Fury

by Steven James

  “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  “So do I.”

  He and Kyle climbed into the boat.

  Even though Daniel was familiar with how to run an outboard motor, he let Larry talk him through the steps.

  Then they took off.

  Just as the snow began to fall.

  Nicole Marten was worried about her boyfriend.

  It was a weird deal.

  She cared so much about him, but she was also scared about the things that happened with him—the hallucinations; the sleepwalking; the bizarre, terrifying blurs.

  She’d never been afraid of him, it wasn’t like that. She trusted that there was a bigger reason behind everything that was happening, although she didn’t know what that might be.

  But right now, even more than being concerned about Daniel, she was worried about his dad.

  Before leaving the Goessel’s house, Daniel had assured her that they would find his father in time, but she realized there was no way he could guarantee that, no way anyone could.

  Still, for some reason, hearing him say it had helped, at least a little.

  Now, as she had a pretend tea party with Michelle, she prayed that Daniel would be safe going out on the lake, and she prayed for his dad—that he would be okay until someone could find him and help him.

  In the back of her mind she was also thinking of her boyfriend’s blurs and the research facility and the wolf poaching.

  It seemed like, somehow, everything was tied together.

  If Daniel was going to focus on finding his dad, and the wolf poaching was at all related to everything else, maybe she could help by trying to solve that.

  She wasn’t sure what she could do right now, but later, when she put Michelle down for a nap, maybe she could go online, search through the information they had on the wolf poaching locations, and see if she could uncover anything that they might have missed earlier.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The black, ominous-looking surface of the lake hungrily absorbed the snowflakes as soon as they landed.

  As Daniel worked the motor, Kyle kept an eye out for ice floes.

  Because of the noise of the outboard, neither of them spoke much, but Kyle pointed when he saw ice and Daniel navigated past it.

  Being on the water reminded Daniel of fishing and canoeing trips he’d taken with his dad, and he found himself worrying once again about him.

  Where is he? What really happened to him?

  Questions about his dad’s disappearance plagued him.

  Who called 911 when he was attacked? Why can’t you remember being there? If this escaped prisoner did stab him, where did he take him? Why?

  The falling snow eventually made it impossible to see the island, but with the help of the compass, they soon found the ice-encased shoreline and followed it north toward the cove where Larry had told them the lighthouse was located.

  Daniel throttled the outboard down so he and Kyle could talk.

  “Hey, I have a question for you,” he said. “It’s something I’ve been curious about for a long time.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why don’t you go out for sports? I mean, I’ve seen you run. You could probably qualify for state in cross country—track too—if you wanted to.”

  “That came out of nowhere.”

  “I was just thinking about last night and how I might have needed some real speed. That brought it to mind.”

  “Last night?”

  “I took Mr. Zacharias’s keys when we were in the car. I thought I might need to outrun him and I realized you wouldn’t have had any trouble doing it. Anyway, I was just wondering about track and cross country. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s cool.”

  “I guess it’s no big deal—telling you, I mean.” But Kyle stared at the lake quietly for a long time before going on. “It has to do with something that happened back when I was a kid. At the time, I was playing baseball.”

  “I didn’t know you ever played baseball.”

  “Well, I didn’t for very long. Pretty much I sucked, and everyone knew it—including my dad. One game I was up to bat and we were behind. Bottom of the ninth inning. Two outs. Two guys on base, and we were two runs behind. It sounds like a cliché but it was true. My dad was in the stands when he got a page from the hospital. He must have figured I wouldn’t get on base because he left to answer it. But I didn’t know he’d gone anywhere.”

  Kyle’s dad had been an emergency room doc and Daniel wondered how serious of a situation it had been. Maybe he needed to leave; maybe he just chose to because he knew his son would strike out.

  Daniel maneuvered the boat around a slab of ice about the size of a car.

  “So, anyway,” Kyle went on, “like I said, I thought he was still there. So the first two pitches were strikes and, well, I didn’t want to strike out without at least trying to hit one of the pitches with my dad watching. So I swung at the third one and actually hit it. I mean, I swung as hard as I could and it was just plain luck that I connected with the ball. But I did. It was the farthest I’d ever hit a baseball before in my life. It went over the fence—just barely, and I mean, you know, this was just a kid-sized park, but . . .”

  “But it was a legit home run.”

  “Yeah. It was.”

  “And your dad didn’t see it.”

  “Right. So the two other guys scored—obviously—and I was on my way toward home with the game-winning run and I glanced up to where my dad had been sitting and no one was there. I couldn’t see him anywhere and I realized he’d missed seeing me hit the ball. I was so disappointed that I ended up staring at the ground when I crossed home plate.”

  Silently, he pointed out a six-foot ice wedge and Daniel took them past it.

