by Riley Sager
“You’re sick,” Charlie says, shifting tones, hoping sympathy will soften Marge.
It doesn’t. Marge grunts out a single, bitter laugh and says, “No shit.”
“Cancer?”
“Stage four.”
“How long do you have?” Charlie says.
“The doctor says weeks, maybe. Two months, if I’m lucky. As if any of this is lucky.”
Despite being at what Charlie assumes to be their final destination, Marge makes no move to leave the car. Charlie hopes it means she’s having second thoughts about doing whatever it is she has planned, possibly because they’re engaged in conversation and not locked in silence. She takes it as a sign to keep talking.
“How long have you had it?”
“A long time, apparently,” Marge says. “When the doctors caught it is a different story.”
“Is that why you’re doing this? Because you know you don’t have much time left?”
“No,” Marge says. “I’m doing it because I know I can get away with it.”
She throws open the car door and steps outside, taking the satchel but leaving the wig. She then goes to the other side of the car and opens the rear door, aiming the pistol at Charlie’s temple as she slides out.
With the pistol again at Charlie’s back, Marge marches her to the lodge’s entrance—a tall set of mahogany doors inlaid with twin windows of stained glass.
“Nudge it open,” Marge instructs. “It’s already unlocked.”
Charlie uses her shoulder to push the doors open. Beyond them is total darkness.
“Step inside,” Marge says.
Again, Charlie does as she’s told. She knows not to try to put up a fight. Because Marge is right—she can get away with anything she wants. She’s terminally ill. Already sentenced to death.
And if Charlie’s learned anything from the movies, it’s that few things are more dangerous than someone with nothing to lose.
INT. LODGE LOBBY—NIGHT
Inside the lodge, all is dark. Charlie can only see what’s immediately beyond the rectangle of pale moonlight spilling through the open door. Still, she can tell the lobby is as big as the lodge’s exterior suggests. Every footfall on the parquet floor echoes to the ceiling high above.
The whole place reeks of neglect, the odors inside heightened by the darkness. The smell of dust is thick and overpowering. There are other scents, too. Mold. Damp. Traces of animals that have gotten inside. Charlie’s nose twitches. She tries to scratch it, but her range of motion is useless thanks to the rope around her wrists.
Behind her, Marge rustles through the satchel, never pointing the pistol away from Charlie. Eventually, she pulls out a large flashlight and flicks it on. As the light sweeps across the lobby, Charlie catches quick glances of dust-streaked floor, unadorned walls, support timbers vanishing into the gloom above them.
Marge nudges the pistol into Charlie’s back, moving them toward the rear of the lobby. There’s another entrance there—a set of French doors flanked by rows of tall windows. The glass on the French doors is opaque with dirt on both sides. Drapes cover the windows next to the French doors, pulled completely shut, their fabric turned gray and fuzzy by dust. The result is such a scarcity of light that it might as well be another wall.
The area has already been prepared for their arrival. In the glow of the flashlight, Charlie sees a large canvas drop cloth spread over the floor. Atop it sit a wooden chair, a stool, and two kerosene lanterns.
Marge drops the satchel on the floor, does more shuffling through the contents inside, and pulls out a box of matches, which she uses to light the two lanterns. Their combined glow brightens the lobby considerably, revealing a massive space made all the more cavernous by how empty it is. What Charlie assumes had once been filled with armchairs, potted plants, and guests bustling about is now a wide expanse of nothing.
To the right, the front desk sits dust-covered and unused. Behind it are bare patches on the wall where paintings had once hung. A lounge sits to the left, now empty save for an oak bar and emerald-colored lighting fixtures that hang over spaces where tables must have been.
Closer to the back of the lobby, the front desk and lounge give way to wide halls that lead to the lodge’s two wings, one on each side. Charlie tries to look down each one, searching for a means of escape, but she can’t see beyond their entrances. Even with the flickering glow of the lanterns, they’re nothing but tunnels of darkness.
