What was it about Wolf Lake Lodge, wondered Gurney, that made the sound of a slow footstep, if that’s what it was, so disturbing? Was it the power outage that was creating a sense of threat? Surely the same sound in daylight, or even lamplight, would not have the same impact.
Madeleine spoke again in a whisper. “Who do you think is up there?”
“Maybe no one. Maybe it’s just the wood contracting with the dropping temperature.”
Her concern shifted to the bat. “Will it really fly out if you open the door?”
“I think so.”
She relaxed her grip on his arm. He slipped out of bed and felt his way from the alcove to the balcony door and opened it. He guessed the cold front that blew the sleet storm away had lowered the temperature at least fifteen degrees. Unless the bat flew out quickly, the whole suite would soon be freezing.
It occurred to him that a fire would be a good idea—for warmth, light, reassurance.
He stepped away from the open door and began to feel his way toward the fireplace. Shivering in his shorts and tee shirt, he stopped at the chair where his clothes were and put on his pants and shirt. As he turned back toward the fireplace, a sound in the outer corridor stopped him. He stood still and listened. A few seconds later he heard it again.
He got his Beretta out of the bag on the chair. He couldn’t help feeling he was overreacting, influenced more by the spooky atmosphere than by any real threat.
“What is it?” whispered Madeleine from the alcove.
“Just someone in the corridor.”
He heard a soft thump from the direction of the suite door.
He eased off the Beretta’s safety and began moving forward. The moonlight was limited to the area near the windows. In this part of the room the visibility was zero.
There was a second thump, stronger than the first—the sort of dull impact that might be produced by someone bumping a knee, or some other blunt object, against the door.
He felt his way into a position by the side of the door, eased the dead bolt into its open position, then stopped and listened. He heard something that might have been the sound of someone breathing, or maybe it was just the movement of air through the crack under the door.
He grasped the doorknob. He turned it slowly as far as it went, steadied his stance, checked his grip on the Beretta . . . then yanked the door open.
CHAPTER 19
The grotesque apparition in front of him was a shock.
A weirdly illuminated face seemed to be suspended in the darkness of the corridor, its features distorted by elongated shadows cast upward by a small yellow flame beneath it.
As Gurney’s mind raced to make sense of what he was seeing, he realized that the flame was in a kerosene lamp, that the lamp was being held by a dirty hand with cracked fingernails, and that the jaundiced face in the angled lamplight was one he’d seen before—at the side of the road when his car was stuck in the ditch. The matted fur hat confirmed the identification.
“Tree come down,” said Barlow Tarr.
“Yes . . . and . . .?”
“Smashed the electrics.”
“The generators are out?”
“Aye.”
Gurney lowered his Beretta. “That’s what you came to tell us?”
“Be warnt.”
“About what?”
“The evil here.”
“What evil?”
“The evil what killed them all.”
“Tell me more about the evil.”
“The hawk knows. The hawk in the sun, the hawk in the moon.”
“What does the hawk know?”
Even as Gurney was asking the question, Tarr was stepping away from the doorway, turning down the wick of the lamp until the flame was extinguished.
A second later he disappeared into the unlit corridor.
Gurney called out, “Barlow? Barlow?”
There was no response. The only sound he could hear was coming from the open balcony door on the far side of the room.
It was the rising and falling rush of the wind in the trees.
AFTER THAT EXPERIENCE, SLEEP SEEMED UNLIKELY.
Convincing himself that the flying bat had departed, Gurney closed the balcony door. He built a large fire in the hearth. He and Madeleine settled down on the couch in front of the blaze.
After speculating about the meaning of Tarr’s visit, they agreed the only clear aspect was that the man wanted them to know that Wolf Lake was a dangerous place. Beyond that, his spooky ramblings could mean anything or nothing.
In the end, they fell into a prolonged silence, succumbing to the undulations of the fire.
After a while Gurney found his thoughts returning to Madeleine’s connection to the area.
He turned toward her and asked softly, “Are you awake?”
Her eyes were closed, but she nodded yes.
“When you stayed here in the Adirondacks with your aunt and uncle, how old were you?”
She opened her eyes and stared into the fire. “Early teens.” She paused. “It’s so strange to think that it was me.”
“What was so different about you . . . back then?”
“Everything.” She blinked, cleared her throat, looked around the room. Her gaze stopped at the kerosene lamp on the small table at Gurney’s end of the couch. “What’s that?”
“The lamp?”
“The etching on the base.”
Gurney looked more closely. He hadn’t noticed it before, having set the lamp down on the table before starting the fire, but on the glass base there was a fine-line etching showing an animal crouching, as if preparing to leap at the viewer. Its teeth were bared.
“It appears to be a wolf,” he said.
She responded with a shiver. “Too many wolves.”
“It’s the theme of the place.”
“And part of the nightmares those people died from.”
“They didn’t die from their nightmares. That doesn’t happen.”
“No? What did happen?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then you don’t know that their dreams didn’t kill them.”
He was convinced that dreams couldn’t kill people, but equally convinced that arguing the point would be fruitless. All he could think was: None of this makes any sense at all.
HIGH STRESS AND AN UNSETTLING ENVIRONMENT, FOLLOWED BY THE mesmerizing effects of the fire, left Gurney with no sense of how long they’d been sitting on the couch. He was brought back to the moment by Madeleine’s voice.
“What time are you leaving for Plattsburgh?”
“Who said I was going to Plattsburgh?”
“Isn’t that what Rebecca’s message was about?”
He recalled playing it while Madeleine was in the bathtub. “You heard that?”
“You should turn down the volume if you don’t want people hearing your messages.”
He hesitated. “She suggested getting together. She’s there for an academic commitment.”
Madeleine’s silence was as questioning as her voice had been.
He shrugged. “I haven’t decided.”
“Whether to go? Or what time to go?”
“Both.”
“You should go.”
“Why?”
“Because you want to.”
He hesitated. “I think it might be helpful to talk to her. But I’m not comfortable leaving you here alone.”
“I’ve been alone in worse places.”
“You could come with me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Now it was her turn to hesitate. “Why do you think I was willing to come here?”
“I have no idea. Your decision surprised me. Shocked me, to be honest. Given a choice between going straight to a snowshoeing weekend or stopping to look into a case of multiple suicides, I never expected you to choose the suicides.”