In the Dark

by Loreth Anne White

“Divorced,” Stella said.

  “Why?”

  Stella snorted softly and sat silent for a moment. “It was over the child issue,” she said finally, turning her face away and reaching for the lantern.

  “Oh God. I’m sorry.”

  Stella came to her feet, lantern in hand. “It’s how things go. Life. Come, let’s go downstairs. I think we all need to put our heads together and figure this out.”

  THE LODGE PARTY

  JACKIE

  The wind pummeled the house and shutters slammed as the storm continued to gather power outside. Trees creaked and scraped against the windows, and strange noises came from the flue. Jackie felt as though the very forest had come alive and was trying to fight its way in.

  The group gathered around the roaring fire Bart had built. More logs were stacked high along the stone ledge that ran in front of the hearth, ready to feed the flames and ward off the darkness through the night.

  Katie had told them about the painting. The television woman had turned into a hollow husk since she’d seen it, her damn digital camera finally silent in her hands on her lap, her complexion white.

  A grandfather clock ticked loudly. Bart had been idiotic enough to wind it up with a big key, and now the pendulum swung back and forth with a loud, judgmental tock, tock, tock.

  Nathan handed a bowl of soup to each of them. He’d warmed the soup from tins he and Steven had found in the kitchen. No one seemed hungry, but all cradled their hands around the warmth of their bowls, as though the warm food offered a link to the civilized normality of the homes they’d left behind to be forsaken in this place far from humanity, deep in the forest.

  The fire popped. A log tumbled. Smoke seeped into the room—the chimney had clearly not been cleaned in a while.

  Jackie abruptly set her bowl down on the coffee table and lurched to her feet. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t sit still. She felt dogged by the troubling connections forming in her mind. She prowled the periphery of the circle gathered around the fire, pulling books off the heavy bookshelf along the wall. Tons of books. Old covers. Some crafted of leather. Some first editions, some signed. Traditional tellings of fairy tales like “Beauty and the Beast” and “Hansel and Gretel.” With illustrations that looked nothing at all like the Disney versions of those tales and more like something out of Carl Jung’s basement.

  “What are you looking at?” asked Steven, his eyes glinting in the firelight.

  “Grimms,” said Jackie, opening a 1940s illustrated collection of fairy tales.

  “Whoever owns this place had money to blow,” said Nathan between spoonfuls of soup, watching Jackie intently. He seemed to be the only hungry one. “God alone knows why they just left all this shit out here to gather dust and mold in the shadows of that awful mountain.”

  Jackie opened another book. Dust puffed out. It smelled like the old bookstores in Toronto she loved to visit. It was her thing. Books. Although people would never guess it by looking at her. And she didn’t bother to tell them, either. Didn’t care what people thought of her. Not anymore. She valued privacy. She shared the intimacies of life, her passions, only with her partner.

  It was an old Agatha Christie. Murder on the Orient Express. These closed-room-type mysteries were among Jackie’s favorites. She’d loved them since she was a kid. Maybe it was even what had steered her into law enforcement. Puzzles.

  She glanced up over the book and regarded Katie again. Someone had gone to great trouble to replicate the image of Katie’s daughter in that painting. First they would’ve had to find the image on social media, and then they would’ve needed to paint it themselves, or have it commissioned. Then it would’ve been shipped out here somehow and hung upstairs. It was big. Heavy. Then Katie had been invited on a fake trip to a lodge where she could see it. There was no doubt in Jackie’s mind that they’d all been lured here for some perverted reason. Somehow they were all connected. But by what? And why?

  She’d recognized Dan Whitlock on the bus. It had taken her a while. It had been almost fourteen years, and Dan had aged. Badly. He’d gone bald. His complexion had coarsened and turned ruddy. His face had swollen and his jowls had grown slack. A double chin, heavy bags under his eyes, and an extra fifty pounds—hardly surprising it had taken her a while to place the seedy-ass PI who’d once hired her to handle some of his dirtiest jobs. She’d been down and out with a predilection for booze herself. She’d needed the money at the time. It had been a dark period in her life.

