Dave, searching alone, had allocated himself the area in front of one of the narrow sides of the rectangular building. To either side, he could hear the others calling out, but ahead there was no sign of life.
He took a fleeting pleasure and some pride in the fact that his new flashlight was working well. It formed a brilliant tunnel of light, sweeping right across the clearing to the tree line ahead. However, beyond that, its light was soon blocked by the densely-growing trunks. In truth, even with this impressive new flashlight, Dave would only be able to see ten, maybe fifteen feet in any direction once he entered the forest.
He walked slowly to the edge of the clearing and, with each step, the reality of the danger he faced weighed more heavily on him. He felt suddenly very cold, but the cold had nothing whatever to do with the fallen snow or the biting air. He slowed to a stop. He knew he had to move, but the courage that had carried him thus far had deserted him.
What was he doing out here? He wasn’t the heroic type. He didn’t have a pioneer bone in his body. And he hadn’t the first clue as to what he’d do if he met Spielman. If things went badly, he’d probably be more of a nuisance than a help to those kids and most likely he’d just become another person for Jeff and the others to rescue. Perhaps he should have listened to Neil and stayed indoors out of everyone’s way.
But even as he thought this, Neil’s unconcerned sneer came to mind, and decided Dave’s course of action for him. He would not let himself become like Neil. If he turned back now, he might be safe and free of harm; he might survive, return to the city and go on to live to a comfortable old age. But he would have to live those years knowing that he had once abandoned five young children to die alone in the dark. What sort of person would be able to live with that knowledge?
Neil, that’s who.
As Dave stared into the trees, his first meeting with Emma came back to him. Had Spielman been stalking her even then? Recalling Emma’s frightened face, Dave felt a sudden, renewed urgency to find the children. With a roar, that came from somewhere hidden deep inside, he began to run and crashed into the scrub beneath the trees, calling out the children’s names.
Lou had been given the flashlight that Bill had found. Its beam was weaker than Dave’s, but she didn’t care. She didn’t want to waste any more time searching for new batteries or looking for another flashlight. She was totally focussed; driven only by her desperate need to find her precious son. Against his need, her own safety counted for nothing. Speed was everything.
Lou led the way across the parking lot and along the track. The snow had drifted into deep banks and, even in the troughs between them, the snow was nearly at her knees; progress was slow.
Phil stumbled along behind her, muttering under his breath. When he cursed as he tripped on a branch hidden in the snow, she rounded on him.
“Shut up! Just shut up! I can’t hear anything but your bitching.”
“Yeah? Well I don’t give a -”
Phil didn’t get to finish the sentence. The glare on Lou’s thin face, lit by the now distant lights of the hotel, stopped him as surely as if she had again slapped him across the face. Out here in the dark cold of the night, her face seemed unnaturally pale while her eyes burned with a frighteningly powerful intensity. Phil realised that the balance of power and control between them had shifted. For all his size and machismo, he was cowed into submission by that look.
“OK, Babe. I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
But Lou had no time for him. She turned away without a word. Phil could keep up or get lost and right now, she didn’t much care which.
Jeff and Rita held hands as they hurried from the comparative safety of the clearing into the densely growing trees. Jeff held the hurricane lamp ahead of them, its flame casting flickering shadows that animated everything around them, making it difficult to discern a way forward. Even had they been able to see clearly, the many low, twisted branches and the icy drifts of snow further hampered their progress. As the minutes slipped by, Jeff became increasingly agitated and soon his frustration boiled over.
“Emma! Emma!”
He was shrieking her name. Tears blurred his vision and poured down his cheeks as hopelessness overwhelmed him. Only minutes from the hotel, he was already close to despair.
“Oh God, Ree, I’ve lost her.”
“We’ll find her.”
“You can’t know that. She’s gone, Ree, she’s gone.”
“Jeff, look at me. Look at me. We’ll find her. I promise you, we’ll find her.”
