The Cabin at the End of the World

by Paul Tremblay

I tell you, Andrew and Eric, the morning after finding the message board (I’d stayed up into the early morning hours typing, reading, and rereading everyone’s posts), I woke with a compulsion to drive to Valencia, a town twenty miles north of Los Angeles. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid and I had no idea why I was supposed to go or what I would find. I was still buzzing after connecting with the others online so I indulged this compulsion instead of denying it. This might sound strange, but the idea of dropping everything to drive to who-knows-where was both terrifying and thrilling, and it was a relief, too. It was relief to give in, even knowing this act of belief would irreparably change my life. I didn’t want or crave that change, at least not consciously. Until the night at In-N-Out, I was 100 percent focused on my job and getting into a master’s program, to the detriment of my already meager social life, but that didn’t really matter to me. I was happy, or if I wasn’t happy, I was all right, and that was plenty good enough. But that morning I called in sick to the hospital, although I knew the written recommendation I needed from my supervisor for my school applications was becoming less glowing with each passing sick day, now the third in a week. She was royally pissed but I had no choice. Or I convinced myself I had no choice. Either way, for this once proud and lifelong agnostic, the possibilities and implications of the fucked-up adventure were intoxicating...