by Katie Berry
Small wisps of vapour plumed from Harder’s mouth, and he shivered both from the cold and the unknown. There seemed to be a chill in the ballroom that no amount of fiddling with the thermostat for the electric baseboard heat could fix. It was like someone had left the emergency doors open for several hours to air the room out even though the temperature outside was well into the minus twenties.
He moved slowly toward the centre of the massive ballroom. Snaking across the floor, a psychedelic flower made of multi-coloured balloon petals blossomed at his feet, with red and gold streamers intertwining like stems. A spider’s web of netting dangled overhead, looking to have previously held the balloons and streamers before their midnight release.
These items should have been disturbed where people had danced through the colourful potpourri as it fell. However, that didn’t seem to be the case here. It looked like when they were dropped, everyone was already gone from the room by the time they hit the ground. But how could that be? Did the entire ballroom decide to go for a stroll into oblivion all at once? All at the stroke of midnight with a speed not humanly possible? He figured if there were a giant trap door in the floor, everything would be gone inside this room, and not just the people. So, he ruled that out fairly quickly.
And then there was the fact that there were no footprints near the ballroom’s emergency exits or anywhere else outside, except for a single set left by the bartender near one door. The snow lay pristine and untouched, sparkling weakly in the early-morning sunlight just now spilling over snow-capped peaks in the distance. The storm had broken just after midnight, and a new cold front now blanketed the area, freezing everything solid.
A tentative knock came at Harder’s back, and he turned. Peering meekly into the ballroom, a young female constable, Jansen, informed him that a message was waiting for him at the front desk.
John had been initially reluctant to leave the ballroom and lose his train of thought, but upon entering the lobby, he was pleased and mystified to note how much warmer it was in this part of the hotel. He retrieved the message from the front desk night manager and scanned it quickly. The forensics team wouldn’t arrive for another two hours due to an equipment delay. He sighed.
Night desk manager Arthur Baldwin adjusted his tie. Heavyset, sallow and pale, it seemed that he was not on speaking terms with sunlight and exercise. He stood shadowed in the alcove leading to the darkened office at his back, touching his hand to the side of his face.
Sometimes, Harder liked to have multiple interviews of the same witness done by different officers. This was one of those times and the night manager was one of those witnesses. He decided to have Baldwin go over things with him while he waited for forensics to arrive. John pulled a microcassette recorder from his pocket, along with a notebook and pencil. “I know you already spoke with Corporal Jansen, but if you could also tell me what happened, Mr. Baldwin, it would be appreciated.”
Baldwin gently rubbed at the side of his shadow-cloaked face for another moment, then cleared his throat. “Sure, why not. It’s pretty much burned into my memory, now.” With a deep sigh and another pause to adjust his glasses, he began.
“It can be kind of quiet around here sometimes, New Year’s Eve being no exception. Let me tell you, I know that from experience. I’ve been here for a while now, since just after the other night guy disappeared, or got murdered or whatever happened to him. So, it’s good to have a book to read or something to watch on TV.” Baldwin trailed off, over his shoulder into the darkened office briefly as if he’d heard something, his face still partially obscured in shadow. “I was just about to sit down for a few minutes to check out the beginning of the late show, to see if it was going to be any good, you know?”
Harder nodded encouragingly.
“Then, the power went out, and the first thing I thought to myself was, ‘Oh great, here we go again!’ Last week, I was swamped at the desk when the power had gone out for half a minute. And I figured that it might be a problem this time as well because of the group in the ballroom. So, I was kind of surprised.”
“Surprised? By what?”
“How nobody came to complain. By the time I was done fumbling under the front desk for the flashlight, I had thought I’d see at least one or two of them storming toward me. I can see down the corridor leading to the ballrooms from here, but there was no one approaching.” Baldwin hesitated for a moment, as if unsure he should continue and say what he was going to say, then blurted, “And then some weird shit happened.”
Yes, Harder thought, weird shit indeed. In fact, today was definitely a shoo-in for ‘Weirdest Shit of 1982’, even though they were only six hours into this new year. With a grunt, he said instead, “Please go ahead, Mr. Baldwin.”
“So, anyway, the emergency lights kicked in about five seconds after the power went off, just like they usually do. And I know that they’re normally quite dim, but it was kinda strange.”
“How so?”
“Well, just before I located the flashlight, I heard this pounding. I wasn’t sure what it was at first. Thought maybe it was the drummer going crazy in the ballroom or something. Then I realised it sounded more like some really big guy running down the stairs from the upper floors at full tilt, in the dark. Once I’d found the flashlight and shone it down the hallway, I figured I’d spot whoever had come down the stairs since I hadn’t seen them in the lobby. But there was no one in sight. However, the strangest thing had to be the lights.”
“Strange? How so?”