Jeff was not convinced, but he let himself be urged forward and tried, with little success, to blink the tears from his eyes. Rita’s hand, firmly gripping his, was now his lifeline, his sole connection with reality; everything else was reduced to a dimly lit and indistinct tangle of blurred tree trunks, his world shrunk to the limit of the hurricane lamp’s hissing light.
Annie and Bill shared the second hurricane lamp. Bill walked with the lamp held high in one hand, the other holding Annie’s trembling hand. They were fortunate in finding the path’s entrance into the trees quite quickly, and were soon cresting the rise that overhung the rapids.
“What’s that gurgling?” Annie whispered.
“Sounds like water. We must be near the river. Watch your step.”
Bill strained forward, peering into the gloom, but the lamp’s glass was already sooty and the light it gave out was failing.
“Just wait here a second, Honey. I’ll go on ahead -”
“No way. We’re staying together.”
Annie’s tone would not countenance any disagreement. Bill squeezed her hand in acknowledgment and began slowly to edge forward.
Suddenly he cried out and let go of Annie’s hand. He flew away from her, down into the darkness, the lamp somersaulting through the air before smashing onto the rocks below.
Annie screamed.
“Bill! Bill! Where are you? Bill? Please answer me.”
For a few terrible, lonely seconds she had no reply. Then she heard a moan.
“Annie, are you OK?”
“Am I OK? Of course I am, you big lug. Where are you? Are you OK?”
Bill grunted in reply.
“Where are you?” Annie’s tone was anxious, “I can’t see a thing.”
“Don’t move!” Bill shouted quickly, “There’s a rockface just ahead of you, nearly vertical and covered in ice. Stay where you are and keep talking to me so I can find my way back to you.”
“Oh Bill, my love, I’m here. Up here. Can you still hear me?”
Nothing.
“Bill? Oh God, Bill?”
Only the gurgling of the water.
“Bill, please, say something.”
Still nothing.
Annie shrieked, “Bill!”
“What? I’m right here.”
Annie spun around, arms out, feeling for Bill. When her fingers closed on his icy, sodden clothing she hung on and dragged him towards her.
“Thank God you’re OK,” she gasped, “We’ll have to get you back to the hotel before you freeze. Come on.”
Without the lamp, the journey back was a hit and miss affair, with both Annie and Bill stumbling into tree trunks to left and right as they felt their way along the path. Finally, with huge relief, they saw the lights of the hotel reappearing ahead of them.
“Come on, we’re nearly there.”
By now, Bill could manage only a nod in reply; his body had been overtaken with violent shivering and his breath was coming in sudden sharp gasps.
As they staggered out of the trees they were startled by a loud blast of sound: a car horn. Frozen or no, Bill was galvanised by the sound. It re-invigorated him with sufficient energy to carry him back to the hotel at something approaching a shambling run. He burst into the lobby, a wild, deranged figure in his soaking clothes.
“Jeez!” said Neil, for once showing his surprise, “What the hell happened to you?”
Bill ignored the question.
“Where are the kids?” he gasped, “Where are they?”
Neil shook his head.
“Then why d’you call us back?”
“I didn’t. It was Lou and Phil.”
“Have they got the kids? Don’t mess with me Neil. Where are they?”
Neil nodded back towards the lounge and Bill hurried away. Annie paused a moment before following him.
“Kept warm and dry enough did you Neil?”
Neil made a slight nod, but showed neither embarrassment nor regret. Annie sneered at him, a look of absolute contempt on her face.
“Neil, you’ve gone too far this time. I will never forget this. You...you disgust me.”
Neil affected nonchalance.
“Sticks and stones, Annie, sticks and stones.”
At that moment the doors opened and a blast of cold air rushed in and over them: Jeff and Rita had returned. Undistracted, Annie kept her attention fixed on Neil.
“Sticks and stones?” she whispered venomously, “Don’t tempt me, you selfish son of a bitch. Get out of my way.”
“Annie, wait up,” Jeff gasped as he hurried after her, “Where are the kids?”
Neil looked at Rita who was still standing just inside the doors, impassively regarding his exchange with Annie.
“So sorry you had to witness that,” Neil said, with cloying insincerity.