  Suddenly Bart came to his feet. He couldn’t remain still, either. He drew back the fire grate, fed another log into the flames. The blaze popped, crackled. He poked the logs, then sat down, got up, walked behind the sofa, went to the base of the stairs, removed one of the indigenous masks from the wall, put it in front of his face, then spun around.

  “Whoo!”

  “Oh, fuck off, Bart!” Katie snapped.

  He lowered the mask. His eyes looked hurt. He hung it back up, reached for the rifle mounted on the wall, cracked it open. He held the barrel to the light and looked into it. Jackie watched as he hung it back on the wall hooks. Her gaze dropped to the vintage-looking knife he’d sheathed at his hip. Bart walked to the old desk, began opening and closing drawers.

  “Hey, there’s a box of ammo in here.” He took out a box of bullets, and his gaze shot back to the gun on the wall.

  “Leave it, Bart,” Steven said.

  Everyone looked at Steven.

  “Just leave the gun, okay?”

  Bart angled his head. His gaze held Steven’s. Jackie could feel the challenge rising between the men. Bart replaced the box, but the air had changed.

  Jackie’s attention went to Stella, who was fiddling with the smoothly carved figurines on the large stone checkerboard on the table. Picking up one after the other, examining them. Each had been fashioned slightly differently from the others.

  Deborah sat on the sofa with her bandaged ankle propped up. Pale, silent, she attempted to eat her soup. Steven had said her ankle appeared sprained, but not badly. He’d said the swelling should go down with elevation and compression. Deborah sensed Jackie looking at her and glanced up. Her eyes met Jackie’s.

  Where have I seen you and that swallow tattoo before, Deborah Strong? What associates you in my mind with the name Katarina? I know you from somewhere. You know that I know you. You are not who you say you are. What are you hiding? What made you so nervous when I mentioned your tat?

  It struck her. A fucking lightning bolt out of a black past—a past that boomeranged right back into Dan Whitlock’s orbit. She remembered exactly who Deborah Strong was. Katarina. Katarina “Kitty Kat” Vasiliev. A young hooker. Far too young at the time. It was the swallow tattoo and the process of thinking about Dan Whitlock that had unearthed it from deep in Jackie’s memory. Her heart hammered. Heat prickled over her skin. Her gaze darted among the others in the group, trying to slot the rest of them into this emerging puzzle. But as with colored squares in a Rubik’s Cube, the minute she moved one set of ideas around in her brain, another aspect of the pattern broke apart.

  Monica and Nathan were seated beside each other on a sofa, looking strained. Jackie had determined at the floatplane dock that the couple from Toronto knew Dr. Steven from before, and it was causing friction between them. A prickle of perspiration glinted on Monica’s upper lip. And Nathan—he kept looking at Bart. Jackie wondered if the married couple knew Bart from somewhere.

  Jackie’s attention returned to Katie. The TV journalist had covered plenty of stories. She could be indirectly connected via her news coverage to any one of the people in this room. What about Stella Daguerre? Jackie felt she was vaguely familiar, too. It was something in her eyes, in the twist of her mouth when she spoke.

  Jackie shut Murder on the Orient Express and replaced the book on the musty shelves. That’s when she noticed that the book lying on the coffee table was also an Agatha Christie novel. She frowned, reached for it, and dusted off the cover.

  Ten Litt
le Indians.

  This hardback was old—from the 1930s. Had this Agatha Christie book ever been published in North America under this title? The original title Christie had given her mystery had used the N-word and had been rightfully deemed even less PC than Ten Little Indians. The book had finally been retitled And Then There Were None.

  An odd ripple of foreboding coursed through Jackie’s veins, more connections forming somewhere deep in her brain. She glanced at Stella again. The pilot was holding a carved figurine and watching Jackie in turn, a strange look on her face. Jackie opened the cover of the book. A piece of paper fluttered to the stone floor. She crouched down, retrieved it, and moved closer to the lantern light in order to read the typed words.

  It was some kind of poem, a rhyme.

  Nine Little Liars thought they’d escaped.

  One missed a plane, and then there were eight.

  Eight Little Liars flew up into the heavens.

  One saw the truth, and then there were seven.

  Seven Little Liars saw they were in a fix.

