by Blake Crouch
I walked out to the woodpile I’d chopped in September. It was stacked seven feet high and stretched for twenty feet between two rampike poplars that had been cooked by lightning last spring. The cold stung. My fingers tingled even through the leather gloves.
I gathered an armload of wood as the sun angled through the spruce branches and thawed the forest floor. The thermometer on the front porch read eight above.
As I reached for the door, something snapped behind me. I froze, turned slowly around, scanned the trees. Twenty yards away an enormous bull moose emerged from the spruce thicket, the branches catching in his giant rack. He walked leisurely behind the woodpile, probably headed for the pond.
Inside I placed a handful of kindling on the metal grate and stacked the logs on end around the twigs in a teepee arrangement. Then I balled up several sheets of the St. Elias Echo and stuffed these beneath the grate. There was a hot coal or two left. These ignited the newspaper which in turn lit the kindling and soon the young flames were tonguing the logs, steaming off the latent moisture, boiling the fragrant resin within.
As the quiet pandemonium of the fire filled the cabin, I walked into the kitchen and rinsed the old coffee grounds from the French press. Then I started a pot of water on the gas stove and ground a handful of French roasted coffee beans in the burr mill. While my coffee steeped, filling the cabin with the smokyrich perfume of the beans, I sat down on the hearth and read over the ten pages I’d revised last night. The new book was coming along nicely. It was the first autobiographical piece I’d ever attempted, a work of confession and catharsis, the true story of my fall from successful writer to suspected murderer. Just last night I’d found the perfect title. If I continued working at this pace I’d have this second draft completed by Thanksgiving. And though it’d be a gangly mess, I had all winter—those days of frozen darkness—to shine it up.
It felt good and strange to be writing again, like many many lives ago.
After breakfast I drove my CJ-5 into Haines Junction, a fifteen minute trip down the primitive Borealis Road. On the outskirts of the village I passed through a stand of aspens. They’d shed their leaves a month ago and I wondered if this stretch of forest had then resembled a flake of gold from the air when the saffron leaves were peaked and still hanging from the boughs.
I didn’t need anything from Madley’s Store this week so I parked at the Raven Hotel and started down the empty sidewalk of Kluane Boulevard.
In the summer months the village bustled with tourists. They came for the mountains that swept up out of the forest just five miles west. Ecotourism was the end result of the three inns, five restaurants, two outfitters, art gallery, and numerous First Nations craft stores. But by October, when the days had begun to shorten and fresh snow overspread the high country, the tourists were gone, the inns and most of the restaurants correspondingly closed, and a hundred people, including me, had lost their day jobs for the long winter.
I stopped under the awning of The Lantern. A thin cloudbank had moved in during the last hour, now a vaporous film diluting the flare of the sun. The air smelled like snow and though I hadn’t even seen a forecast I’d have wagered the paycheck I was about to collect that a storm was blowing in from the Pacific.
I entered The Lantern. Julie, the diminutive Aishihik woman who’d opened the restaurant six years ago, was vacuuming the small dining room. This place had the look and feel of the best restaurant in a remote Yukon outpost: the dim lighting, white paper tablecloths, plastic flowers, and opulent wine list—red and white. To work here with a good heart I’d been forced to smother the snob in me.
When Julie saw me standing by the hostess podium she turned off the vacuum cleaner and said, "Your paycheck’s in the back. I’ll get it for you."
She walked through the swinging doors into the kitchen and returned a moment later with my last paycheck of the season.
"What’s going on here tonight?" I asked.
"Lions Club is having a banquet. Could’ve used you, Vince, but since you don’t have a phone it’s a lot easier to call Doug than drive six miles out to your place." She handed me the envelope. "Come see me next spring if you want the job again. You know it’s yours."
"I appreciate that, Julie. I’ll probably see you around this winter."
I went outside and crossed the street. Since it was only 10:30, Bill’s was empty. But the hair and tanning salons (Curl Up & Dye and Tan Your Hide) that sandwiched the diner had customers aplenty.
I stepped into Bill’s and ordered one of his homemade bearclaws and a tall cup of black coffee. Bill was a Floridian who’d moved up to Haines Junction more than twenty-five years ago. I’d heard somewhere that he was a Vietnam vet but he never mentioned the war so I never mentioned it to him. And even though he was an American, he didn’t do the predictable patriotic things most expats did such as flying Old Glory and exploding fireworks on the Fourth of July. In fact the only time I even heard him reference his native country occurred last winter. Something scandalous had happened in Washington and even the locals up here were intrigued. The Champagne man who owned the ATV and snowmobile dealership just down the street had asked Bill what he thought of the state of affairs in his country.
Bill had been wiping down the counter but he stopped and stared at the man sitting on the stool before him. With his wooly white beard and scarred face, Bill bore the likeness of a jaded Santa Claus.
"I didn’t move into heaven to keep tabs on hell," he said. Then Bill slammed his fists on the counter and grabbed everyone’s attention. I’d been sitting alone in a booth, working on a bowl of black bear chili. "Listen up!" Bill hollered. "If you want to discuss current events in the United States, do it elsewhere. I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to listen to it in my diner."
