FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

This was not an isolated cabin in the woods. It was a cabin in name only, a tidy little one-bedroom house in a small cluster of similar cabins, on the western shore of a narrow lake near the south end. The nearest cabins, barely visible from her front door, were little more than dark shadows among the trees. No cars sat in their driveways, no lights burned in their windows. So she was isolated, even if the cabin wasn't.

The key turned smoothly in the lock, letting her into a chilly foyer with several boring landscapes hanging on the walls. The lights all worked as she walked around the cabin, exploring the modern kitchen (garbage disposal and dishwasher), living room (50" plasma TV), and bedroom (42" plasma TV, terrible hunting lithographs, and condoms in the nightstand drawer). She ended up out on the deck looking over the lake, the row of house-shaped shadows like dark, jagged teeth on the reddish reflections in the water.

"Couldn't afford a west-facing house, eh, Martin?" she murmured. Or maybe he just didn't like sunsets. Figured he'd be an early riser. Thought of himself as a young go-getter. "I hate people like that," she said, and then looked to the right and left to see if any of the neighbors were out watching her talk to herself.

The adjacent decks were empty, but when she looked to her left, she saw, on the opposite shore of the lake, a flicker of fire in a patch of darkness. It went out and then flared to life again, for all the world like an eye winking at her. The sun was sinking quickly, but she was fairly sure she hadn't seen any buildings over on that side. Maybe there was a campground there, a place where she could get away from the getaway if she needed to.

With the key, Martin had given her a small binder with all the rules for guests at the cabin. Among the cautions she skimmed was an address for the general store, open until seven daily, with the added instruction that she should "go meet Leon as soon as possible." Despite her current inclination to do the opposite of whatever Martin told her, she would need to get some basic supplies if she were going to be here for two weeks.

The general store, unlike the cabin, looked exactly as she'd pictured it: a small house whose lower floor held brightly lit, widely-spaced shelves of produce and groceries, and whose upper floors were undoubtedly where Leon and his family stayed. Leon looked the part just as much: a sturdy man who might have once been a lumberjack, his white beard neatly trimmed, his red flannel shirt clean and buttoned nearly to the top. He was bagging groceries for another customer, a tall, thin man with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing white pants and a white leather bomber jacket that looked too thick for the warm season. She heard them talking as she walked by, something about taking kayaks out on the lake again, but Leon looked up from the conversation to wave cheerfully and say, "Evening, miss."

It had been years--the better part of a decade--since Valerie had been called "miss." She allowed herself to glow, shutting up the part of her brain that told her it hadn't been meant as a compliment. I'm on vacation, she told herself, and that means I can enjoy insincere flattery for once. She waved back to him. The customer gave her a sharp look and then picked up his bag.

He wore a silver ring on his left hand. Valerie wouldn't have noticed it except that her hand went unconsciously to the bare spot on her ring finger when she saw it, and then she realized that it wasn't on his ring finger. He wore it on his middle finger. She thought that odd, but then, people wore stranger jewelry in stranger places, back in the city.

She filled her basket with instant dinners, and selected a few cuts of beef and some chicken breasts, figuring she'd feel more ambitious later in the week. On vacation, she reminded herself when her brain tried to stop her from reaching for the package of Pecan Sandies. I'll run it off, or swim it off, or...or I won't, and I won't worry about it.

"Amazing how Pecan Sandies can make you feel like you're on vacation," she told Leon when she came up to the counter.

"I love 'em," he said, and patted his midsection. "That and butter pecan ice cream."

She found herself smiling. "Not an every-day treat, though. I'm Valerie. I'm staying in Martin's cabin, 670 Kiskaton Drive."

"Welcome to Sycamore Heights Estates, Valerie. I'm Leon." He held out a tan, callused hand.

"Martin told me about you," she said. "I'm just here for a couple weeks. What's good to do in the area?"

"Lots," he said. "What do you like to do?"

A motorcycle pulled up outside the store, its throbbing roar muffled, then dying. "Anyone rent bikes?"

"Sure," he said. "There's a dirt bike place up the road. The best trails are up on the north end. But you don't wanna ignore the lake."

She'd meant motorbikes, but she didn't correct him. "I'm not really good around water. Isn't that what everyone comes here for?"

"We're between seasons, so it should be kinda slow. There's kayaking on the lake. Even if you've never done it, it's easy. You'll get the hang of it right away. You can rent one up at the Rec Center, that's up the road, turn toward the lake, make a right, you'll run right into it. You here by yourself?"

She hesitated automatically, but his manner was so genial that she didn't feel the need to lie in the otherwise empty store. "Yep. Just a getaway from work." And then, because she couldn't help herself, "I'm going through a divorce right now."

He nodded sympathetically. "Like I said, we're between seasons. Summer and winter, there's dances and dinners, if that's your kind of thing. But there's plenty to do on your own, too. Lessee, you can go hiking. Some great trails up the mountain."

The door jangled. A tanned young man with raven-dark hair and a sharp nose slouched in. His dark eyes scanned Valerie, and then he turned and wandered over to the beer cooler.

Leon tensed up immediately. He didn't take his eyes from the young man. "Course," he said loudly, "you want to be careful. Take your husband with you whenever you go out to the wilderness."

Valerie opened her mouth to remind him she was here alone, but he went on. "Not always safe to wander around alone," he said, still staring at the young man, and she understood then what he was doing.

