There’s a cabin on Douglas Lake that I go to every year on Memorial Day weekend with two old college buddies, Benny and Alex. We were all Business majors at the University of Tennessee, but that didn’t stop us from making the fiscally-dense decision to go in together on a timeshare right before graduation. It’s been almost a decade since we finished school and moved on; these days we all live in other parts of the country. I live in Chicago now, Alex is in Washington D.C., and Benny’s all the way out in San Diego. But we all still pay nearly $1,000 a year for the Douglas Lake cabin, and that’s on top of the initial costs when we signed the agreement. Like I said, it was a dumb, impulsive move. However, it’s kept us in touch over the years. We haven’t missed one of our Memorial Day cabin trips yet.
Our place sits on the edge of a row of other cabins, and I dare say the other ones are nicer than ours. That especially goes for the place directly next to ours. It’s really more of a posh lake house than a cabin, with a second-story balcony and open-air back deck. Alex calls the behemoth “Catfish Palace”, referring to the most popular catch on Douglas Lake. It was built after we signed on our place, and it sits a little too close to our lot if you ask me. But I’m sure whoever owns that place would doubly prefer to not be so close to our rustic getaway.
Our place sits on the edge of a row of other cabins, and I dare say the other ones are nicer than ours. That especially goes for the place directly next to ours. It’s really more of a posh lake house than a cabin, with a second-story balcony and open-air back deck. Alex calls the behemoth “Catfish Palace”, referring to the most popular catch on Douglas Lake. It was built after we signed on our place, and it sits a little too close to our lot if you ask me. But I’m sure whoever owns that place would doubly prefer to not be so close to our rustic getaway.
As for the other “owners” of our cabin, we only have info for the people that stay there the week before us and the people that come the week after us. This is in case anybody wants to request a time switch. Since we’ve got the Memorial Day holiday during our week, we’ve had offers – generous offers – to trade in exchange for an adjacent week - plus cash. But money hasn’t been tight for any of us, and we really do look forward to that weekend every year. Since the agreement is for a whole week, we’ve let the family that follows us, the Downey family, know that the place is available on the Wednesday after Memorial Day if they want it. I’m sure getting access just after a big holdiay isn’t ideal, but they seem to appreciate the gesture.
This year was one of our best trips yet. I’d been dating a girl named Susanne back in Chicago, and things were starting to get serious between us. I told Benny and Alex that I was thinking about asking her to move in with me, which quickly became the target of a lot of domestic jokes and comments about “living in sin”, as though living together before marriage was a thing that raised eyebrows anymore.
“I hope Father McTuggagin doesn’t find out,” Benny said, referencing a crass, made-up character that we often played with our collectively bad Irish accents. “What’s thess now, young Daniel? Ya be livin’ in sen if she be willin’ to touch ya doon belowww!”
We all laughed and cracked open another round of beers as the sun went down. Old friends are the best friends, especially when you only see each other long enough to tell the same old jokes and recount the same old stories. Alex would talk about the time we scored tickets to see Pearl Jam in Memphis. And every time he did, I’d remind him of the magic mushrooms he secretly took without me and Benny knowing.
“It was incredible,” he’d say. “Just the hum of the lights in the parking lot was more majestic than ‘Yellow Ledbetter’ could ever be."
I’d look at him side-eyed. “I would trust your judgement more, Alex, if you’d ever actually made it inside the FedEx Forum.”
“Oh, right.” And then he’d laugh as if he were remembering this fact for the first time. Looking back, maybe he was.
Maybe we all were.
I said that this weekend was one of our best trips, but I guess they were all pretty much interchangeable. Each and every one of them offered a nice, long weekend away from the grind with a couple of good friends. If you could magically align them all, like a stack of photograph negatives over one another, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the same sentences and exchanges matched beat-for-beat. I’m sure there’s a psychology word for it: the more time away from a person, the more likely you’ll do and say the same things when you see them again. The three of us fell into old patterns and habits we had back at UT, those days that we were around each other nonstop.
