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"My old friend, my old dear cabin," Mr. Corby said, leaning on the door frame with one arm on his hip. " What do you think Mr. Gray?" he asked. Age might've frozen his face to a frown but he had been welcoming since the moment I met him. "I had thought it fitted a youngling like you, and it's tall enough for your size."
"It's cozy," I said meeting his gaze. I put my hands in the pockets of my overcoat, "just how I expected it to be when I decided to purchase the property." I scanned the interior as I stood in the center of the room, "not so much, but a home nonetheless."
He laughed, stretching the wrinkles in his face, and making his few missing teeth more pronounced, "I think my wife said the same thing when it was built."
I looked at the ceiling. At the abandoned cobwebs thickened by dust that had dominated every surface enough for crops to grow.
Mr. Corby was locked onto the bulky shape draped with white cloth that was facing the fire place in the left of the room. A couch by the looks of it.
All the furniture were covered in white sheets, the small dining table for four people in the right of the room, the four chairs tucked to its side, and the single stove in the corner.
"It's beautiful Mr. Corby," I said with a smile noticing him silence as he reminisced.
Past memories he had spent in this cabin were clearly painted in his bitter-sweet complexion. I could tell it was all he could see.
"It is isn't it?" he took off his bennie and scratched his white hair, then he wore his bennie back, "it's an old home. A mirror of my own self and the days I had with it. I've become frail in the years, but this cabin," he shook his head, knocking on the log wall with the side of his fist, "it's as tough as steal, made from iron pine. Built it with my brothers in the fifties, five years after the war."
According to Mr. Corby, when his second daughter was born, that was when he decided to have another house built outside the woods across the road. Realizing the war was truly over and there was no use in hiding, he moved there with his family. This cabin was forgotten little by little, and would be rarely used.
In the end, only he was the one to keep coming back to it. Visiting this cabin once or twice a year.
"I see, " I replied.
I walked near one of the four windows and split the curtains aside to let the sunlight in. The floor subtly creaking beneath my soles. The darkness had instantly retreated in the corners. The ambience less haunted.
This was my new home. A cabin in a clearing about half a kilometer deep in the woodlands. While unkempt I found no faults with it. Like he said, it fitted a youngling like me.
Mr. Corby had only put it up for sale two years ago, but no one wanted a property secluded in the woods plagued with wolves. My closest neighbor was Mr. Corby himself and his family. Their homes were facing the entrance leading to this very place.