“So, get this: the emergency lights along the corridor dimmed and brightened all in a series, like a pulse, but just the one time, sort of like a runway at the airport. When I started making my way down there, I had to shake the flashlight a couple of times as I went cause it seemed like it was going to die on me for a second like the lights did.”
“And what happened?
“First of all, there was the cold. I felt it when I was about a dozen yards from the door. So, now, of course, I figured the heat was also malfunctioning, and I thought it was going to be one of those shifts. In retrospect, I really wish it had been.” He shook his head sadly.
“Please continue.”
“I was expecting to hear laughter or shouting as I approached the door, or maybe music from the guys in the band that weren’t electric. Playing something to soothe the savage partygoers, so to speak.” He laughed tiredly.
“And was that the ‘weird shit’ you spoke of?”
“That certainly was strange, let me tell you, but the scary, weird shit actually happened when I opened the ballroom door.” Baldwin paused again, seeming unwilling or unable to express what he’d seen.
“Go on,” John said reassuringly. “I need to know what you saw.”
“So, when I opened the door… There was nothing.”
“Nothing? You mean it was dark in the room?” Harder asked, trying to clarify.
“No, it was more than dark.” After a brief pause, he said again, “There was nothing.” Baldwin rubbed the side of his face for a moment.
“More than dark? Nothing? What do you mean?”
“I mean, there was a complete absence of light in the room! It was like I was looking into outer space, here inside the hotel. The darkness just went on and on forever, into infinity.” Baldwin paused, collecting his thoughts. “I’ve wandered through that room a few times at night when it wasn’t in use.” He stopped.
“And?”
“And I know I should be able to see something inside the room even if the drapes are closed, especially this time of year with all the snow outside making it a little brighter at night. I thought I should have seen a little light leaking through the gaps in the drapes, you know? And besides, the emergency lights should have kicked on inside there since they were already on out in the hallway. Maybe they were having battery issues like the weird shit that happened with the hallway emergency lights, right? But then...” Baldwin trailed off.
“Please continue, Mr. Baldwin. Anything you kn
ow may be of vital importance in this case.”
“I stuck my head through the door and then I felt the real cold hit my face.”
“Yes, I noticed it myself when I was in the ballroom just now.”
“No, nothing like that. This was much, much colder than it feels in there now.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “Did you ever use liquid nitrogen in science class back in high school?”
Harder nodded.
“So, I stuck my face into the gap between the doors to peek inside. And then I felt this searing cold, almost like I’d opened a canister of liquid nitrogen and stuck my face into it.”
“Searing cold?”
“Yeah, you know, when something’s so cold it feels like you’re being burned. And this was the same kind of thing, but much, much, colder. Almost like I was getting frostbite instantly. Anyway, I pulled back and slammed the door shut. But not before I got this.”
Harder looked up from his notepad. “Got what?”
Stepping forward from the shadows, Baldwin turned to face the inspector, the side of his face now visible. Painful-looking reddened skin covered part of Baldwin’s face around his right eye and cheek as if he’d been out for a stroll in an Antarctic gale without his parka and balaclava properly adjusted. He reached up to touch it again, saying, “I only had my face in the gap for less than a second, before I slammed the door shut thinking I’d gone crazy.”
Harder studied the man’s face. What had happened to him in there? How did this man manage to get windburn inside a heated ballroom?
Baldwin continued, saying, “I didn’t know this had happened until later, actually.” He gently touched his face again. “So, anyway, I tried again after a couple of seconds, just to see.”
“Just to see what?”
“To see if I actually was crazy. So, I pulled open the door open a crack again, and this time there was no black void — just the ballroom again, and the lights are coming back on inside as well. And then I see it’s empty, and I’m like, what the hell? Where did everyone go? Across the room, one of the new room service girls and the kitchen manager were staring back at me. Let me tell you, they both looked as terrified and confused as I felt.”
“Was there anything else, Mr. Baldwin?”
The night manager touched his hand gently to the reddened half of his face and stepped back into the darkened office, adding, “Only to say that like everything else at this resort, you’ve gotta be careful — it just might bite.”
CHAPTER FOUR
December 23rd, 2021, 1950 hours
Lively was getting close to shutting things down for the night. The snow was getting so heavy, he could barely keep the windshield clear, despite the heavy-duty winter wiper blades of the SUV. The defroster was running full tilt, but the buildup of snow on the windshield was so rapid that it laboured to keep up and the windows were threatening to fog-up completely. He shook his head ruefully, ready to pull over and nap for a few hours until the storm abated.
Emily’s voice suddenly chimed from the speaker system, saying “You have arrived at your destination.”
Squinting through the windshield, Lively said, “Really? Where is it?” He slowed the vehicle on the road and then stopped altogether. There was no further response from the GPS system, not that he’d been expecting one. With the elbow of his leather bomber jacket, he rubbed the passenger side window-glass, making a viewing portal for himself.
