Chapter 79: The Cabin in the Woods
"Have a seat. Can I get you anything? Coffee, water?"
"Water's fine. Thank you."
Three minutes earlier, Rango had introduced himself — first name only, no last name, still running the building inspection cover in his head — and the man had grabbed his hand with both of his, the specific grip of someone who had been waiting a long time for something to arrive and had just watched it pull into the driveway.
Now Rango sat on a couch that was too comfortable for a stakeout house and watched Mr. Hutchinson move around the kitchen with the unhurried ease of someone at home in the middle of a weekday afternoon.
The house was clean. Organized. Books on the shelves that had actually been read — spines creased, some with tabs. A desk in the corner with stacked folders. The family photos on the wall that Megan's projection had shown — smiling couple, two kids, Christmas card composition.
Rango looked at the photos.
Looked at the clearly bachelor kitchen.
Filed that away.
"Apple pie?" Hutchinson called from the kitchen. "Just made it this morning."
"We're good, thank you."
Ted, sitting on the armrest beside Rango, leaned close and murmured, "He keeps looking at your face."
"I know."
"Like he's checking something."
"I know."
Hutchinson came back with two glasses of ice water, set them on the coffee table, and settled into the chair across from them with the manner of someone sitting down for a conversation they'd been rehearsing.
He looked at Rango's face for the third time.
Rango set down the building inspection cover. "You know who I am."
It wasn't a question.
Hutchinson smiled — not surprised, just relieved to skip the preamble. "I knew your last name the moment I opened the door. You have your father's jaw and your mother's eyes, which is a combination I haven't seen in about fifteen years." He looked down at his hands. "I had a good friend who talked about you. You and your sister Megan."
Rango went still.
His sister — Emma's mother, the Megan the house was named for — wasn't someone strangers brought up. Wasn't someone who came up in casual conversation.
He glanced at the ring on Hutchinson's hand. The cabin etched in the silver.
"This friend," Rango said carefully. "That's my father."
"Pete Winchester," Hutchinson said. "Yes."
He said it the way you say the name of someone you miss.
Rango sat back. Around him the house was quiet — afternoon light through the windows, the distant sound of the neighborhood, Ted absolutely motionless on the armrest.
"Tell me," Rango said.
Hutchinson lit a cigarette — the gesture of someone settling in for the long version — and talked.
He'd been a junior analyst when he first came on. Observation work, he called it. Cataloguing. Documentation. The kind of job where you spent your days writing down things that shouldn't exist in language that tried to make them manageable.
Pete and Louise Winchester had already been senior personnel by then. Action team. The people who went in first when something that had been contained decided it didn't want to be contained anymore. Hutchinson described them the way people describe forces of nature — not with awe exactly, but with the particular respect of someone who had watched something operate at a level they couldn't fully account for.
"The things we held," he said, "they weren't small. We had entities in containment that had been operating for centuries. Things that made the demons you hunt look like minor incidents." He turned his cigarette over. "Your parents walked into those containment breaches like they were responding to a noise complaint."
Rango said nothing. He was thinking about every business trip his parents had ever taken. Every time they'd been on the road for weeks. Every time Megan had put him to bed and his parents' room had been empty.
"What was the organization?" he asked.
Hutchinson looked at him. "What do you know about it?"
"Almost nothing. A man named Amos mentioned something once — a facility that captured and contained supernatural entities. I had a name in my head but I didn't say it out loud."
"Say it now."
Rango looked at him steadily.
"The Cabin in the Woods," he said.
Hutchinson nodded once.
"I knew it," Rango said, with a quiet intensity that made Ted glance at him.
He'd seen the movie. More than once. He knew what the facility was — what it did, why it did it, what lived in its lower levels, what the whole operation was actually for at the deepest level. The ancient entities. The ritual. The way the whole architecture of the place pointed toward something that made every other supernatural threat look like a localized problem.
His parents had worked there.
Had led operations there.
"Your parents weren't just members," Hutchinson said. "They were captains. Action team leads. Between the two of them, your mother and father personally brought in more than half of the entities currently in our inventory." He paused. "When they disappeared, our breach response time tripled. We lost people on jobs they would have walked out of."
Rango absorbed this.
"How did they disappear?" he asked.
Hutchinson's expression dimmed. "We've been investigating for fifteen years. No conclusive answer."
"Yellow Eyes?"
"That's what the evidence looked like on the surface — sulfur trace, burn pattern, the signature. But—" Hutchinson shook his head slowly. "Your parents had personally contained entities that make Azazel look like a mid-level problem. A Prince of Hell alone shouldn't have been able to take them both. Not Pete. Not Louise." He looked at his cigarette. "Either they were caught completely off guard, or it wasn't Azazel, or—"
"Or they're not dead," Rango said.
