Looking at the pale woman’s corpse lying in the bathtub, Chris and the others finally began taking Alaric Thomas’s warning about cannibals seriously.
Some of them still desperately hoped this was nothing more than the work of an ordinary murderer, but nobody wanted to remain inside the cabin long enough to find out.
Their thoughts were suddenly identical—they needed to get back to the road before whoever owned this place returned.
They rushed toward the front door, but the distant roar of an approaching vehicle stopped everyone cold.
The sound grew louder with every passing second, clearly heading straight toward the cabin.
Chris immediately turned around because he had already checked the rear entrance and found it blocked.
There was no time to escape.
They had to hide.
Alaric moved first, dropping to the floor and sliding beneath the bed directly across from the doorway.
Jessie followed him almost immediately while Scott and Carly copied them and squeezed beneath another bed closer to the entrance.
Chris hurried into the adjoining room and disappeared from sight just as the vehicle outside came to a stop.
The cabin became deathly quiet.
A few seconds later, the front door was shoved open with a violent creak and crash.
Heavy footsteps entered one after another as three horribly disfigured men walked inside.
Alaric recognized them immediately from Wrong Turn: Three Finger, Saw-Tooth, and One-Eye.
Saw-Tooth, the largest of the three, carried the body of a dead woman wrapped in barbed wire.
He dragged her inside without the slightest care before throwing her onto the floor like a piece of meat.
The corpse landed directly in front of Alaric and Jessie.
It was Francine.
Her dead eyes remained wide open and seemed to stare directly beneath the bed.
Jessie’s entire body stiffened when she recognized her friend, and Alaric immediately understood what must have happened after they left Evan and Francine behind with the vehicles.
He tightened his grip around the old machete while a black Ghost Card silently appeared between the fingers of his other hand.
Glowing words surfaced across its empty face.
[Detectable Containment Target: Cannibal Mutant] Any remaining doubt vanished.
This really was Wrong Turn.
Jessie pressed herself against Alaric’s back and covered her mouth with one hand to keep from making a sound.
She was trembling badly enough that he could feel it, but Alaric had no attention to spare for anything except the three killers only a few feet away.
One wrong movement beneath the bed would get both of them killed.
Saw-Tooth grabbed Francine’s corpse and hauled it onto the dining table.
What followed confirmed every horrible detail Alaric remembered as the cannibals began cutting apart her body and preparing pieces of flesh for themselves.
Fresh blood spread across the already stained tabletop before dripping slowly toward the floor.
Chris, Scott, Carly, and Jessie could do nothing except watch from their hiding places.
Any lingering belief that these men might simply be murderers disappeared as the three brothers began eating.
Alaric could almost feel the terror spreading through everyone in the room.
By then, regretting the decision to enter the cabin was meaningless.
Minutes crawled past.
Alaric remained tense beneath the bed while Jessie stayed pressed tightly behind him.
His entire focus was on controlling his breathing and tracking the movements of the three cannibals.
Even when the killers finally finished eating and began settling down, he refused to relax.
Eventually afternoon sunlight shifted across the cabin windows.
Then came the sound Alaric had been waiting for.
Snoring.
He slowly raised his head enough to see the nearest bed and confirmed that the cannibal lying there appeared to be asleep.
Alaric glanced across the room and gestured toward Scott and Carly, indicating that they should start crawling out carefully.
Every movement needed to be silent.
Jessie immediately caught Alaric’s wrist and shook her head.
Her expression practically begged him not to move, and she refused to release him until Scott had successfully crawled from beneath the other bed.
Only then did Alaric carefully slide forward.
Once outside, he glanced toward the sleeping Saw-Tooth.
The cannibal looked even worse from this distance.
Sparse hair covered parts of his misshapen head while his face was heavily distorted, his brow almost nonexistent, and years of filth stained his clothes.
The smell coming from him nearly matched the rest of the cabin.
Alaric tightened his grip on the machete and looked toward Jessie.
He quietly indicated that she should hand another available blade to Scott, then pointed toward the sleeping cannibal.
Scott understood exactly what Alaric wanted.
Scott swallowed hard.
Then he shook his head.
He couldn’t do it.
Chris quietly emerged from the adjoining room and immediately gestured toward the door.
His meaning was obvious: get outside first and discuss everything once they were away from the cabin.
Jessie, Scott, and Carly clearly preferred that plan.
Alaric didn’t.
This might be the best opportunity he would ever get.
While hiding beneath the bed, Alaric had already tested the Two of Spades against the sleeping cannibal.
The Ghost Card had detected Saw-Tooth as a possible target, but it refused to contain him in his current condition.
That meant there was another requirement he still didn’t understand.
Perhaps the target needed to be weakened.
Or perhaps a corpse could be contained.
Either possibility was worth testing because Alaric couldn’t afford to leave without understanding the power that might eventually keep him alive in this world.
He looked toward Saw-Tooth and noticed one thick hand resting beside a shotgun.
Waiting until the cannibal woke up would make the situation far more dangerous.
Alaric slowly drew his pistol.
Chris noticed immediately and his eyes widened.
He tried to signal Alaric to stop, clearly terrified that the gunfire would wake all three brothers.
Unfortunately, by the time Chris realized what Alaric intended to do, it was already too late.
Alaric had made his choice.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Three gunshots exploded through the cabin.
Saw-Tooth jerked violently on the bed.
Alaric fired again to make certain the cannibal could not immediately recover, then moved before anyone else had fully processed what was happening.
He grabbed the machete and brought it down on the arm closest to the shotgun, preventing Saw-Tooth from reaching the weapon.
A terrible scream ripped through the cabin.
The entire attack had taken only seconds.
Three Finger and One-Eye instantly woke.
Their enraged shrieks snapped everyone out of their shock.
