckon you're learning how things work 'round here."

You want to return to Winterson in your lap, but the poorly disguised condescension fans a spark of annoyance. "You haven't asked for mine."

"I know yours," He responds, pulling a rag from a loop on his pants to wipe at something. "Kate talks."

The paperback spine creaks in your grip. "I suppose that comes with owning the watering hole."

He chuckles, exchanging the rag for a pair of pliers. "Something like that."

You don't ask. Handsome John may be, but he is definitely weird. Best to avoid the bad side of the nearest grocer, handyman, and locksmith. You return to reading, and another half hour slips past. You don't notice until the hum of the refrigerator restarts, practically jolting you out of the chair.

John stands washing his hands in your kitchen sink. You did not invite him in. His head turns, seemingly hearing how your breath stutters, and he nods at the switch beside the door.

"Give 'er a try," He says, wiping his hands on a dish towel.

The light works, and you flick it a few times to be sure. You stare up at the light, listening to its muted hum.

"Y'know," John murmurs, suddenly behind you in the doorway, leaning, supported by an arm, on the frame well above your head. "This is an old place. Doesn't get let often. Probably more repairs hiding around here. Already saw a few holes in the screen. I can take a walkthrough and fix what I can while I'm here."

Your head dips back, neck craning to meet his eye at this angle. It doesn't occur to you to move despite the whole of the front yard before you. You swallow. He's only trying to drum up business. A small-town entrepreneur. Trying to survive just like you. "Maybe another time."

John raps two knuckles on the frame and pushes off. "Alright, I'll gather my things." He brushes against you as he passes and collects his tools and stepladder.

You watch him from the entry and offer a weak smile when he returns, holding a notepad. He fishes a pencil out from a pocket, scribbling a moment, before he tears off a page and holds it out – an old-fashioned carbon invoice.

Not weird, just different.

"Pay when you can. You know where to find me."

You take the invoice. "Not afraid I'll skip town?" You joke, trying to gauge his sense of humor.

He grins and huffs a laugh. It sounds only a little forced. "Not at all. I know all the best spots from the bay to the mountains, for hiding or otherwise." He rubs the back of his neck.

Your brows creep up. "Or otherwise?"

John's eyes widen a fraction, and his hand slips from his neck in a gesture of surrender. "Don't mean anything by that. More like…for food. Dinner, maybe? A hike?"

The sheepishness of his tone does him credit. So what if he's a little awkward or indelicate? Probably as nervous as you are, though clearly for different reasons. In town for all of two weeks and already a local's taken interest. Inwardly, you preen.

"That sounds like a date."

"It does." He concedes.

You start to shut the door on him, stopping when his expression falls into absolute confusion. A laugh bubbles up, and you open the door again. "Well? You didn't ask," You playfully turn his words back on him.

"Smart one, aren't you. Alright then," He muses aloud, smiling. "Would you like to grab dinner later this week? Know a good spot within a half hour of here."

The way he looks at you, eyes crinkling with interest, you don't suppose it's a bad idea to get out, make friends, and immerse yourself in the community. "I'd like that, John."

There's a triumphant glint in his eyes. "I'll be in touch, sweetheart." He dips his head, returns to his truck, and flashes a wave when he pulls a u-turn and drives out.

That night, when you return from a walk to watch the sunset, you flip on the porch light, grinning, thinking about your date.

You do not notice the little red dot within the bulb.

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