Hutchinson looked at him.
"You were going to say it," Rango said.
"I was going to say it's a possibility we haven't ruled out," Hutchinson said carefully. "Your parents had resources and capabilities and connections that the organization itself didn't have full visibility into. If they chose to disappear—"
"Why would they do that?"
"I don't know." And he said it like he meant it — like it was the thing that had kept him up at night for fifteen years.
Rango sat with it. Turned it over. Set it on the shelf next to everything else that needed to wait until after Azazel.
"The organization," he said. "You said some people call it by different names. Savior. Monster Containment. What do you call it internally?"
"The Cabin," Hutchinson said. "Just the Cabin. People who work there, that's what they say. I work at the Cabin. It means something specific to the people who know."
"And my grandfather?"
Hutchinson smiled for the first time since the conversation had turned serious. "Your grandfather and Amos. You know they trained together?"
"I know they knew each other."
"Knew each other." Hutchinson shook his head. "They were the best the organization ever had. Two decades as the primary capture team. Before your grandfather left—"
"Why did he leave?"
"He had children," Hutchinson said simply. "And the Cabin is not a place you raise children inside of." He looked at Rango. "He trained your father instead. And your father eventually came back to it."
Rango looked at the ring on Hutchinson's hand.
"And now you want me to come back to it," he said.
Hutchinson leaned forward. "The action captain position has been vacant since your parents disappeared. We've been running operations by committee, which is—" he made a gesture that covered the full inadequacy of committee-run supernatural containment operations. "You're a natural. You were born into this. The Cabin needs a Winchester."
Rango stood.
Walked to the window. Looked out at the courtyard, the street, the neighborhood where he'd grown up that didn't look like his neighborhood anymore.
"I need time," he said.
"Of course."
"And I need to deal with Azazel first."
"Understood."
Rango turned back. His eyes went to the family photos on the wall. The smiling couple. The two kids. The Christmas card composition that had shown up in Megan's database search.
"One more thing," he said.
"Yes?"
"Your wife and kids."
Hutchinson blinked.
"Where are they?"
A long pause.
Hutchinson had the expression of a man who had maintained a cover for so long that being seen through it produced something between relief and embarrassment.
"Actors," he said. "I hired them for the listing photos. I've been here alone since I built the house."
Rango looked at him. Looked at Ted. Looked back at him.
"Okay," he said.
"Does that change—"
"No," Rango said. "It doesn't change anything." He moved toward the door. "I'll be in touch after Azazel."
Hutchinson followed him to the entry. "Rango."
Rango stopped.
"Your parents were the best people I ever worked with," Hutchinson said. "Whatever happened to them — wherever they are — they were good people who did real work that mattered. I thought you should hear that from someone who was there."
Rango stood in the doorway for a moment.
"Thank you," he said. And meant it.
Outside, McQueen was idling at the curb. The afternoon had gone gray while they were inside, November reasserting itself.
Rango got in. Sat.
Ted climbed onto the dash and said nothing, which was its own kind of statement.
"My parents worked for the Cabin in the Woods," Rango said, to the windshield. "My grandfather helped build it. Amos was there. And nobody mentioned it to me once."
"To be fair," Ted said carefully, "you also didn't know about the summoning system until you were twelve."
"Also Amos's oversight."
"Amos has a philosophy about information timing."
"Amos has a philosophy about everything." Rango stared at the house. At the ring on the man inside who had been sitting in his childhood address for fifteen years waiting for him to show up. "The Cabin in the Woods, Ted. You know what that place is. You've seen the movie."
"I've seen the movie," Ted confirmed. "The basement level alone—"
"Has things in it that make Azazel look like a parking ticket." Rango leaned back. "And my parents ran capture operations there. For decades."
The street was quiet.
"So either Azazel got lucky," Rango said, "or something bigger than Azazel took them. Or—"
He didn't finish it.
"Or they're somewhere," Ted said.
"Or they're somewhere," Rango said.
McQueen pulled away from the curb without being asked, the way he did when he understood that sitting still was no longer useful.
"Get Amos on the phone," Rango said. "And this time he's going to answer every question I ask."
"He won't like that," Ted said.
"No," Rango agreed. "He won't."
[Chapter Rewards]
500 Power Stones unlock 1 chapter
10 Reviews unlock 1 chapter
Hope you enjoyed the chapter.
20+chapters ahead on P1treon Soulforger