Cabin fever

Once when I was 14 I had a nice chat with an older man on a bus ride. It was winter break and my friend and his family invited me to their cabin for a few days of skiing. I had to take the bus to his house since he lived in an entirely different neighborhood than me, but I found a nice spot next to a man who was list in thought. The minute I sat down he came back to reality and just stared at me being the socially unawkward person I am I started a conversation with him.

He said normal and just a little lonely, finally after a little polite convo he asked if I wanted to hear a story I agreed seeing as how I still had a 30 minute ride. It started off with him as a younger man possibly 10 years ago he owned a small log cabin in the mountains and lived their with his wife and child a simple secluded life. As he started telling this tale he got that far off look again and kept going, his wife and child passed away with no known cause due to the fact that animals had found their bodies before he did. Even after this he stayed in the house he had built for his family suffering alone.

He continued until he got to one bad winter a few years back, there was a very bad snow storm that trapped him in his cabin as he was on his way to get food. He was trapped there for 3 weeks with no food. At this point I thought he was full of it no way could he survive that Long with no food, so I asked him how he survived that long and if anybody had tried to rescue him. He said that a few men came by but they were older and by the time they made it to him they were so far gone that they passed within an hour. I was going to question him further, but my stop came up so I said my goodbyes as I was walking away he invited me to his cabin since we were heading to the mountain anyway I promised him we would stop by.

We never made it to the cabin they had to cancel their trip due to some last minutes emergencies, lucky for us. About a week after our break was over I heard my parents talking at the table in hushed tones I of course snuck to where I could hear what they were saying and what I heard made me thankful that our trip was cancelled. The old man on the bus was in the local paper turns out the police arrested him about 3 days after I met him, the recent heat waves had melted a lot of the snow and ice around his part of the mountain the resulting melted water caused some loose top soil to shift revealing over 25 complete skeleton buried beside his house.

All the bones were picked clean including a woman and child that had been there longer than the others and buried in a more honorable fashion.