ASTERWICK 01 - The Cabin (Patreon)

10.11.26 – 10 a.m.

Black Alder National Forest – West of Asterwick, OR

Mira Holloway: 5’6” 125 lbs | June Park: 5’3” 110 lbs

Mira Holloway saw the cabin first. That was the part she would remember later. Not the rain threading down through the firs. Not the trail vanishing under ferns. Not June Park laughing behind her, breathless and bright, saying they were definitely lost. The cabin. It stood in a hollow where there had been no hollow ten minutes ago.

“Tell me you see that,” Mira said. June came up beside her, one hand braced on a mossy trunk. She was shorter than Mira by three inches, stronger by stubbornness alone, and currently wearing the expression she used when a bad idea had just become interesting. “I see,” June said. “I hate that I see.” She lifted her chin toward the cabin. “That is either a murder cabin or a very committed Airbnb.” “No road,” Mira said. “No listing. No stars.” “Still better than that place in Bend.”

They had left Asterwick just after eight that morning, two coffees deep and pretending the sky was not the color of old steel. The plan was simple. Drive west. Park at the old logging gate. Hike the Alder Crown Loop. Take pictures. Prove to June’s feed that Oregon was not just breweries, fog, and people arguing about mushrooms. Simple plans got eaten in Asterwick.

The town sat in a green fold of the Coast Range, twenty miles from the nearest highway and somehow farther from everywhere else. Asterwick had twenty-four thousand people, a small university on the hill, two gyms, five bars, three churches, and a downtown full of brick buildings that still wore old logging-company names in faded gold paint. It kept a bronze saw blade in front of city hall and called itself a timber town, even though most of the students had never touched an axe and half the old mill had been converted into lofts, coffee, and office space.

Mira did not trust much about Asterwick. Not since she had moved back to clean out her mother’s house. Not since the neighbors had started looking at her like her return had confirmed a bad rumor. Not since she found the trail map in a kitchen drawer, folded into a square and labeled in her mother’s handwriting: DO NOT FOLLOW PAST THE THIRD MARKER. So, naturally, June had wanted to follow it.

“Your mom was dramatic,” June had said at the trailhead. “My mom alphabetized batteries,” Mira had said. “She was not dramatic.” Now they stood beyond the third marker. There had been three carved posts along the path. The first was marked with a crescent. The second with a hand. The third with a woman’s eye, wide open, cut deep into cedar darkened by rain. After that, the official trail became a suggestion. Then a memory. Then nothing.

And now there was a cabin. It leaned to one side, roof bowed under moss, windows black as wet stones. A narrow porch sagged over weeds. No smoke rose from the chimney. No road led to the door. The ground around it looked undisturbed, as if the forest had grown there first and the cabin had pushed its way up afterward. June lifted her phone. No signal. No surprise. Then her screen flashed.

One bar appeared. Then five. Then the time changed from 11:43 a.m. to 3:17 a.m. June held it away from her face. “Nope.” “We should go,” Mira said. “Absolutely,” June said. Neither of them moved. The door opened by itself. Not all the way. Just an inch. Enough to show a strip of dark inside. Enough to make the hinges breathe. Mira’s stomach tightened.

June whispered, “That was probably wind.” There was no wind. They should have turned around then. They should have retraced their steps, argued about the map in the car, and driven back to town with muddy boots and a story they would later decide not to tell. Instead, June walked toward the porch. “June.” “Just looking.” “That is what people say five seconds before finding bones.” “If we find bones, we leave.”

The porch complained under June’s first step. One soft crack. Then another. The sound moved through the boards too slowly, as if the wood had to think about it before deciding to answer. Mira followed because leaving June alone with a bad idea had never once improved the bad idea. The air changed when she stepped beneath the rotten porch roof. It warmed. Not much. Just enough to feel wrong against the cold rain on her neck.

June touched the door with two fingers. It moved inward another inch. No squeal this time. No groan. It opened like it had been waiting to be polite. Inside was dark, but not empty-dark. Occupied-dark. The kind of dark that seemed layered, dense, almost furred. Mira leaned forward and caught a smell she could not place. Cedar. Wet iron. Fresh earth under a house. “Okay,” June said. “We looked.”

But she did not step back. Neither did Mira. Something in the cabin seemed to pull without pulling. Not a force. Not exactly. More like her body had heard an order her brain hadn’t. Mira’s pulse kicked once, hard. Her skin felt too small. She rolled her shoulders under her rain jacket, irritated by the sudden tightness across her back. The pack straps bit into muscle she did not remember noticing that morning.

