The Silent Cabin

By Erik Stone

On a warm summer day, Cami Novarro heads to her grandfather’s cabin to help him clean up the last of the remaining miscellaneous items he needs to be removed prior to selling the place. Little did she know that several bad seeds were on their way to the property to use as an outpost for a terroristic plot they planned to carry out. The evildoers are unaware she’s there as they murder her grandfather and proceed to lay out their plan. Cami is trapped in the labyrinth walls of the old, isolated home that once served as a transport point for liquor bootleggers. She must remain completely silent as she navigates the hidden tunnels of the cabin in an attempt to escape the foreigners who have invaded her family’s vacation spot. Any noise and any wrong move could alert the dangerous men of her presence. With no cell phone service and one path for entry and exit, Cami has limited options for getting away. She must use her wits and instincts in order to survive the ordeal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662450860

Book preview

Chapter 1

Pappy Joe’s Cabin

Cami Novaro was a nineteen-year-old petite brunette with bright-green eyes and a couple of freckles on her nose. She had finished her first year at college, and it had gone swimmingly. The courses were tough, but she liked a challenge. She had been off for the summer and was glad because she needed the rest. But it was August, and the time had come for her to keep a promise she had made. Earlier that summer, she had agreed to help her grandfather, whom she affectionately referred to as Pappy Joe, clean out his old cabin.

Pappy Joe was in his seventies now, and for all those years, Cami had thought the world of him. He had regularly babysat her from the time she was born until she reached the age of thirteen, at which time she mustered the courage to tell her parents she could handle being alone while they went out. As a child, she would sit with Pappy Joe for hours watching Disney videos while he twirled her hair or assembling a ridiculous puzzle of a cartoon cat. He took her out for ice cream in the summers and hot cocoa in the winters. They played Sorry and Chutes and Ladders and Candyland while she grew. He had even taught her how to play chess when she was only nine. Then, he’d let her win about every third or fourth time they played. By the time she was ten, he didn’t need to let her win anymore. She was incredibly smart and really focused on small details. She regularly consulted him for advice on everything from school to relationships to eventually college selection. Her parents had good heads on their shoulders, but she always knew they would lay out the most practical option, whereas Pappy would have her search her heart for the answers. She adored him, and he returned the sentiment.

Pappy Joe had told her that the cabin upkeep was just too much for him now, and nobody had even bothered visiting it for several years except him, and that was just to maintain the property. Gramma Beth had passed away four years earlier, and since then, the usual summer gatherings had ceased. They were great times many years ago. The entire family would reunite at that cabin around the Fourth of July. They’d wrestle and run and tease and play tag. It was the only time Cami really ever saw her cousins, and each year, they would all be just a bit older. As she reached her teens, several of the eldest cousins began fading from the collection. They must have become too mature or maybe too busy to attend the gala.

The cabin itself wasn’t a cabin at all but actually an old house. The cabin was just what they all called it. It was a fairly large building. It was once a grand home that still graced the edge of the lake. Cami imagined that in its prime, it was probably a beautiful, almost majestic mansion of a sort. It was comprised of four large bedrooms on the second floor and a living room, dining area, kitchen, and family room on the first. But time and weather had done some damage on the old structure, and it wasn’t quite the estate it once was. Still, Cami and her family had wonderful reunions at the place almost every summer as far back as she could remember. Her grandfather maintained the property as best he could, but brutal winters and harsh summer storms had worn the exterior to the point that the house looked more like a giant shack than any type of home.

Pappy Joe had purchased the thing from an elderly man some twenty or so years before Cami was born. She remembered how Pappy had told her about the eccentric man who had built the house during the prohibition years and that it was full of hidden passages and secret rooms. Apparently, the old fellow had booze shuffled in via the lake, which he would secretly sell to the underground taverns.

The passages were neatly woven throughout the house. The old man had this cabin designed particularly for the stashing of liquors and quick escape should anyone in authority decide to drop by unannounced. There were tunnels to and from different rooms. There were hiding spots, crawl spaces, and secret doors. It was a clandestine labyrinth.

Cami knew those secret passages all too well. She and her many cousins would swim in the lake that spread across the backside of the property. They would chase and push each other. They would gather around the fire at night and tell ghost stories, but their favorite thing to do each summer was to play hide-and-go-seek. Those secret hiding places in the cabin served as the best places to avoid being caught in the game. Some of her favorite spaces were the one under the bed in Gramma and Pappy’s room that led to a tunnel to the ground floor and the one camouflaged in the wall at the top of the stairs that the average person wouldn’t even notice if they didn’t look closely enough.