“Forget it Neil,” Rita said quietly, “I’m with Annie. You are a selfish SOB, a worthless, self-obsessed waste of space. If there was any doubt of that fact before, you’ve certainly settled the matter today.”
Before Rita could say anymore, or Neil make a response, the lounge door banged open and Jeff called her to the join the others inside.
A bizarre sight met Rita in the lounge. A large and grizzled old man lay on a sofa by the fire. His arm was bound in a makeshift bandage and his face seemed creased in pain. A bloom of bright red blood was spreading through the fabric of the bandage, growing larger even as Rita stared.
“What going on? Who’s this?” Rita asked.
“This is Mr Spielman,” said Jeff, attempting a smile of reassurance to Rita, whose eyes had grown suddenly huge with alarm.
“What the hell’s he doing here?” she gasped.
Neil came into the room.
“He told everyone he’d come back later,” he said, “And when he did, Phil stabbed him.”
“That’s not the way it happened,” Phil cut in. Both Lou and Spielman looked at Phil intently, “We found him in the woods. It was dark, and it all got a bit confused, OK?”
Jeff didn’t really care about any of this. He fell to his knees next to the old man.
“Mr Spielman, do you know where our kids are?”
For several, painful moments the old man simply stared at him as if he hadn’t understood the question. Then, with aching slowness, he shook his head.
“Don’t reckon I do, son.”
“It’s no use,” Bill interrupted, “We’re wasting time. I’m getting some dry clothes then I’m going back out to search for the kids. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
But Jeff persisted. He wanted information.
“Come on, Mr Spielman, you know something about all this. You warned Lou and Phil about the abductions.”
“Sure did, son. Was the only thing I could do. Wouldn’t have been right else.”
“So, do you think our kids have been abducted?”
The old man nodded.
“Why? Why would someone do that?”
“Might not necessarily be a someone, son.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to frighten the ladies, son, but might be it’s not so much a someone as a something.”
Jeff shook his head in disbelief.
“What are you talking about? Look, this is serious: our kids are missing, for God’s sake If you know anything, anything at all, please tell us.”
“Like I told your friends, there’s been kids disappearin’ for years, always girls an’ young kids. An’ whatever it is steals them away ain’t never been apprehended. Years back, when I was young, I found one of them. She was dead. All laid out on a table, with grasses an’ such all around. When I saw her poor face, well son, ma guts turned over; to see her lying there so bruised and dirty. Such a pale, pretty little thing.”
He glanced over towards Lou, but she immediately looked away.
“The killer was gonna burn the place down, an’ her body an’ all the evidence with it. Put wood and dried grass against the walls.”
“Walls? A building? Wait, was it here? Did you find the body here?”
“No. No. In a shack, down the river aways. Near some falls.”
“He took the girl there? Mr Spielman, could you take me there?”
“No, son. That was years ago. That shack’s most likely an overgrown heap of rotten timber by now.”
“I don’t care. Take me there. Please.”
“Can’t do that, son.”
“Why the hell not?”
Jeff had lost patience with Spielman. He pushed himself to his feet and the old man winced as the sudden movement jolted his injured arm.
Rita moved to calm Jeff, her hand grasping his.
“He’s an old man. And he’s hurt,” she whispered.
She turned to Spielman.
“Mr Spielman, could you maybe draw us a map?”
Spielman’s frown deepened.
“I could do that, ma’am, but don’t rightly know that I should. There’s evil there.”
“What d’you mean? Does someone live there?”
“No. But, like I said, ma’am, this ain’t necessarily a someone.”
Rita thoughtfully regarded the old man. His lined face gave little away. It could be, she supposed, that he was simply senile or delusional; all his stories could yet turn out to be no more than a futile waste of time, diverting them from their search. More worryingly, there was also the possibility that Spielman was neither confused nor unbalanced, but scheming; it was possible that he did, after all, have something to do with the children’s disappearance and was now intentionally misleading their parents.
But what else did they have to go on?
“Please draw us the map anyway, Mr Spielman. We’ve got no idea where the kids might be and they’ve been out in the cold and the dark for over an hour already.”