June rubbed at her own forearm. “Do you feel that?” “Feel what?” Mira asked, though she knew. Heat. Pressure. A rising fizz under the skin. Like nerves waking up after being asleep too long. June laughed once. Too sharp. “I don’t know. Like I drank three espressos and swallowed a battery.”

Mira looked at her friend. June’s cheeks were flushed. Rain beaded in her black hair. Her eyes looked bright in a way that made Mira want to tell her to blink. Behind them, the forest had gone quiet. Too quiet. Like every living thing nearby had decided to wait. The open door showed nothing useful. No furniture. No old journals. No antlers on the wall. No spooky portrait waiting in the gloom. Just boards, shadow, and a square of darkness near the back that might have been another room or might have been the cabin thinking about becoming deeper. Mira took one step inside. The floor held.

That bothered her more than if it had sagged. The cabin looked ready to collapse if a squirrel sneezed. Yet the board beneath her boot felt solid as stone. June stepped in beside her. The room seemed to adjust around them. Not move. Adjust. Mira could not explain it later without sounding ridiculous, so later she would not explain it at all.

There was a mark on one wall, but not one she could name. A darkened patch in the grain. A curve in the wood that looked wrong the longer June stared at it. “Do you hear humming?” Mira did. Low and almost sweet. It seemed to come from the wall, the floor, the roof, and the hollow parts of her own chest. Her fingers curled without permission. For one strange second she wanted to run. Not away. Forward. Up the trail. Through brush. Over stone. She wanted to move until the woods ran out first.

June exhaled. “Mira, we’re leaving.” This time she sounded certain. That helped. Mira nodded too fast. They backed out together, neither willing to turn their backs until their boots hit mud. The porch gave one last soft crack under them. The door stayed open. The dark inside stayed where it was, watching without eyes. Halfway to the trees, June stumbled and caught herself with a hand against Mira’s shoulder. Her grip was hot. Stronger than Mira expected. Mira had seen June open pickle jars that defeated grown men, bully movers into carrying a couch up three flights, and once drag a drunk sophomore out of the campus fountain by the back of his hoodie. June had always been compact and fierce. This felt different.

“Car,” June said. “Your car. Now.” “Bossy,” Mira said. “Alive,” June said. “I’m being alive.” That was June. Jokes first. Panic second. Collapse never, unless there was Thai food and a couch involved. They had met at Asterwick University, when Mira was a freshman with a scholarship, a bad haircut, and the belief that if she stayed quiet nobody would ask where her father had gone. June had been the girl across the hall who owned three lamps, no inside voice, and enough confidence for both of them.

June had taught Mira how to forge a parking pass, how to drink cheap whiskey without making a face, and how to stop apologizing for entering a room. Mira had taught June how to study, how to sleep before finals, and how to recognize when a local boy was lying about knowing a secret waterfall.

They had been lost together before. In corn mazes. In Portland. In the accounting department of the university, which June still claimed had been designed by a vengeful ghost. But this was different. This was Asterwick woods after the third marker, and the trees seemed to arrange themselves with opinions. Mira looked once more at the cabin in the hollow that had not existed. From this angle it seemed farther away than it should have been. Smaller, too. Like a thing pretending to be background. Then she turned toward the trail, toward the third marker, toward the old sedan waiting beyond the logging gate, and tried not to notice that every step down the mountain felt easier than the last.

At first, neither of them spoke. The forest filled the silence with rain. Drops ticked against sword ferns. Water ran in thin silver threads over black roots. Somewhere high above, a raven made one rough sound and then stopped, as if it had thought better of announcing them. The trail was not a trail anymore. It was a rumor of trampled moss, a guess between salal bushes. June took the lead because June always took the lead when she was scared and did not want to admit it. Mira let her, because letting June pretend was one of the terms of the friendship.

“You still have that tire iron in the trunk?” June asked. “Beside the jumper cables and the emergency granola bars.” “Good.” “Why do we need the tire iron?” June ducked under a branch. “Fo the vibes.” “If we die out here, delete my search history.” “You said that during finals,” Mira said. “And I meant it then, too.” Mira almost laughed. Almost. The sound rose in her chest and got stuck there, trapped under that strange humming aftertaste. Her lungs felt too large. Or the air did. She could not tell. She only knew she was not as winded as she should have been. They were moving uphill now, angling around a fallen cedar slick with moss, and her legs should have burned.

