25 Days
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Synopsis
The countdown to Christmas has never been scarier than in this internationally bestselling holiday horror novel from Per Jacobsen.
Hoping to bring his family closer together, Adam Gray arranges a vacation in a remote cabin on a snowy mountain. Things take a dark turn, however, when someone starts leaving gifts in the Christmas stocking mounted on the barn door.
Each morning brings something new, and with every passing day, the contents become more terrifying. Soon, the family makes a spine-chilling realization: they’ve been dragged into a deranged game of Secret Santa, and if they want to survive, they will have to fight
Release date: April 8, 2025
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Print pages: 320
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25 Days
Per Jacobsen
Adam
IT’S PURE REFLEX. As soon as the first few notes of Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You have found their way to his ears, Adam Gray’s hand releases its grip on the steering wheel and moves down to the radio’s volume knob.
He doesn’t turn it, though. Something makes him hesitate and change his mind. Perhaps it’s the realization that he’s the only one of the four people in the vehicle who has registered the music.
In the past, the two girls in the back seat would have ordered him to crank up the volume—and the woman in the passenger seat would have belted along from the very first line, not worrying about key or rhythm. Now, they just sit there, staring at glass plates; the girls at the screens of their cell phones and Beth through the pane of the side window.
In the past. It’s a strong phrase to use for something that doesn’t go further back than a few years. It’s crazy how so much can change in such a short time.
Outside the car, the air is full of dancing snowflakes, and the pines whizzing by on both sides have been given a touch of white on top of their evergreen needles.
So has the asphalt of the road, which Adam isn’t too happy about. Especially not if it gets worse. True, they can also get large amounts of snow in Newcrest, where they live, but it usually doesn’t take very long before the first snowplows are sent out to clear the roads.
But they are up north now. Far from Newcrest, and far from major cities in general. And Adam has a strong feeling that these deserted roads that wind through the Willowbend forests aren’t exactly at the top of the clearing crew’s itinerary.
But that was kind of the point, wasn’t it? he thinks. To get away from it all and spend some quality time together as a family.
He glances over at Beth in the passenger seat. She sits with one leg pulled up so that her foot is resting on the seat and her chin on her knee. He can’t see her face because it’s still turned toward the window, and her freckled cheek is hidden away behind a thick lock of chestnut-brown hair.
She has been gazing at the landscape almost nonstop throughout the drive. Three hours of her just staring blankly out the window… although Adam has a feeling that she isn’t so much looking at the landscape as she is avoiding looking at him.
He shifts his gaze up to the rearview mirror just in time to see his eldest daughter move her hand up in front of her mouth as if she is suppressing a burst of laughter.
“What’s so funny?” he asks.
Abby jolts when she realizes that she is the one he is talking to, and she slams the phone down on her thigh with the speed of a furious cobra.
“Nothing,” she says. “Just something on TikTok.”
Adam opens his mouth, then sees the expression in her eyes in the rearview mirror and thinks twice. No need to start a war by asking her for more details.
While her older sister picks up her phone again, Chloe momentarily takes her eyes off her trance-inducing screen and leans in between the front seats.
“How much farther is it?”
“In about half an hour we’ll be at the gas station where we’re supposed to meet the guy who owns the cabin,” Adam replies. “He’s going to take us the rest of the way up there. How far that is, I don’t know, but it’s probably not that bad.”
“Why don’t we just meet at the cabin?”
Adam turns around in his seat and glances at her with one eyebrow raised.
“Because it’s a vacation in the country that I’ve booked for us,” he says. “And when you’re out in the country, like really out in the country, the GPS gets confused.”
He emphasizes the last word by crossing his eyes and tilting his head from side to side before moving his gaze back to the windshield. This makes nine-year-old Chloe let out a giggle—and her fifteen-year-old sister roll her eyes.
One in three he can still get a smile from. Guess that’s better than nothing. In any case, it’s what he will have to settle for. However, he is hoping that this vacation might change that a bit.
Through the speakers, Mariah Carey’s only Christmas wish fades out, and a news fanfare takes over. After that follows a deep male voice.
“Straight from WBCN’s studio in Colmena, this is Mark Ranter, wishing you a good afternoon and welcoming you to the news on this bitterly cold first of December. We start off in Grismond, where a family with children woke up this morning to an unpleasant—and rather macabre—start to the Christmas month. It was the father who made the chilling discovery on his way out with the garbage. He spotted a bloody trail leading into the family’s garage. And what he found in there was nothing short of a horrendous sight. Someone had hanged—”
A click, and the voice is gone. Adam looks down and sees Beth’s fingers clutching the dial on the radio. From there, his gaze slides up and meets hers.
She looks angry. Judgmental.
“What?” he says, gesturing down to the radio. “I’m not the one who decides what they say on the news, am I?”
“No, but you are able to decide what your daughters need to listen to, aren’t you?”
He doesn’t know what bothers him the most—what she’s saying, or the way she says it. The way she whispers it, as if that would somehow prevent the two girls in the back seat from hearing it. Christ, they’re sitting less than four feet away from her. And on top of that, she has just turned off the radio.
Adam’s teeth dig into the flesh on the inside of his lip, but he manages to maintain a smile on the outside. Which is good, because he has promised himself that he won’t argue with Beth on this trip. He wants to course-correct the ship, not sink it.
“I… I didn’t really listen to it,” he says. “My head was in a completely different place. But you’re right. Sorry.”
He looks at her, she stares at him, and then—luckily—she nods and leans back in her seat. Catastrophe avoided.
Half an hour of awkward silence later, Adam turns the car into the parking lot in front of the Exxon gas station, a short distance outside the town of Crimson.
