Chapter 22
The Cabin in the Woods
ATTENTION, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: KYLIE Kahl is not okay. She is very fucking not okay.
Her period is late. By her count, two weeks.
And this is . . . concerning. Because, despite the insanity of the past six years, her cycle has always remained regular, arriving each month like clockwork to remind her that she’s still young, still alive, still got time.
And he keeps track of it, too. She doesn’t believe he’s trying to get her pregnant.
He knows which days in her cycle are “safe” and which ones aren’t.
But since he doesn’t like to use condoms—he says they’re constricting and uncomfortable—the possibility of pregnancy is always there.
Ha. He’s uncomfortable.
#cuethefuckingviolins
She’d need to test to know for sure. She’s never been pregnant before and has no idea what it feels like.
She and Freddie had no plans to have a child, either.
All she knows about pregnancy are the complaints she heard in church from the women expecting their third, fourth, fifth child.
The nausea. The sore boobs. The fatigue.
The weird cravings. The food aversions. The constant need to pee.
She has none of these symptoms, except for the most telling one: the absence of blood.
Oh, and the fact that she can smell absolutely everything.
She thought she’d gone nose-blind to the odors of the cabin long ago. At some point, she stopped noticing the aroma of damp earth and rotting leaves that permeates the space, and the scent of the sweat and fluids that are permanently soaked into the thin mattress she spends most of the day on.
Her sweat. His fluids.
At least she can still smell the wood burning in the old-fashioned gas stove in the corner, which he only turns on when it’s so cold she’s shaking.
Sometimes she thinks about tossing his old Moleskine journals into that stove, and the Polaroids, too.
Years’ worth of writings and photos, always about other people and what they’re doing, with hardly any self-reflection at all.
Sometimes the journal entries are written in third person, and there are more than a few that read like short stories rather than diary entries.
Maybe Thing One was an aspiring writer at one point. Maybe he still is.
See how he likes it, watching it all burn. Maybe that would actually get a reaction out of him.
Kylie likes the smell of fire. It reminds her of campfires and all those summers she spent hiking and sleeping in tents in the woods with her youth group.
Not all those kids were uptight; some of them had been her friends.
Hell, the first time she ever smoked a joint was on a camping trip, and the first time anytime touched her boob was in the woods behind the tents later that night. It wasn’t even a boy. It was a girl.
She never thought in a million years she’d actually miss those people, but she does.
The church had a problem with her, that’s true. But she also had a problem with the church. The way it was run, the structure, the rules, the expectations, the shaming. So much shaming.
She turns over on the thin mattress, the chain cuffed to her ankle scraping across the wood floor.
The other end is attached to a thick support beam, and there’s just enough length for her to reach the rickety metal table and chairs in the middle of the cabin where they eat their meals.
She can also reach the toilet and the bathtub with no problems. But the chain isn’t long enough to reach the cupboards where the food is stored, or the drawers where the knives are kept, or the axe that’s hanging on the back wall, like a threat.
Actually no, not like a threat. A promise.
She misses Ingrid. It had been nice—which is so fucking selfish of her—to have someone to talk to.
And the two of them talked about everything.
They compared their reality show experiences, and Kylie told her how she and Freddie met, and Ingrid told her about her embarrassingly short-lived engagement to the fake-ass royal.
Imagine lying about being royalty. The audacity.
Even Ingrid said it would have been fucking hilarious had it not actually happened to her.
They also played a lot of board games. There were a bunch stacked on the shelves with the journals—Monopoly, Game of Life, Sorry!
, Clue, and even Operation, but that last one they couldn’t play, because there were no batteries and half the plastic body parts were missing.
Body parts.
Like Ingrid’s foot, which Kylie had watched Thing One chop off with that axe, while Ingrid screamed and screamed until she passed out.
The dark red color of the blood that had seeped out, bleeding through the woefully inadequate gauze he’d wrapped around it in an attempt to keep the foot attached to the ankle.
