In the Dark

by White, Loreth Anne

  She crept to the edge of the grove, panned the small beam of the headlamp into the darkness. Again she listened. Afraid. There were animals out there. She fingered the trigger on the rifle, told herself she knew how to use it. It had been a while, but she knew.

  Slowly she crept forward on the soft forest floor, spongy with needles and loam and moss. She went deeper. Listened again. The voice was louder. She followed it.

  Suddenly she saw a light ahead. Faint. Glowing in the mist, then gone as fog crawled thickly across it. She clicked off her headlamp and pressed closer. The voice grew louder. Stella’s voice. Talking to someone.

  Deborah came around a large tree and saw her. Her pulse quickened.

  Stella sat on a log. She’d placed a headlamp on a stump in front of her. The beam of the light illuminated her from the front. Next to the headlamp was a camera—the red light flashing. It was recording.

  Katie Colbourne’s camera. Stella had taken it. She was recording—filming herself.

  Deborah’s mouth went dry. Holding the rifle ready, she crept a little closer and shifted into the shadow of a tree. She watched. And listened.

  “I don’t think we will last much longer,” Stella said softly to the camera. “Steven is worsening. Faster than I thought he would . . .”

  A voyeuristic, sick, cold feeling sank through Deborah. She was unable to move, bewitched by this glowing little vignette in the black heart of the endless forest. Transfixed, tense, she watched, her hand on the trigger of the gun.

  “I followed through with the plan he’d set in motion. I followed his script. I lured in our victims. I brought in all the props, including the toxic mushrooms, and the wooden figurines which Franz had commissioned, which had been prechopped and fixed back together in such a way that I could easily twist off their heads. I kept manipulating the props, decapitating a carving each time someone died, or disappeared, even though I had not had a hand in their deaths. Because I did not kill anyone. Not directly.”

  Deborah’s heart leaped into her throat. Tension torqued through her chest. She leaned a little closer, her mouth open as she breathed faster.

  “I put the bowl of mushrooms in the kitchen,” Stella confessed to the camera. “To tighten the mental screws. To mess with Nathan, the mycologist. To mess with everyone who knew he knew mushrooms. I sabotaged the avionics. I brought in the painting Franz had commissioned. I did that a few weeks earlier, when I brought in the bag of groceries and the book, and the checkerboard and figurines, and the bullets and the rifle. I brought in gas for the generators, which I put in the shed. Food in tins to sustain us for a while, for however long it all took. I inserted into the book the rhyme Franz had written. I scoped out the trail I eventually led everyone on, knowing it would never go anywhere, never lead us to Kluhane Bay. Not in time, anyway. Not before the snows came. Not before help came. Because I took the note we’d written to rescuers who might come.”

  Deborah leaned even closer, a hot rage blooming in her heart. Her finger twitched against the rifle trigger. She’d held on all this time, pretending she was innocent, waiting for the others to die until she was the last one left standing. And then help would come. She’d been certain of it. Because they’d left the note.

  “But here’s what I did not do. I did not cut free my plane. I don’t know what happened to Jackie Blunt. I did not kill Bart Kundera. I did not put the mushrooms into Steven’s bowl of food. I did not hang Katie Colbourne. But I know who did. And if you watch the footage preceding this recording, you will hear it yourself. You will hear Deborah Strong forcing Katie Colbourne up onto that chair at knifepoint. You will hear Deborah threatening Katie’s daughter, and then you will hear her kick out the chair out from under Katie, because Katie had figured out who she was. And Deborah Strong did not want the truth to come out. You will hear Katie Colbourne dying.”

  Fuck! Fuckfuckfuck! She can’t do this. If anyone hears . . . it will all be over.

  Deborah stepped out of the shadows. “Stop, Stella! Stop it right now.”

  Stella swung around, mouth open in shock.

  Deborah aimed the gun at Stella’s head and clicked on her own headlamp. “Get away from that camera. Now. Do it.”

  Stella lurched up to her feet, face ghost white.

  “You’re sick,” Deborah barked at her. She was shaking now. Violently. “Do you know that? You’re a sick, sick fuck!”

  Stella slowly put her hands out in front of her, took a small step backward. “Deborah, put that gun down.”