“Hey, do you think you could hang back an extra day or two?”
It was Tuesday morning. Benny and I were doing our final sweep of the cabin, making sure we grabbed our personal items. The lodging association that ran the timeshare sent a small cleaning crew between each group, but we had learned the hard way that you pretty much have to clean the place top to bottom if you don’t want to leave behind a cellphone charger or favorite pair of sunglasses.
“What do you mean ‘hang back’?” I asked Benny. “You think the mosquitoes need a chance to finish us off?” I was trying to play along, but it was obvious that he wasn’t joking.
“Sorry, it’s just that there’s some stuff I need to tell you before I go back. Just between you and me, Dan. Without Alex.”
“Why wouldn’t we want-“
“You’ll see. Please.”
I considered this for a moment. It wasn’t like Benny to ask something big unless it was important. He wasn’t careless with other people’s time like Alex could be. And another day or two in Tennessee wasn’t such a big deal. I owned a small data analyst company that I could run from almost anywhere. Plus, I’d brought on Susanne when she was let go from her law firm the previous year, and she could easily handle daily operations for the week.
After a quick call to Susanne and cancelling my afternoon flight, I told Benny I was there for him. He asked that I not say anything to Alex, and I kept the plan a secret. We had all used separate Uber rides to get from McGhee Tyson Airport in Knoxville to the cabin, but had planned to return in the same car. Alex had the earliest departure time, so I made up a bullshit story about losing my cellphone at the last minute. Benny said he’d lend a second set of eyes for the search. After a few rounds of protests, Alex relented and left in a solo ride.
With Alex gone, I started to unpack. Benny stopped me.
“Hold off on that, man. I’ve got a surprise for you.” Benny gathered up his luggage and walked out the front door of the cabin. I followed suit, confused. He locked up. Dropped the key in the lockbox on the side of the building, then walked across the driveway toward the big lake house next door.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve arranged for special accommodations.” Smiling, he removed a key from his shirt pocket and waved it in the air. “Plus, we can’t go back on our deal with the Downeys.” I’d forgotten about them. They would likely be showing up the next day.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, giddy with excitement. “We’re staying at freakin’ Catfish Palace?”
Benny laughed and ushered us inside. It was even more impressive than I could have imagined. The living room and kitchen were combined in an open floor plan with high ceilings. Fruit and other food items were on the counter. There was a hallway that I assumed led to a bedroom. The staircase dramatically curved up the side of the large room. The upstairs held two more bedrooms, but the coolest feature was the large open space in the middle that held a bar and led out to the second story balcony.
“Check the fridge,” Benny said.
I walked behind the bar and opened the small metallic fridge at my knees. It was fully stocked with Seaton tall boys, our beer of choice. None of us had been able to find the brand in town all weekend, assuming the brewery must have folded for good over the previous year.
“Did you do this?” I asked. Benny shrugged and I punched him on the shoulder. “We could have been drinking these all weekend?”
“No, I was saving them,” he said, opening two for us. “They weren’t easy to find.” He then plucked two cigars from behind the bar and opened the balcony door. Walking out, it occurred to me how orchestrated Benny’s seemingly spur-of-the-moment request had been.
“Wait, wait. You have to understand that I have a lot of questions.”
Benny shushed me, then gestured out.
The view from the balcony was astonishing. My mind fell to ease over the cool water of Douglas Lake. It was strange how different it all looked from just twenty feet up. The air smelled sweeter, felt softer somehow.
Benny handed me a cigar. “Dan, I own this place. Bought it last year.”
“You what? I mean, wow. Why didn’t you…I mean, wow!”
“Business has been good. Hell, it’s been so good that I up and sold the company.” The words looked comically natural coming out of a mouth that was also clenching a cigar.
“Yeah, but why tell me all this now, and not Alex?”
Benny paused for a moment and said, “You’ll see.” Off my look he lost the swagger some. “Look, I just wanted one more weekend in the cabin, a normal trip like the old days. Is that so strange?”