But on this quiet morning Bill was friendly and sedate. Bach filled his diner and I noticed that he’d been writing in a journal.
He handed over my change and asked me whether I reckoned it was going to snow. I told him I hoped so and he smiled, said he did too.
I sometimes wondered if Bill suspected me. There was this kindred energy whenever we locked eyes. But I didn’t worry about Bill. Different circumstances might have guided us to Haines Junction but we both desired the same thing. And we were getting it too. I think we sensed the repose in one another.
Gathering my cup of coffee and pastry, I left Bill’s and headed toward the last building on this side of the street, a two-story structure that more resembled a ski lodge than a public library. But it was appropriate architecture for this bucolic community.
As I walked the clouds continued to thicken.
It grew cold and still.
I wanted to be home before the snow began to fall.
The first floor of the library comprised a book collection that was almost endearing in its degree of deficiency. But I hadn’t come to check out books.
I passed by the front desk and climbed the spiral staircase to the second floor which consisted of a study room, the periodical archives, and a computer lab that provided the only dial-up internet access in all of Haines Junction.
I entered the lab and sat down at one of the three unoccupied workstations.
The connection was laggard.
I unwrapped my warm bearclaw and pried the plastic top from my cup of coffee, praying the mean librarian wouldn’t see me with my contraband.
First I checked my email. I had several messages from my Live Journal friends so I spent the next hour reading the new mail and responding.
Years ago I’d have done myself in for even considering making online friends. I thought it to be the telltale sign of a lonely pathetic existence. But I embraced it now as my only channel for meaningful interaction with real human beings.
Because I was in hiding I was forced to keep a distance from my neighbors. No matter how well I liked someone in the village, if I were to form a bond of any sort I’d be jeopardizing my freedom. So in the five years I’d resided in Haines Junction, no one had ever
been invited to my cabin for dinner and I’d never accepted an invitation to anyone else’s home. I would’ve loved to have spent Christmas or Thanksgiving with some of the interesting people I’d met while living here but it was too risky. Loneliness was the price of my freedom.
But to my Live Journal community I could bare my heart—albeit cryptically—and they could lay open their souls before me. Their companionship brought me tremendous comfort. I was no longer ashamed of myself and it disheartened me that I ever was.
When I’d sent my last email of the day, I glanced through the window at my back. Though I couldn’t distinguish them from the buildings across the street, the haze of snowflakes was apparent against the distant backdrop of evergreens.
I smiled.
The first snowfall of the season still excited that southern boy in me who’d spent most of his winters in North Carolina where snowstorms are a rarity.
Before leaving I visited the webpage of a local news station in Charlotte, North Carolina. I browsed the website each time I came to this computer lab. It was my only method of checking in on Elizabeth, John David, and Jenna Lancing, the family I’d deprived of a husband and father.
Even if something were to happen to them I’d probably never know or have the chance to prevent it. But it eased my mind to peruse the news of Charlotte and its suburbs, if only for the symbolic gesture of me watching after my best friend’s wife and children.
Once I’d seen that the headlines didn’t reference the Lancings (and they never did) I entered Beth and Jenna and John David’s name into a search engine. Nothing came up. The only successful search I ever conducted concerned Jenna who had turned thirteen in August.
Last winter she’d won the hundred meter freestyle in a middle school swim meet and I stumbled upon the results which had been posted on her school’s webpage. I’d been tempted to send her a congratulatory card. The Lancings still lived in the same house on Lake Norman. But for all I knew, Beth believed that I’d murdered her husband. So I’d settled for merely printing out the swim meet results and highlighting Jenna’s name.
A dogsled magnet still held that page to my refrigerator door.
When I stepped out of the library it was midday and the snowfall had frosted Kluane Boulevard, parked cars, the woods, and rooftops in a delicate inch of powder. I buttoned my vest, pulled a black toboggan down over my ears, and strolled back up the sidewalk toward my Jeep.
The village was so quiet.
I could almost hear the snow collecting like a subconscious whisper.
I anticipated being home and the fire I would build and the peaceful hours I’d spend in its warmth, writing while the forest filled with snow.
God, I loved my life.
6
KAREN Prescott woke, the darkness unchanged.
She sat up, banged her head into a panel of soundproofing foam.
Consciousness recoiled in full.
She felt around in the dark for those familiar invisible objects of her small black universe: the two empty water bottles at her bare feet, the huge coil of rope, the gascan, the blanket.
Her head throbbed with thirst, her jaw was broken, her fingertips shredded from picking glass shards out of her hair. The car was motionless, its engine silent for the first time in hours. Karen wondered if it were night or day and for how long she’d lain in her bathrobe on this abrasive stinking carpet, still damp with her urine.
How far was she from her Manhattan apartment?
Where had the man with long black hair gone?
Perhaps the car was parked in front of a convenience store and he was inside using the restroom or filling a cup at the soda fountain or signing a credit card receipt. Maybe the car sat in the parking lot of a Quality Inn. He could be lying in bed in a motel room watching porn.
What if he had a heart attack?
What if he never came back?
Was the trunk airtight?