  “Why? Because someone will die?” She issued a wild laugh. “Only one person is going to live. There will only be one, Stella. Like the rhyme says. And that one will be me.”

  “Deborah. Please, set it down.”

  A noise of a breaking twig came from behind her, followed immediately by a male voice.

  “What’s going on?”

  Deborah swung around.

  Steven. Bent over and propping himself up with one hand pressing against a tree trunk.

  “Do as Stella says, Deborah,” Steven croaked in a weak voice. “Just . . . put the gun down. We . . . need the bullets . . . for when the wolves come.” He took a faltering step toward her.

  Deborah tightened her finger around the trigger, hatred blackening her heart.

  “Stop. Right. There.”

  He took another step closer.

  “Stop, Steven, or I will shoot. Because you know what? I’d like to kill you. If you hadn’t hit and killed Stella’s kid, we wouldn’t all be here, trapped in this fucking nightmare.”

  A small noise of pain came from Stella. But Deborah kept her gaze fixed only on Steven, her finger tense around the trigger. Blood boomed in her ears.

  Swaying, physically gutted from his illness, Steven stumbled forward another step.

  Deborah lifted the gun, fired.

  Steven stopped dead in his tracks. She held her breath. He looked into the light of her headlamp, right into her eyes. A dark stain bloomed across his chest. His knees sagged. He lifted a hand toward her, as if reaching for help.

  And he sank to the ground with a soft thump.

  THE LODGE PARTY

  STELLA

  Stella flinched as Deborah swung the gun back on her. Her pulse jackhammered, and her gaze shot to Steven, to the dark stain of blood spreading across his chest.

  “Put that camera off,” Deborah yelled. “Now!”

  Stella swallowed and moved cautiously toward the camera, her eyes on Deborah, on the gun. She switched off the camcorder. The flickering red light stopped.

  Steven groaned and lifted his head from the soil. Stella’s breath caught in her throat. Instinctively she started toward Steven.

  “Stop!” Deborah barked. “Stay away from him. Go back to the fire. To the others.”

  Stella faced Deborah. “I’m going to Steven.”

  “I’ll kill you. I will,” Deborah barked.

  But Stella continued toward Steven, sweat pooling under her arms, her mouth dry, her brain racing. She dropped to her haunches.

  “Steven?” she said quietly.

  His eyes met hers in the darkness. Her heart crunched at the pain she saw there. Her mind boomeranged back to the day she’d knelt down on the wet road and looked into her son’s eyes. This man had killed her baby. And then he’d fled.

  “Stella,” he whispered as a bubble of dark blood formed at the corner of his mouth, “I . . . I killed him. I killed your boy. And . . . I’m sorry.” He coughed and wheezed in air. “I am so, so sorry.”

  Tears flooded into Stella’s eyes. They washed down her cheeks. She began to shake. All her hatred . . . every hot, red, sharp bit of it suddenly shattered. It had come to this. She looked up at the forest canopy as the tears continued to pour down her face, up at the roof of ancient branches that had been growing for thousands of years. She heard a wolf howl, and she felt the eternity of the woods and the universe around them.

  She felt Zeke near.

  Suddenly nothing mattered. And she began t
o sob, her shoulders shuddering as everything inside her released.

  Steven reached for her hand. His fingertips felt like ice as they touched her skin. “I was . . . scared, Stella.” He coughed, wheezed, as he tried to breathe in. “I . . . am selfish. And I was . . . terrified.” He tried to take another breath. Frothy blood foamed out of his mouth. “I . . . deserve what you did. I . . . deserve to . . . die. Please . . . please forgive . . . me.” Steven fell silent, watching her.

  Blood that looked black in the darkness began to leak from the side of his mouth.

  Stella glanced at Deborah. The woman seemed frozen, her face blanched white beneath the headlamp in the center of her forehead, like a Cyclops eye.

  Stella suddenly wanted to flee. She’d gotten from Steven what she’d come for. And now, confronted by hunger and exhaustion and pain and distance and endless, endless forests and mountains, things looked different. She wanted nothing further to do with this awful nightmare she’d set into motion with Franz.

