Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Emma
By the time we turned off the main road and onto the last stretch of mountain, my phone had been out of service for nearly an hour and the only light outside the truck came from the high beams reflecting off frost-glazed trees.
We’d passed a handful of houses on the way up, each one more fortress-like than the last, with thick stone chimneys and fences sunk deep in the dirt.
Now there were just pines, black and glossy, crowding in until even the moon disappeared.
Daniel’s truck grumbled under us as it climbed, all torque and stubbornness.
The heater rattled in protest, blowing air that was technically warmer than the outside but did little for my toes.
Beth had her feet tucked up under her on the bench seat, wedged between me and the door, and she’d wrapped herself in a pashmina scarf the color of dill.
It matched nothing she wore and still managed to suit her.
Daniel drove with both hands, knuckles white on the steering wheel.
He looked straight ahead, scanning the road and every empty turnout like he expected a moose or, more likely, something worse to bolt out in front of us.
Occasionally he’d reach out to adjust the radio, then drop his hand again, as if even static would be an intrusion up here.
In the rearview, I caught a glimpse of Henry. He hunched in the middle of the backseat, knees up, jacket zipped all the way to his chin. His eyes shifted back and forth, watching the snowfields flicker by. Every so often he’d murmur something to himself, a tiny tremor in the background.
After a while, the road split into a barely paved tongue that curved uphill. Daniel slowed to a crawl, squinting at the mailbox numbers, then glanced over his shoulder. “This is it, right? 448?”
Henry checked a folded sticky note in his palm, then nodded. “It’s a gravel drive. You have to go almost a quarter mile before you can see the house from the road. They built it that way on purpose.” His voice sounded tinny, as if he’d been breathing cold air for too long.
“‘They’ being Alice’s grandmother?” Beth asked, twisting around to look at him. “I thought she was kind of a recluse, but this is some next-level Unabomber action.”
Henry smirked at that, then fidgeted with his zipper.
“She doesn’t do people, given the fact that her powers are similar to Alice’s.
It makes her sensitive. She says when people come around, it’s like having a migraine but in your chest.” He paused, searching for a better way to say it, then gave up.
“I’ve been here before. Alice and I would drive up supplies, or help winterize the place, but we always had to call ahead. Otherwise she’d just ignore us.”
“Sounds like a real delight,” Daniel said, not unkindly. He steered onto the gravel, the tires crunching loudly. “Did Alice say anything about her grandmother being sick? Or in danger?”
“No.” Henry bit his lip, thinking. “I don’t know.” He slumped, sinking into his parka like it might swallow him.
The drive felt even longer than it probably was, every curve the same and every tree a repeating pattern. Daniel hunched forward, squinting at the darkness.
“Let’s take bets,” Beth whispered in my ear. “What’s the creepiest thing we’ll find tonight? I call upside-down crucifix in the master bedroom.”
“Dead moose in the pool,” I whispered back, trying not to smile. “If there’s a pool.”
She grinned, her teeth bright in the gloom. “Haunted pool, then.”
Daniel navigated one last turn, and a shape emerged in the trees ahead. A low-slung log cabin, darker than the surrounding pines, with a single porch lamp throwing a jaundiced glow onto the steps. He pulled the truck as close as possible, killed the engine, and the silence settled in.
The woods made my skin prickle. Even inside the cab, I had the sensation of being watched, though every window reflected only our own faces. Daniel checked the mirrors, then exhaled a long, steam-white breath.
“All right,” he said, turning to Henry. “What do we need to know about the layout?”
Henry blinked, caught off guard. “Um. There’s a mudroom, then the kitchen to the right, bedrooms down a short hall. The living room has a big woodstove, but the rest is electric. There’s a basement, but you have to go through a trapdoor in the pantry.”
The porch light flickered as we climbed out. The air stung the inside of my nose and tasted clean, with a bite of cedar and old smoke. I pulled my jacket tighter and peered into the shadowed tree line, half-expecting a face to materialize among the branches.
Daniel unloaded a gear bag from the truck bed, then reached in and produced a set of flashlights. He handed them out, keeping the largest for himself. “Everyone sticks together. Nobody wanders off alone. Got it?”
“Got it,” Henry said, though his jaw clenched and unclenched in a nervous rhythm.
Beth twirled her flashlight, trying to lighten the mood. “Are we the Scooby gang, or the Goonies? I need to know who I’m supposed to be.”
“Velma,” I said, as soon as the question left her lips. “You’re always Velma.”
Beth sniffed, pretending offense, but even she couldn’t keep a straight face for long. “Nerd solidarity.”
The porch steps groaned under our weight. Henry led the way, shoulders hunched, and reached for the knob. Then he hesitated. “She never leaves the door unlocked,” he whispered, as if the house might overhear.
Daniel stepped forward, brushed past Henry, and tested the knob.
It turned with almost no resistance. The door itself, however, stuck in the frame until Daniel leaned into it, and when it finally gave the bang was loud enough to spook a pair of birds from the nearby birches. The interior yawned black and cold.
Daniel swept the entryway with his flashlight, tried the light switch, but nothing happened, then motioned us inside. The air was five degrees colder than outside, with a sticky, chemical note that made me wrinkle my nose. Maybe mothballs. Maybe something worse.
The mudroom was a concrete-floored antechamber with racks of heavy boots and parkas, all in muted earth tones. Nobody had bothered to clean up tracked-in pine needles or the odd dead beetle. There were only three sets of boots by the wall, not counting the ones on our feet.
“Kitchen’s this way,” Henry whispered, and his beam bobbed down a narrow hallway lined with taxidermized fish and landscapes painted in blues and greens. The kitchen opened up at the end, a square of Formica and pine with an ancient, battered table at the center.