Was she whittling away with each breath at a finite supply of air?
He’ll let me out eventually. He promised. I’ll keep calm until—
She heard something.
Children’s laughter.
Their high voices reached her, muffled but audible.
Karen wanted to rip away the soundproofing and scream her brains out for help.
But her captor had warned that if she yelled or beat on the trunk even once, he would kill her slowly.
And she believed him.
The driver side door opened and slammed.
He’d been in the car the whole time. Was he testing her? Seeing if she would scream?
As his footsteps trailed away, she thought, Spending a Friday night by myself in my apartment isn’t lonely. This is lonely.
7
ME and Josh and Mikey were playing with a slug and a magnifying glass I took from my big brother’s room. My brother’s name is Hank and he’s eleven. I’m only seven and I hate it.
Mikey found the slug on his driveway before he left for church. He isn’t afraid of slugs so he picked it up and put it in a glass jar in his garage. I’m not afraid of them either. I just don’t like the way they feel when you touch them.
We were playing at the end of my street where no houses are. Mom says if I want to play in the road this is where I have to do it since no cars ever come down here. She doesn’t want me to get run over.
Mikey had pulled the slug out of the jar and put it on the road. It was crawling very slowly. It left a silver slime trail behind it. Josh made me give him the magnifying glass. He’s very bossy sometimes but he’s bigger than me so I have to do what he says.
"Get out of the light, shrimp," Josh said to Mikey.
Mikey moved. He’s more afraid of Josh than I am. Josh is nine. He has his own BB gun. When Josh held the magnifying glass over the slug the sun went through it and made a bright dot on the slug’s back.
"What are you doing?" Mikey asked.
"Just watch."
"What are you doing?" Mikey asked again.
"Shut up! I’m trying to concentrate! Billy showed me how to do this."
I wanted to know what he was doing too. It was sort of boring just watching Josh hold the glass. After a long time the slug started smoking. Josh laughed and got real excited.
"Do you see that?" he yelled.
"What are you doing?" Mikey asked.
"I’m burning him, Mikey." Mikey got up and went home crying. He’s only six years old and my mom says he has a very tender heart. Josh asked if I wanted to do it but I told him no. The slug wasn’t crawling anymore. Or maybe it was and I just couldn’t tell.
I heard a loud whistle. Josh looked up. "Oh no, my mom," he said. Josh dropped the magnifying glass and took off running down the street. I watched him go. He could run very fast. He was scared of his mom. She turned mean after his dad went away.
I stood up and stomped on the slug in case it was hurting. It stuck to the bottom of my shoe like nasty gum. I was getting ready to go home when a man got out of a gray car that was parked at the end of the street near the woods. He was very tall and had long black girl hair. He came toward me. I was afraid but he didn’t even look at me. He just walked right past me up the street.
Something fell out of his pocket onto the road but he didn’t notice. I went over and picked it up. It was shiny and expensive-looking.
"Mister!" I yelled. The man turned around. "You dropped this."
The long-haired man came back. He looked down at me. He didn’t smile. Most grownups smile at little kids. "You dropped this," I said. He opened his hand and I put the shiny thing in it. "What is it?" I asked. It looked very neat.
"A laser pointer. It makes a laser beam."
His teeth were scary—brown and jagged like he didn’t brush them ever.
"How?" I asked.
"Open your hand. I’ll show you. Come on, it doesn’t hurt." I opened my hand and a red dot appeared. It was the neatest thing I ever saw. "You should see it at night," he said. "If it were dark I could shoot this b
eam across Lake Norman and it would light up an entire house. But you have to be very careful. If you shine it in your eye it’ll blind you. You want to try it?"
"Yessir." He handed me the laser pointer.
"Push the gray button," he said. "Shine it on my hand."
I pushed the button and shined it on his hand.
The long-haired man sat down in the road and took his laser pointer back. Then he took a piece of yellow candy from his pocket and ate it. I wanted one too but I didn’t ask.
"What’s your name?" he said. He was smiling now.
"Ben Worthington."
"Ben, that was awfully nice of you to tell me I dropped this. You could’ve kept it. You’re an honest boy. If I give this to you will you be careful not to shine it in your eye?"
"I would be very careful."
"I can’t give it to you right now. I have to use it this afternoon but—"
"Why?"
"I lost something in a tunnel and I have to find it with this."
It made me sad that I couldn’t have it right now.
"But maybe… No, I shouldn’t. Your parents probably wouldn’t let you have—"
"Yes they would."
"No I don’t think—"
"They would too."
"Ben, if I give this to you you can’t show it to your parents. Or your brother. He would steal it and play with it. Your parents would take it and throw it away."
"I won’t tell them."
"You promise?"
"Yessir, I promise."
"You can’t tell them about me either."
"I won’t." He got up and looked down at me.
"Later tonight I’m going to come knock on your window. You have to go to your backdoor and open it so I can give this to you. Can you do that, Ben?"
"Yessir."
"You have to do it very quietly. If anyone wakes up and sees me I’ll have to leave and you won’t be able to have the laser pointer. Do you want to have it?"
"Yessir."