  Yet another part of her couldn’t flee. She’d created this. This was her responsibility. And she had nowhere else to go—she could never return home. And if she was going to die out here, she was going to do it on her terms, not Deborah’s. Not Steven’s. Not anyone’s. She would die a human being who was still capable of compassion.

  “I’m going to take him back to the fire, okay?” she said to Deborah.

  Her words seemed to kick Deborah back into action.

  “You stay right there.” Still pointing the rifle at Stella, Deborah walked backward and reached for the camera. She picked up the device and slid it into her pocket.

  Stella ignored Deborah’s order. She slid her hands under Steven’s armpits, heaved, and dragged him a few inches. He groaned in pain. Blood poured faster from his mouth. Stella felt the hotness of the blood from his chest wound on her wrist.

  Tears filled her eyes. She sucked in a deep breath, pulled harder. Steven moved a few more inches, the heels of his boots dragging tracks through the loam.

  Steven screamed in pain.

  Stella, weak from lack of food, dropped exhausted to her knees, breathing hard, desperation chasing through her.

  “Leave him, goddammit,” Deborah said as she stomped toward them. “Just leave him.”

  Tears sheened down Steven’s mud-streaked cheeks. His breathing gurgled. Revulsion for Deborah exploded through Stella.

  She tried again to drag Steven. She made it a few more feet. Her boots slipped in the mud, and she fell into the dirt, panting.

  Franz’s words filled her brain.

  “The veneer of civilization is very, very thin, Stella. Like the delicate shell of a bird’s egg. The tiniest force will crack it. And the cracks are not where light gets in. They’re where the evil oozes out. That’s where the Monsters live, in that ooze. My games, my scripts . . . They just help make the cracks. It’s the players who show us the rest. They show us what we all really are, deep down at the core. Beasts.”

  Stella froze. She eyed this Cyclops beast with the gun. She cleared her throat.

  “I’m going to do it, Deborah. I’m going to take him back to the fire with me. I’m taking him back to Monica and Nathan.”

  “He’s dying anyway. He’d have been dead by tomorrow. All of you will be. With or without my assistance.”

  “Just . . . let me die,” Steven muttered. “Let me . . . die.” He coughed up a dark gout of blood and began to gasp.

  Stella bent her head closer to his, and she moved damp and bloody hair gently back off his face. “I’m taking you back to the fire. To the others. It’s warmer.”

  “Why . . . why, Stella? Why . . . are you being . . . kind?”

  “Because I can’t not be. I can’t leave you out here for the wolves to eat you alive, Steven.”

  “I killed your son.”

  Stella stopped breathing for a moment. She blinked, forcing focus back. “I . . . I know,” she said softly. “And I can’t leave you dying here, like you left him dying in the road.” She choked on emotion. “Because . . . I’m better than that, Steven. I’m better than you. I—”

  A noise came from the shadows.

  Stella fell silent.

  Deborah tensed, swung the gun toward the sound.

  Monica appeared from the mist and shadows.

  “What in the . . . ?” Her gaze shot from Steven to Stella to Deborah. “What happened? What is this?” Her gaze ticked back to Steven. An inhuman sound came from her throat as she dropped to her knees in the loam beside them.

  “Did you do this?” Monica shouted at Deborah. “Did you shoot him? You bloody asshole, you—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Deborah snapped. She aimed the gun at Monica. “And don’t you go getting all high and mighty with me, you rich, old bitch. You, who killed the kid. With him.” She jerked her chin toward Steven on the ground. “You, whose husband put mushrooms in his food.”

  Monica’s face went white. “What?”

  “Get up. Go back to the fire.”

  Monica glanced at Stella. “Is that true? Was it Nathan?”

  “Help me, Monica,” Stella said. “Help me drag him back to the camp.”

  Monica stared, mute, mouth open—a madwoman with matted hair sticking out of her hat.

  “Monica,” Stella said.

  “Is it true?”

  “Ask him yourself. He’s your husband. Just please . . . help me with Steven. We can’t leave him here. The wolves will come. They’ll smell the blood.”

  They got him to the fire. In their hungry, thirsty, weakened state, the effort felt Herculean. She and Monica propped Steven against a mossy log. He looked alien, with his yellow skin and yellow eyes, and the black blood coming out of his mouth.

