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Message: <blockquote data-quote="HeapThaumaturgist" data-source="post: 934239" data-attributes="member: 12332">Cabin Fever Pt. 2The mountain was big, and the only road up it a steep series of switchbacks and hairpin turns.  It was a fifteen minute drive up the narrow blacktop to the cabins.  The base and gentle beginning slopes were rather heavily populated, like an urban subdivision, but five minutes up and the driveways all but disappeared.  If it weren’t for the occasional truck or SUV they had to squeeze past, it would be easy to think they were alone on the mountain.  The rental agency owned the summit of the mountain, and eventually they came to an electronic gate.  It stood in front of them on the forty-degree slope, vertical and slightly comical.  On one side of the gate was a near-vertical drop of fifty feet or more, on the other the wall of the mountainside.  Behind the gate the road twisted out of view, and behind the Explorer the mountain hid behind itself.“Abandon all hope, yada yada, etcetera etcetera.”  Frank said.Brickell leaned out the window and punched the passcode written on one of the cabin key-rings into an arm-mounted pad.  The gate shook slightly and opened outward, ABOVE them.“That always looks so weird.”Their cabin lay a little further up the road, off a gravel side lane.  The lane split in three, one path leading up, another down, and the last disappearing around a bend in the slope.  The boys’ cabin lay on the downward path, easily visible from the lane.  It was a jumbled affair with a single main story and a 3/4 loft and partial basement with garage underneath.  The path led into the garage while the rest of the house continued out into nothingness, supported on a series of sturdy timbers and cross-beams.  The exterior of the cabin was mostly logs, with the garage portion sided in dark wood planks.  Brickell pulled up to the garage door and turned off the car.  Everyone piled out and Scott went to unlock the garage while Brickell opened the back hatch.  They took the bags in first, carrying them up the wooden stairs at the side of the house ten, fifteen feet to the wide front porch and the front (and only) door.Scott let them in and Frank immediately moved forward and right, remembering the master suite and its king-sized bed and private bath.  “Dibs!”The interior was furnished in what could be called Quaint Yuppie Rustic, with sawn-log tables so thickly lacquered and varnished the wood seemed to be trapped in a museum case.  “Antique” tea-kettles and frying pans lined the top of the kitchen cabinets.  Everything that might look “rustic” made out of logs WAS made out of logs:  bed frames, end tables, footstools, and balustrades.  Near the front door an old, and original-looking, desk stood in front of the windows.  On it was a serviceable office phone with speed dials labeled for the office, fire department, police, and two office personnel’s home phone numbers; in case of emergency.  Next to the phone was a leather-bound journal marked “Guest Log”.  Wiley flipped it open and paged through.  There, a few pages back, was the log entry from their previous visit.  Surprisingly, few entries after their first, most of those dated during the two tourist seasons that had followed.  It was a homey feel, to see the passing of guests before and after them.  He would have to get Frank to help compose a group entry for this visit.  But first the rest of the car needed to be unpacked.****************************************************They couldn’t see the cabin around the bend where an old Dodge Ram sat with its drivers-side door open.  Leaves littered the vinyl bench seat, piling in the corner by the passenger door.  The overhead light was dim, the battery almost out, and in the back a few old soft-side suitcases were still wet from a rainstorm three days earlier.  Behind their cabin, up the slope, half-screened by trees was another cabin.  As Penick lifted both bags of charcoal from the back he heard children playing and when he turned he could see a minivan parked on the upper path.  Idly he hoped the kids wouldn’t ruin the quiet relaxation of his vacation.Farther up the mountain road the front door of a cabin home hung sickly from one hinge.  Charles and Paige Vint had visited Maggie Valley the year before, rented a cabin, and fell in love.  They had bought a property a few months later in the sparse “gated community”.  They had only moved in three months ago, and so nobody in the area really knew them ... and so nobody noticed when they stopped coming down the mountain.</blockquote>

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