Marge, apparently tired of rifling through the satchel, dumps its remaining contents into a clattering pile on the canvas drop cloth.
There’s the bottle of chloroform, of course, and the rag already used to apply it.
What’s worse are the other items now spread out on the floor.
A knife.
Bigger than the one Charlie had used on Josh.
A carving knife.
Marge removes it from its leather sheath, exposing a wide blade and an edge so sharp it looks like it could slice bone.
She sets it down next to a pair of slip-joint pliers.
Charlie’s body clenches at the sight of them, her muscles sparking with the urge to run.
She doesn’t care that Marge still holds the gun and that running is impossible and that she doesn’t know where to run even if she could.
All Charlie and her twitching body and racing brain care about is getting away.
Now.
Right now.
She makes a break for it as Marge still kneels on the floor, heading toward the nearest exit.
The French doors.
Charlie jackrabbits toward them, hoping they’re unlocked, prepared to smash through them if they’re not. When she slams into them, the doors rattle but don’t open. She rams a shoulder into them. A pane of glass pops out and shatters to the ground outside.
Through the open square it left behind, Charlie sees a stone walkway, a drained swimming pool, lounge chairs stacked like firewood. She doesn’t know if the walkway leads to another part of the lodge, but she doesn’t care. Anywhere is better than here.
Charlie tries to throw herself into the door again, but Marge is upon her before she gets the chance. She tugs on the collar of Charlie’s coat, pulling her backward, yanking her to the floor.
A slap of pain hits Charlie as her head bounces off the canvas-covered floor. White spots float across her vision, obscuring the sight of Marge climbing on top of her, surprisingly strong and shockingly heavy.
Through the white spots, Charlie sees Marge tip the chloroform bottle against the rag before clamping it over her nose and mouth.
More white spots.
Gathering.
Growing.
Soon Charlie can see nothing but white as the chloroform casts its spell. Marge doesn’t keep the cloth over her face long enough to knock her out completely. It only makes her weak. A rag doll being dragged across the floor.
Charlie feels her body being lifted into the chair. More rope is wound around her torso and the back of the chair, holding her in place. The white spots start to fade one by one, like stars at dawn. By the time Charlie can see clearly again, she’s been completely bound to the chair.
Marge stands in front of her, the pistol replaced by the pliers.
Fear spreads like lava in Charlie’s chest.
“Who are you, and why are you doing this?”
“I told you,” Marge says. “We’re here to talk.”
“About what?”
Marge lowers herself onto the stool in front of Charlie. There’s a hardness to her that goes beyond her spindly body. It’s in the set of her jaw and the frown etched on her lips and the darkness of her eyes.
“I want to talk,” she says, “about my granddaughter.”
TWO A.M.
INT. GRAND AM—NIGHT
Driving—honest-to-goodness driving—h
as taken a toll on him. He’s a sweaty, pain-wracked mess by the time he reaches the entrance to the Mountain Oasis Lodge. Sitting in the car next to the sign with the missing “O,” he wants nothing more than a warm bed, a cold beer, and a couple of Extra Strength Tylenol.
He resumes driving because he doesn’t like the situation. Marge told him all she wanted to do with Charlie was talk. Well, you don’t need to bring someone to an abandoned hotel in the Poconos to talk. They could have done that in the diner.
Even if it was easier to talk in another location, there’s no good reason that Charlie’s boyfriend felt the need to surreptitiously follow them there. The Volvo passed the sign a minute ago, going slow, its headlights out to keep Marge from noticing it.
Something else is going on here, and he feels the need to check it out.
He owes it to Charlie.
She wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for his lies and tricks and half-truths. None of which he’s proud of. It was all part of the job. At least, that’s what he told himself when trying to justify it. But the truth is that none of it was kosher. He knew that but ignored it.
Because the job was simple.