  One lost control, and then there were six.

  Six Little Liars tried hard to stay alive.

  One saw the judge, and then there were five.

  Five Little Liars filed out the door.

  One met an ax, and then there were four.

  Four Little Liars lost in the trees.

  One got stabbed, and then there were three.

  Three Little Liars realized what they knew,

  One hanged himself, and then there were two.

  Two Little Liars went on the run.

  One shot a gun, and then there was one.

  One Little Liar thinks he has won.

  For in the end, there can only be one.

  But maybe . . .

  there shall be none.

  Jackie’s gaze shot to the figurines.

  Fuck me.

  “Give me that,” Jackie demanded of Stella, holding out her hand for the carving.

  Everyone stared at her. Shutters banged. Another log tumbled in the grate, sending smoke into the room. Slowly Stella placed the carved wooden piece into the palm of Jackie’s hand.

  Jackie examined it closely. She seated herself on the low stone ledge in front of the fire, her back to the flames. She reached forward and picked up each of the carvings in turn, studied them.

  Nine pieces. Nine Little Liars.

  “This is sick,” she said loudly. “This is fucking mental.”

  “What is it, Jackie?” Nathan asked. “What are you seeing?”

  She got up, retrieved the piece of paper with the rhyme.

  She read it to them.

  “Nine Little Liars thought they’d escaped. / One missed a plane, and then there were eight . . .” She reached the final verse. “For in the end, there can only be one. / But maybe . . . there shall be none.”

  The eyes of the group shimmered in the firelight, faces tight. Complexions waxen. Silent.

  “It was in the Agatha Christie book,” Jackie said. “The paper with the rhyme was stuck inside a book with a story about a group of individuals—all strangers to each other—who are invited by an anonymous host to a secluded island. Then they all proceed to die, one by one.”

  “Because they’re being punished,” said Deborah. “I saw the television series.”

  “Yes. Because a character in the story—the judge—felt they’d escaped retribution,” Jackie said. “So the judge killed them. One by one. Until there were none.” She pointed to the carvings. “Those little figurines—there are eight of them on the board.” She scooped up another that had been toppled off the side of the board. Its head had been cut off. “And this one? A ninth. Nine Little Liars. This one has to be Dan Whitlock.” Jackie wagged the headless carving at them.

  “Why?” said Bart.

  “Because his head is off, doofus,” said Jackie.

  Bart’s face darkened. “So? What in the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “That Dan is dead,” replied Jackie.

  Silence filled the room, save for the tock, tock, tock of the grandfather clock.

  Katie surged up from her chair. “You don’t know that!” Her voice was shrill. She waggled her hand at the checkerboard and the carvings. “This . . . this is ridiculous! You don’t know any of this—none of this can be right.”

  She whirled around to face the others, her eyes manic, and she pointed back at Jackie. “Tell her. Tell her she’s mad.”

  “Is she?” said Deborah.

  Everyone fell silent and turned to her.

  “How else can you explain all of this? Our invites, this lodge, the GPS coordinates, the painting upstairs, the rhyme typed up and placed inside that old Agatha Christie novel? That hardback was left on the table next to that board so we would see it.”

  “We’re all being punished for something,” Monica murmured quietly, her eyes going strange. “Each one of us has been specifically lured here, baited with potentially lucrative contracts that appeal to our individual business, to our greed. And now we are trapped for . . . for some sick-ass game that someone is masterminding. And that . . . that Agatha Christie–type rhyme, it’s not the only verse in this house. There is one about sinners in the bathroom. It says those who lie to cover their deeds must repent.” She pointed with an unsteady hand to the board with its bizarre carved figurines. “Whoever has done this, they have gone to huge trouble. They are sick in the mind. And they plan to kill us. Like in the story. One by one. And I bet Jackie is right. I bet that Dan Whitlock is dead.”

  Katie began to cry.

  Steven lurched up from his seat. “Oh, come on, don’t be so pathetic. This”—he waved his hand at the wooden figurines on the stone checkerboard—“is not some kind of reality murder mystery, for Pete’s sake. No one is going to die. Get real. If anything, it . . . it’s some kind of hoax.”

