Abandon

Isaiah veered off the main trail.

They climbed narrow switchbacks up the hillside.

Soon the procession was four hundred feet above the canyon floor, scrambling over scree. Through the gap between the mountains, Abigail walked so close to her father that the steel toes of her Asolo boots occasionally banged into his heels. She thought she heard the trickle of running water—a stream, a spring perhaps.

. . .

Another half mile and they’d come to the edge of a lake. It stood mostly unfrozen, the wind pushing ripples that lapped at the fragile ice extending out a foot from the bank. Isaiah had started in the direction that would take them around the north side when Lawrence said, “That’s not the best route.” Isaiah stopped, looked back. “There’s a rock glacier on that end, a quarter mile ahead. Drops right into the lake. It’s steep. Very dangerous. Our party had a near miss yesterday with this type of situation.”

“You know I trust you, Larry, but do you know why?”

“No. No, sir.”

“Because I know that you know I will f**k your ass up if you give me bad information.”

They followed the south shore around Emerald Lake. Deep in the basin, the wind had died. Snow fell vertically again, and aside from the whisper of its collection, there was no sound save for the labored breathing of the party and the squeak of boots in the inch of new snow. Across the lake lay the rock glacier—boulders shifting, smashing into one another. From several hundred yards away, their collisions sounded like small-caliber gunshots.

Stu yelled suddenly from behind, “Hey, what’s . . . what was that? You see that?”

Everyone stopped.

“What you got?” Isaiah said, reaching for his machine pistol.

“I saw a light.”

“Where? I don’t see anything.”

“Straight ahead.” As Abigail stared into the distance, she didn’t see a light either, only the hulking shadow of Emerald House. “I’m telling you, Isaiah, it didn’t last long, but this light or candle, whatever it was, just winked on and off.”

“What floor was it on?”

“I don’t know. It happened so fast.”

“Anyone else see this light?” No one answered. “Larry? You the expert.”

“No one’s lived there in a hundred and sixteen years.”

“I’m just telling you what I saw,” Stu said. “Maybe I’m a little—”

“Fucked-up is what. You got every other day of your life to be a drunk motherfucker. I need you to hold your shit together tonight. You do that for me?”

“Yeah, Isaiah. Sorry.”

Abigail filled with apprehension as she walked the last hundred yards to Emerald House. She’d never seen anything like it—this rambling edifice enveloped in darkness and silence and ruin, the corpse of what it had once been.

Wet snow clung to the facade. Windows busted out. Shingles peeled off. Four-story chimneys toppled into piles of rock. The north wing was a shambles but intact, its southern counterpart long since collapsed on itself, the winter snows crushing it through the years, until all that remained was the foundation and a small mountain of demolished framework.

Isaiah followed the stone pathway up to the portico, passing between the massive rotting Douglas fir trunks. Yellow notices had been stapled to the oak doors—Forest Service warnings regarding the instability of Emerald House, threatening all trespassers with aggressive prosecution. A feeble attempt had been made to chain the iron handles together.

Isaiah called out, “Bolt cutter,” and Stu came forward with his pack, unzipped it, and produced the requested tool. One easy snip and the chain fell onto the sandstone. Isaiah grabbed the door handles, hesitated. “Larry,” he called out. “It would be awfully tragic if some heavy shit was to fall on my head. Why don’t you come do the honors?”

Abigail watched her father walk under the portico.

“Your show now,” Isaiah said as Lawrence pushed open the doors and led the way inside.

TWENTY-FOUR

Jesus, this place is huge.” Isaiah let the beam of his headlamp pass through the foyer. “My light doesn’t even reach the far end. We safe in here, Lar?”

“No, but this is the most stable part of Packer’s mansion.”

The foyer smelled dank, redolent of mildew and wet wood. From her spot in line, Abigail shone her light on the cracked marble floor, saw piles of scat, puddles of ice. Through a hole in the roof, snowflakes drifted down. She removed one of her mittens, let her fingertips graze the stone wall—cold and soft and wet, carpeted in dead lichen.

“There’s a journal in my pack,” Lawrence said. “I need to see it.”

Isaiah unzipped it, pulled out a black spiral-bound notebook. As Lawrence took it and sat down on the cascading staircase, Abigail couldn’t stop herself. “What’s going on here, Lawrence?”

Isaiah grinned. “You don’t know?” He laughed, his southern-tinged voice reverberating through the foyer. “Nice, Larry. Very nice. More I get to know you, more I like you.”

When Abigail aimed her light in her father’s face, she recognized the guilt and the circuit closed, connecting on some primordial level to that girl who still inhabited her, and a subconscious memory, twenty-six years old, of that exact look of shame when her daddy had slipped into her bedroom one night to say that he had to go away.

“What have you done?”

“I’m sorry, Abby. I’m so sorry.”

“For what? Tell me.” Isaiah’s hand passed through the beam of light. She fell. The darkness tingled. Emmett started forward, but his nose ran into the barrel of Stu’s machine pistol. He held up his hands, retreated.

Isaiah knelt down, grabbed Abigail’s ponytail, lifting her head so their eyes met. “My man’s got some serious shit to attend to. Next time, the fist will be closed. You’ll lose teeth. Now get the f**k up.” He jerked her by her hair, pulling her to her feet. “And shut the f**k up.”

“That isn’t necessary,” Lawrence said, his voice trembling.

“Tend to your notebook,” Stu warned.

Abigail touched her cheek. The bruise burned.

“All right, Lar. Where we going?”

“I’m not a hundred percent sure, since I haven’t actually seen it. This is all theoretical, based on my research. I was gonna try to find it on this expedition.”

“You bullshitin me, Larry? Don’t make me—”