Spielman looked uncomfortable.
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Please, Mr Spielman, think of the children. I’m begging you, please.”
With great reluctance, Spielman nodded and Rita hurried out to the reception desk to get some paper and a pen.
Bill and Annie were coming back down the stairs. Bill was now in dry clothes, but his face was as pained as before.
“Rita, is everyone ready to go back out?”
“Almost. Spielman’s drawing us a map of a possible place where the kids might be... taking shelter.”
Sudden hope lit Bill’s face.
“A shelter? Where?”
“A shack, somewhere down river.”
Bill and Annie exchanged looks. The optimism faltered and Annie’s lower lip began to tremble.
“Rita,” Bill explained wearily, “the banks of the river are lethal. The rocks are steep and they’re covered in sheet ice. I had a lamp but I fell in. And the water’s brutal. It’s freezing.”
Rita understood what Bill was saying; if the kids had wandered off along the river, without lights, they were likely to have fallen just as he had. And, once in the icy water, small children would not have survived.
She looked into Bill’s eyes and saw the light there fading as the hope of finding his children died. He looked suddenly old and broken. But still he hugged Annie to him, feigning strength and hope, for her sake.
Rita touched his arm. There were no words.
As he struggled to draw the map, Spielman began to recount his story. He looked at the faces surrounding him. He had their full attention.
“It started back in the fifties, 1957, the poor girl I found and four kiddies, all dead, and they never did find the killer.”
For a moment no one made a sound.
The attentive hush was abruptly interrupted by Neil.
“That’s not quite true, is it Spielman?”
Neil’s voice betrayed no emotion. It was the tone he employed to bewilder trial witnesses into unwarranted and damaging self-contradiction. Here, in the hushed lounge, it worked to good effect on Spielman; the old man looked completely baffled. Intrigued faces turned from Neil back to Spielman.
Spielman searched Neil’s face.
“What yuh tryin’ to say, son? Yuh sayin’ I’m a liar?”
“Heaven forfend,” Neil affected hurt and surprise, “No, I’m saying only that you’re mistaken. The killings didn’t start in 1957. A young woman was killed here, back in 1946. Isn’t that right?”
“I...I don’t know...I...Oh yeah, I remember now: there was a body found, a woman, near the edge of the forest. But that weren’t nothin’ to do with this. Heck, there weren’t no kids missin’ an’ no one knew who she was, or where she come from. Most likely she was a drifter, just passing through; there was a lotta folks on the road back then, looking for work, or just a place to be, after the war. An’ anyhow, no one knew for sure if she’d even bin killed or just died natural: there weren’t a whole lot left of her when they found her. I remember there’d been a bad winter that year. Most likely she just had enough an’ up and died, poor girl. But, how the heck d’you know about her, son?”
“I know because, instead of blindly charging off into the night like these others, I have spent the last hour in the hotel office. There’s all sorts of interesting reading in the filing cabinets there: newspaper cuttings, police reports, copies of witness statements.”
Rita looked anxious.
“What are you saying Neil?”
She backed away from Spielman.
“Does he have something to do with all of this?”
“No,” Neil gave Spielman a reptilian smile, which did nothing to reassure the old man, “Spielman here is mentioned, in 1957, but only as the discoverer of the remains of one Suzie Bower.”
“She was the girl I told you about. Lyin’ on the table, with the grasses...such a pretty thing. Shook me up real bad,” Spielman looked wistful, lost for a moment in his past, “Was years ’fore I could go back to that part of the forest.”
“Please, Mr Spielman,” Rita urged, “the map.”
Suddenly Jeff spoke up.
“Dave! Where’s Dave? Has anyone seen him?”
They all exchanged panicked glances and shook their heads.
“He was searching alone,” said Annie, “Oh God, Bill, something’s happened to him now. Oh God.”
But Bill was too numbed at the loss of his children to register any additional concern.
Suddenly Annie shrieked.
“Perhaps he’s found the kids!”.
“If he had, he’d have brought them back, Annie.”
