Chapter Text
“Oh, hell no,” muttered Bood from the backseat, leaning forward through the gap between Troy and Ilya to peer at the scene before them.
Troy put the van in park, grimacing with silent agreement.
“Is not that bad,” murmured Ilya.
“Dude…” Bood shook his head. “Are we seeing the same thing? This is fucked.”
Ilya shrugged.
He had seen worse than this, but he had to admit that it was pretty gruesome.
They were in the middle of nowhere, so far off the beaten track in eastern Québec that they hadn’t been sure if their rusty old van was going to make it down these twisting dirt roads.
But here they were, and there was no turning back now.
Troy killed the engine. For a few minutes, the three of them sat in silence, drinking in their surroundings.
The forest was dense and overgrown, threatening to overtake the shell of a cottage that had burned down thirty years ago. Ilya could tell that it used to be an impressive building, once showcasing more luxury than the average person could afford. Even in 1987, the year this place was originally built, it would have cost at least a million to bring it to life.
One-point-two million Canadian dollars, to be precise. Because, of course, Ilya had memorized every single detail about this place that he could.
He’d been obsessed with the Cursed Cottage, as the internet now called it, for years. Ever since he learned about the tragedy of Shane Hollander when he was still a kid back in Russia…
“I feel nauseous,” murmured Troy.
“Lucky you,” grumbled Bood. “I feel like I’m going to shit my pants.”
“Shut up,” Ilya told both of them. His voice was gentle, but they recognized the somber note in his tone and knew to obey.
Swallowing down the sense of foreboding rising in his throat, Ilya yanked on the door handle and hopped down from the passenger seat. His shoes squelched in the mud; scattered thunderstorms had been plaguing the area for the past few hours. Not out of the ordinary for a typical Canadian summer day, but eerie nonetheless.
Long grass and tangled ferns waved in a lazy breeze as Ilya moved closer to the abandoned remains of the cottage.
It was… strange. One half of it looked like the bones of a forgotten animal carcass, nothing more than crooked wooden beams and crumbled walls, broken teeth in nature’s lopsided maw. Blackened edges of old plaster and scorched tiles peered at him through dangling branches, the undeniable evidence of what happened here all those years ago.
The weird thing was that the other half of the cottage was relatively unscathed. The western side, the portion of building that sat closest to the lakefront behind it, hadn’t yet caught fire by the time first responders arrived on the scene in 1990. They put it out as quickly as possible, desperate to prevent a large-scale forest fire, as the story goes, but by then, the worst and most unresolvable tragedy had already occurred.
Ilya wandered closer to the cottage, stepping past what had probably once been the threshold and was now a vague opening in the front of the gouged-out structure.
Behind him, he could hear Bood and Troy finally getting out of the van, muttering to each other as they rummaged around in the back for their equipment. Ilya ignored them and moved deeper into the old cottage.
Overhead, the sun was shining brightly, as if the dark clouds and booming thunder that chased them all the way here was nothing but a figment of his imagination.
A sickening thrill zipped down his spine as he passed through the worst of the rubble. It was a familiar sensation, one that he’d known since he was a child.
Ilya had always fell oddly attuned to other planes of existence. Maybe it was a consequence of discovering his mother’s corpse, or maybe it was a symptom of having never felt truly connected to his homeland, never being truly grounded in this reality.
Either way, something about this land was definitely not normal.
It was like the trees around him were pulsing, breathing in tandem. The way the rainwater dripped off their branches made it seem like they were salivating, yearning to reach out and swallow him whole.
He rolled his shoulders, doing his best to shake off the disturbing thoughts.
The toe of his boot kicked aside a rock, sending it skittering across the rotted slats of pine that led into the less ruined half of the cottage. He passed by a bathroom with empty hinges in the doorway. The toilet was gone, leaving nothing but a gaping hole in the muddy floor tiles, but the clawfoot tub still stood proudly on the far end of the space. Ilya paused to peer closer, seeing that a hole in the rotted ceiling had allowed years’ worth of rain and snow to overflow the rusted tub over and over, creating a greenish concoction of algae and dead leaves.
He grunted under his breath and carried on down the hallway.
Despite the ruins behind him, this was actually considered to be the most haunted place on the property.
Which was weird, because it wasn’t even where Hollander died.
Ilya halted in the doorway of the main bedroom, recalling the grainy photographs they’d found online of what had once been a tasteful room with expensive furnishings and massive windows. An architectural magazine had once devoted half an issue to showing off this home the year after was built, so they had a good idea of what it was supposed to look like.
Some of the windows were still in tact, but most were nothing but shattered fragments of glass. A heavy branch had fallen through at one point, likely caused by one storm or another in the past thirty years. The branch itself now lay pathetically across the floor, still partially protruding from the room to where it had once probably offered some pleasant shade on the patio outside.
