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John answers his phone, "Jake, are you at the cabin yet?" Jake responds, "I got stuck halfway up the drive and walked the rest of the way. My phone dropped out before I got here but somehow I got phone reception now, I'm amazed I got through." John assures Jake he'll be up with his plow truck in the morning and they should be able to dig his car out. He also tells Jake that he's made several improvements on the cabin and will fill him in on all the details the next day. After a short conversation, Jake stokes the fire and falls asleep on the couch. It has been a weary week of strange days that finally brought him to the family cabin, it would get stranger as time goes on.
The cold of the room stirs Jake from his sleep, the coals have died down and he will need to work with the fire to get it going again. He is still hung over nearly as badly as when he arrived at the cabin and his mood has soured after waking up. The sun hasn't risen yet and Jake is unaware of the time as he gets up from the couch, he is only aware of the darkness of the room and the creeping coldness. There is some newspaper and kindling left and so Jake begins what will become a daily ritual until well into spring, making a fire. Jake has built a fire or two over the years and with some success, so building a fire in a fireplace shouldn't be any problem even though the room temperature never depended on him for that. "Another trial" Jake muses to himself as he builds up the newspapers and wood all the while the room becomes even colder. He begins to get more agitated as he tries to light the fire. The flames would take off and the fire would seem to be going quite well, but then after about ten minutes, it would go out.
The darkness of the room, the encroaching cold, and Jake's hung-over condition make him feel paranoid as if someone is in the room with him. He begins to feel frightened as if something is very wrong and a panic comes over him. He looks around into the dark room and the shadows playing off the walls. The animal mounts on the cabin walls are hard to see and look threatening in the light given off by the fireplace. He can almost hear talking and laughing somewhere in the background, although he rationalizes the sound must be from the fire he tries to keep going. He feels ill now, dizzy, as an image of an angry man's face flashes before his eyes and he regains his senses by forcefully shaking off his feelings of dread. The moment he breaks out of this strange condition the room becomes entirely peaceful and the fire Jake is trying to keep going is now blazing. He falls back to sleep until much later when John arrives.
Jake is roused by the sound of his brother's voice, "It's late, get up you lazy piece of shit." John continues, "I've got the drive cleared up to your car, now we need to get that beater into the turnaround." Jake reluctantly gets up and seated then tells his brother to "Fuck off". John replies, "Been drinking all night at Mick's have you? I saw the puke on the walk up." Jake replies, "Yeah, what of it? Let's get it done." They leave the cabin and walk back down to Jake's vehicle and John's heavy-duty pickup truck. It's a workout to shovel Jake's car out of the dip and John is more than physically fit to get the job done, but Jake has to keep up and show John he can handle it. The sibling rivalry is apparent as they get Jake's car back a couple of hundred feet to the turnaround. John clears the rest of the way and creates a parking space near the cabin for Jake's vehicle as Jake sits in his car and smokes cigarettes.
Once the way is clear, Jake starts his car and after some maneuvering, he manages to get up to the cabin. Once parked, he brings more of his belongings into the cabin. John occupies himself with other things outside while Jake gets situated with his belongings. After Jake has brought most of his things in John shows up again and the brothers have a chance to converse. Jake occupies a spot on the couch as John takes up the nearby reclining chair and describes all the improvements he has made to the family cabin. It's a long list of off-the-grid improvements that happens to include an electric well pump, hot and cold running water, and a septic system, so even though Jake needs to find another laundry mat, he could shit, shower, and shave in the cabin. In addition, full-service electricity has been installed with a battery backup system in case of power outages. If that wasn't enough, John had installed a cell phone repeater that kept cell phones fully operational around the cabin. There is one HD flat-screen TV with broadcast reception and a DVD player. This is better than Jake had thought, far from the primitive conditions he had expected and was willing to deal with. Jake let John rattle off about how the cabin now works, about the stores in the basement, and about the cat he saw in Jake's car earlier. "Cat! In my car!", the few words from John that got through into Jake's mind without filtering.
Suddenly Jake's moment of relaxation ends as he runs out to his car to find this cat. He hadn't even thought about how a cat may have gotten in his car when he thought of Sam, Jennifer's cat from the fortune-telling shop. As he approaches his vehicle he can clearly see a Siamese cat on the dash and the collar that he saw Sam wearing at Madame Gentry's. As he gets closer he looks through the windshield of his car he sees what is obviously Sam looking up and meowing. While Jake wonders how he would handle this, he remembers the business card Jennifer gave him at Madame Gentry's Reading Room. He goes back into the cabin and sits on the couch, gets out his phone, and dials the number on the business card. "Well, what's with the cat?" asks John with a smirk on his face. Jake responds, "I'm calling the owner now. We'll see what she says." John quickly interjects with, "She says? Who is this she? A girlfriend?" Jake gives John a look that could kill as he waits for an answer to his phone call.