  “He apologized later when he found out he’d missed my homer,” Kyle concluded. “I never told him about how I felt when I crossed the plate. I didn’t want him to feel bad about what had happened, but I also didn’t want him to be disappointed in me since I knew it was just a fluke and it wasn’t gonna happen again. I didn’t want to let him down so I just gave up on organized sports—all of ’em. After he died two years ago in that car crash I just, well, I just never got back into them.”

  “I think he’d be proud of you if you ran.”

  “Hard to say. But that’s why I don’t. There you go. Now you know.”

  The conversation ended somewhat awkwardly and abruptly.

  As they rode in silence beside the ice surrounding the island, snow began to accumulate next to them on the seats of the boat.

  Then they came around the corner of the inlet and got their first glimpse of the lighthouse.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  It was perched on a rocky point on the other side of the cove.

  The lighthouse must have been painted white long ago, but over the years the paint had peeled and chipped away after being in the exposed sunlight and the unyielding wind coming in from across the lake.

  From their research, Daniel knew that the tower rose one hundred and twelve feet above the rocks. The keeper’s house was attached to its base and it looked like it was as long-abandoned as the lighthouse itself.

  According to the journal entries, Betty had been standing in the field near the house when she bumped into the lantern and her nightgown caught on fire.

  A chill sank down Daniel’s spine.

  Was she real?

  Did she really die here?

  He didn’t know, but he was seriously starting to consider the possibility that Jarvis Delacroix had only imagined her, that she’d grown out of the insufferable loneliness that came from being stuck on this island by himself.

  The field surrounding the house was covered with what appeared to be several feet of snow. It would make sense that the island would get battered with lake-effect snow and Daniel could only imagine how much would accumulate out there by winter’s end.

  A metal mesh
fence skirted the property to keep trespassers out, but the lighthouse was accessible from shore—at least it would’ve been if it weren’t for the thirty-foot-wide ring of ice that entrapped the island.

  From where they were it wasn’t possible to tell how thick it was.

  Daniel stopped the boat’s motor so he and Kyle could talk more easily and his friend pulled out the oars to row them up to the edge of the ice.

  “Okay,” Kyle said, “it looks like we’re stuck out here, but at least we can get a look at the lighthouse. Does it make you remember anything?”

  “Not really, except what we read in Jarvis Delacroix’s journal about Betty dying out here. I think I need to go inside.”

  “How are you supposed to do that?”

  “It’s only about thirty feet to the rocks.”

  “Thirty feet is thirty feet, bro.”

  “We’re going to have to cross the ice.”

  “When you say ‘we,’ do you mean ‘we’ as in ‘you,’ or ‘we’ as in ‘both you and your not-exactly-thrilled-to-die-by-drowning-today friend’?”

  “I’ve got an idea, but it would mean ‘we’ as in ‘me.’”

  “Seriously, I’m not thinking that ice is thick enough to walk on.”

  “I’m not going to walk on it.”

  “How do you plan to get across?”

  “I need to spread out my weight.”

  “Yeah, well, it’d be ideal if we had some cross-country skis or something. Then you might make it, but . . .”

  “Well, we have something close.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Hand me those oars.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-NINE

  “The oars?” Kyle said. “Are you kidding me?”

  “If I kneel on the blades and hold on to the shafts, I should be able to slide them forward one at a time.”

  “And just, what—crawl across the ice with the blades distributing your weight?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “We agreed not to use that word.”

  “Here it applies.”

  Daniel leaned over the rowboat’s gunwale and felt the edge of the ice, but found that it was just an inch or so thick here, which he guessed was way too thin to support his weight, even if he were using the oars.

  The water somehow felt even more frigid than the ice itself.

  Despite himself, Daniel shivered as he shook the drops off his hand.

  “What did I tell you?” Kyle said.

  Daniel pointed farther down the inlet. “Let’s check down there, see if it gets any thicker.”

  Though he still didn’t appear excited about the idea, Kyle rowed while Daniel checked the ice at regular intervals and eventually, about thirty-five yards away, found a spot where a section of thinner ice had broken away and drifted off. The ice that remained was several inches thick.

  “Hold on,” he told Kyle. “This looks good.”

  From here, the ice stretched nearly forty feet to the rocky shoreline.

  Daniel had heard that the average depth of this lake was more than four hundred feet, so even this close to shore he doubted that the anchor rope would be long enough. However, they needed to do something to keep the boat in place. He tried the anchor, and thankfully, after about fifty feet of rope had played out, it came to rest on the lake bottom.

  He cranked up the slack to keep them in place.

  “Okay,” Kyle said, “let’s assume for just one minute that you don’t crash through the ice and drown.”

  “I’m good with that.”

  “What if you find something there at the lighthouse? How are you supposed to get it back here if you’re crawling across the ice?”

  “That’d be a good problem to have. I’ll deal with that when the time comes.”

  After handing over the map and compass, Daniel placed one of the oars on the ice with the blade parallel to the boat.

  He tried curling his hand around the shaft and found that, because of the way the oar had been cut, there was just enough room for his fingers to fit between the shaft and the ice.