The town. Using that word to describe Crimson is almost a stretch. How many houses did they pass between the WELCOME TO CRIMSON sign and the NOW LEAVING CRIMSON sign? Ten? Fifteen?
“What a fucking ghost town,” Abby mumbles in the back seat.
“Hey, language!” both parents yell in chorus… but after a short pause, Beth leans toward Adam and whispers:
“Who the hell taught those little fuckers to talk like that?”
Adam feels his lips pulling up in a smile. Partly because that sentence is an old inside joke between him and Beth, but even more so because she also smiles at him. That happens so rarely these days. Maybe this trip really is what’s needed to get them back on track.
“You’re not wrong, though, Abby. It didn’t exactly look overpopulated,” he replies as he lets his gaze wander, first across the roof above the gasoline pumps and then down to the facade of the gas station’s store. Both look like something from a different era. Rust and cracked paint mar the bottom side of the snow-covered roof, and the windows of the store look like they haven’t been cleaned since Clinton resided in the White House.
“Looks like we got here first,” Adam says, turning to the girls in the back seat. “How about we take a quick look in the store to see if they’ve got some candy?”
The response is as surprising as it is heartbreaking. Both girls wrinkle their noses and shrug, not even bothering to lift their gazes from their phones.
“What the heck is wrong with their generation?” he mumbles to Beth. “I would have pushed my little brother down a well for a bag of Skittles at their age.”
She smiles again—and it feels as though his lungs finally get a bit of oxygen after an eternity without.
“Well, if you are going in there anyway,” Abby says, “I wouldn’t mind a Coke.”
“Oh yeah, me too!” Chloe adds.
He glances at Beth, who responds by shaking her head slightly.
“Your wish is my command, your highnesses,” he jokes, making a theatrical bow to the girls as he gets out of the car. “You just stay seated and leave the Coke quest to me. We wouldn’t want you straining your legs after such a long drive, now, would we?”
Snow crunches beneath his feet, and the air is still full of swirling flakes as Adam walks over to the store. Once in a while, some of them land in the stubble on his cheeks and are transformed into chilly water droplets that run down his neck, making him shudder.
When the motion sensor on the wall above the store entrance detects his presence, the glass doors slide apart, revealing a room that looks exactly as Adam imagined it would.
It’s dim, due to a burnt-out fluorescent tube in the ceiling that no one has bothered to replace, and practically every shelf has a thin coating of light gray dust.
The floor tiles are also pretty dirty. A few of them have broken loose in the joints, making them creak underneath Adam’s shoes as he moves through the room.
The counter is at the opposite end of the store. Behind it is a clerk chatting with the only other customer; a brawny man in coveralls, holding a rolled-up newspaper in a fist that looks as if it could pulverize a pool ball without any problems.
Adam edges past a rotating rack filled with various snacks and sweets in colorful packaging and walks over to a fridge on the left side of the store. It’s not very big, and two of the shelves are almost completely empty, but he still finds what he needs; a bottle of water and two cans of Coke.
Carrying these, he continues over to the counter, where the clerk has turned his back and is putting up a poster on the back wall—a drowsy man behind the wheel of a car and a reminder that the store sells freshly brewed coffee every day for only two bucks.
In the meantime, the big man in the coveralls has started reading his newspaper. Nevertheless, he is still standing right in front of the counter—and he stays there, even as Adam queues up behind him and clears his throat.
“Excuse me, sir. Are you standing in line?”
The man lifts his head and glances at him. Then he—slowly—runs his tongue over his front teeth, causing his upper lip to bulge.
“Do I look like I’m standing in line?”
For a moment, Adam is completely paralyzed by that answer, and he can’t find any words, let alone utter them. The fact that the man appears even bigger up close doesn’t exactly help, either.
“I… um, no. It was just… well, you were reading your paper, and…”
“And I’m not allowed to do that, or what? Or maybe you don’t think a hillbilly like me can read at all? That it?”
“I… what? No, I just figured that you probably weren’t standing in line because you were reading.”
“Come on, Sam,” the clerk drones behind the counter. He is an older guy, and the tone of his voice reveals that this isn’t the first time he has had to reprimand his regular customer. “The poor guy thinks you’re being serious. And it’s not like I’m flooded with customers as it is. If you keep scaring them away, I won’t have any at all.”
The big man in the coveralls squints at the clerk and rolls his eyes. Then he turns his gaze back to Adam’s face, studying it carefully while his tongue takes another trip across his front teeth. Then his lips spread, exposing a tobacco-stained set of teeth.
“We like to mess a bit with strangers that wander out here into the middle of nowhere,” he says, as if that one sentence explains and justifies everything. “Especially if they’re city slickers.”
I see. What a great joke. Netflix hasn’t called to offer you a stand-up special yet?
Even though that’s what he thinks, Adam just nods and pulls up his lips in the tiniest smile he can get away with.
The man in the coveralls takes a step back, and Adam edges his way past. As he passes him, he inhales a mixture of sweat and motor oil that gives him a sting of nausea. Luckily, the man doesn’t stay behind him for very long before he closes the newspaper and strolls toward the exit.
“Anything else?” the elderly gentleman behind the counter asks.
Adam shakes his head.
“No thanks, just this.”
The clerk nods and taps a bony finger on top of the cash register’s display where the amount is shown in digital numbers.
“Four bucks and twenty,” he says—and while Adam looks for the change in his wallet, he leans over the counter and whispers: “Don’t mind Sam. He’s all bark and no bite.”
“It’s okay,” Adam says with a strained, polite smile on his lips.
“Always was a bit of a weirdo,” the clerk continues. “Shouldn’t come as a surprise, though. Lived with his mom all his life. All his life. Can you imagine?”