The bed, huge enough in the old photographs to suggest that the celebrated athlete who used to sleep here probably enjoyed more than one lover in his sheets at a time, was now nothing more than a rotted mahogany frame. The mattress had been removed at some point, leaving rusted springs that looked a little menacing to Ilya.
He frowned to himself. Not much was known about Hollander’s personal life. His hockey prowess was legendary enough that he was basically the patron saint of Québec and his original hometown of Ottawa, and he was even known to be beloved by fans of the Voyageurs’ greatest rivals. Everyone knew everything about his history-making statistics and the records he set that were still mostly unbroken even today.
And yet… when it came to digging up information about Shane Hollander the person, there wasn’t much of anything at all.
He didn’t have a wife. Didn’t have children. One Reddit thread claimed he had a brief affair with a former Hollywood starlet named Rose Landry, but it was hard to confirm when it all happened during an era before social media. A few former teammates of his, like the now-retired left wing Hayden Pike, had regularly been pestered for insider details about the elusive center, but none of them were interested in selling out their friend.
Which was a good thing, Ilya supposed. Inconvenient for him, sure, but still admirable.
Hollander’s parents were still alive, but they were old and gray, and Ilya couldn’t bring himself to reach out to them for comment. Not that he would even know how to find them. Yuna and David Hollander completely disappeared from the public eye following the untimely loss of their only son.
That was one of the strangest things about this place. They never came back here in the wake of Hollander’s death. They never bothered to have the place demolished and the property sold. In fact, in the immediate years following the tragedy, while greedy fans picked away at the ruins to claim whatever bits of the beloved hockey captain they could find, the Hollanders simply let it happen.
On the drive here, Bood had hypothesized that the Hollanders might not have known about their son’s cottage in the woods. That maybe it was a secret place where he could disappear from everyone, including his parents. After all, Hollander had been known to be an introvert. Quiet and focused on the ice, and a veritable enigma elsewhere.
Maybe it would have been different if he was alive nowadays. With the internet the way it was, Ilya was pretty sure that even Shane Hollander wouldn’t have been able to be as private as he was in the eighties.
Ilya shook his head, realizing he’d been staring at the rusted, rotting bed frame for several minutes. His limbs felt oddly light, as if he was floating. He shook out his arms and stepped back into the hallway. The sensation faded slightly.
The echoes of Bood’s voice rumbled in the background as Ilya continued moving through the ruins. He made his way across the ravaged floor plan and stepped past the jagged claws of a wall that no longer served as a barrier between inside and out.
This was the back of the cottage. Once a neatly manicured lawn, the grass was overgrown, clogged with weeds, and dotted with new saplings that had sprung up as nature slowly reclaimed her rightful place. Ilya moved through it all like he was wading through the sea, aiming for the lakefront glittering at him through the dense trees.
The lake was private, and many wealthy people still owned property around it, but nobody had come within five kilometers of this place since the fire.
It was weird, actually. This was prime real estate. At any point in the past three decades, someone could have snatched this property up and remade it into something new.
But it had been left untouched this whole time.
Ilya swallowed hard, his chest fluttering with unease as he navigated the subtle decline toward the muddy strip of beach. There was a rotting dock stretching out into the murky water, and one glance at it told Ilya he’d be stupid to set one foot on it unless he wanted to crash right through into the lake.
So, instead, he stood in the damp dirt that wasn’t quite sand and stared out across the sizable lake. There was a large boulder protruding from the water a few feet away. Maybe a pleasant place to sit and watch the sunrise, once upon a time.
Ilya felt a wave of unease roll through him as a cloud passed over the sun. He kept his gaze focused straight ahead, unblinking even as tears began to prick at the corners of his eyes. Despite the balmy weather, the hairs on his arms suddenly stood on end.
He wasn’t alone.
Not in the sense that Bood and Troy had caught up to him.
No, this was something else. He could feel it, lurking behind him. A presence, the way you might feel someone standing nearby you in an otherwise empty room.
Whatever, or whoever, it was… Ilya knew that he was being watched.
Observed, but not approached.
That was a good sign.
Especially considering the stories that had come from all the people who tried to investigate this place over the years.
Most people didn’t even make it all the way down the narrow road before they ran into trouble. Fallen trees or unnavigable potholes. Engine failure or flat tires.
One particularly spooky story came from a reputable medium who claimed that they kept driving in circles, looping around and around in the forest with no end in sight even though they swore they were driving straight toward the cabin the whole time.
Those who actually did make it to the property didn’t last long. Disembodied voices chased them off. Unbearable cold suddenly descending in the dead of summer freaked them out. Branches snapping at them out of nowhere, as if pulled back and set free by an invisible force, resulted in broken noses and brutal bruises. People claimed they’d been scratched by things they couldn’t see, or yanked at by hands that weren’t supposed to be there.
