If I’d brought the burner, I might have tried to call Quinn. But there was no time to return to the car. Before long it would be sunrise. I chewed a few ibuprofen, hoping to quell the fire in my knee.
I pushed through the cedars, until a gap between the trees revealed a screen door. The door buckled when I yanked its handle, but I pried it open and reached for the knob on the inside door. It was locked. I rattled the knob, then set my shoulder to the door and pushed until the cheap wood gave way.
Like the first one, this cabin consisted of a single empty room, reeking of mouse urine and mildew. When I switched on the flashlight, an animal skittered across the rafters, sending down flakes of clotted dust. The roof had caved in, boards and tar paper dangling above the room’s center. I crossed the space cautiously, looking for loose floorboards, ran my fingers across the dank walls to feel for a hidden panel or door. I came up cold.
The next cabin seemed pretty much the same, barricaded by dense cedars and utterly neglected. But its screen door opened easily, and so did the door that led inside. I stepped through and clapped a hand to my face.
The stench of damage poured into my nostrils like fetid water as I swept the flashlight’s beam across the room. It was no larger than the others, but the roof was intact. Green carpeting covered the floor, like the artificial turf used around swimming pools, peppered with mouse droppings and shredded pine cones. The eye-watering odor of mouse urine was compounded by an earthier scent, just as foul. The cottage must have been downwind of one of the outhouses.
I dropped my bag, knelt painfully, and rolled back a corner of the green carpeting. The softwood floor beneath was riddled with holes from wood-boring insects. I dropped the carpet back into place, stood, and looked around.
The carpet didn’t extend to the back wall. I walked over and saw a metal vent installed in the floor. I aimed my flashlight through the vent but couldn’t see anything. When I crouched to hold my hand above it, I felt a slight warmth. No one would heat an abandoned cabin in February.
I yanked the edge of the carpet and began to roll it up. Halfway across the room, it exposed a plywood trapdoor, about three feet square, with a small brass handle. The carpentry was careless, or maybe it had just succumbed to the cold. The plywood had split and the adjoining hardwood splintered. Screws protruded from the hinges. I set down my flashlight, grasped the trapdoor’s handle, took a deep breath, and yanked.
A wave of noxious air enveloped me, much warmer than the room. I sank to my haunches, grabbed the flashlight, and shone it down into the hole.
“Hey,” I called softly. “Hey, who’s down there?”
No one answered. Squinting, I made out the top of an aluminum stepladder about two feet below me. I couldn’t tell how far it extended to the floor beneath it.
I slung my bag over my shoulder, grasped the flashlight between my teeth, and maintaining a precarious hold on the floor’s edge lowered myself until my boot touched the top step. The ladder wobbled, but I kept going, until I could grasp the ladder’s side rails. When my boots hit the floor, I grabbed the flashlight to look around.
I stood in a room half the size of the one above, with poured concrete walls and floors. On an Ikea coffee table sat a gallon water jug, half full, and a battery-operated lantern that wasn’t switched on. The only other furniture was a futon mattress pushed against one wall, covered with soiled sheets printed with cartoon animals. Above the mattress a wall vent exhaled a breath of hot stale air. A white enameled bucket with a lid served as a chamber pot. The place reeked of shit and piss, and also of something dead.
I switched on the lantern and stepped to the futon, breathing through my mouth so I wouldn’t have that ghastly smell in my nostrils. It made no difference. Fear seeped into me as my hand grabbed a sheet. I hesitated, and pulled it back.