"I'll remember," she said. She couldn't resist a curious look at the young man as Leon finished ringing her up. He was paying them no attention at all, standing at the beer cooler holding the door open as though he were comparison shopping, one hand holding the door, the other in the pocket of his black leather jacket. Except that he was just staring at the beer without doing anything, the same way, Valerie thought, that she'd been staring at the frozen dinners in the supermarket that first day after Steven left her. She hadn't been looking at them at all; she'd been wondering how long she could stand in the cold before she got numb.

"You need me to walk you to your car?" Leon asked.

"I'm okay," Valerie said. The day she couldn't handle a few young punks...besides, the kid by the beer seemed to be alone. She couldn't see anyone out front. And she didn't want Leon to have to leave the kid alone in the store, even for a moment, even with the big glass windows he could see through from the parking lot.

"You have a good evening, then, and come back tomorrow and let me know how it was." He turned his full attention on her for the span of the good-bye, a big, genuine smile and a handshake. But as she walked out the door with her groceries, he yelled at the kid, "Hey, pick something and close the door. This ain't a library."

She had to giggle at the thought of a beer library. She put the groceries in the back seat, and then looked around to try to find the vehicle the young man had driven. He looked like the motorcycle type, for sure, but there was no motorcycle in the parking lot. In fact, her car was the only vehicle. So maybe he'd walked over. Must live nearby, and that would make sense, given that Leon seemed to know him well.

And there weren't any other kids hanging out in the parking lot, or anywhere along the way back to the house. So he was on his own there. What harm could he get up to? Leon was certainly capable of looking after the store.

Tonight wasn't the night for chicken or beef. Tonight was instant dinner night. She poured the mix into a saucepan, added water and milk, and turned on the heat. For good measure, she tossed in some tuna fish. The smell brought back her college days, before she had the husband and the important job and every meal had to feel like a Family Meal. And that thought brought her back to the young man in Leon's store. Was he still in college, or just out of it? Or never went? She hated to indulge in stereotypes, but this didn't seem like an area that sent a lot of its children on to university.

She took the meal out to the living room and resisted the temptation to turn on the TV. The sun had set, but the stars were dancing on the lake, the moon was nearly full, and the air was refreshingly cool, so she took her meal out to the deck and sat, the simple food pairing well with the quiet, simple night.

The drawback was that the food got cold quickly. She had just begun to wonder whether she wanted to finish the rest of it or reheat it in the microwave when she heard a crunch from somewhere off to the right of the deck. She sat very still and listened. Of course, she thought, there'd be raccoons around, and other wildlife, and here she was bringing food out into the open. And not just any food, but artificial cheese sauce, which she was pretty sure you could smell a mile or so away.

It had sounded heavier than a raccoon, too, like something big stepping on twigs. Martin had mentioned wolves, but they were just like big dogs, right? Were there mountain lions in upstate New York? Mountain lions and wolves were supposed to be light on their feet--or paws--and wouldn't have made that crunching noise. Were there bears? She couldn't remember, but suddenly the fact that she hadn't heard anything after that one step was making her nervous. The light spilling out from the windows of the living room suddenly made her feel like a sitting duck, and the darkness filled itself with creatures climbing the deck, waiting just outside the light to seize their moment to pounce.

She stood, pushing the chair back with a loud scraping, and walked quickly into the living room. Her heart was pounding for reasons she could barely fathom. She tossed the dish in the microwave, but didn't press any buttons. She'd only heard one footstep, which meant that whatever she was listening to had tried to be silent, and that implied that it was stalking her.

But that was ridiculous. It was clearly just after her food. Idiot city girl, bringing food out onto the deck at night. She left the room-temperature tuna in the microwave and walked back to the closed patio door, turning out the light on the deck on her way. Pressed with her nose to the cool glass, she scanned the woods beyond the deck, now silver-brushed in the moonlight.

"Of course Martin would have told you if there were dangerous wild animals at the cabin," she murmured. "It would've been on the instruction sheet." Her voice echoed in the silence of the house. She would go turn on some music, she decided, and crawl into bed.

She lingered at the glass a moment longer, then another. Try as she might, she couldn't shake the feeling that something just beyond her field of vision was watching, waiting for her to leave. Okay, this is silly, she told herself. I'm going to--

Something moved. A shadow, just on the other side of the deck. She stared, waiting for it to move again, heart pounding so loud she could hear it in her ears, a wild, savage rhythm of panic. There was something out there. It was that shadow right there, the one now holding perfectly still. Something was out there. It had moved like a bear, not like a wolf or a mountain lion. Like something upright, swinging an arm across the deck.

And now it was standing still, that shadow right there. Or had it been that one? Or the one next to it? They all looked the same now.

Her heart slowed. Had she even seen a shadow move at all? She laughed uncertainly. "You're scaring yourself, Val," she said. "Time for a glass of wine and a good night's sleep."

Even though the sheets on the master bed smelled clean, she changed them for spares she found in the closet. With a glass of wine from the pantry and a book from her suitcase, she curled up in bed. But though she was always able to lose herself in a book, the shadow lurked around the edges of her mind.

Maybe that young man from the grocery store would have been able to protect her. He looked well able to handle himself in any situation, unlike many people she'd known who wore ostentatious leather jackets. There was a look to him, a rough confidence, that wasn't very common in the city, or at least not in the office environment she was most familiar with. Leon hadn't liked him, but if he'd been truly dangerous, Leon wouldn't have let him in the store, would he?

Look at her, fantasizing about the leather-coated rebel. Well, what harm would it do? This was supposed to be a vacation, after all. And thinking about him coming into her room, slowly taking off the leather jacket, coming to the bed...it drove the shadow from her mind. She fell asleep with the light on.