The first time Richard visited the cottage on the hill, he was in his early thirties and still married to Evelyn. Their children were small—the daughter six, the son three—and they still believed that their problems were temporary.
They learned of the existence of the cottage from a man in their town, a laborer whom they had hired to replace a rotting porch beam. The man told them that he had stayed in it himself, on a hunting trip, and that it was beautifully appointed and largely unknown even to those who lived nearby. That’s because it was owned by the gas company, on land where it had a drilling claim, land not generally accessible to the casual hiker or hunter. But if you called the gas company—at the substation the cottage was near, not the main number—and asked to rent the cottage, they would offer you an attractive rate, and allow you to hunt on the surrounding land.
Richard and Evelyn did not hunt, but he found this strange arrangement enticing. Evidently there was a lake nearby, and the gas company provided wood for the woodstove (it was spring and still chilly at night) and a rowboat and fishing tackle. Perhaps a weekend getaway could be a balm for their troubles. Richard phoned the gas company substation and made a reservation, and a few weeks later the family drove the ninety minutes to the site, which was on a gravel road deep in the woods near a small dilapidated town.
The substation itself was a low cinder block structure enclosed by a chain-link fence, and when they pulled in at a mechanically operated gate, an attendant stopped them and asked, with some hostility, what business they had here.
“We’re staying at the cottage,” Richard said through the open car window.
The attendant, a stocky middle-aged man with an imposing brow and gruff manner, softened. He offered Richard a broad smile and an awkward handshake. “Oh, you’ll love it, sir. My wife and I spent our honeymoon there. A lovely place.” The man peered into the back of their car and winked at the children.
Richard and Evelyn enjoyed a laugh at the man’s expense on the way up the hill from the substation. A honeymoon, here? But it was the first laugh they’d shared in some time, and they both felt that the vacation had gotten off to a fine start.
The hill, steep for the area, was grassy and treeless, save for a towering oak that stood at its summit. This oak, it turned out, sheltered the cottage, a compact, two-story building sided with yellow clapboard. Beyond the cottage, the hill sloped gently toward woods that bordered the lake.
While the children played in the grass, Richard and Evelyn went inside to unpack their things. The cottage interior was strange—darkly paneled, and divided into what seemed like too many small rooms. There were a tiny kitchen and sitting room on the first floor, along with a master bedroom barely larger than the bed it contained. A bureau was wedged into a small closet. Upstairs was the bathroom and, farther along a narrow hall, two more bedrooms, both even smaller than the one downstairs, each containing one small cot. Peculiar photographs hung in the hall, curled black-and-white images of heavily clothed people posed outdoors, staring blankly at the camera.
The construction of the house was such that, despite its small size, it never seemed to truly reveal its shape and dimensions; it would prove vexing, in the days to come, to find the door to the stairway, or to orient oneself upon exiting, even though nothing had changed and the layout could not have been simpler. The cottage also had an unusual, if not unpleasant, odor, a bit like roasting nuts or burned chocolate, the source of which could not be found. For all that, though, the place seemed adequate, and they chose to ignore its shortcomings and enjoy, as best they could, one another’s company.
For the better part of a week, Richard and Evelyn and the children told stories around the fire, went fishing and boating, walked in the woods, cooked rustic meals, and sang along to songs played on Richard’s guitar. As the days passed, employees came and went down below at the substation, and sometimes they caught sight of the family and waved. It was a funny little vacation, but it had, at least for a while, the intended effect—Evelyn and Richard regained some of their closeness, and they enjoyed their children more than ever before.
And yet what Richard kept returning to—lingering in the hallway on his way downstairs to join his family—were the old photos, unframed, each hanging from a single nail like a WANTED poster, so that they fluttered and swung in the slipstream of passersby. His mind had processed them as former vacationers, awkwardly posed at the woods’ edge. But now he saw that their woods were different—sparse and coniferous—and the landscape surrounding them flat, barren, and almost alien, compared with this lush and hilly terrain. The subjects wore roughly tailored animal skins and heavy boots; their hats were tall and boxy, with mysterious slots and flaps. Some of them held weapons: rifles, mostly, but also machetes, and, in one case, an actual sword.
Who were these people? They seemed to stand in judgment of him. They gazed through him as though he were nothing but smoke. Out on the beach, watching the children splash and play at the water’s edge, he felt the gentle breeze as a threat, a force that could blow them away.
Hidden behind the hill, the gas company substation thrummed like a hibernating animal. He held his wife’s hand tightly.