Nothing. No coffee mugs, no crumpled napkins, no sign of a meal or recent use. The digital clock on the oven blinked 12:00. The fridge hummed, but the light inside never came on when I tugged the door open.
“Weird.” Beth poked her head around the corner.
Daniel tested the faucet. A hiss, then a metallic cough, then nothing. “Pipes are frozen,” he said. “No electricity, no water. But the truck in the garage is here, so they didn’t drive anywhere.”
That detail made the back of my neck tighten. “Maybe they walked?”
Henry shook his head. “Alice’s grandmother doesn’t walk well. She uses a cane, and on bad days she barely makes it to the mailbox.” He ran a hand through his hair, the static lifting it in black strands. “Something’s wrong.”
The hallway to the living room was carpeted with a brown shag that had to date back to the early eighties.
At the end stood a stone fireplace, gray and massive, the hearth still heaped with half-burned logs.
Something must have shifted when the house settled, because the fire screen now hung half off its hook.
Daniel righted it, then poked at the ashes with the toe of his boot.
“Cold,” he muttered. He glanced at the windows, each one crusted with frost and sealed with heavy curtains.
I swept the living room with my flashlight. Most of the surfaces were tidy, but a coat lay on the couch, and next to it, a teacup with an inch of cold liquid inside.
“Henry, do you remember what she was wearing last time you saw her?” I called.
He thought. “Sweatpants, a flannel shirt, slippers. Why?”
I gestured at the coat. Henry ran over and picked it up. “This is Alice’s.”
“Could she have left it up here when visiting her grandmother before, or is it new?”
Henry looked frustrated. “Either is possible, but I don’t think it’d be on the couch still if it was old.”
“Good point.” I released a slow breath. “So she was here.”
“That’s good, at least. It means we’re on the right track,” Beth said, trying to sound cheery, and failing.
I eyed the coat. “If she left, she didn’t bundle up. There’s no way she’d go out in this weather without her coat.”
Daniel grunted, moving to the back of the house. We followed, staying close. He stopped at the last door on the left and listened. I braced myself for the worst. A body, or at least a scene that would haunt my dreams for years.
But the room was empty. Just a bed, made up tight, a few pill bottles on the nightstand, and a wall of books lined up. No evidence of a struggle. No blood. Not even a note.
Daniel doubled back to the mudroom, opened the door to the garage, and flipped the light switch. Nothing. The truck Henry mentioned sat inside, layered with dust and half-blocked by sacks of bird seed. No fresh footprints. No sign that anyone had even opened the garage in weeks.
Back in the kitchen, Daniel stared at the silent oven clock, lips pursed. “We need to call this in.”
“No signal,” Beth reminded him, gesturing at her phone.
He nodded, then gestured for us to sit. “First things first. We make a fire, get the place warm, and figure out our next move. Emma, help me with the woodpile?”
I followed him out onto the porch, where the air had turned sharp enough to bite. He hefted two logs in each arm, then nodded at the darkness. “You see anything weird?”
I shook my head. “No. But it doesn’t feel right, does it?”
He frowned. “I’m not picking up anything right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe. Too many variables.”
“And her jacket?” I asked.
He nodded. “She was here. Recently. We’re on the right path.”
“Now, we just need to find her.”
We headed back inside. Both of us tense. Something was definitely wrong. Alice had been here, but what had happened to her? It was like she just vanished.
Henry was slumped in a chair, hands shaking. “I know something happened. I just know it.”
Daniel set a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s rule out all the normal stuff before we panic. Is there a landline?”
“No,” Henry said.
“We’ll need to drive down the road, see if any of the neighbors have a phone we can use,” Daniel said.
Beth looked up. “And if we run into whatever scared them off in the first place?”
Daniel smiled, a small, tight thing that made his cheeks dimple. “Then we improvise.”
Henry looked like he might be sick. “If Alice is out there—”
“She’s resourceful,” I said, forcing a confidence I didn’t feel.
He looked at me, eyes rimmed with red, and nodded. “Yeah.”
Beth drifted over to me, nudging my hip with hers. “So, what are we thinking? Should I start preparing for the chainsaw-wielding psycho?”
“Maybe,” Daniel said, lowering himself onto the couch. “If I had to guess, there’s a person responsible for Alice and her grandmother being missing. Someone who knew how to get close without making noise. Someone who knows the area.”
“Why not a bear or just some natural thing? The woods are dangerous, after all,” Beth said.
“I guess that’s possible too, but that’s not what my gut is saying.” Daniel’s eyes glinted, and for a moment, I saw the bear behind them. The patience, the calculation, the slow, deliberate way he took in every detail.
We sat for a while in the orange wash of candlelight. Henry’s leg bounced so hard it shook the table. The wind picked up, rattling the porch rail. Somewhere out in the woods, a branch cracked, then fell silent.
I kept thinking about the unfinished teacup, the coat on the couch, the cold fireplace. All the little things that said, we were here. And then we weren’t.
Eventually, Daniel stood. “Okay. We have a choice here. Go find some way to make a call or–”
“No,” Henry said, his expression determined. “We need to look for her. She’s here. Somewhere.”
Daniel sighed. “Then, the second option. I can try to pick up their scent. I’ll go bear and circle the house, see what turns up. The rest of you stay put. If I’m not back in ten, lock the door.”
Henry stood, eager for anything that wasn’t just sitting and waiting. “I’ll come with you.”
Daniel frowned but didn’t argue. “Fine. But you stay close. If anything looks off, you run back here. Got it?”
“Got it,” Henry said.
Beth and I followed them outside where Daniel quickly shifted. He walked around the side of the house with Henry following behind. After a few minutes, Henry came running back. “Come on,” Henry called in a loud whisper. “He’s got her scent!”