Basically, there was a reason they called this the Cursed Cottage.
And there was a reason why, over the years, this property had become infamous even among the paranormal community.
Don’t go there, veteran investigators warned. Seriously. Of all places, don’t fuck with the Cursed Cottage.
Even Troy, who was the most skeptical of their trio, had expressed serious hesitation over this project. He’d argued that there had to be a good reason why this place had never been cleaned up and resold, why anyone who attempted to do so couldn’t bring themselves to describe what they experienced without going pale.
Well, it’s our job to learn that reason, yes? Ilya had countered.
Troy didn’t have a good argument against that.
The lake water lapped at the thin shoreline.
Ilya swallowed hard. He was still being watched. The breeze kissed the back of his neck, oddly cold despite the fact that it was about 25ºC right now.
He resisted the urge to turn around, not wanting to scare off whatever entity had joined him here by the lake.
Was it Hollander himself? Had it been Hollander who violently stalked this property for years now? Could a quiet man who was never known to be naturally aggressive in life turn into a monster in death?
Ilya wasn’t sure.
So, instead of confronting it directly, he kept his gaze on the water, sparkling even under the passing clouds.
“Hello,” he whispered out loud.
There was no answer except a prickling at the nape of his neck, a tingling sensation that drifted below his collar and slithered down his spine.
It was not necessarily malicious, though.
If anything, it felt like curiosity.
So, he kept talking.
“My name is Ilya,” he murmured. “Ilya Rozanov.”
No response. He didn’t really expect one.
But if it was the ghost of Hollander… he’d been bilingual. Maybe English wasn’t his preferred language. And they were in Québec, after all, so any ghost who lingered here was probably a francophone.
“Salut,” Ilya tried again. “Je suis Ilya.”
His mouth, born to speak Russian and begrudgingly resigned to speaking English, stumbled over the French words, but he was pretty sure they sounded decent enough.
Then again, maybe he was making the wrong assumptions. This land belonged to other people long before the French arrived. But he didn’t know any of the indigenous languages.
He cursed himself internally for that. It was a research oversight, and he hated making mistakes.
The prickling sensation had settled at the base of his spine. Ilya tensed when the next gust of cool air felt eerily similar to an exhale against the back of his neck.
“Is okay,” he murmured. “C’est bon. C’est… tiguidou?”
Another soft puff of air, almost like a breath of laughter. Was this entity amused by his attempt at slang?
“I’m not here to upset you,” he assured the being. “We won’t take anything. We won’t leave anything behind, either. I promise. We just want to… learn. Observe.”
The tingling trailed back up his spine. Goosebumps erupted along his arms. He had to blink back tears again, not because he wanted to cry, but because he could never help these intense physical reactions to brushes with the paranormal.
Because that’s most certainly what this was.
“I’m sorry,” he continued. “I don’t know how to say any of that in French.”
A high-pitched ringing sounded in his ears. He flinched, and it stopped instantly.
“No, is okay. You didn’t hurt me. My ears can’t always hear speech from wherever you are. Try again if you can.”
Silence, but the presence crept closer. Ilya didn’t dare move an inch, didn’t dare take his eyes off the lake. He could feel it behind him, looming with that tentative curiosity.
Then, the ringing in his ears began again. Gentler this time. He closed his eyes, trying to focus, but no words came through.
When it went quiet again, Ilya felt an overwhelming sense of disappointment that didn’t come from within himself. The entity knew that he still could not hear him and it was not happy about it.
“That’s okay,” he assured it, opening his eyes. “If is easier, you can communicate another way. Can you throw something into the water maybe? One of these pebbles at my feet?”
Nothing stirred.
He knew better than to openly suggest that the entity try to touch him, even if that's what was already happening. In fact, it had been reckless to even offer it his full name to begin with. You had to be careful with the paranormal, had to keep in mind that the beings you were reaching out to might not be human at all.
“I heard stories about falling branches,” Ilya continued. “Are you the one who can do that? Can you do it now, without hurting me?”
Nothing.
Until, suddenly… CRACK.
On instinct, Ilya whirled around.
“Fuck!” Bood shouted several yards away, almost falling face-first into the long grass as he tripped over rotted rubble at the back of the cottage.
Troy, hovering right behind him, snorted. Clearly, they’d found their way through the remains to track him down.
Ilya frowned up at them from the bank. The presence was gone. The breeze was warm again. His spine no longer tingled.
Bood stood upright, then met Ilya’s gaze through regrowing forest.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Ilya shook his head. “I felt something.”
“Something?” Troy echoed.
Ilya looked over his shoulder toward the lake. “Someone, I guess.”