“It’s okay,” Adam repeats because he has no idea what else to say. “Nothing happened.”
The clerk nods as he reaches out his hand to take the payment. Sadly, Adam doesn’t have exact change… because at this point, he really just wants to get away from this chatty old geezer.
But no, he has to wait nicely while the elderly gentleman behind the counter finds his change. And there is no rush.
“I see you have your family sitting out in the car. Are you passing through?”
“Yes and no. We’re supposed to meet with someone out here. We’ve rented a vacation house.”
The clerk squints his eyes and nods in a strangely knowing way. Then he raises his index finger and points it at Adam.
“It’s Bill’s cabin, isn’t it?”
Adam responds with silence and a fairly reluctant nod, hoping that might help to end the conversation.
“If you think you’re out in the country now, you just wait,” the clerk says as he drops the change into Adam’s palm. “This is nothing compared to Bill’s cabin. It’s all the way up where… oh look, there he is now.”
He points out the window, and Adam follows the direction of his finger.
Sure enough, out in the parking lot, a new vehicle has just arrived. It’s an SUV that is burgundy-colored and has a dream catcher hanging from the rearview mirror—both characteristics that Bill had described in their last correspondence.
Behind the wheel sits Bill, wearing a baseball cap and a green parka over a red-and-black flannel shirt. He looks a bit older than he did in the portrait photo on the website. Adam notices this right away, even though the cap covers a good portion of Bill’s face.
The driver’s side door of the SUV opens at the exact second that the entrance doors slide aside for Adam, and the two men both shudder at the encounter with the icy wind.
At least it stopped snowing, Adam thinks, but that’s a small consolation because it still feels like the wind is going straight through his clothes, skin, and hair.
“Mr. Gray?”
“Just call me Adam. And you must be Bill, right?”
“That’s what it says on my birth certificate,” he replies with a smile, after which he jogs across the parking lot, holding out his hand.
“I hope you didn’t wait too long,” he says as Adam shakes it. “I don’t live that far away, but my neighbor had parked his tractor in front of my driveway, so I had to wait for him to get off his ass and move it.”
“No worries,” Adam replies, nodding at the beverages he holds under his arm. “We’ve only been here for five minutes and took the opportunity to stock up.”
Bill glances in the direction of Adam’s car.
“I see you’ve got two girls. They’re going to love the place. The animals are always a hit with the young girls. Especially the rabbits and the piglets.”
“I can imagine. Actually, that was one of the reasons why I chose your cabin. Getting to feed the animals is pretty exciting for, um…”
He’s just about to say city slickers, as the man in the coveralls called them, but then changes it to: “… city people like us.”
Bill lets out a sound that is somewhere between a snort and a laugh.
“Yeah, I guess there aren’t a lot of chicken coops in… Newcrest, was it?”
“Yeah—and no, you won’t find many farm animals in our neighborhood.”
“Well, then, what do you say we head on up to the cabin so you can meet the little critters?”
“And get warm,” Adam adds.
“And get warm,” Bill repeats, after which he turns around and starts walking back to the SUV. “You just follow me—and if at any point you’re having trouble keeping up, you flash the high beams a few times, okay?”
Adam replies with a nod and a raised thumb. Next, he pulls up the collar of his coat to protect his neck from the piercing wind and runs over to his family in the car.
If you think you’re out in the country now, you just wait.
That was the clerk’s description of their destination, and when Bill’s cabin finally appears at the end of the winding dirt road that has led them up the mountain, in and out through large clusters of snow-covered pines, Adam has to admit that it wasn’t an exaggeration.
The cabin is located in a large, crescent-shaped recess. In the summer months it might be a beautiful grassy valley, but with all the snow right now, it most of all looks like a white lake surrounded by dark trees—and in its middle, the cabin floats like a lost ship.
There are no other houses in sight, and the only sounds are the car’s engine, the wind whistling outside, and the muffled crunch of snow and gravel under the tires.
Inside the car, there are no sounds at all because all four family members sit completely still and stare out the windshield. And all four of them instinctively hold their breath as they study what is going to be their home for the next week.
Rarely has anything filled Adam with such opposing feelings as this sight does. Simultaneously, the cabin looks inviting and intimidating. The windows shine with a warm, orange glow and give a wordless promise of a break from the stress of everyday life… but around them, the grayish wood of the facade is worn from sun and wind, and the roof is heavy with snow that threatens to fall down at any moment and bury the cabin so it merges with the white surface of the valley.
“Somebody is in there,” Abby’s voice sounds from the back seat.
Adam squints. She is right, there is a silhouette behind the curtains in one of the cabin’s windows—and now, looking closer, he can also see a car. It’s parked next to a barn that is located on the right side, a bit drawn back from the cabin.
In front of them, Bill’s SUV turns to the side and stops. Then he reaches his arm out of the window and gestures toward the barn.
“What does he want?” Beth asks.
“He wants us to park in there, I think.”
Now, almost as a confirmation of those words, Bill gets out of the SUV and runs over to the barn. Once there, he pulls open the door and waves them in.
Like the cabin’s windows, the barn is lit by a warm, orange light. It comes from a row of lamps that hang down from some of the beams out on the sides where the ceiling is lowest.
“Oh, my God! They’re so cute!”
Chloe’s outburst makes Adam jump in his seat, but as soon as his brain decodes the words, the shock transforms into joy.
And the rabbits are cute. A little group, lined up neatly behind the cage’s wire mesh, stare curiously at the newly arrived guests with small, black eyes.
One of them, a white dwarf rabbit with black spots, balances on its hind legs and stretches up, almost as if trying to peek into the back seat of the car, perhaps hoping to spot some treats.