“Aha! There you are.” Inset from the road by about a dozen metres, the gate to the resort was barely visible, partially buried by blowing snow — not easy to see in the dark. With a shake of his head, Lively added, “You’re certainly not the easiest to find. That can’t be good for the tourist trade.” He hadn’t seen it at first because it literally looked just like a wall of snow, with all of the whiteness blowing and swirling around it. If it hadn’t been for the GPS, he would have driven right on by.
Lively cranked the wheel and pulled off the highway. He placed the 4Runner into park, its headlights illuminating the Sinclair’s main gates, currently sitting closed. There was no sign of them opening automatically, and he sighed, wondering if they were unlocked. He really didn’t want to go out into the cold to check, but knew he had no choice.
In the centre of the gates, wind had scoured the ground bare, creating a chest-high drift along the right-hand side. Fortunately, the left wasn’t as heavily buried, its drift only knee-high, but he wasn’t holding out much hope of an easy entry into the resort. If the gates didn’t open, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to try and scale them to gain entry right now. He might just stay in the 4Runner for the night instead. Then, when first light hit, he’d see what his options were. It wasn’t worth a case of exposure to try and walk the half-mile or so from these gates to the main building, especially in light of the current storm. Had it not been blizzarding out, he may very well have attempted it – but tonight, he wasn’t sure if he’d even survive the journey. The temperature gauge said it was currently twenty-five below zero outside, and it had to be twice that with the windchill. But now, here he sat, in his toasty, warm vehicle, thinking of all the frozen water outside, and his need to urinate came back with a vengeance. He realised he was going to have to admit defeat and find a tree somewhere near the side of the gate. Once he’d tended to business, he’d see if he could gain access to the property.
The moment he stepped out of the SUV, he instantly regretted it. The fierce wind lashed his legs, biting into the thin fabric of his casual cotton pants. Snow scraped along his face, and he could taste its cold brutality. He hadn’t taken the time to change at his condo, he was still wearing the same clothes he’d worn on the cruise. The warmest thing he had on was his leather bomber, but its lining was not the thickest. His more seasonal clothes were in his duffle bag in the rear of the SUV. He shook his head, realising with literal cold irony that three seconds outside in this blowing snow was better than three cans of Barq’s to keep a person awake and alert. However, it also exacerbated his need to go make yellow snow somewhere.
Though he was in the middle of a blizzard at the side of the road, he didn’t feel he should just ‘whip it out’ here and take a leak on the gates of this place. It would be somewhat disrespectful, he figured. Many people viewed this site with near-religious reverence, possibly because it could be the last resting place of over one hundred victims of an, as of yet, unexplained mass murder. Those thoughts percolated through Lively’s caffeinated brain as he moved to the left side of the entrance and stood facing away from the road, next to where the gate abutted a high wall when open.
A massive gust of wind tore through the entryway, and the heavy gate on the left was finally rattled loose from the confines of drifting snow leaning against it. The entrance was slightly sloped to aid in drainage during the rainy season, and it angled away to gutters on either side. Gravity helped the liberated gate, and it began moving like a locomotive down the short slope.
Lively finished his business with a small sigh and was beginning to fumble for his fly. From the corner of one eye, he caught the blur of the cast iron gate rolling rapidly toward him. He threw himself backward into the snow. With a crash, the heavy gate slammed into the stone wall where he’d been standing and bounced back several feet. Feeling slightly shaken, Lively stood upright, slowly zipping his trousers. As he dusted the snow from his legs and jacket, he said, “I guess that concludes the rest break.”
When the heavy iron gate had struck the wall, most of the ice and snow had tumbled from the foot-high bronze letters affixed to its top. The first half of the resort’s name was now exposed to the night’s savage fury.
Many times, over the years, Lively Deadmarsh had stared evil in the face, but never so literally as tonight. ‘SIN’ stood only inches from his eyes, clanging against the wall in the gusting wind. The opposite gate, containing the ‘CLAIR’, only moved ever so slightly, still frozen in place thanks to the high drift that covered most of it.
This seemed an appropriately ominous start to this
newest case, Lively thought. He’d expected it to be difficult, and perhaps one of the most dangerous he’d taken on since resigning from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Rarely staying at his apartment in Vancouver, he’d been hopping from one investigation to the next since CSIS. And now that he thought about it, that had actually been his life when he worked in the Service as well, so really, nothing much had changed. In fact, just before this case came across his virtual desk, he’d been tying up some loose ends and had been planning on going to Nova Scotia after his cruise to check out an aquatically named hotel which contained one very disturbing room. However, he’d put that on hold so that he could be here instead, with an entire resort hotel full of disturbing things, including one of the most infamous disappearances on the planet.