  It was a tight squeeze, but it would work.

  All things being equal, water freezes first close to shore, where it’s shallower and the current isn’t as strong, so he figured he would need to be the most careful here, near this edge where the ice wouldn’t be as thick.

  Kyle shook his head. “There is no way this is a good idea.”

  “You’re probably right.” Daniel lined up the second oar. “I’ll keep my life jacket on to avoid the drowning part.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t exactly reassure me.”

  “Let me see your phone.”

  “For what?”

  “I can use it as a flashlight if I need to look around inside the lighthouse.”

  “It’s not waterproof. If you wreck it when you drown, I’m going to be very upset.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  After pocketing the phone, Daniel gingerly climbed over the gunwale, and finessed himself so that he was kneeling on the oars.

  Distributing his weight was tricky and getting back into the boat later was going to be even trickier, but he decided not to dwell on that right now.

  Just don’t fall through the ice or it’s gonna be one long, cold trip back to Larry’s.

  As he eased forward, the ice let out a faint groaning sound.

  Immediately, he stopped crawling. It seemed like his heart somehow paused midbeat and, at the same time, slammed out its rhythm even harder than before.

  “It’s not too late,” Kyle said softly, as if he were afraid that the weight of his words might somehow crack the ice Daniel was kneeling on. “You can still get back to the boat.”

  “I’m good. I know how to swim and besides, you’re a lifeguard, right?”

  “Sorry, buddy, but I’m not diving in there for you.”

  “Not even for your phone?”

  “Well . . . Maybe for the phone.”

  “Spoken like a true friend.”

  “Just take it easy, okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  Daniel moved one oar then the other, using them to support him as he crawled toward the island. Occasionally, the ice would creak under his weight, but he was careful not to let either of his knees slide off the oars’ blades.

  At first it was slow going, but by the time he was about halfway across, he was able to get into a rhythm. From there, it went faster, and before long he’d covered the rest of the distance between himself and the shore.

  Once he was on the bank, he called to Kyle, “See? No problem.” He set the oars beside one of the boulders. “I’ll be back in a couple minutes.”

  “Be careful.”

  “My middle name is Mr. Careful.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  “I’ll see you in a few.”

  Scrambling up the ice-covered boulders on shore was a little dicey, but he made it. Once he had his footing, he took off his life jacket and laid it on the rocks, then stepped onto the snowy field that he would need to cross in order to get to the lighthouse.

  All was quiet on the island except for the splish-wash of waves against the ice as the wind began to pick up.

  From here it was maybe twenty-five yards to the lighthouse.

  Fresh deer tracks were the only thing that marred the otherwise pristine snowy field in front of him. With the woods beyond it and the snow continuing to fall, the day was tranquil and beautiful.

  Then he reminded himself that this was the field where, supposedly, an eleven-year-old girl had burned to death.

  You saw her in your dream. You saw her at the game. Are you going to see her again here?

  Maybe she would appear to him standing in the snow, her blackened body sizzling as the snowflakes touched it, her arms outstretched toward the tower where her uncle was when her nightgown caught on fire.

  Or maybe she would emerge from the top of the lighthouse and stand there
, staring down at the island she would never leave.

  Daniel peered up through the falling snow and could see the outline of the tower.

  No girl.

  No blur.

  And she wasn’t in the field either.

  It was just a hushed, snowy day on an island in Lake Superior. Nothing out of the ordinary about it.

  Was Betty real?

  Did a girl actually die out here in this field?

  He didn’t know, but maybe the answer lay inside the lighthouse.

  It looked like the only way into the tower was through the house.

  The snow came up to his knees as he crossed the field and arrived at the front door of the keeper’s home.

  The windows were shuttered, but the door hung at an awkward angle on its rusted hinges.

  It resisted, but Daniel muscled it open.

  And stepped inside.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY

  The entryway was littered with trash. Crude graffiti covered the walls. Stumps of candles and discarded beer cans lay in the corners.

  It didn’t really surprise him that this would end up being a place where people would come to party, but it did make him wonder if there would be anything helpful left here for him to find.

  With the windows boarded up, the interior of the home was thick with shadows, so Daniel pulled out Kyle’s phone and scrolled to a flashlight app.

  Using it to guide his way, he entered the first room.

  It must have served as some sort of central living space because it led to the kitchen and a short hallway with two attached rooms. One of them was only about eight feet long. With the shelves on one side, he guessed it might have been used for storage. The other was probably the keeper’s bedroom.

  Maybe Betty slept there in the storage room.

  That is—if she was ever really here.

  Turning to the left, he used the phone to illuminate the kitchen, which was still, inexplicably, stocked with a large pile of split logs to use in the potbellied stove.

  Who knows—the wood might have been brought in by the people who come here to party.

  Nothing appeared to be suspicious or out of place for an old abandoned lighthouse.