“I thought you’d like them,” Adam says. “We’re looking after them while we live here.”
“It’s gonna be so cool!” Chloe exclaims… but even though her obvious excitement makes Adam happy, it’s her older sister’s follow-up that really warms his heart.
“Not bad, Dad,” she says softly but sincerely. “Not bad at all.”
Even Beth nods with the hint of a smile on her lips.
“Welcome to the hidden paradise of Willowbend,” Bill says as they get out of the car. “I see that you’ve spotted the bunnies. There are also chickens and piglets.”
He points toward the other end of the barn where there’s a large chicken cage built with wooden posts and wire mesh. Next to it is a pigpen enclosed by a sturdy metal frame. The ground within is covered with a thick layer of straw, and in the middle of the pen is a small, rectangular wooden house that—if it weren’t for the feed and water troughs attached to its sides—could easily be mistaken for a child’s playhouse.
While Beth and the girls say hello to the animals, Bill grabs Adam’s arm and hands him a bunch of keys.
Adam looks at the keychain’s pendant and then at Bill’s hand.
“Yup, it’s a dream catcher,” Bill says, turning his hand so that Adam can get a better look at the engraving on his ring. “And yes, it’s the same one that I’ve got hanging from the rearview mirror in my car. It’s my wife. She has roots in the Ojibwe tribe, and this is one of the ways she holds on to her culture.”
A crooked smile forms on his lips, and he lowers his voice to a just between you and me whisper.
“Usually, I tell her that I know she’s just plastering them all over the place to scare all the other women away and let them know that I’m taken.”
He lets out a hoarse chuckle, which Adam can’t help but take part in. As it dies out, Bill grabs his arm once more.
“There are a couple of things you need to know about this place,” he says. “First of all, there’s absolutely no cell service up here… but I’m guessing you’ve already figured that out.”
“There were a few frustrated complaints from the back seat on the way up here,” Adam confirms. “But that’s okay. They were warned in advance. Besides, that was kind of the main goal with this trip; to spend some time together as a family.”
“Sounds like a good idea. However, in case of emergency, there is an old landline in the master bedroom inside the cabin. It still works, and my number is on a sticker on the bottom.”
“That’s good to know.”
“The other thing is the animals,” Bill continues, bringing Adam with him over to a large cabinet by the wall to the left. “All the feed is stored in here.”
He starts opening the doors but freezes when a woman’s voice emerges from behind him.
“Perhaps the girls should see this as well?”
Bill and Adam both turn around and are greeted by an elderly woman standing in the barn’s doorway, holding an oil lamp in her hand.
Adam recognizes her. It was her silhouette they saw behind the curtains when they arrived.
“Holy crap, Miss Morris,” Bill exclaims. “You almost scared the life out of me. Everything’s all right up here, I trust?”
The older woman’s lips curl into a faint smile, and she nods slowly.
“Fine and dandy, Mr. Tavern.”
Adam isn’t sure why, but something about the woman makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Then again, maybe he does know. Her black coat, pale skin, and the bun in her hair make her look like a character from a horror movie. The oil lamp doesn’t exactly work against that idea, either.
“This is Miss Morris. She looks after the place when there aren’t any guests.”
Adam takes a step forward to shake the woman’s hand but changes his mind when he only receives a brief nod from her. A nod that feels as chilly as the breeze coming in from the doorway behind her.
“And you’re absolutely right, Miss Morris,” Bill continues. “Since it’s probably the girls who will be taking care of the animals most of the time, they, of course, should see this as well.”
“Abby and Chloe!” Adam calls. “Come over here a sec, will you?”
His daughters, now standing by the piglets, reluctantly let go of the metal railing and walk over to him.
“This is the food for the animals,” Bill says, gesturing down to three blue plastic barrels standing at the bottom of the cabinet. “It’s easy enough because they’re in the same order as the cages; bunnies, chickens, pigs.”
He moves his hand up to a shelf at the top of the cabinet. From it, he picks up a laminated piece of paper and turns it toward them.
“On this you can see when to feed them and how much. So… can anyone tell me when it’s time to feed the chickens?”
Behind Adam, Chloe’s hand cautiously rises in the air, and Bill gives her a go-ahead nod.
“Tomorrow morning?”
Bill winks at her and smiles before returning the paper to the shelf.
“I think the animals are in good hands,” he says. “Don’t you agree, Miss Morris?”
“I certainly do.”
“Good. Then how about we take a look at where you’re going to sleep for the next seven days?”
The other members of his family answer with a unanimous sure, but Adam says nothing. His attention is caught by the sensation of something touching his back.
It’s Beth’s hand, gently gliding over it. It’s brief but undoubtedly a caress.
The first one in a long time.
“So, what’s the verdict?” Bill asks.
“It’s a very nice place you’ve got here.”
That is an understatement. Adam finds the cabin nothing short of wonderful—and his wife’s eyes tell him that he isn’t the only one.
In particular, he is blown away by the contrast. Because stepping over the threshold really felt like stepping into another world. The obvious difference is, of course, the temperature; the harsh cold outside versus the enveloping heat inside the cabin. But it’s more than that. Far more.
Out in the rugged mountain landscape, the world was basically reduced to two colors, black and white, but inside the warm living room of the cabin, shades of brown, red, and gold are woven together to create a cozy and welcoming atmosphere.
The crucial element of this effect is of course the fireplace that is built into the back wall of the living room. Its crackling flames cast dancing shadows on the dark brown wood paneling of the walls, and the deep orange light of the fire softens the edges of everything it touches.
On the left side, the kitchen extends off the living room, separated only by a half wall with built-in shelves filled with rustic jars and various small decorative items.