The sound of her body being dragged across the wood floor as Kylie cowered on the mattress, horrified at what was happening, yet sickeningly grateful it wasn’t happening to her.
God help her, she was so selfish.
Despite what she tells herself, she knows deep down that there’s no way Ingrid survived.
#rapist
#murderer
#imgoingtodieheretoo
There are no windows in the cabin. She often wonders what this place looks like from the outside.
She never saw it, or if she did, she doesn’t remember.
Just like she can’t remember the details of his face.
She was hiking when he approached, upset and panicked, holding a leash with no dog attached.
“My terrier slipped out of her collar,” he’d said to her. “Have you seen her?”
That’s all Kylie can recall. And then she woke up here. And this is where the church got it wrong. Hell isn’t down there.
It’s right fucking here.
She draws the blanket up around herself.
It’s clean, at least. The mattress might be beyond help, but he does wash the blankets, and he does bring her a change of clothes when the old ones get raggedy.
Nothing new, all stuff he probably picked up at Goodwill or Value Village.
She puts the scratchy blanket to her face and inhales.
It smells like Tide. It smells like home.
But not the home she shared with Freddie, because, well, which one? He owns seven residences all over the world and makes a point to live in all of them over the course of the year. And they’re all beautiful. But none of them ever felt like home.
Home is where her parents and little sister are. Home smells like fresh laundry and Sunday brisket and the lemon bars her mom makes for the church bake sale they do four times a year. She misses her parents, even though they stopped speaking to her when her first TikTok went viral.
“You put a video of yourself naked on the internet?” her mother had said to her after someone from church showed her the TikTok.
She can still remember standing in the kitchen facing her parents, who’d just returned home after Sunday service, her mother wearing that long-sleeved cotton floral dress with the modest neckline, her father sporting his old brown suit and dated paisley tie.
Kaycie was still in her Sunday best as well, cowering nearby on the other side of the wall, eavesdropping even though their parents had told her to go straight up to her room the second the three of them had walked through the door.
She can still see the expression on her mother’s face clear as day, those bright blue eyes wide, her bare mouth open and shaped into a perfect O of horror.
“Delete it,” her mother had said, her voice rising to a few decibels shy of a shriek. “Delete it right now, Kylie Ann. Your body is not for other people to see.”
“It’s how I make money, Ma,” she responded, refusing to be ashamed. “I just hit a million followers. And I’m not naked. I’m wearing a bikini. And earrings.” She holds up her hand. “And my favorite ring.”
“Don’t be smart,” her father barked. “This is not the time for stupid jokes.”
“That video . . . it’s obscene,” her mother spat. “This is not how we raised you.”
“No, you raised me to be a good little church girl, and that’s what I’ve been,” Kylie said. “But I’m twenty-one now. I’m an adult, and it’s my body. I’m allowed to decide for myself—”
She never finished that sentence because her mother slapped her right across the face.
And that slap was some real Roy Jones Jr. shit, stinging like a motherfucker.
The strength behind it surprised Kylie because until that day, neither of her parents had never struck her.
Unlike other members of the church, Kirk and Karoline Kahl didn’t believe in “spare the rod, spoil the child.”
When her mother realized what she’d done, she burst into tears and stormed out of the kitchen. She then heard the footsteps of her little sister as Kaycie darted up the stairs to the safety of her room, followed by the heavier footsteps of their mother right behind her.
“How could you do this to your mother?” her father said to her then, his face red with fury. “How could you do this to us? You’re an embarrassment to this family and to the church. You cannot live in this house anymore.”
“No problem,” Kylie said, and a minute later, with the bloom of her mother’s handprint still flushing her cheek, she was in her bedroom shoving clothes and anything else that would fit into an old duffel bag.
“Ky-Ky, don’t leave,” Kaycie had whimpered from the doorway as she watched her pack. “Please don’t go. Please don’t leave me here with them.”
