In the Dark

by Loreth Anne White

  Deborah’s heart clean stopped. Her mouth went dry. Blink. Breathe. Be normal. She gave a dismissive shrug.

  “Have you ever gone by that name?” Jackie asked.

  Breathe.

  “No.”

  But the woman continued to study her. Her attention dropped back to Deborah’s wrist with the tattoo.

  Fuck. I should’ve had it removed. I knew I should have. How can this be? How could this woman know Katarina?

  Deborah broke eye contact and looked out the window. But her eyes watered. Her pulse beat in her carotid. She could feel Jackie watching the back of her head. Everything had changed with that one word.

  Katarina.

  The plane banked again, affording a sudden view of a tiny town far below—a scattering of colored buildings along the shore of a lake that stretched into the distance like an ocean. Stella’s voice came through the headphones as she called in a GPS location to her dispatch. Deborah heard her say they were flying over the town of Kluhane Bay.

  I am Deborah. I am Deborah Strong. I am strong. I’m a fiancée. A mother-to-be. I’ve never heard of Katarina. I run a successful business. I don’t know any Katarina—

  “Do you mind if I film you?” Katie Colbourne asked as she peered around her seat.

  Deborah’s pulse beat even faster, her face going hot. “No, sure. Go ahead,” she said as calmly as she could. They’d all signed forms agreeing to being photographed and filmed. They’d also agreed that any shots or footage could be used for spa promotional materials.

  “Can I ask you some questions?” Katie asked, leaning farther around her seat and focusing her camera on Deborah’s face. A fall of flaxen hair tumbled across Katie’s cheek. She had a real TV-host look. Pretty.

  Deborah fiddled with her engagement ring. “Sure.”

  “You seemed lost in thought while looking out of the window a moment ago. What were you thinking?”

  I am Deborah. I am Deborah Strong. I am strong . . .

  “Beautiful.” She smiled. “I was thinking that it’s so stunningly beautiful down there, and exactly like the provincial car registration plates say: ‘Beautiful British Columbia.’”

  “You’re Deborah Strong,” Katie said for her future viewers, or for her own record. “You own your own business?”

  “Housekeeping. A boutique-style service, usually for smaller, luxury establishments.” She glanced at the others. She knew they could all hear in their headphones what she was saying. But they showed no apparent interest.

  “You’re BC born and bred?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Were you born in BC?”

  Alarm bells started clanging. Fear rushed into her chest. No, no, it’s okay. Deborah Strong has nothing to hide, stay close to the truth . . . “Alberta, actually, near Edmonton. I moved out to BC when I was . . . a lot younger.”

  A pause, Katie waiting for Deborah to say more. Deborah offered nothing extra. She felt the security woman watching, listening.

  “Do you think you might be happy to relocate to a remote setting for periods?”

  For a brief, outlandish moment, Deborah wondered if perhaps Katie Colbourne worked for the RAKAM Group, and her recordings and questions were all part of the greater job interview, and she’d show her footage to her bosses.

  “If it works out,” Deborah said carefully. “For periods of time.”

  “Do you have children?”

  She cleared her throat. “Not yet.”

  “But you do have a fiancé?” Katie smiled, lowered her camera, and turned it off. Her eyes were kind. “I saw the ring.”

  The thought of Ewan—coupled with the fact that Katie’s apparent interrogation was over—eased her mind. “He’s in the military—air force. Stationed at CFB Comox,” she said. She was proud of Ewan. She liked to talk about him. “He’s away for extended tours, so this contract would work well for us. How about you?” Deborah asked, steering attention away from herself. “You got kids?”

  Katie beamed. And this polished TV woman looked suddenly incredibly human and relatable. Her smile struck Deborah as startlingly honest. And it made her instantly like Katie.

  “A daughter,” Katie said proudly. “She’s just turned six.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Gabby.” Katie pulled up a photo on her phone. Reaching around the seat, she held it out for Deborah to see.

  “Oh, she’s beautiful,” Deborah said, taking the phone for a closer study. “She looks just like you.”

  “I think she looks like her dad.”

