Only Child
@nxtwhatheseems || closed
Stanley never had a chance to meet his uncle Stanford, he’d died before he was born. His father was always very tight-lipped about his brother, giving the sense that he was ashamed of the man and not at all sad that he was long dead. The only clue Stanley had ever really gotten about who his uncle even was, was a brief bout of anger when his father was drunk one night and went on a rant about how his good-for-nothing brother had selfishly hoarded some large amount of money he’d gotten from some kind of achievement his father hadn’t specified, and left the rest of his family to rot in destitution while he went out to live on the west coast in a fancy cabin in the woods.
There were so many years between that and the notice that Stanley was being passed down a cabin after attempting to give it to charity had fallen through for legal safety reasons, that he’d almost forgotten who it belonged to. The cabin was in bad shape when Stan got there, with some kind of crazy cult symbolism all over the place, most of which Stan was able to clear out in a big junk scrapping run, but some of which was built directly into the walls and windows themselves. At a glance, it looks like illuminati shit, but that’s probably a myth, anyway. Besides, the place was free, without any mortgage since his crazy uncle had it built on the land, all Stan had to pay were utilities and the land tax, both of which were much less than paying for a house anywhere else would have been.
Rural Oregon was never his idea of a good time, but it was enough of a base of operations for him to swing back around to now and then between traveling gigs to keep himself busy. The locals were weird, and the wildlife was weirder, so he never stuck around for very long, it was just a cheaper place to land between jobs than a motel would be.
It’s during one of those brief stays that he hears something weird. It wakes him up in the middle of the night, and while his first instinct might have been ordinarily to think that someone was breaking in, that doesn’t seem to track for this. It’s a deep rumbling noise, like an earthquake. The entire cabin quivers like an earthquake. But there’s a strange, faint blue light seeping up from the floorboards, shining up through streams of dust. With a bit of exploring, Stan might find a panel of the wall downstairs he never thought twice about before, where a rectangle of that same blue light is shining out on all four sides of a hidden door.