“Maybe he can’t because...because he’s injured or he needs help or something. Come on, Bill, we’ve got to find him.”
Bill shook his head.
“Bill, come on!” Annie was now tugging at his arm, crying, trying to shake off his dazed inactivity. She turned to Jeff for support, “Tell him, Jeff, tell him we’ve got to find Dave.”
Jeff answered, but his voice was flat. Like Bill, he was close to despair.
“Annie, Dave was searching in a completely different direction to where Spielman’s map says this shack is. We can’t search in both directions; look what happened when we split up before.”
“Jeff, we have to split up. We don’t know for a fact that the kids are in the shack; they could just as likely be with Dave. If we split up into two groups, no one will be on their own this time. Please Jeff, all of you, come on, let’s get back out there.”
“I’m going to the shack.”
Bill had spoken and, in the short silence that followed, Annie looked uncertain.
“Honey,” she urged, “they could be with Dave.”
“I’m going to the shack,” he repeated.
“Annie,” said Rita, “why don’t you go to the shack with Bill? We’ll look for Dave. Jeff, honey, is that OK with you?”
Jeff was quiet a moment.
“I hope Dave’s OK, Ree, but I’m going to the shack with Bill. I don’t know why, but I’ve just got this feeling the kids are there.”
Rita could see that Jeff’s slender hope for his daughter lay in this conviction that she was at the shack. Without this belief, he would despair. Jeff had to go to the shack with Annie and Bill.
Looking around her at the worried faces, Rita decided to take charge.
“OK Jeff, you should go to the shack. Lou, what do you want to do?”
“I’m going to the shack.”
Lou’s decisiveness surprised everyone, as she sat grim faced but otherwise impassive.
“You can’t search for Dave alone,” said Jeff, suddenly frightened for Rita.
“Don’t worry.” Rita sounded confident, “Neil will be coming with me.”
“Odd that I don’t recall volunteering. I’m staying right here, thank you.”
Rita moved towards Neil with the coldest look in her dark eyes.
“If you don’t move your sorry ass to come help me find Dave,” she hissed, “then I will make it my business to see that your reputation, such as it is, is totally destroyed when we make it back to civilisation. There’s gonna be a whole heap of media interest and I will tell everyone, in lurid detail, what a low-life piece of crap you really are. I will tell them all that you chose to abandon young children, and even your own partner, because you don’t give a shit about anyone but yourself.”
“My dear,” said Neil feigning a smile, “you forget that I’m a lawyer. That rant would undoubtedly count as a glowing endorsement. I’d be busier than ever.”
Smiling his humourless smile, he cast a look around the assembled group, but no one returned the smile. No one was even remotely amused. It was clear that they would no longer tolerate his selfishness. Seeing this, Neil resigned himself to the inevitable. He had no choice.
“So that’s how it is, is it? Well don’t expect any heroics. First sign of trouble and you’re on your own.”
Jeff was understandably anxious that Rita would have to rely on Neil.
“Phil?” he asked, “Would you go with Rita and Neil?”
Phil glanced across the room at Lou. She said nothing, but her sullen face made her feelings clear, even to Phil. Lou would be happy to see him choose any direction and just kept on walking, if it took him away from her. Relieved to have an excuse to be apart from her, Phil agreed to accompany Rita and Neil. That eased Jeff’s mind a little, but still he leant forward, his head close to Neil’s.
“If you do anything to harm Ree,” he whispered, “or if you abandon her out there, believe me, you won’t have to worry about any killer; I’ll kill you myself.”
It sounded ludicrously melodramatic and Neil was tempted to sneer but, as he drew his head back, he caught the fierce intensity of hatred in Jeff’s eyes and stopped dead. He was startled, realising that this was a very real threat of harm, a threat which, coming from Jeff, was further heightened by its unexpectedness. Neil had long been aware of the antagonism and intellectual rivalry that Jeff felt towards him, but had dismissed it as laughable nonsense. He had very poor regard for Jeff’s abilities, and it amused him to taunt and bait him, as he had earlier. But the Jeff he had goaded into shouting at him, before the search, had been hot-headed and impulsive; this Jeff was coldly determined and deliberate. There was icy resolve in the eyes of the usually ineffectual college professor.