I couldn’t argue with that. If Catfish Palace was our future vacation spot, which I assumed would be the case, I was sure going to miss the old cabin.
“Well, congratulations,“ I said. “It looks like San Diego paid off big time. Oh, and you owe me the cost of my cancelled flight, you know.”
Benny laughed till he choked on the smoke from his cigar. Channeling Father McTuggagin, he said, “Danny, mah boy. Tha only thing ya need to ra’member is tha…ah, fook it. Le’s have us a drenk!”
This got me laughing. I was still confused as hell, but my incredulity was dulled after a few more Seaton tall boys. I was able to lighten up and eventually meet Benny’s enthusiasm, if not his wild exhilaration. After the sun had set, he revealed a small cache of fireworks on the back deck. He scurried to the edge of the lake with something that looked like a hand grenade on a stick. Lighting it, Benny cried out to the stars overhead. The whole scene seemed very dreamlike to me, but we had moved on to whiskey a bit before then. The display of lights shooting over Douglas Lake was fantastic.
Benny shook me awake the next day. It was after twelve o’clock in the afternoon. I probably hadn’t slept that late since college. Even our “wild” cabin trips had gotten pretty tame as we aged out of our early and mid-twenties. Sleeping so late was surprising, but the hangover was painful. I was barely able to focus my eyes or walk. Benny giggled as he helped me from my bed and back out onto the balcony. I wretched at the sight of the piled cigar butts and empty beer cans we’d strewn across the floor the night before. Benny navigated around the debris, leading me to a side of the balcony I hadn’t noticed the previous day. It was overlooking our old cabin. There were two chairs waiting for us. Benny sat me down in one of them, taking the other for himself.
“What’s this?” I asked. Benny shushed me and nodded to a car that was emptying in the cabin’s driveway. It was the Downey family. I had never seen them before, but they looked pretty much as I had imagined them, except there were two boys instead of a boy and a girl. Also, and I don’t know why I had assumed otherwise, but they were all a bit older than I thought they’d be. Mr. and Mrs. Downey – I think his name was Glen, I didn’t know her name – appeared to be in their fifties. The kids were either late teens or college-age.
Benny whispered to me. “Stay kinda still. I’ll narrate as best as I can, but the next few minutes are pretty crucial.”
This seemed like very odd behavior, but I chalked it up to my hangover. I began to speak up, but Benny leaned over and shook his head with dead serious eyes. I suddenly felt very uncomfortable. I hadn’t been outside for two minutes and I was already sweating profusely.
Benny looked out to the Downeys. “Okay, Dan. Let’s see what you notice.” Mr. Downey went to grab the key from the lockbox from the side of the cabin as the rest of the family unloaded luggage and groceries from the trunk of their sedan. Only, the lockbox wasn’t a lockbox anymore. It was a small panel that slid up with a hidey hole under it.
“What happened to the lockbox?” I said, trying my best to match Benny’s lowered volume even though my head was pounding.
“Oh, good. You got one right off the bat.” He was still whispering, but Benny’s excitement was causing his voice to crack.
“When did they do that?” I asked. Benny stared at me as I watched the Downey family carry their things inside the cabin. I looked back to Benny, but he shot a couple of glances toward the cabin to tell me to keep watching. I didn’t think there would be much to see, except I quickly saw that I was wrong.
The entire cabin was turned a bit. It was as though the building had been lifted and set back down so that, from our chairs on the balcony, Benny and I could now see the entire back half of the cabin. And I could see more than that. The back wall was almost entirely glass, a window where I could see the Downeys unloading their groceries into the refrigerator. The cabin only had one story, that hadn’t changed. But it looked different inside. There were paintings on the wall, and what seemed like hundreds of trinkets, small items like plastic toys or wooden carvings, were splayed around the room on small shelves that were affixed to the walls.
“That’s not our cabin,” I said.
“It is and it isn’t,” Benny said. “Let’s just enjoy the show for a while, huh?”