They did not. Ahead of her, June moved fast. Too fast for someone who had complained all morning about her calves, her socks, her hydration levels, and the moral failure of trails that went upward. She pushed through wet brush with a kind of impatient force. Branches snapped back. Ferns bent flat under her boots. “Slow down,” Mira said. June stopped so suddenly Mira nearly crashed into her.

“Did you hear that?” June asked. Mira listened. Rain. Drip. Her own pulse. June breathing through her nose, quick and controlled. Then, from somewhere behind them, branches snapped. June’s face went flat. “Nope twice.” They ran. Or they tried to call it running. Really, it was a controlled fall through wet green chaos. Mira grabbed trunks, skidded over roots, caught herself before a muddy drop. June cursed in three languages, none of them fluently. Once, Mira laughed despite herself. June looked back, eyes wild. “Do not make this a bonding moment,” June said.

“Too late.” They found the third marker twenty minutes later, though Mira would have sworn it had been five. The carved eye stared from its cedar post, rain pooling in the cut pupil. June stopped in front of it and braced both hands on her knees. “I hate art,” she said. Mira leaned one hand on the post. The cedar felt warm. She pulled back immediately. “Don’t touch that,” June said. “You’re becoming cautious. I’m proud.” “I have layers.”

Mira smiled, then stopped because smiling felt strange. Not bad. Strange. Her jaw felt tight. Her heartbeat had settled into something heavy and steady. She flexed her fingers and watched tendons move under wet skin. For a moment, the movement fascinated her. Then June said her name, and the fascination snapped like a thread. “You okay?” June asked. Mira lied. “Yes.”

June nodded like she knew it was a lie and accepted it as payment toward later honesty. That was another term of the friendship. You were allowed one lie in the field. Two if there was blood. Three if family was involved. They passed the second marker next. The carved hand looked different from before. Mira knew that was impossible. It had been palm-out when they came in. A warning or a wave. Now the fingers seemed curled, not quite a fist. She did not tell June. June did not tell her if she saw it too.

The woods opened by slow degrees. More light. Less moss. The distant hiss of the road, or what Mira hoped was the road. Her thighs should have ached. Her lungs should have been sharp with effort. Instead she felt coiled. Ready. Like she could turn around and sprint all the way back to the cabin just to prove she could.

That thought scared her more than the cabin. June stopped again near the first marker, the crescent moon carved low into the post. She pressed a hand to her chest. “Tell me my heart is supposed to be doing this.” “After running from a haunted cabin?” Mira said. “Probably.” “Not haunted. Weird. Different category.” “You have categories?” “I have standards.” June wiped rain from her face. Her hand lingered at her jaw, then moved to her neck, then her shoulder. She frowned, adjusting her sweater, “I swear this fit when we left.”

Mira wanted to say hers did too. Instead she said, “You bought it in the children’s section.” “Petite outdoor performance,” June said. “Respect the branding.” They found the logging gate at 12:08 p.m. Mira knew because June’s phone said so again, normal as a bored receptionist. No five bars. No impossible hour. Just rain on glass, mud on boots, and the dull green hood of Mira’s old sedan parked where they had left it.

The car was a 1998 Volvo with one missing hubcap, a heater that worked only when threatened, and a back seat full of donation boxes from Mira’s mother’s house. It looked ridiculous. It looked beautiful. June slapped both hands on the roof and bent forward, laughing hard enough that it almost sounded like crying. Mira unlocked the door with shaking fingers. “We are never hiking again,” June said.

“You said that after the waterfall incident.” “That waterfall had stairs.” Mira opened her door. Warm stale-car air breathed out at her. Old upholstery. Pine air freshener. Dust. Home, or the closest thing available. Before getting in, she glanced toward the road behind them, then back to the trees. The trailhead looked ordinary. Closed in. Wet. Empty. No cabin. No hollow. No dark door standing open.

June followed her gaze. For once, she did not make a joke. Mira slid behind the wheel. Her knees brushed the underside of the steering column. She froze. That had not happened before. Not once in all the years she had driven this cranky old car. June dropped into the passenger seat and slammed the door. “Drive,” she said. Mira started the engine. It caught on the first try, which was another impossible thing. She put the car in gear and pulled away from the logging gate, rain streaking the windshield, the forest closing behind them as if it had never opened at all.