From one of the jars, Bill picks up a small key and holds it out for everyone to see.
“Most likely you won’t need it, but this is the key to our reserve supply in case your food should run out. You’ll find it behind the cabin, about halfway down the backyard. A rusty metal hatch with a padlock, hard to miss. Originally, it was a bomb shelter, I think. But now
Adam
IT’S PURE REFLEX. As soon as the first few notes of Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You have found their way to his ears, Adam Gray’s hand releases its grip on the steering wheel and moves down to the radio’s volume knob.
He doesn’t turn it, though. Something makes him hesitate and change his mind. Perhaps it’s the realization that he’s the only one of the four people in the vehicle who has registered the music.
In the past, the two girls in the back seat would have ordered him to crank up the volume—and the woman in the passenger seat would have belted along from the very first line, not worrying about key or rhythm. Now, they just sit there, staring at glass plates; the girls at the screens of their cell phones and Beth through the pane of the side window.
In the past. It’s a strong phrase to use for something that doesn’t go further back than a few years. It’s crazy how so much can change in such a short time.
Outside the car, the air is full of dancing snowflakes, and the pines whizzing by on both sides have been given a touch of white on top of their evergreen needles.
So has the asphalt of the road, which Adam isn’t too happy about. Especially not if it gets worse. True, they can also get large amounts of snow in Newcrest, where they live, but it usually doesn’t take very long before the first snowplows are sent out to clear the roads.
But they are up north now. Far from Newcrest, and far from major cities in general. And Adam has a strong feeling that these deserted roads that wind through the Willowbend forests aren’t exactly at the top of the clearing crew’s itinerary.
But that was kind of the point, wasn’t it? he thinks. To get away from it all and spend some quality time together as a family.
He glances over at Beth in the passenger seat. She sits with one leg pulled up so that her foot is resting on the seat and her chin on her knee. He can’t see her face because it’s still turned toward the window, and her freckled cheek is hidden away behind a thick lock of chestnut-brown hair.
She has been gazing at the landscape almost nonstop throughout the drive. Three hours of her just staring blankly out the window… although Adam has a feeling that she isn’t so much looking at the landscape as she is avoiding looking at him.
He shifts his gaze up to the rearview mirror just in time to see his eldest daughter move her hand up in front of her mouth as if she is suppressing a burst of laughter.
“What’s so funny?” he asks.
Abby jolts when she realizes that she is the one he is talking to, and she slams the phone down on her thigh with the speed of a furious cobra.
“Nothing,” she says. “Just something on TikTok.”
Adam opens his mouth, then sees the expression in her eyes in the rearview mirror and thinks twice. No need to start a war by asking her for more details.
While her older sister picks up her phone again, Chloe momentarily takes her eyes off her trance-inducing screen and leans in between the front seats.
“How much farther is it?”
“In about half an hour we’ll be at the gas station where we’re supposed to meet the guy who owns the cabin,” Adam replies. “He’s going to take us the rest of the way up there. How far that is, I don’t know, but it’s probably not that bad.”
“Why don’t we just meet at the cabin?”
Adam turns around in his seat and glances at her with one eyebrow raised.
“Because it’s a vacation in the country that I’ve booked for us,” he says. “And when you’re out in the country, like really out in the country, the GPS gets confused.”
He emphasizes the last word by crossing his eyes and tilting his head from side to side before moving his gaze back to the windshield. This makes nine-year-old Chloe let out a giggle—and her fifteen-year-old sister roll her eyes.
One in three he can still get a smile from. Guess that’s better than nothing. In any case, it’s what he will have to settle for. However, he is hoping that this vacation might change that a bit.
Through the speakers, Mariah Carey’s only Christmas wish fades out, and a news fanfare takes over. After that follows a deep male voice.
“Straight from WBCN’s studio in Colmena, this is Mark Ranter, wishing you a good afternoon and welcoming you to the news on this bitterly cold first of December. We start off in Grismond, where a family with children woke up this morning to an unpleasant—and rather macabre—start to the Christmas month. It was the father who made the chilling discovery on his way out with the garbage. He spotted a bloody trail leading into the family’s garage. And what he found in there was nothing short of a horrendous sight. Someone had hanged—”
A click, and the voice is gone. Adam looks down and sees Beth’s fingers clutching the dial on the radio. From there, his gaze slides up and meets hers.
She looks angry. Judgmental.
“What?” he says, gesturing down to the radio. “I’m not the one who decides what they say on the news, am I?”
“No, but you are able to decide what your daughters need to listen to, aren’t you?”
He doesn’t know what bothers him the most—what she’s saying, or the way she says it. The way she whispers it, as if that would somehow prevent the two girls in the back seat from hearing it. Christ, they’re sitting less than four feet away from her. And on top of that, she has just turned off the radio.
Adam’s teeth dig into the flesh on the inside of his lip, but he manages to maintain a smile on the outside. Which is good, because he has promised himself that he won’t argue with Beth on this trip. He wants to course-correct the ship, not sink it.
“I… I didn’t really listen to it,” he says. “My head was in a completely different place. But you’re right. Sorry.”
He looks at her, she stares at him, and then—luckily—she nods and leans back in her seat. Catastrophe avoided.
Half an hour of awkward silence later, Adam turns the car into the parking lot in front of the Exxon gas station, a short distance outside the town of Crimson.
The town. Using that word to describe Crimson is almost a stretch. How many houses did they pass between the WELCOME TO CRIMSON sign and the NOW LEAVING CRIMSON sign? Ten? Fifteen?
“What a fucking ghost town,” Abby mumbles in the back seat.