That’s what Marge told him when they spoke on the phone. She had called him out of the blue, saying she got his name from a friend whose brother is a cop in Scranton and that he came highly recommended.
“Never let a man get away from me yet,” he said.
“How about a woman?” Marge said.
“Plenty of them have gotten away from me,” he’d said, trying to make a joke about his woeful dating history.
Marge hadn’t found it funny.
“This one’s young. Twenty. She shouldn’t be a problem. You think you can help?”
“I usually only track down fugitives,” he told her. “At the request of law enforcement. What you’re talking about sounds a lot like kidnapping.”
“I prefer to think of it as chaperoning.”
He would have hung up if Marge hadn’t then given her offer. Twenty thousand dollars. Half of it wired to him beforehand with the rest paid upon delivery. God help him, he couldn’t say no to that. Business had been slow the whole summer and his savings account was all dried up. He was a month behind on his most recent car payment and would be short on rent at the end of the month if another job didn’t come his way.
“Give me the details,” he said.
Marge told him about the murder of her granddaughter at the hands of a serial killer, sparing none of the gory details. Stabbed. Tooth pulled. Body dumped in a field.
“I’m never going to see justice done,” she said. “Not while I’m alive. Unless I get to talk to one particular person.”
That person was her granddaughter’s best friend, who had seen the killer but couldn’t recall a single thing about him.
“You think she’s lying?” Josh said.
“I think she just needs someone to jog her memory,” Marge replied.
The trouble, according to her, was that the girl had made herself scarce. She hadn’t come to the funeral, and she no longer answered her phone.
“I need you to find her and bring her to me,” Marge said. “I want to see if she can remember anything that might help find the man who killed my Maddy.”
“Don’t you think that’s a job for the police?”
Marge sniffed. “I’m prepared to give you twenty grand to make that none of your business.”
He agreed, and the rest is history. The job turned out to be not so simple, and Charlie was a problem, albeit one he can’t keep himself from admiring. Now he’s driving over a no trespassing sign into a situation he’s really not physically or mentally prepared for.
Like Charlie’s boyfriend, he cuts the Grand Am’s headlights and lets the wan light of the moon guide him. Not the best idea. When taking the car across a bridge in front of a waterfall, a bolt of pain hits, causing him to swerve close to the wooden guardrail and almost crash into the ravine.
With the bridge behind him, he begins the slow, twisting drive up the hill to the lodge. His body sways with each hairpin turn, the stitches in his side straining. At the top of the hill, he parks the Grand Am just inside the circular drive leading to the front of the lodge and cuts the engine. Both the Cadillac and the Volvo belonging to Charlie’s boyfriend are also there, parked under the portico, no one inside them.
Before leaving the car, he grabs the steak knife Charlie had stabbed him with. It’s sat on the floor of the passenger side the entire drive, still wet with his blood. He wipes it clean with his sweatshirt.
Knife in hand, he gets out of the car, unsure of what will be waiting for him when he enters the lodge.
The only thing he knows is that it’s his fault Charlie’s in this predicament.
And now it’s his job to get her out.
INT. LODGE LOBBY—NIGHT
Charlie stares at Marge, realization bubbling up from the addled depths of her brain. No wonder she thought there was something familiar about the waitress when she first came to their table. Charlie had seen her before tonight. Not in person, but in a photograph. A young looker posing poolside with Bob Hope.
“You’re Mee-Maw,” she says.
“We never had the pleasure of meeting,” Marge says. “But I heard all about you, Charlie. My Maddy talked a lot about you. She said you were a smart cookie. I warned her about that. I told her, ‘Watch out for the smart ones, baby doll. They know how to hurt you.’ And I was right.”
But Charlie wasn’t smart. Not when it came to Maddy. She was devoted. Except for that one time.
And that was all it took.
One slip. One pissy mood. One mistake.
And everything changed.
Now she’s being held hostage by a woman who wants to do God knows what, and all Charlie can think is that she deserves all of it.