  “Hold your gloved fist against the wound,” Stella said. She couldn’t think of anything else to use. They were wearing everything they’d brought.

  “What’s going on?” Nathan asked, sitting up, shivering by the dying fire. He looked feverish in the flame light. Sweaty.

  Monica lowered herself beside Nathan.

  Deborah stood on the other side of the small fire circled by stones. She held the gun on them. Stella remained standing. Her mind raced as she watched them all, thinking of a way out of this.

  “Deborah shot Steven,” Monica told her husband quietly.

  “Why?”

  “Nathan, did you poison him—was it you?” Monica asked.

  He met his wife’s gaze. He said nothing.

  Her hand went slowly to her mouth. She looked at Steven. Tears glittered in her eyes.

  “I hate him,” Nathan said between chattering teeth. “I hate him and I want him dead.”

  “Hate you, too, Nathan,” Steven whispered. “No . . . balls. No . . . fucking balls.”

  “And look who’s dying now—you’re dying, Steven.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Deborah barked. “You all shut up. Sit down, Stella.”

  Stella lunged for the rifle.

  Deborah saw her coming and whipped up the butt as she sidestepped. Stella went flailing forward. Deborah brought the butt of the rifle down hard on her head. The cracking sound was loud. Stella felt the blow shudder through her skull. She felt bone crack. The impact resonated through her jaw, making her bite her tongue. She tried to catch her balance but kept staggering forward.

  She fell into the dirt. The woods spun around and around in a dizzying kaleidoscope. A feeling of nausea rose from her belly. The forest darkened. Time seemed to stretch. The sounds of the others faded far away, as if into another dimension. She slumped flat onto her stomach. With her face turned to the side, her cheek resting on sharp pine needles, she watched the others through half-closed lids as if observing some distant movie, unable to move.

  Deborah turned in what seemed like slow motion. She put the rifle stock to her shoulder and aimed at Steven sitting helpless against his log.

  “You’re a killer. Say goodbye, Steven.”

  She pulled the trigger. Her shoulder jerked back slightly
with the recoil as the crack of the rifle echoed up into the forest. A bird woke with a start and fluttered and flapped through the branches. A black hole appeared between Steven’s eyes. His hands fell limp at his sides. His yellow eyes just stared, suddenly sightless. His mouth hung open.

  Monica shrieked like a banshee.

  Calmly Deborah turned the gun on Nathan. She fired. The bullet went into his neck. His body juddered. Monica surged up from beside him and ran screaming into the misty darkness of the forest.

  Stella’s head stopped spinning a little. She could move her limbs. She struggled onto her hands and knees and then up onto her feet. As she wobbled, stumbled, then ran in the opposite direction from Monica, she heard another crack of the rifle.

  Stella reached the cover of thicker trees, turned. Monica was crawling, mewling, blubbering. She’d been shot in the back.

  Deborah swung around, saw Stella.

  Stella gasped and ducked into the trees.

  THE LODGE PARTY

  STELLA

  Wednesday, November 4.

  Stella hid. In the base of an old-growth hemlock, under its heavy boughs, silent and shivering, blood seeping from the wound on her head. She listened to the distant cries of an eagle and the howls of the wolves intensifying. She tried to shut her mind to the horror that had to be unfolding, bloody and awful, in the grove.

  She had no idea how long she’d hunkered under the protective arms of the old tree. She’d crashed blindly through the woods and scrub for miles. Deborah had not come. Had she lost her? Was she waiting for Stella to move again and reveal herself?

  The pale gray light of a new day bled into the forest. Visibility was still almost nonexistent as the clouds tumbled low and dense over the mountains, and soft flakes of snow materialized from the mist.

  Stella crept out from under the branches and listened. She couldn’t hear Deborah. Perhaps she really had lost the woman. Stella figured she must be facing west. The direction of the lake. She began to move through the trees and scrub, aiming what she believed must be north. She hoped she’d find the game trail again. Then she could track her way back. Part of her was unsure why she was even trying to escape. Another part of her was driven by sheer obstinacy in not wanting to allow Deborah to win now. Deborah, who’d denied Stella a proper ending to the “game.” Deborah, who would never say sorry for her role in allowing Steven and Monica to get away with manslaughter.