“Hey, language!” both parents yell in chorus… but after a short pause, Beth leans toward Adam and whispers:
“Who the hell taught those little fuckers to talk like that?”
Adam feels his lips pulling up in a smile. Partly because that sentence is an old inside joke between him and Beth, but even more so because she also smiles at him. That happens so rarely these days. Maybe this trip really is what’s needed to get them back on track.
“You’re not wrong, though, Abby. It didn’t exactly look overpopulated,” he replies as he lets his gaze wander, first across the roof above the gasoline pumps and then down to the facade of the gas station’s store. Both look like something from a different era. Rust and cracked paint mar the bottom side of the snow-covered roof, and the windows of the store look like they haven’t been cleaned since Clinton resided in the White House.
“Looks like we got here first,” Adam says, turning to the girls in the back seat. “How about we take a quick look in the store to see if they’ve got some candy?”
The response is as surprising as it is heartbreaking. Both girls wrinkle their noses and shrug, not even bothering to lift their gazes from their phones.
“What the heck is wrong with their generation?” he mumbles to Beth. “I would have pushed my little brother down a well for a bag of Skittles at their age.”
She smiles again—and it feels as though his lungs finally get a bit of oxygen after an eternity without.
“Well, if you are going in there anyway,” Abby says, “I wouldn’t mind a Coke.”
“Oh yeah, me too!” Chloe adds.
He glances at Beth, who responds by shaking her head slightly.
“Your wish is my command, your highnesses,” he jokes, making a theatrical bow to the girls as he gets out of the car. “You just stay seated and leave the Coke quest to me. We wouldn’t want you straining your legs after such a long drive, now, would we?”
Snow crunches beneath his feet, and the air is still full of swirling flakes as Adam walks over to the store. Once in a while, some of them land in the stubble on his cheeks and are transformed into chilly water droplets that run down his neck, making him shudder.
When the motion sensor on the wall above the store entrance detects his presence, the glass doors slide apart, revealing a room that looks exactly as Adam imagined it would.
It’s dim, due to a burnt-out fluorescent tube in the ceiling that no one has bothered to replace, and practically every shelf has a thin coating of light gray dust.
The floor tiles are also pretty dirty. A few of them have broken loose in the joints, making them creak underneath Adam’s shoes as he moves through the room.
The counter is at the opposite end of the store. Behind it is a clerk chatting with the only other customer; a brawny man in coveralls, holding a rolled-up newspaper in a fist that looks as if it could pulverize a pool ball without any problems.
Adam edges past a rotating rack filled with various snacks and sweets in colorful packaging and walks over to a fridge on the left side of the store. It’s not very big, and two of the shelves are almost completely empty, but he still finds what he needs; a bottle of water and two cans of Coke.
Carrying these, he continues over to the counter, where the clerk has turned his back and is putting up a poster on the back wall—a drowsy man behind the wheel of a car and a reminder that the store sells freshly brewed coffee every day for only two bucks.
In the meantime, the big man in the coveralls has started reading his newspaper. Nevertheless, he is still standing right in front of the counter—and he stays there, even as Adam queues up behind him and clears his throat.
“Excuse me, sir. Are you standing in line?”
The man lifts his head and glances at him. Then he—slowly—runs his tongue over his front teeth, causing his upper lip to bulge.
“Do I look like I’m standing in line?”
For a moment, Adam is completely paralyzed by that answer, and he can’t find any words, let alone utter them. The fact that the man appears even bigger up close doesn’t exactly help, either.
“I… um, no. It was just… well, you were reading your paper, and…”
“And I’m not allowed to do that, or what? Or maybe you don’t think a hillbilly like me can read at all? That it?”
“I… what? No, I just figured that you probably weren’t standing in line because you were reading.”
“Come on, Sam,” the clerk drones behind the counter. He is an older guy, and the tone of his voice reveals that this isn’t the first time he has had to reprimand his regular customer. “The poor guy thinks you’re being serious. And it’s not like I’m flooded with customers as it is. If you keep scaring them away, I won’t have any at all.”
The big man in the coveralls squints at the clerk and rolls his eyes. Then he turns his gaze back to Adam’s face, studying it carefully while his tongue takes another trip across his front teeth. Then his lips spread, exposing a tobacco-stained set of teeth.
“We like to mess a bit with strangers that wander out here into the middle of nowhere,” he says, as if that one sentence explains and justifies everything. “Especially if they’re city slickers.”
I see. What a great joke. Netflix hasn’t called to offer you a stand-up special yet?
Even though that’s what he thinks, Adam just nods and pulls up his lips in the tiniest smile he can get away with.
The man in the coveralls takes a step back, and Adam edges his way past. As he passes him, he inhales a mixture of sweat and motor oil that gives him a sting of nausea. Luckily, the man doesn’t stay behind him for very long before he closes the newspaper and strolls toward the exit.
“Anything else?” the elderly gentleman behind the counter asks.
Adam shakes his head.
“No thanks, just this.”
The clerk nods and taps a bony finger on top of the cash register’s display where the amount is shown in digital numbers.
“Four bucks and twenty,” he says—and while Adam looks for the change in his wallet, he leans over the counter and whispers: “Don’t mind Sam. He’s all bark and no bite.”
“It’s okay,” Adam says with a strained, polite smile on his lips.
“Always was a bit of a weirdo,” the clerk continues. “Shouldn’t come as a surprise, though. Lived with his mom all his life. All his life. Can you imagine?”
“It’s okay,” Adam repeats because he has no idea what else to say. “Nothing happened.”
The clerk nods as he reaches out his hand to take the payment. Sadly, Adam doesn’t have exact change… because at this point, he really just wants to get away from this chatty old geezer.
But no, he has to wait nicely while the elderly gentleman behind the counter finds his change. And there is no rush.
