An Unwanted Guest

The front door of the hotel opens again, and Gwen barely discerns, in the faint light of the open door, Lauren and Ian coming out to join them. Gwen thinks of Henry and Beverly sitting alone in cold animosity back in the lobby. What if something happens to them? But she doesn’t really care. They’re not her problem – her first duty is to help Riley. The killer might be out here somewhere and Riley might run right into his arms. She turns away from the hotel and looks out into the darkness.

‘Riley!’ Gwen screams. They all hold still, ears cocked.

But all they can hear is the lashing of the trees in the wind.

‘We should spread out,’ Bradley says. He moves off to her right; James moves off to her left.

Gwen moves forward over the ice, towards the drive, the tree line looming to the right. She’s slipping and falling, her ungloved hands freezing from contact with the icy ground. Where did Riley go?

She can’t see anyone any more. They’re there, but they’ve all slipped away again into the darkness. The trees and shrubs are menacing shapes in the dark. We have to find her, Gwen thinks, as she slides precariously forward.

Chapter Twenty-seven

DAVID’S HEART IS pounding so loudly, his breath coming in such short, loud rasps, that he can’t hear anything over his own fear. He feels his way, touching the wall of the ground-floor hall with his right hand as he makes his way to the door of the woodshed. When he reaches it, he takes a deep breath and pushes the door open. He curses himself again for not having a light.

‘Matthew?’ he says. ‘Are you there?’ He’s met with absolute silence. And he can’t see a thing.

Riley runs wildly into the cold, icy dark. The terrible fear has taken over, driving her. She runs and slides, falls and picks herself up again, instinctively searching for somewhere to hide, some low place where she can crouch unseen. She needs to take cover. She senses the forest ahead of her and heads for it. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she knows to stay hidden, not to make a sound. She reaches the edge of the forest and crawls into some brush. She crouches on the ground, turning herself into a tight ball. She squeezes her eyes shut and rocks back and forth, her hands over her ears, trying to block out everything.

Gwen has never been so frightened in her life.

There’s some comfort in knowing that the others are out here with her, even if she can’t see them. It’s like she’s alone in a dark void. She can’t bear to think about David, what the gunshots might mean. Is someone else dead? She wonders if soon there will be no one left at all. She wants to live, but she hopes that if she has to die, she isn’t the last one. She doesn’t think she could bear it. She is defenceless. She thinks of the small, sharp letter opener that had been lying on the writing desk in their room. She wishes she had it with her now.

She keeps going, past the lawn to the drive, every footstep treacherous on the ice. ‘Riley!’ she calls. ‘Where are you?’ She takes a few more steps down the drive and stops to listen. She can see nothing, hears nothing ahead of her. How she wishes she had a torch! Suddenly she hears a wild howling. Coyotes, she thinks. Or wolves. She stops in her tracks, overwhelmed with terror. How has it come to this?

She suddenly realizes that she can’t hear anyone else. ‘Bradley?’ she calls urgently. But Bradley doesn’t answer. No one answers. Perhaps they can’t hear her over the furiously gusting wind. Gwen’s heart pounds frantically; she can hardly breathe. She turns around, looks back towards the hotel, where she last heard the others. ‘Bradley? Lauren?’ she cries again, more loudly, her voice infected with panic. But no one answers. She can’t think. She is all alone.

Gwen stops moving. She doesn’t know where anyone else is, whether there’s a killer out here. There’s a crushing pain in her chest.

She thinks she hears a sound like something falling heavily, but she can’t tell where it’s coming from. With the darkness like a void and the wind swirling around her, everything is distorted; she doesn’t trust her senses. For a moment, she does nothing. She doesn’t move, for how long she doesn’t know. She has lost all sense of time. Maybe a minute, maybe ten. She’s so frightened, so cold, that she doesn’t think she can move. She has to wait for the ache in her ribs to subside.

She begins to feel her way back towards the hotel, body low, arms outstretched, looking for Bradley or James, Lauren or Ian – anyone who can make her feel less alone. Less terrified. Even as she does so she’s aware that she’s abandoning Riley to her fate. Riley, her friend, who is afraid, and vulnerable, and irrational. Riley, who needs her.

But she doesn’t care. Right now, she can’t think of anyone but herself. She stops for a moment in the dark, trembling violently, listening, convinced now that the killer is nearby, that he has murdered the rest of them without a sound. And then she is fleeing back to the hotel, reckless on the ice, slipping and sobbing, terrified that she will be next. She aims for the hotel, which is hulking in the dark, desperate to get back to the lobby, to the light of the fire.

Alone in the lobby, Henry and his wife sit frozen in silence and fear. He watches her stare into the fire, which is starting to falter. He needs to add another log.

Somewhere out there David is searching for Matthew, who is armed and possibly a killer; Riley and Gwen are outside. He can understand why James and Bradley felt they had to go after the two women, but once they did, he doesn’t see why Lauren and Ian had to go after them, too. He’s angry at them for choosing Riley and Gwen over him and Beverly. Now he and Beverly have been left to fend for themselves. What if the killer comes for them?

He watches his wife carefully. He no longer feels a shred of affection for her. He loves his children, that hasn’t changed. But something about her – something about her fills him with revulsion. He thinks of her flabby white thighs, the veins that run in little maps along her legs. Her breasts that are too heavy. The perpetual look on her face of being fed up. As if life is only to be endured.

But it’s more than that. It’s the way she views him. Overweight family man. A bit of a fool. Someone whose life is mostly over, who will never do anything interesting or exciting again. Just her presence near him, knowing that she believes this about him, makes him hate her. What had she said to him? – It’s just a phase. She diminishes him; she always has. Jilly doesn’t do that. She admires him. She finds him interesting, attractive. She told him she wants to spend the rest of her life with him. She won’t get tired of him, as Beverly says.

His wife doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life with him, but she would. If this hadn’t happened. All she thinks about is duty. The tyranny of the shoulds. I should do this, or you should do that. You should be at home more. You should spend more time with the kids. You should try for promotion.

He gets up to stir the fire. He reaches for the poker with his right hand. Oddly, time seems to slow down. He grasps the poker very tight. She’s sitting right there. It would be so easy. There’s no one here to see it. He could run outside after the others, make up some story …

He grips the poker tight.

David feels his way across the woodshed floor, sliding his feet along in case Matthew is there, somewhere, on the floor. He calls his name, but gets no response. He forces himself to get down on his hands and knees and feel around on the sawdust-covered floor for Matthew. He reaches the stump they use for chopping wood, feels its rough surface with frantic hands.

All he finds is the torch.

Riley huddles in the forest, her entire body shaking with fear and cold, reliving some of the worst moments of her life. Memories of victims – screaming, suffering, dying – bear down on her. She presses her hands to her ears to try to block out the noise, but it doesn’t work because the tumult is inside her head. She closes her eyes tight to stop seeing, but it doesn’t help, because the images are in her mind’s eye.