“That makes one of us,” I muttered.

I got our things off the back of the truck while Jules set about finding a key to the cabin.

“Look behind the gutter,” I said. Sure enough, he found the key tucked away there.

“You’re on fire, big boy,” he said, laughing.

The cabin door needed a little convincing, but Jules got it open with a firm shoulder shove. It was musty inside but nowhere near as bad as I was expecting it to be. In fact, it was cozy. If the place had been listed on Airbnb, it would have been described as “a quintessential woodland escape” or something like that. I opened all the windows and had a look around. It was just as I remembered it. A big studio-type room, with a bed and a small bathroom at the back of the building. There was a tattered sofa at the foot of the bed, plus a couple of armchairs to the left of it and an intricate rug on the floor in the center of the room. A tiny table and two chairs were near the front door. The kitchen was small, with rickety timber cabinets and a sink in front of the window that looked out on the porch. It had a vaulted ceiling with exposed beams.

“Geez,” said Jules, standing in the center of the rug and pointing up, “check it out.”

I was as surprised as he was when I looked up and saw a pair of sturdy-looking wrist cuffs fixed to the beam overhead.

Jules tapped them lightly. They clanked together. “Holy shit, look, there’s a key here and everything.” He started to laugh. “Whose place did you say this was?”

“I’m not sure exactly. It’s been in my mom’s family for years. I think she and a bunch of her cousins share it or something.”

“Ooooh, kinky,” crowed Jules.

“Oh, shut up.”

Jules was in no mood to shut up. Quite the opposite, in fact. “Didn’t you say that your parents come up here every so often?” It was true. At least once a year, my parents came up here and stayed for a week or so. I’d always loved it because when they did, I got to stay over at Jules’s. They’d done it since I was a child. The only reason they brought me along that one time was that Jules came down with stomach flu the morning they were due to leave.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. I really didn’t. It was weird as fuck that there were cuffs in the cabin. There was no getting away from that.

Jules juddered like a hyena. “Who do you think ties up who?”

I looked at him in horror. “You’re talking about my par. . .”