Tall pines towered over us and the mist in the air was eerie. The only sound was our feet crunching on dry debris and the occasional distant call of a bird.
I squeezed Gavin’s hand. I wasn’t scared, exactly, but this place was unsettling.
After a short walk down the trail, we came within sight of a decrepit old cabin.
“Welcome to the murder cabin,” he said, gesturing with his other hand.
“Wait, what?”
“You don’t have to be scared for real. There’s nothing that can hurt you, and I don’t think anyone’s actually been murdered here. But I set it up so it’s creepy as fuck. I wasn’t sure what you were going for in your book, so there’s a little of everything. I thought this might give you some ideas.”
“You set up a murder cabin for me?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal. “Shall we?”
It was a big deal, but I wasn’t sure how to tell him how amazing this was without making it awkward. We were supposed to be just friends, but things like this—and what we’d done yesterday—were starting to make my heart yearn for more.
And I couldn’t go there. It wouldn’t be fair to suddenly spring a bunch of messy feelings on him when I was the one who’d talked him into our current… arrangement, for lack of a better word.
But he’d made me a murder cabin.
He’d make such a great boyfriend, if someone could ever convince him she was worth it.
“Don’t worry.” He squeezed my hand. “I’ve got you.”
I didn’t tell him that I wasn’t afraid of the cabin. That I was grappling with an unexpected rush of emotion and I wasn’t prepared to deal with it. I just smiled and nodded, keeping the rest of it locked up tight inside me.
He slowly led me toward the cabin and I let the atmosphere sink in. The towering trees, the mist, the eerie silence. It made my heart beat harder and a tingle of fear crawl up my spine.
But I actually liked the feeling.
The cabin’s wood was gray and weathered with gaps between the boards. The covered porch sagged on one side and the stairs looked like they might break if you stepped on them.
“Go ahead.” He dropped my hand and gestured toward the cabin. “Check it out.”
“By myself?”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
I glanced at him, suddenly worried there might be someone waiting to jump out and scare me.
“This isn’t a prank,” he said, as if he could read my mind. “It’s more like… visual inspiration.”
“Okay.”
With a deep breath, I walked up the porch steps. They creaked beneath my feet. The porch itself seemed to let out a low groan as soon as my weight settled on the old boards. But it held.
I glanced to the side and gasped. A mannequin dressed in an old t-shirt and jeans was sprawled out on the porch, as if he’d fallen there, dead. A long knife stuck out from his chest and something red—it looked a lot like ketchup—was splattered around the wound.
“Maybe your main character is first on the scene and discovers something like that,” Gavin said.
I gazed at the fake murder scene. A stabbing victim would be an interesting twist.
She walks up the creaky steps, her weapon drawn. Heart beating fast, the adrenaline flowing through her veins a familiar companion. The interior is dark, apparently abandoned, but her instincts flare to life. She steps onto the porch and catches the metallic scent of blood in the air. Pointing her weapon to her right, she finds the body, the murder weapon still protruding from his chest.
This was giving me ideas already.
“Is there more inside?” I asked.
His mouth turned up in a smile. “Oh yeah.”
I pushed the door open and crept in. Tingles raced down my back, but there was something exhilarating about it—about walking straight into fear. I knew it was because this was safe—none of it was real—but it was a heady sensation nonetheless.
Light streamed in through a dingy window and the cracks between the boards, illuminating floating particles of dust. Gavin hadn’t been kidding. There was more inside. A lot more.
A sheet of plastic stretched across a section of floor, splattered with fake blood, and a severed arm sat in the middle of it. An ax was stuck in the floorboards nearby. In another corner, a skeletal arm poked out of an old dusty chest. Rusty tools hung from the rafters and a rickety table and chairs were covered with fake spiderwebs. At least, I hoped they were