Her aunts and uncles would chime in that they didn’t agree with the children playing in those dark places, but Pappy Joe would reassure them that there was nothing dangerous in the passageways, and they should let the children have their fun. Cami learned the tunnels well during those years. She and her cousins would crawl in and out of them, dirtying their knees and screaming in surprise-filled fun. They’d explore the inside of the cabin walls and sometimes found new and exciting passages they hadn’t noticed on prior visits.

The house sat on a peninsula that had but one road that allowed for entry and exit. Cami was driving toward the place. The hair on her neck jumped to attention when she turned the car off the main road and saw the once bright and welcoming sign to the house. It was now tattered, tilted, and barely legible but still noted that Peninsula Drive was the way in. The mailbox that once proudly boasted NOVARO now leaned backward. Some ugly brown vines had crawled their way up the post, reaching for the box opening. On one side of the lane, a dilapidated diamond-shaped sign warned Dead End; that sign was also worn down. It showed that it was as old as Cami. She noticed the swamps on either side were just as grown over as ever. The weeds and cat-o’-nine-tails stretched for yards into the air. The water over here was calm even if the rest of the lake was moving. Its surface was lined with green slime and lily pads. The marsh didn’t hide the fact that entering it could be fatal. One could easily get caught in the mud that created the floor of the mess and be pulled under, never to be seen again. In her rearview mirror, she could see nothing but a cloud of dust as the tires kicked up sun-dried dirt behind her. Her tire rolled over a small limb, and the cracking of the wood startled a goose, which honked as it flapped away from the marsh’s edge. She passed the two large oaks that adorned either side of the road that separated the driveway from the swamp. Those trees were older than her grandfather. Their trunks sat in the swamps, and they reached their barely alive branches skyward as if trying to touch the clouds. A few leaves hung on to them as autumn claimed the rest. As she pulled into the large dirt parking area at the front of the old home, she felt relief, and the hairs on her nape went limp.

She parked the car and turned off the ignition. She pulled her cell phone from her purse that was sitting on the passenger seat, glanced at the coverage bars, and noticed it had no signal. She wasn’t surprised since this old house was miles from anything one could call urban. She shoved the phone into her hoodie pocket. Her gaze moved to the land around her. The lake seemed to stretch around the world. It was about forty yards from the back door of the cabin and wrapped its way almost completely around the property. The golden sun glistened and sparkled on the rippling water. It was near the horizon, and it reflected off the lake like a beacon. She remembered the kids would run to the pier and leap into the cold lake water, no matter what time of day it happened to be. Years earlier, Pappy Joe had a load of large stone dumped into the lake off the pier so the kids had something stable to stand on in the water. He had also created a small line of buoys to reveal where that stone lied. Venturing beyond that barrier was strictly forbidden by all of the adults as they knew the dangers of the mud-lined floor of the lake. The old rope and buoys were no longer floating. Cami determined that Joe had put them away, probably years earlier. Nobody came to swim as of late.

To the left, the water seemed never-ending. To the right, it curled its way back into the marshes and eventually all the way to the main road from which Cami had just driven. Off in the distance, on the other side of the lake, was the tiny outline of several other houses or cabins. Cami didn’t know for sure. The only hint of life at all was revealed when the sun dropped, and few faraway lights popped on like miniature eyes from a hidden cat. Crossing those waters always seemed like an impossible task. Even as she grew older, she often thought she could never muster enough strength to swim them. They were as deep as anyone could guess, probably hundreds of feet in the center. Even if she could try to stroke through the rippling current, there was nowhere to go. The closest shore was maybe a hundred yards off, and it turned to weeds and trees, a lost forest on another peninsula, or perhaps a small island. It would be a worthless swim.

Her gaze moved to the old shed behind the house. It was barely visible from where her car sat. Its old, rotted boards still seemed sturdy enough to house Pappy’s collection of tools or whatever he kept so secretly hidden in there. A single lamp hung over the doorway, but Cami had never in her life seen it lit. She assumed it never did actually work. The door was makeshift and appeared to not sit quite perfectly in its jamb. The windows were covered with dust and the tin roof with algae. Surrounding it was tall grass and cat-o’-nine-tails, and ugly weeds and flowers poked out from behind. Pappy had told the kids that the shed was off-limits, although he let Cami tag along a few times while he was fetching a tool. And nobody was to go beyond it for any reason. He