“I see you have your family sitting out in the car. Are you passing through?”
“Yes and no. We’re supposed to meet with someone out here. We’ve rented a vacation house.”
The clerk squints his eyes and nods in a strangely knowing way. Then he raises his index finger and points it at Adam.
“It’s Bill’s cabin, isn’t it?”
Adam responds with silence and a fairly reluctant nod, hoping that might help to end the conversation.
“If you think you’re out in the country now, you just wait,” the clerk says as he drops the change into Adam’s palm. “This is nothing compared to Bill’s cabin. It’s all the way up where… oh look, there he is now.”
He points out the window, and Adam follows the direction of his finger.
Sure enough, out in the parking lot, a new vehicle has just arrived. It’s an SUV that is burgundy-colored and has a dream catcher hanging from the rearview mirror—both characteristics that Bill had described in their last correspondence.
Behind the wheel sits Bill, wearing a baseball cap and a green parka over a red-and-black flannel shirt. He looks a bit older than he did in the portrait photo on the website. Adam notices this right away, even though the cap covers a good portion of Bill’s face.
The driver’s side door of the SUV opens at the exact second that the entrance doors slide aside for Adam, and the two men both shudder at the encounter with the icy wind.
At least it stopped snowing, Adam thinks, but that’s a small consolation because it still feels like the wind is going straight through his clothes, skin, and hair.
“Mr. Gray?”
“Just call me Adam. And you must be Bill, right?”
“That’s what it says on my birth certificate,” he replies with a smile, after which he jogs across the parking lot, holding out his hand.
“I hope you didn’t wait too long,” he says as Adam shakes it. “I don’t live that far away, but my neighbor had parked his tractor in front of my driveway, so I had to wait for him to get off his ass and move it.”
“No worries,” Adam replies, nodding at the beverages he holds under his arm. “We’ve only been here for five minutes and took the opportunity to stock up.”
Bill glances in the direction of Adam’s car.
“I see you’ve got two girls. They’re going to love the place. The animals are always a hit with the young girls. Especially the rabbits and the piglets.”
“I can imagine. Actually, that was one of the reasons why I chose your cabin. Getting to feed the animals is pretty exciting for, um…”
He’s just about to say city slickers, as the man in the coveralls called them, but then changes it to: “… city people like us.”
Bill lets out a sound that is somewhere between a snort and a laugh.
“Yeah, I guess there aren’t a lot of chicken coops in… Newcrest, was it?”
“Yeah—and no, you won’t find many farm animals in our neighborhood.”
“Well, then, what do you say we head on up to the cabin so you can meet the little critters?”
“And get warm,” Adam adds.
“And get warm,” Bill repeats, after which he turns around and starts walking back to the SUV. “You just follow me—and if at any point you’re having trouble keeping up, you flash the high beams a few times, okay?”
Adam replies with a nod and a raised thumb. Next, he pulls up the collar of his coat to protect his neck from the piercing wind and runs over to his family in the car.
If you think you’re out in the country now, you just wait.
That was the clerk’s description of their destination, and when Bill’s cabin finally appears at the end of the winding dirt road that has led them up the mountain, in and out through large clusters of snow-covered pines, Adam has to admit that it wasn’t an exaggeration.
The cabin is located in a large, crescent-shaped recess. In the summer months it might be a beautiful grassy valley, but with all the snow right now, it most of all looks like a white lake surrounded by dark trees—and in its middle, the cabin floats like a lost ship.
There are no other houses in sight, and the only sounds are the car’s engine, the wind whistling outside, and the muffled crunch of snow and gravel under the tires.
Inside the car, there are no sounds at all because all four family members sit completely still and stare out the windshield. And all four of them instinctively hold their breath as they study what is going to be their home for the next week.
Rarely has anything filled Adam with such opposing feelings as this sight does. Simultaneously, the cabin looks inviting and intimidating. The windows shine with a warm, orange glow and give a wordless promise of a break from the stress of everyday life… but around them, the grayish wood of the facade is worn from sun and wind, and the roof is heavy with snow that threatens to fall down at any moment and bury the cabin so it merges with the white surface of the valley.
“Somebody is in there,” Abby’s voice sounds from the back seat.
Adam squints. She is right, there is a silhouette behind the curtains in one of the cabin’s windows—and now, looking closer, he can also see a car. It’s parked next to a barn that is located on the right side, a bit drawn back from the cabin.
In front of them, Bill’s SUV turns to the side and stops. Then he reaches his arm out of the window and gestures toward the barn.
“What does he want?” Beth asks.
“He wants us to park in there, I think.”
Now, almost as a confirmation of those words, Bill gets out of the SUV and runs over to the barn. Once there, he pulls open the door and waves them in.
Like the cabin’s windows, the barn is lit by a warm, orange light. It comes from a row of lamps that hang down from some of the beams out on the sides where the ceiling is lowest.
“Oh, my God! They’re so cute!”
Chloe’s outburst makes Adam jump in his seat, but as soon as his brain decodes the words, the shock transforms into joy.
And the rabbits are cute. A little group, lined up neatly behind the cage’s wire mesh, stare curiously at the newly arrived guests with small, black eyes.
One of them, a white dwarf rabbit with black spots, balances on its hind legs and stretches up, almost as if trying to peek into the back seat of the car, perhaps hoping to spot some treats.
“I thought you’d like them,” Adam says. “We’re looking after them while we live here.”
“It’s gonna be so cool!” Chloe exclaims… but even though her obvious excitement makes Adam happy, it’s her older sister’s follow-up that really warms his heart.
“Not bad, Dad,” she says softly but sincerely. “Not bad at all.”
