The Cabin in The Rain

A Story by Tom Aubin

A young man comes across a cabin in a forest. When he enters it, the rain starts to fall. He comes to realize that the rain only falls while being inside the cabin.

THE CABIN IN THE RAIN

It was a beautiful and sunny day when I found the cabin in the woods. I could not remember what I was running from, but I ended up feeling grateful for that mystery that made me go off the tracks and eventually led me to this wonder among the trees.

I stepped forward carefully, looking over my shoulder more than once, still unsure of what I was trying to escape from, and looked inside through the dusty window. There was a table and a couch in the middle of a tiny living room. Something was on the table, but I could not see what it was. I heard a click somewhere inside me, and suddenly felt like an observer of my own self, looking at each of my movements from a retired point of view.

My fingers drawing shapeless forms on the dusty window, my legs moving along the cabin, my hand on the door knob, the door closing behind me, and here I was: inside.

Then something strange happened: it started to rain. I could hear the drops hammering the rooftop, like a billion meteors, and now looking through the other side of the window I could see it. The heavy rain outside, giving birth to a dozen of puddles in the dirt, beating up the trees and hiding the horizon with a wall of mist.

I decided to wait inside for the return of the sun, and inspected the cabin.

It was a kingdom of dust, but for some reason I could not smell it, the only thing reaching my senses was the smell of wood, as if it had come straight from the factory. Next to the couch was a huge shelf, full of books.

I approached it and gasped. Among all the covers were my favorites tales. Time stopped. Books always had this effect on me. They made me forget about everything else than this black hole of words in which I was happy to fall into.

I started to take a book from the shelf, put it aside, then a second, put it aside, and after a while the unceasing rain outside grabbed my attention. It was not easing, at the contrary. It was a constant, stable sound, like a forgotten finger one a piano key, making it ring all day long. It seemed like it would go on forever.

I opened the door, and as soon as I did the rain stopped. I closed it, and it started again.

The rain was only falling when I was inside the cabin, and the realization of that fact filled me with wonder. I was eleven years old, and it seemed I had found a mistake of nature.

I tried it a couple of times, and it never failed. As soon as the door would be open, the rain would vanish, and once more the ground was dry and the trees unharmed. I could feel the warmth of the sun on my cheeks. Closing it would bring back the sound of the rain, the puddles of water and the misty wall behind the trees.

I was still thrilled by this discovery when a voice came out of the darkness behind me. “What are you doing here, boy?”

I jumped off my feet, swallowed a shriek, and landed on my bottom. There, in front of my eyes, stood a man. Tall, broad, half of his face still in the dark. He walked to me and held his hand.

Still shaken, I took it and was back on my feet in an instant.

“What are you doing here?” he asked again.

“I was lost in the woods, and I found this place.”

As I talked I could not stop to wonder where this man had come from. I had previously inspected every corner of the place, so unless there was some kind of secret way that I had missed, the man could only have fallen from the sky.

“Who are you?” I asked.

The man took a few steps back, and fell on the couch.

“I am a writer.” he said.

His eyes were fixed on the window, looking at the rain outside.

“Or at least I liked to think so.”

“What is this place?” I asked. “How long have you been living here?”

“I don’t know.” The man said, then added: “Weeks? Years? Too long is the only answer that I have. The rain washes time away. The mist drapes days and nights and makes it impossible for me to differentiate them.”

His face was out of the darkness for a second, and what I saw made me feel for the man. He had ghosts in his eyes, and facing them suddenly filled me with dread.

“You see this typewriter on the table?” the man asked. “This cabin is my prison and the typewriter is my cell.”

“I don’t understand.” I said.

“In order to come out, to escape from the rain and to discover what lies beyond the mist, I must write a story.”

This time I understood, but I really could not see the problem in that.

“Just write it then.”

“It’s not as easy as it sounds.” The man said. “I used to be a prolific writer, and one day, inspiration, my Muse, or whatever you want to call it, just left, abandoned me in the dark and never came back. I am still waiting for her return.”

Right then the vision of this man sitting on his decaying couch, looking at the outside world, turn my dreaded wonder into pity.

“Why is it always raining outside?” I asked.

“Rain is all I know, young man. I forgot everything about the sun, about the blue sky. It is part of a world in which I don’t belong to anymore.”

“Stop whining!” I heard myself shout.

The man looked at me with round eyes, and for a second the ghosts were shaken away. I had a glimpse of the life that must have once filled his eyes.

“You have a typewriter.” I said. “Just sit at the table and write a story. If it’s not good enough, try another one tomorrow. When was the last time you touched the damn thing?”

I was sure there could have been an equation giving me the answer to my question by calculating the amount of dust on the typewriter.

The cabin was filled with silence, and from the floor came a cracking sound as the man got up. He dragged himself lazily towards the typewriter and looked at his hands as if they were tools that had not been used in a long time, and by glancing at his eyes I could catch his thought: I hope they are still sharp enough.

The typing started, and I just sat on the couch, opened one the books and started to read. I knew what I could do for him. I could give him ideas.

“Your typewriter.” I said, and the typing stopped for a second as the man slowly turned his head like an owl in my direction. “It’s not your cell. It’s the key.”

He pondered what I had just said and went on typing.

A couple of hours passed, and I had to leave. I told him I would be back the next day with ideas for his stories. “We will get you out of here.” I said.

That night, I could not sleep. I had the feeling that it was all in my imagination. The cabin had never been there.

But the next day, here it was. At the same spot in the woods. I closed the door behind me, and the rain started to fall. The man was there, holding a pile of papers. “Tell me what you think.” He said.

And I did. “Not good enough.”

He went on typing. I sat on the couch and listened to it, the keys of the typewriter were starting to match the sound of the falling rain, like two instruments playing the same chord in a slightly different tuning.

I came back every day for a while, and one day, as I entered and closed the door behind me, I heard nothing. No rain. No typewriter.

I looked through the window, and I saw what I had just left outside. The man was gone with the rain and the mist. On the table was a pile of paper, and a hand written note.

The title on the first page of his final story, in capital letters, was : “The Cabin In the Rain”. On the note I read: “You were wrong. The typewriter wasn’t the key.”

I smiled, as the man must have smiled, realizing that the perfect story to tell was his own story, then I sat on the couch and read it.

When my eyes stopped on the last word of the last page, I understood the note. This is why I could not remember what I was running from. This is why I recognized the books on the shelf. This is why I felt like an observer of my own self. I was not running away from anything when I came across this place, I was rushing here to help without even knowing it, to set him free. The man was in trouble, lost, trapped in his own consciousness, his cabin in the rain, and needed help from his childhood mind. His Muse.

I thought it was the opposite, but I belonged to the cabin, and the man belonged outside, in the wild world.

The typewriter was nothing but the lock, this whole time.

I was the key.

THE END

© 2017 Tom Aubin

Author's Note

Hi everyone. I just wanted to let you know that my native language is French so I apologize in advance for any mistakes you can find. I would be really grateful if you could point them out to me so I can correct them.
Thanks a lot, and have a good reading. I hope you will like the story.

T.A.

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Delmar Cooper

A few things you might consider: In the foreword italicized above the title you say "A young man comes..." The story does not show the narrator's youth, save for one weak reference by the writer character in the middle of the story, and as it is important a earlier reference is needed.

“Why is it always raining outside?” This comes to the reader without it being firmly established that it is indeed always raining. An effective reference early on would anchor this in the readers mind.

You might check the way the story is paragraphed. The way "lousy" is used is not idiomatic, but reads "as in the manner of a louse." I don't think that was your intention. Some small verb tense corrections needed, but for the most part no one can detect that English isn't your native language.