“I’m so sorry,” she says.
It’s not a plea. She doesn’t expect three words to give Marge a change of heart. It’s just a simple statement, made with all the sincerity she possesses.
“My granddaughter’s dead,” Marge replies. “Sorry doesn’t mean shit.”
“I loved her, too,” Charlie says.
Marge shakes her head. “Not enough.”
“And Josh—I mean, Jake. Is he related to Maddy, too?”
“Him?” Marge says as she absently scratches her tufted scalp. “He was just someone I hired to get you here. Never laid eyes on him until tonight. He’s not my responsibility.”
She glances at the stain on Charlie’s coat where she had wiped Josh’s blood from her hands. When fresh, it had blended in with the red of the fabric. Now dry, it stands out, dark and incriminating. Seeing it causes Charlie’s stomach to churn.
She stabbed an innocent man.
She likely killed him.
Knowing that she thought it was in self-defense no longer matters.
She is a murderer.
“That coat of yours used to be mine, by the way,” Marge says. “I gave it to Maddy when she turned sixteen. It’s how I knew who you were the moment you walked into the diner.”
Charlie remembers being in the bathroom, watching as Marge checked the coat’s label. At the time, she thought the waitress was looking to see if it could be replaced. Now she knows that Marge was really just confirming her identity.
“You can have it back,” Charlie says, even though it’s the only thing she has to remember Maddy by. “I want you to have it.”
“I’d rather have my granddaughter back,” Marge says. “Do you know what it’s like to bury someone you love, Charlie?”
“Yes.”
Charlie knows it all too well. Those twin caskets. Those side-by-side graves. That double funeral that she was so unequipped to handle that it rewired her brain. Every movie in her mind can be traced back to that horrible moment in time, and no am
ount of little orange pills will change that.
“I thought I did,” Marge says. “I buried my husband, and it hurt like hell. But nothing prepared me for losing Maddy. Other than a doctor and a nurse, I was the first person to hold her. Did she ever tell you that? Her father—that deadbeat—was already out of the picture, so I was there when she was born. She came out a screaming, wriggling mess, but when the nurse put her in my arms, all I saw was her beauty. In a dark world, she was light. Bright and blazing. And then she was snuffed out. Just like that.”
Marge snaps her fingers, and the sound echoes like a gunshot through the cavernous lobby.
“My daughter went through a bad spell. There’s no denying that. She was messed up after Maddy was born, so I took on the burden of raising her. For the first four years of Maddy’s life, I was her mother. And that kind of bond? It never goes away. Ever.”
She grabs the knife and holds it up, bringing it so close that Charlie can see her reflection in the blade.
“When I found out Maddy was dead, it felt like someone had jammed this knife right into my heart and plucked it out. The pain. It was too much.”
Charlie thinks about four days ago. Filling her cupped palm with little white pills. Swallowing them all. Watching Gene Kelly twirl in the rain as her eyelids grew heavy. All the while hoping that it would bring an end to every rotten thing she was feeling.
“I felt that way, too,” she says. “I wanted to die.”
“Well, I am dying,” Marge says. “Whoever first said life’s a bitch, hoo boy, they really nailed it. Life is a bitch. A nasty one. Because that feeling I had? Of wanting to be put out of my misery? That went away the day we buried Maddy. As I watched them lower her into the ground, something in me just snapped. In its place was rage. Like whoever had yanked out my heart had plugged the hole left behind with a hot coal. It burned. And I welcomed the feeling. After we put Maddy in the ground, I looked at my daughter—my only child, who had just buried her only child. I looked at her and vowed that I would make the person responsible pay for what they’d done. I swore that I was going to find who killed my Maddy. I was going to find them and rip a tooth out of their mouth, just like what they did to her. And that tooth would become my most cherished possession because it was proof. Proof that the person who slaughtered my granddaughter got the justice they deserved.”