  A memory flared hot into Deborah’s mind. Her own father. Chasing her through green summer grass spiked with wildflowers. You bad little girl! Get over here, Katarina, you little shit. Now. She shook the image.

  “She’s going to miss you while you’re away these ten days,” Deborah said, handing the phone back.

  “One day down, nine more to go.” Another grin. “And it’s more a case of me missing her.” Katie pushed the fall of hair back from her startlingly blue eyes. “I used to travel a lot for work, but I cut back after Gabby was born. It’s why I left the cable news station to go into travel documentaries. Best change I’ve ever made. Far more flexibility being my own boss, and I can spend more time with my daughter.”

  She’d already told them all over breakfast.

  “So Gabby’s with your husband now?”

  “Her dad. We divorced a year after she was born.”

  “Oh.” A feeling of cold washed through Deborah’s gut, and her image of the happy Katie Colbourne tilted slightly. It was disheartening to think of all the excitement and work and emotion that went into falling in love, and into committing to a life together, and into the decisions around having a child, becoming a parental unit, only for it all to be smashed apart later. Her hand went instinctively to her belly, where her own little secret grew.

  Stella Daguerre’s voice came through the headset. “We’re nearing the lodge. If you look carefully, you can glimpse it between the trees at the end of the lake below.”

  Excitement shimmered. Everyone leaned forward to look out their windows as Stella banked her plane into a slow curve, affording them all a view. Below, the long, narrow body of water sparkled. It was nestled into a valley between two mountain ranges that rose sharply up on either side. Densely forested slopes scored by the gray scars of avalanche chutes plunged down to the water. The lake looked deep, and very dark—a blue that seemed almost black as it reflected gold dollars of sunlight.

  No roads were visible anywhere, not even a trail around the lake. Again, Deborah was struck by the utter absence of human presence. The plane lowered, flying toward the head of the lake.

  “The lodge lies at the far northern end.” Stella pointed.

  Steven Bodine’s deep voice came through the headsets. “Can you reveal the name of the lake now?”

  “Taheese Lake,” Stella said. “Just over thirty-two kilometers long, or twenty miles. But while long, it’s narrow, only two kilometers wide at the widest part. At the southwest end it flows into what becomes the Taheese River, which feeds all the way down to Lake Kluhane.”

  “So that small town back there was Kluhane Bay?” Nathan asked.

  “Correct,” Stella said into their headsets. “Very small town, but it gets busier over the summer months.” She dipped the nose of her de Havilland Beaver. Their altitude dropped sharply. Deborah felt her stomach rise to her throat. She held her belly tighter to stop the feeling of airsickness as the waters of Taheese Lake came up to meet their little yellow bird. She caught sight of the bank of dark clouds looming in the north. Crosswinds slammed suddenly into the plane. The aircraft rocked violently. Deborah held her breath. Everyone in the plane exchanged looks of worry.

  Silence thickened inside the de Havilland as Stella battled to steady the craft. She banked again and began another downward sweep in a long, lazy spiral, the wings rocking on currents of wind.

  Mountains and wilderness spun around and rose to meet them. Debora
h was gut-punched with awe, fear. She moved her hands to clutch her knees tightly. Her teeth clenched. The wind whomped them again, and the plane teetered violently.

  “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m sure looking forward to that welcome drink described in the email brochure,” Bart Kundera said loudly into their headsets, breaking some of the tension.

  Others laughed. Uneasily.

  Deborah saw small white-water caps on a stretch of the lake that was unprotected from the crosswinds.

  “Oh, look!” came Monica’s voice. “I think I see it, the lodge—is that it, at the end there?” The plane turned.

  Down below, at the foot of a tombstone mountain of black granite, the dark shape of a building emerged between trees that grew dense. Deborah heard Stella calling in their GPS coordinates again and telling West Air dispatch that she was coming in for an approach. She also reported the strength of the wind, and mentioned that the storm front was closing in fast.

  As they neared their destination, the lodge building took more distinct shape, and a feeling of foreboding rose inside Deborah. It looked nothing at all like she’d imagined. Nothing like any of the images she’d seen in the brochure, or on the spa website.