“You’ll be okay,” Kylie told her sister, and she needed to believe that was true; otherwise she’d never be able to go. “In three years, you’ll be eighteen and you can leave here and come live with me.”
“You promise?”
“I promise,” she said.
“We’ll pray for you,” her mother had shrieked as Kylie thundered down the stairs with her overstuffed bag, which would turn out to be the last time she’d ever set foot inside her childhood home.
“We’ll pray for your soul that God saves you from the devil.
Because he’s coming for you. The devil is coming! ”
It didn’t work out for her little sister the way she’d hoped.
Kaycie ended up marrying a boy from the church not long after her eighteenth birthday, which Kylie only learned about when the wedding invitation arrived in the mail.
The ceremony was to be held at the church, the reception in the backyard at home.
Their parents probably thought she wouldn’t dare show her face at the wedding, but hadn’t they already told her that she had no shame?
Of course she wouldn’t miss Kaycie’s wedding.
Shamelessly, she attended the ceremony. She watched from the back of the church as her little sister exchanged vows with a pimply-faced altar boy named Jed they’d known their whole lives and whom Kaycie used to hate.
“Guess you’re not coming to live with me,” Kylie had whispered to her when the two of them embraced after the ceremony as their parents, who didn’t say a word to her, watched closely.
“Guess you’re not planning to come back to Wisconsin,” Kaycie had whispered back.
But she didn’t seem sad when she said it. Quite the opposite. Her little sister looked happy, peaceful, and radiant in her simple white wedding gown. Which was all Kylie had ever wanted for her.
She hears the lock on the cabin turn. Instantly the memories—which are all she has now—fade away. Reflexively she hides her face from the sudden flash of light. After her eyes adjust, she sees two things she wasn’t expecting.
He’s wearing an Elmer Fudd mask. That’s a new one.
And he’s brought someone with him. A young woman, drugged and dazed. Her ankle is already encased in the steel cuff, the chain attached.
“Good morning, Kylie,” he says. “You have been here six years, three months, and twelve days. This is Sydney, a new friend for us. Say hello, Sydney.”
Sydney does not say hello. He lets go of her then, and she slumps to the floor, her head lolling to the side. One of her eyes—the eye he would have punched to get her to stop struggling before he pressed the chloroform-soaked rag to her face—is swollen shut.
“Sydney, Kylie will help you learn the rules of the cabin,” he says, attaching her chain to the support beam. “I promise there aren’t too many, and they’re very easy to follow.”
Another moan.
“Kylie, you’ll help her, won’t you?” He checks to make sure the chain is secure.
This is when she might tell him to fuck off, or eat shit, or suck a dick. Because it does make her feel a tiny stab of joy to say it, and he doesn’t care what you say. He only cares what you do. She opens her mouth to respond, but the words won’t come.
“Why don’t you help her take a bath?” he asks.
They both know it’s not a question.
Oh, no. Not this soon. No.
He turns the tub faucet on and leaves the cabin, locking the door behind him. As the bathtub begins to fill, the new person—Sydney—turns toward her, her face dazed and terrified.
“Please,” she says, her words slurred. “You have to help me. I . . . I can’t stay here. Please. Please.”
“Come on, get up,” Kylie says. She stands and reaches for Sydney’s hands to help her to her feet. “You have to take a bath, okay? You have to do what he says. You have to, or he’ll kill you.”
“Please, please, I don’t—”
“He will kill you,” she repeats, as Ingrid flashes through her mind.
Ingrid, fighting.
Ingrid, screaming.
Ingrid, bleeding.
Ingrid, gone.
“I promise you it’s not so bad,” she tells Sydney. “I promise.”
#liar
It is bad. It is so, so bad.
As she helps the other woman undress, she thinks of her mother in that flowery church dress. The way her blue eyes—identical to her own—threw daggers at her. The way she screamed that she would pray for her so the devil wouldn’t come for her.
You didn’t pray hard enough, Ma, Kylie thinks as she helps a trembling Sydney into the tub. The devil is here.