  “Did you speak to someone from the RAKAM Group, Steven?” Monica asked.

  He glowered at her.

  “Well, did you?”

  “I spoke to Amanda Gunn. She was my contact.”

  Monica turned to the others. “How about the rest of you? Did anyone here have any contact with a person from the RAKAM Group other than Amanda Gunn?”

  No one replied.

  The wind slammed against the back of the lodge. The whole building creaked. Flames flickered in the fireplace and in the lanterns.

  “Maybe it’s Amanda who’s behind this,” said Bart.

  “Or maybe Amanda Gunn was just hired via email by some anonymous person at the so-called RAKAM Group, and she in turn contacted each of us via email.”

  “They had a website,” said Bart. “I checked their website.”

  “Right,” said Jackie. “A site full of fake, photoshopped images, the same fake pictures we were sent in fake email brochures.”

  Steven yanked his phone out of his pocket and tried to pull up a web page.

  “There’s no reception out here, Steven,” Monica said. “You can’t fight your way out of this one. Not this time.”

  Steven’s eyes blazed fire at Monica.

  “Fuck this,” he whispered. “I’m going to bed.” He strode toward the stairs.

  “Better lock your door, Steven,” Nathan called out to the surgeon as he thumped his way up the steps.

  “We better all lock our doors,” Deborah said, so quietly she was almost inaudible, her gaze locked hard and fast on Jackie.

  And Jackie could see by the look in the woman’s pale-blue eyes that Deborah Katarina “Kitty Kat” Vasiliev had just figured out where they’d met in the past.

  THE SEARCH

  CALLIE

  Saturday, October 31.

  “We found the crashed plane, Dad. It’s a yellow de Havirand.” Benny took a bite of his pizza and spoke around his mouthful. Callie chose not to correct her son with the plane name. She was just happy to watch and listen to him chatting with his father. The fried chicken place had been closed when the two of them had finally made it throu
gh the snowstorm and rolled into the larger town of Silvercreek, which lay about an hour’s drive through the mountains from Kluhane Bay. The snow had started flying heavily along the pass after she’d left Mason and Oskar in charge of things on the Taheese River. The drive had taken far longer than usual because of the conditions. And because of the delay, she’d failed Benny yet again, this time on her promise that they’d have fried chicken when they visited his father.

  “And I helped, Dad. Mom let me.” Ben shot a quick glance at her. Callie smiled, nodded for him to continue.

  “When Oskar and the guys pulled the crashed de Havirand out of the river with ropes and stuff, it was upside down and all smooshed. And the ponts were missing, and almost one wing was completely gone. And the pilot inside was dead.” Another glance at his mom. “I heard them say there was a knife in her neck.”

  Benny watched his dad’s face, waiting for a reaction. Peter’s eyes were open. He seemed to be watching—perhaps even hearing—his son, but there was no other response. Unlike a patient in a coma who is completely unconscious and appears to be in a deep sleep, Peter had sleep-and-wake cycles. He would open his eyes, breathe on his own, cough, sneeze. His fingers would twitch. And despite his traumatic brain injury, when Benny spoke to him, Callie was convinced she saw flickers of life in Peter’s eyes.

  He lay slightly propped up in the hospital bed. But tonight he looked thinner than usual. His skin was pale, almost translucent from lack of sunshine. He’d been so tanned, so robust. Her heart ached.

  The TV in the corner, suspended from the ceiling, was screening White Fang. It was dark outside, and Callie could see their reflections on the window, along with flickering blue light from the television screen. A little family unit. Both the single room and the television cost extra per day. Callie wasn’t sure how much longer they’d be able to fund these little perks. Her seasonal work as a guide with an outdoor adventure company ran from May through to the end of October. She took on admin work during the winter, but with no real end in sight she was probably going to have to look for more lucrative employment. Peter was a forester, and his disability pay only took them so far. She smoothed her hand over her hair, then pulled the band out from her ponytail. It was giving her a headache. She felt beyond tired. The search and rescue stuff was all volunteer. It was her passion, and Peter’s, and it gave her a way to get out and be with like-minded people, even if the hours were not ideal. She was going to have to make some tough decisions.