  “It . . . looks different,” Monica said, voicing what they all had to be thinking.

  “That’s not the lodge,” Steven said. He turned to Stella. “That’s not the place, right?”

  Stella remained silent, her hands tight on the de Havilland’s controls as she battled the crosswinds.

  Deborah’s pulse raced. She closed her eyes as the water rushed up to meet them while the plane was still wobbling, and she bid a silent prayer to whatever gods might listen.

  They hit with a hard thump. Deborah’s eyes flared open and she gasped.

  The plane lifted, rocked, whomped, and bounced back onto the lake surface a few more times. The sound of the engine changed. They’d made it. They were down. Stella taxied slowly toward a dock that listed into the water among reeds and rushes.

  Along a path that led up from the dock, a monstrous totem pole rose like a sentinel between the lodge building and the water. It had a raven’s head on top. The raven had been carved with a long beak full of wooden teeth and massive, outstretched wings. The raven caricature had in turn been fashioned atop the head of a stylized bear. The bear also had humanlike teeth, and a tongue that stuck out in an aggressive, warrior-like fashion. Another totem, slightly smaller, had been erected a short way behind the first. Paint peeled off both, and they were grayed by the weather. They stood like ancient warnings to foreigners who might dare to come upon on this shore. Not welcome. The words seemed to rise from the pit of Deborah’s stomach and whisper deep inside her brain. Not welcome.

  Everyone was quiet.

  Stella appeared tense. She leaned forward, studying the place as she taxied up to the listing dock.

  The front of the lodge came into view. Rain began to spit. The sky turned suddenly dark. They’d entered the shadow of clouds that poured over the granite mountain behind the lodge. The wind lashed suddenly at them.

  The building was constructed of logs. Double story. All the logs had been worn so dark that the building looked silvery black in this light. Rows of windows watched them from upstairs, dark-green shutters like eyelids placed at their sides. Above the front door hung a rack of bleached antlers.

  The area around the lodge was overgrown with brambles and covered with mosses and lichens.

  Bart said, “This cannot be right.”

  “Looks like the Overlook,” Monica whispered.

  “The what?” Nathan asked.

  “That spooky hotel in that Stephen King novel.”

  “No, it does not,” said Bart. “This place looks nothing like the one in the movie. And it’s smaller.”

  “That’s how the hotel looked in my imagination,” Monica said quietly. “I never saw the movie.”

  “Stella, what is this place?” Steven demanded, his voice strident in their headsets. Deborah watched Steven as he glared at their pilot. His neck was tight, his shoulders stiff. The bold and shining surgeon who could cut people open on his operating table and sew them back up in prettier shape looked as though he might be scared.

  “These are the coordinates I was given,” Stella said quietly. She brought them up alongside the dock. The rain rapped harder. It ticked on the roof and against the windows and danced upon the water, making a billion pocks and bubbles on the surface. The wind gusted as the storm began to hunker down.

  “Radio someone,” Jackie ordered suddenly from her seat in the back.

  Deborah glanced over her shoulder at Jackie. The woman had powered on her cell phone and was checking for cell service. She came up empty. Her black, inscrutable eyes narrowed to slits. Her jaw tightened. Katie started filming out the window, silent. Deborah swallowed as a pontoon nudged up against the moss-covered dock. It looked like it hadn’t been used in years.

  “Radio someone,” Jackie demanded again, louder. “Find out what’s going on. Check if this is the right place.”

  “I did radio the coordinates in.”

  “What did they say?” Jackie demanded.

  Stella turned to face them all. The expression on her slender, angled face made Deborah’s heart sink.

  “This is the place. These are the coordinates to which West Air was contracted to fly you all.”

  “No, no way,” Steven said. “I did not sign up for . . . for this.” Steven waved his hand in the direction of the hulking building. “You have got to take us out of here. Fly us back. Now.”

  As if on cue, the rain began to pour harder, and the wind bore down, sending waves lapping over the edges of the dock and the plane rocking.

  “Let’s just take a look, shall we?” Stella said, powering down the engine. “Whatever this is, there is no way I can fly us out of here until this weather blows through. I fly visual flight rules. And with VFR you need daylight. You need to see, or we will crash in these mountains.”

  “Yeah,” Bart said. “She’s right. Let’s just check it out.” He unbuckled his harness. “The actual spa could be through the trees or something, or around in the next bay. Maybe this is just a joke, or something.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  “Maybe we’ve been duped,” Steven said darkly.

  “But why?” Monica asked.

  Stella opened the pilot-side door. The wind blew in cold and wet.

  One by one they alighted from the Beaver, stepping gingerly from the pontoon onto the slippery green slime that covered the dock’s planks. Deborah was the last to deplane. Steven held out his hand to assist her.

  Her foot touched a plank. But as she transferred weight, it slid out from under her so fast that she was flat on the dock and tumbling into the water before she could even register what happened. The cold lake stole her breath. Shock blinded her. She thrashed wildly at the brackish water, at the reeds, going under, gulping for air. A hand groped for her jacket. By her collar, she was hauled dripping out of the reeds and dragged up onto the dock. She sat on her butt, coughing and choking, terrified, her eyes filling with tears, her hair plastered to her face.

  Stella bent down. “Are you okay?”

  “I . . . I can’t swim. I can’t swim. I—”

  “It’s all right, Deborah.” Stella reached for her arm. “You’re out—you’re safe now.” She helped Deborah up to her feet with Bart’s assistance.

  Deborah shook like a leaf. Water poured from her clothes and squelched in her shoes. She could barely breathe from the shock and cold. She tried to take a step and gasped in pain, her left leg buckling under. “My ankle. I . . . I think I’ve hurt my ankle.”

  They all stared at her. All shaken. White-faced. It made Deborah feel even more frightened. The wind gusted and the rain lashed at them.

  “Monica and Nathan,” Stella said, taking command of the situation. “Can you guys help Deborah up to the lodge? I need to secure the aircraft to the dock. Bart, maybe you could check to see if there
is actually a real spa around the bay, or another building somewhere?” She reached for a rope. “Jackie, can you give me a hand and hold fast on to this strut here while I moor the Beaver to the dock?”

  Jackie acquiesced. Nathan and Monica put their arms around Deborah and helped her limp carefully along the canting dock, keeping the bulk of her weight off her ankle. Deborah was petrified of going into the brackish shallows again—utterly terrified—and great big palsied shudders took hold of her body. Steven just stood there glowering at them all, as if refusing to accept his lot, as if blaming them all for bringing him here. Katie quietly filmed the whole thing. Thunder rumbled.

  With the assistance of Monica and Nathan, Deborah reached solid ground. As they began up the narrow and overgrown path toward the lodge, she heard Jackie’s and Stella’s voices rising in argument down on the dock. Jackie said something about calling for help on the radio again, and Stella cut her off angrily, then lowered her voice. Deborah glanced back over her shoulder.

  Through the pelting rain she witnessed Stella pulling Jackie close, and they conversed in what appeared to be urgent tones. Jackie suddenly stilled and glanced at the plane.

  “Easy, there’s a step coming up here,” Nathan said.

  Deborah returned her focus to the ground as they limped through the rain up toward the looming lodge.

  THE SEARCH

  CALLIE

  Saturday, October 31.

  “You promised!” Benjamin whined in the passenger seat as Callie navigated her 4x4 along a rutted track toward the command post her SAR team was setting up near the river to search for the downed plane. She was late. It was past 9:00 a.m., but the sun had not yet risen above the mountains, and would not do so for at least another twenty minutes at this time of year. Not that a sunrise would change much on a bleak day like today. Clouds rolled low over the mountains, and sleety rain pelted the forest. Her wipers scraped muddy arcs across her windshield. She felt a bite of irritation toward the new cop who’d sent the aircraft into the water.

  “I know, Ben, I know. I’m sorry.” She slowed down to steer through a pothole thick with mud. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” She flashed him a smile she couldn’t manage to feel in her heart. “And we’ll get a special dessert when we go visit your dad for dinner tonight, okay?”