And he was right. It was a show, just not much of one at first. It started out like the world’s most boring reality show. One son, the Blonde one, would talk to Dad for a minute, then shout something at his brother, the Quiet-looking one. Mom opened up a box of crackers and made everybody snacks. It was very mundane stuff, yet I couldn’t look away. Then something strange happened. One by one, but not at the same time, each member of the Downey family dazedly stumbled over to a specific trinket on the wall, as though the item was pulling their destined soul toward it. The rest of them didn’t notice as this happened, they just went about their business, though the business seemed to grow increasing odd. I’m certain that I saw Mrs. Downey put her shoes in the freezer. And then, once they all stood before their trinkets of choice, they lifted the item into the air and stood there for several minutes.
“What’s happened to them?” I asked. “What the hell is going on, Benny?” I was still whispering.
“You don’t need to whisper anymore,” Benny said, full volume. “Do you want another beer?”
“No.”
“Suit yourself,” he said as he opened one for himself. I hadn’t seen him bring it with him.
“Did you do something last night? Did you…change things over in the cabin after I fell asleep?”
“The answer to your question is ‘no’. Last night, I got drunk with you and shot off some fireworks. The cabin is as it always has been.”
That wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. I squinted and saw that the paintings in the cabin were violent scenes: torture, animal sacrifice, things that I would have noticed and taken down.
The Downeys all walked outside, trinkets still in hand. They were looking right at us. I instinctively ducked down and Benny laughed.
“They can’t see you. They’re in the cabin.” He said that as though they hadn’t just walked outside.
Benny took a sip of his beer and threw the half-empty can at the family below. It hit Mrs. Downey in the face. The impact left a red welt on her face and spilled beer on her clothes, but she didn’t seem to notice any of it.
Benny did the Father McTuggagin voice again. “Shite. T’was aimin’ for dear old Da, I was.”
“What the fuck?” I shouted. This wasn’t the Benny that I knew. “What the fuck are you doing? Are you somehow behind this?”
“Behind this? I’m not behind this, Dan.” Benny laughed. “You might say that I was in the middle of it for a while, then I crawled my way to the front of it, but I didn’t build the cabin. The cabin just ‘is', okay? I pulled you out so that you could see it.”
Just then, a car slowly pulled into the cabin’s driveway. It was Alex’s Uber ride from the previous day. I squinted and saw that my friend was now driving the car.
“What’s Alex doing here, Benny?” Silence. “What’s he doing here?!”
Alex stopped the car and got out. His face was covered in dried blood. I didn’t see the car’s original driver, and I was afraid of what carnage might be hidden away in there. Alex walked over to join the Downey family, revealing his own trinket, a small wooden spiral thing, from his pocket. They were now all facing us. Their lips began moving, just slightly, but in harsh rhythm. It looked like they were chanting, or perhaps praying. Benny stood up and jumped off the edge of the balcony. He landed sturdily on his feet down below. I arose from my chair as he walked to his congregation standing on the border between the cabin and a place poor Alex had once called Catfish Palace.
As I peered over the edge of the balcony, I saw that Benny had changed. He was twenty or thirty years older. His clothes were the same, but his hair was now wispy and the top of his head was dotted with sunspots. Age hadn’t weakened Benny though. He calmly walked down the line of his dazed parishioners, touching each of them gingerly on their foreheads, one by one. Once Benny arrived at the end of the line, I saw that Alex was also an old man. The blood had dried into the deep wrinkles around his eyes.
I suddenly felt much older myself. I wanted to call Susanne, but I could only remember her name now. If she was ever an actual person who once loved me, I couldn’t imagine her face anymore. Once he finished blessing Alex, Benny turned and smiled up at me, his teeth gray and rotting. He gestured for me to join them. I didn’t want to. I looked away, down to my own trinket, a painted rock. It grew hot in my pale, fragile hands.
The world quickly dulled as I tumbled off the balcony. I never felt the ground below.