Even Beth nods with the hint of a smile on her lips.
“Welcome to the hidden paradise of Willowbend,” Bill says as they get out of the car. “I see that you’ve spotted the bunnies. There are also chickens and piglets.”
He points toward the other end of the barn where there’s a large chicken cage built with wooden posts and wire mesh. Next to it is a pigpen enclosed by a sturdy metal frame. The ground within is covered with a thick layer of straw, and in the middle of the pen is a small, rectangular wooden house that—if it weren’t for the feed and water troughs attached to its sides—could easily be mistaken for a child’s playhouse.
While Beth and the girls say hello to the animals, Bill grabs Adam’s arm and hands him a bunch of keys.
Adam looks at the keychain’s pendant and then at Bill’s hand.
“Yup, it’s a dream catcher,” Bill says, turning his hand so that Adam can get a better look at the engraving on his ring. “And yes, it’s the same one that I’ve got hanging from the rearview mirror in my car. It’s my wife. She has roots in the Ojibwe tribe, and this is one of the ways she holds on to her culture.”
A crooked smile forms on his lips, and he lowers his voice to a just between you and me whisper.
“Usually, I tell her that I know she’s just plastering them all over the place to scare all the other women away and let them know that I’m taken.”
He lets out a hoarse chuckle, which Adam can’t help but take part in. As it dies out, Bill grabs his arm once more.
“There are a couple of things you need to know about this place,” he says. “First of all, there’s absolutely no cell service up here… but I’m guessing you’ve already figured that out.”
“There were a few frustrated complaints from the back seat on the way up here,” Adam confirms. “But that’s okay. They were warned in advance. Besides, that was kind of the main goal with this trip; to spend some time together as a family.”
“Sounds like a good idea. However, in case of emergency, there is an old landline in the master bedroom inside the cabin. It still works, and my number is on a sticker on the bottom.”
“That’s good to know.”
“The other thing is the animals,” Bill continues, bringing Adam with him over to a large cabinet by the wall to the left. “All the feed is stored in here.”
He starts opening the doors but freezes when a woman’s voice emerges from behind him.
“Perhaps the girls should see this as well?”
Bill and Adam both turn around and are greeted by an elderly woman standing in the barn’s doorway, holding an oil lamp in her hand.
Adam recognizes her. It was her silhouette they saw behind the curtains when they arrived.
“Holy crap, Miss Morris,” Bill exclaims. “You almost scared the life out of me. Everything’s all right up here, I trust?”
The older woman’s lips curl into a faint smile, and she nods slowly.
“Fine and dandy, Mr. Tavern.”
Adam isn’t sure why, but something about the woman makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Then again, maybe he does know. Her black coat, pale skin, and the bun in her hair make her look like a character from a horror movie. The oil lamp doesn’t exactly work against that idea, either.
“This is Miss Morris. She looks after the place when there aren’t any guests.”
Adam takes a step forward to shake the woman’s hand but changes his mind when he only receives a brief nod from her. A nod that feels as chilly as the breeze coming in from the doorway behind her.
“And you’re absolutely right, Miss Morris,” Bill continues. “Since it’s probably the girls who will be taking care of the animals most of the time, they, of course, should see this as well.”
“Abby and Chloe!” Adam calls. “Come over here a sec, will you?”
His daughters, now standing by the piglets, reluctantly let go of the metal railing and walk over to him.
“This is the food for the animals,” Bill says, gesturing down to three blue plastic barrels standing at the bottom of the cabinet. “It’s easy enough because they’re in the same order as the cages; bunnies, chickens, pigs.”
He moves his hand up to a shelf at the top of the cabinet. From it, he picks up a laminated piece of paper and turns it toward them.
“On this you can see when to feed them and how much. So… can anyone tell me when it’s time to feed the chickens?”
Behind Adam, Chloe’s hand cautiously rises in the air, and Bill gives her a go-ahead nod.
“Tomorrow morning?”
Bill winks at her and smiles before returning the paper to the shelf.
“I think the animals are in good hands,” he says. “Don’t you agree, Miss Morris?”
“I certainly do.”
“Good. Then how about we take a look at where you’re going to sleep for the next seven days?”
The other members of his family answer with a unanimous sure, but Adam says nothing. His attention is caught by the sensation of something touching his back.
It’s Beth’s hand, gently gliding over it. It’s brief but undoubtedly a caress.
The first one in a long time.
“So, what’s the verdict?” Bill asks.
“It’s a very nice place you’ve got here.”
That is an understatement. Adam finds the cabin nothing short of wonderful—and his wife’s eyes tell him that he isn’t the only one.
In particular, he is blown away by the contrast. Because stepping over the threshold really felt like stepping into another world. The obvious difference is, of course, the temperature; the harsh cold outside versus the enveloping heat inside the cabin. But it’s more than that. Far more.
Out in the rugged mountain landscape, the world was basically reduced to two colors, black and white, but inside the warm living room of the cabin, shades of brown, red, and gold are woven together to create a cozy and welcoming atmosphere.
The crucial element of this effect is of course the fireplace that is built into the back wall of the living room. Its crackling flames cast dancing shadows on the dark brown wood paneling of the walls, and the deep orange light of the fire softens the edges of everything it touches.
On the left side, the kitchen extends off the living room, separated only by a half wall with built-in shelves filled with rustic jars and various small decorative items.
From one of the jars, Bill picks up a small key and holds it out for everyone to see.
“Most likely you won’t need it, but this is the key to our reserve supply in case your food should run out. You’ll find it behind the cabin, about halfway down the backyard. A rusty metal hatch with a padlock, hard to miss. Originally, it was a bomb shelter, I think. But now
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