Chris threw the door open and the entire group bolted outside as the surviving cannibals scrambled after them.
Alaric abandoned any thought of finishing Saw-Tooth and sprinted behind the others.
They raced through the trees and climbed toward higher ground using a fallen trunk across part of the slope.
Gunshots echoed from behind them as the cannibals fired wildly through the forest, but distance and thick vegetation worked in the group’s favor.
Nobody was hit.
Three Finger stopped briefly below the slope and stared after the fleeing group while releasing one of his strange, high-pitched laughs.
One-Eye hurried toward their truck instead, apparently intending to circle around and hunt them from another direction.
Alaric didn’t slow down until the cabin had disappeared behind the trees.
By the time they reached higher ground, everyone’s adrenaline had begun to fade.
Chris bent forward with both hands on his knees and struggled to catch his breath.
After several seconds, he looked at Alaric with an expression somewhere between disbelief and alarm.
“Man, have you always been that brutal?” “I’ve had some training,” Alaric replied between breaths.
“And if they don’t die, we do.” His words sounded calmer than he actually felt.
When Saw-Tooth’s blood had sprayed across his clothes, Alaric had nearly thrown up on the spot.
Knowing these creatures from a movie was completely different from attacking one in real life.
Nearby, Carly suddenly broke down crying.
She could barely continue walking and kept talking about Francine between sobs.
Watching her friend being butchered had finally overwhelmed whatever composure she had managed to maintain.
Jessie and Chris immediately moved toward her and tried to calm her down.
Alaric used the pause to think.
Something bothered him.
He gradually stopped walking altogether.
Jessie noticed almost immediately and looked back at him.
“What’s wrong?” Alaric stared toward the direction they had come from.
“I need to go back.” Chris’s head snapped around.
“What?” “I need to return to the cabin.” “Are you out of your damn mind?” Chris demanded.
“You saw what those things did to Francine.
We barely got away from them!” Jessie quickly grabbed Alaric’s arm.
“No.
Come with us.
Going back there alone is insane.” Alaric shook his head.
He wasn’t trying to get himself killed.
Three Finger and One-Eye had already left the cabin to pursue them, with one of the brothers taking the truck.
That meant the most dangerous place from several minutes ago might temporarily be safer than wandering blindly through the woods while two experienced hunters searched for them.
More importantly, Alaric had left Saw-Tooth behind in a critically wounded condition.
That was an opportunity he couldn’t ignore.
His pistol still gave him some protection if the situation changed, and he had undergone basic firearms training after discovering that Valak existed.
He hadn’t suddenly become some elite soldier, but learning how to protect himself had seemed like the minimum requirement after discovering that demons and horror-movie killers were real.
More importantly, he needed to understand the Ghost Cards.
Until he knew exactly how containment worked, every future supernatural encounter would remain a gamble.
Jessie’s grip on his arm tightened.
“Then I’m coming with you.” Alaric immediately shook his head.
“No.
Stay with Chris and the others.” “Alaric—” “I’ll check the cabin and come right back,” he said.
“If either of the other two returns, I’m not fighting them.
I’ll leave immediately.” Jessie clearly hated the idea, but Alaric had already made his decision.
They had not traveled far enough for the return trip to take long, and moving alone would let him stay quieter.
After making sure Chris understood that Jessie was staying with the group, Alaric headed back down the slope.
He moved cautiously through the forest.
Every few steps, Alaric stopped and listened for engines, footsteps, or Three Finger’s distinctive laughter.
Nothing followed him.
When the cabin finally came back into view, he crouched behind the trees and studied the property before approaching.
No truck.
No movement outside.
Alaric reached the cabin and carefully looked through a gap near the doorway.
Saw-Tooth was still lying on the bed.
A crude bandage had been wrapped around part of his head, suggesting one of the other brothers had done what little they could before chasing after the group.
His breathing was faint and uneven, but somehow he was still alive.
Alaric stared in disbelief.
After what had happened inside the cabin, Saw-Tooth should have been dead or at least completely unconscious.
The cannibal’s abnormal durability was even more ridiculous in person than it had looked on-screen.
Alaric was suddenly very glad he had not tried fighting one of them with the machete alone.
He remained outside for another moment and checked the surroundings.
Nothing.
Only Saw-Tooth remained.
Alaric slipped through the doorway and moved quickly toward the bed.
The cannibal was barely responsive but still had the shotgun near him, so Alaric immediately pulled the weapon away and placed it out of reach.
Only after making certain Saw-Tooth could not suddenly grab it did he summon the Two of Spades.
The black card appeared between his fingers.
Words immediately formed across its surface.
[Name: Saw-Tooth] [Type: Cannibal Mutant] [Status: Dying | Restrained | Containable] Alaric stared at the final word.
Containable.
So the Ghost Card required some kind of condition before a target could be captured.
He couldn’t yet determine whether Saw-Tooth qualified because he was dying, because he had been physically restrained by his injuries, or because both conditions mattered.
For now, finding the exact rule was less important than taking advantage of the opportunity in front of him.
“Contain.” The moment Alaric gave the command, the Two of Spades moved from his hand on its own.
The card floated toward Saw-Tooth’s forehead.
A strange pulling force erupted from its black surface.
Saw-Tooth’s body distorted beneath the invisible force before being drawn directly into the Ghost Card.
In only a few seconds, the enormous cannibal disappeared completely from the bed.
The room fell silent.
The Two of Spades floated back into Alaric’s hand.
Its face was no longer blank.
A lifelike image of Saw-Tooth now covered the card, showing his twisted features and hulking body in disturbing detail.
Alaric examined his first successful containment and finally understood one thing.
Cannibal mutants like Saw-Tooth were only worthy of the lowest tier of the Ghost Cards.
…
A review helps a lot.
P1treon: