Why did the drinking start up again? Nothing to do with the creature, as far as I know (that came later), and not a youthful urge to reignite either. More of a quiet relaxing into the inevitable. Maybe if I’d had you two up here all the time, I would easily have kept to my discipline. I don’t know. Maybe my character decided it long before and nothing on earth could stop the resumption. It wasn’t such a problem. Some Jack and coke to soften the edges of this world. Years had gone by since I’d stopped my drinking altogether. More than two, not that I’d counted them. But I was lonely and alone. A taste of liquor at home was almost as good as a girlfriend for a while. Eventually, I tried out the local bars and joined the others of my kind, the fellowship of people who love the lighting and are willing to pay extra for atmosphere, booze, and company. It’s not where I met Cynthia, though. She, I met at work. She came into the store three times in a single week in search of new shoes. I managed to exert a little charm, believe it or not.

You probably don’t remember her well, if at all. She took the both of you on a little outing that first summer she and I were dating. I can’t imagine you have much interest in learning more about her now, given how extremely uncommunicative you were with her back then. She’s a nice woman, though. She has family up in Marquette and was working at Seney National Wildlife Refuge. I mention her because she was good friends with Anne Greer. The two of them went way back, from childhood.

Anne had been out of state, working as an accountant down in Florida, where she married a Chief Petty Officer named Sullivan, who was already close to his retirement from the navy. She was the whole reason he moved up to Michigan. She wanted to raise a family close to home, and he was only forty-eight himself, and deeply in love. They wasted no time in finding a house to buy. The run down cabin next door was an afterthought. A hunting lodge, they figured, or an opportunity for passive income. It became Sullivan’s pet project to fix it up. Anne spent her time volunteering at the Wild Life Refuge. 

Over the course of the two years Cynthia and I dated, I didn’t hear a whole lot about Anne and nothing about Sullivan, until that is, Cynthia asked if I was interested in buying a cabin. She told me her friends wanted to offload a bit of land. I didn’t think I could afford it, but she hinted that the price would be extremely low. That’s how I found myself sitting in Sullivan’s house for the first time.

Anne was the busy one, light on her feet. She could have been in her late twenties still, by her looks. She had one of those faces that keeps its color and softness for far longer than most. I know for a fact she was thirty-eight. Sullivan’s natural stoicism couldn’t mask the admiration that had brought him to Michigan. He was quiet as she chatted away with Cynthia, who, I could see, was almost as charmed by her friend as Sullivan must have been. Anne’s laughter is what I remember most, though. A joy that insisted everyone take part in it. If she were a guest at a party, she would have been at the center of it. Instead, she was getting everyone drinks and asking me how I liked the winters up here. I told her they were only a problem if you had to go to work, get the mail, or do anything. Anne, for her part, owned a snowmobile and enjoyed cross-country skiing. She couldn’t wait for the snow to come. She teased Sullivan about growing up in California and I saw a hint of that subterranean connection couples have (he called her an arctic fox). 

The subject of the land only came up after everyone settled in comfortably. A tray of crackers and cheese was laid out on the coffee table between cold cans of pop sweating rings of condensation. Everything in the memory of that day is crisp. I’m not sure why. I felt very happy. Cynthia and I had been circling something serious in our relationship, a tension brought on by time and her desire for a greater commitment. Somehow, being around Sullivan and Anne for the afternoon was a kind of respite. Anne especially. She seemed to view company as a performance, and she wasn’t shirking in her responsibility. The bit of land, she said, is just something we want to get rid of. We don’t have any use for the cabin. She looked at Sullivan, who shifted uncomfortably in his chair. I couldn’t help noticing his furtive glance towards the window. He spoke up, saying something like, the cabin is more trouble than it’s worth if you don’t ever plan on using it. 

I wanted to see the place, and Sullivan agreed. Cynthia immediately suggested we go alone and let her and Anne take care of lunch (lunch was a non-negotiable requirement when we’d agreed to come). I imagine she had a lot to vent about with Anne. Like I said, we’d been going through a rough patch. The ultimate rough patch, you might say. I didn’t want to start a new family with her, or with anyone. I’d always been upfront with her about that, especially as time went on, but she was of a certain age and she wasn’t about go out without a fight. I suppose I should have just ended it myself. It would have been the honorable thing to do. But really, I didn’t want to be alone, and neither did she. 

We walked single file. Sullivan led the way, taking a narrow trail through trees that were soaked from rain. We stepped over patches of snow and ice and approached through the stubbled field around the cabin. He told me how he’d added the porch to the front himself. The remnants of his construction materials were still piled up close to the building. He was lucky to have gotten it all done without being interrupted by the last cold snap. Apparently, the crumbling stone steps underneath the deck weren’t even flush with the door (poor construction, he said), but he assured me that the fundamentals were alright. The cabin had and would stand the test of time. He couldn’t say exactly how old the place was (his best guess was thirty years).

Do you hunt? he asked me. Not yet (because I wasn’t raised in a household that bothered killing its own food when there were perfectly good steaks sitting in coolers at a grocery). I don’t know if I said all that, but I did tell him hunting was the reason I was thinking of buying the land. I wanted to learn. Sullivan was pleased with my response. There was an element of audition to the entire conversation, which I couldn’t blame him for. The price he was offering was unbelievably affordable. It made sense he would want to know who his neighbor would be. He welcomed me then and there to use the sixteen acres he owned, which included several hunting stands. He himself preferred bow hunting, but using his .308 Winchester got the job done just as well. But the start of deer season was several months out, so I had plenty of time to buy a rifle or bow, or both, he added. Just like that, the sale had been made, and we hadn’t even agreed to it, not really. I told him I might come up in the summer with my kids. He encouraged me to go out shooting with him if I did decide to. Anne could watch kids for the day. Small game hunting, apparently, was something he did for fun, and it helped curb nuisance animals like red squirrels, starlings, and coyotes. 

The cabin tour was hardly memorable. He told me he had a spare bed in storage he could drop off later. He’d already tested the wood stove, which seemed to work alright. He also recommended replacing the generator. I don’t remember much beyond that. Venison steaks and vegetables for lunch, a conversation about gardening. Anne and Cynthia did most of the talking. No one offered alcohol, but I imagine Sullivan and I both would’ve welcomed a drink. Why not? It was a festive and cheerful occasion. How could I have known we were on the cusp of something terrible?

[End of excerpt]

Another break in the flow as Eli turned the page. There, an inhuman face was sketched in the same black pen. It wasn’t particularly well drawn, but seemed to roughly match the description Sullivan had given of the monster. The next page was filled with only a hand. Its disturbingly long, oddly drawn fingers were segmented by lots of circles, apparently denoting joints. Eli could hear the sounds of Nadine working in the other room. He turned the page, reading on.