Neil swallowed hard and struggled to regain his composure.
“I said I’d go, didn’t I? Threats are not necessary.”
Rita looked at him in disbelief.
“Oh no? I think they are. You’d happily stay here and leave Dave and the kids out there to face God knows what. Self-interest is your only motivation for anything, isn’t it Neil?”
Still shaken, Neil merely turned away.
Speilman had collapsed back onto the cushions.
“Think he’ll be OK?” Rita asked.
“I may be old, young lady, but I ain’t deaf. I’ve survived out here in the wilderness since ’fore you were born; I’ll be jus’ fine. Go find your kids, but please,” he grasped Rita’s hand, “take real good care of yourselves. There is somethin’ evil out there.”
With that, the old man eased back into the cushions, his injury clearly causing him some pain. The friends looked unsure. Something evil? What had the old man meant by that? They exchanged nervous glances.
“Come on,” Annie urged them, “he’ll be OK. Let’s get back out there.”
“Wait one second,” it was Rita, “I have an idea.”
She ran to the reception desk and began to rummage around its shelves.
“Honey, what are you doing?”
“Help me look, Jeff. There must be some here.”
“Some what?”
“Marker pens, or scotch tape, or string: something to mark the trees so we can find our way back. Once we’re deep in the trees we can’t see the lights of the hotel.”
Without looking up, Rita continued to turn out boxes and rifle through drawers.
“Yes!” she shouted triumphantly, “Here!”
She jumped back up, her face a manic smile. Bemused faces stared back at her. In the frightened quiet of the room she was suddenly conscious of how inappropriate her smile must seem. Apologetically, her face reddening, she held up two reels of tape and a ball of string.
As everyone readied themselves to return to the search, Jeff and Rita kissed goodbye and, for both, this parting was painful. Jeff was torn between his near certainty that he would find Emma in the shack, and the small but persistent concern that he could in fact be wasting precious time, following directions supplied by a crazy old man who seemed obsessed with evil ‘somethings’ out in the forest. Jeff didn’t want to be parted from Rita but, if Spielman’s ramblings proved to be unreliable, then she might be the one to find Emma. He and Rita had to separate; time was slipping relentlessly away from them, and with every passing minute the chances of Emma surviving must surely be dwindling to nothing.
Rita, for her part, was anxious not for herself, nor even primarily for Emma, but for Jeff. Would he be able to cope without her, out there in the forest? She knew how desperate he was and her impulse was to be with him, to comfort him, should the worst happen. She wondered briefly why it was that she didn’t share his certainty that Emma was in the shack. He, Bill and Lou all seemed so sure. Was it because she could never have the same emotional link to any of the children as did their own parents? Rita wanted to find Emma, as she also wanted to find Lisa, Mikey, Ethan and Laura. But, looking around, she could plainly see the terrible difference of degree between her need and that being endured by the children’s parents, whose faces were almost unrecognisable from the laughing, carefree smiles of the morning’s snowball fights.
Whatever the reason, Rita didn’t share their conviction that the kids would be in the shack, nor could she shake off her concern for Dave. He might be hurt or lost, but he could yet be key to finding the children; he might have caught sight of them, or found some evidence of them. There was even the slim chance that, as Annie hoped, he might already have found them. Rita looked across at Annie, now pulling on her warm clothing and opening the door to the icy dark of the clearing. Why was it that Annie was not convinced, as the others were, that the children were in the shack? Surely, as their mother, Annie was every bit as devoted to Lisa and Mikey as was Bill? Why, like Rita herself, was Annie so hopeful that Dave held the key?
It was time to go.
Rita hastily dismissed her musings. Maybe Annie’s very different belief was proof that there was no special parental link to the missing children. Maybe everyone in the room was simply clutching at a possibility, any possibility; each desperate to make their hope a reality, armed only with the force of their own conviction.