White Wedding

by Jean Barrett

  “I don’t care what you say!” he cried. “That ice is probably starting to break up out there! We’ll really be trapped then! The rest of you can hang on here and die, but I’m gettin’ off while I still can!”

  “Stuart, no! There isn’t enough light left for a safe crossing even if you—”

  Too late. He was already at the door and had it unlocked before Lane could reach him. In the next second the door was open, and Stuart raced into the twilight.

  Lane started to go after him, but Dorothy stopped her in the open doorway. “Better wait for Jack,” she advised. “He has the pistol.”

  Lane stared into the dwindling light where Stuart had vanished, sick at the thought of the teenager alone out there with a killer. Jack, hearing the commotion, emerged from the bathroom.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded.

  Dorothy swiftly told him while Lane hung anxiously in the doorway.

  “Damn fool kid!” he swore angrily.

  “Jack, we can’t leave him on his own out there,” Lane implored. “He’s just a boy.”

  “Yeah, one who’s lost his head. All right, don’t look at me like that. I’ll catch him and bring him back. If I can.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “You’re staying here, or neither one of us is going.”

  There was no time to argue with him. With each passing second, Stuart was moving farther out of reach.

  Jack grabbed up his coat as he issued rapid instructions. “Dorothy, hand me the flashlight, would you? Did you get a chance to load it with fresh batteries? Good. Okay, now listen. You keep the door locked and the shutters barred until I get back. No peeping out this time. For anything. Here.” He laid the pistol on the table. “I’ll leave this with you and take the bow and arrows.”

  “You can’t go out there without the gun,” Lane objected.

  “The pistol stays here,” he insisted.

  He was gone before she could make him take the gun, plunging into the fading light in the direction of the dock trail where Stuart had been headed. Lane gazed after him helplessly. Maybe she shouldn’t have urged him to go after Stuart, but she couldn’t bear the thought of the terrified teenager fleeing recklessly into the unknown. She knew that Jack, underneath his anger, felt the same. But she would never forgive herself if anything happened to him.

  * * *

  IT WAS A GRUELING VIGIL. Much worse than the one they had suffered this afternoon, Lane realized. Each minute was an agony. They obeyed Jack’s direction and refrained from folding back a shutter and looking outside, but she knew it must be completely dark by now.

  She kept listening for a sound, fearing the burst of gunfire. But it was silent outside, and just as silent inside the guesthouse. Neither woman talked. In fact, Dorothy dozed off with exhaustion in a corner of the sofa. Lane, perched on the edge of her chair, stayed alert. And she worried.

  What was happening out there? What was keeping Jack? He had been gone too long. Where was he?

  As she thought about Jack, the image of him resulted in more than just concern. It filled her with a warm glow. She could no longer deny her feelings for him. The terror of their situation had reduced everything to basics, stripping away all that was unimportant, allowing her to recognize her love for him. An honest, deep love, she thought, awed by the power of her emotion. And that much in all this nightmare was wonderful.

  Maybe Jack was right. Underneath it all, maybe she had never stopped loving him. Or perhaps this was a new love. Either way, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but his safe return, and she prayed for that.

  But what if she lost him now that she had found him again? Unthinkable. Don’t even consider the possibility. Don’t think of anything but getting him back, of telling him just how much he means to you. And if it turned out that he didn’t feel quite the same, that his chief interest in her was, after all, as a mother for the child he wanted...

  A sudden noise made her start. At first she feared it was something outside the house. Then she realized it came from the cupboard bed. Allison and Chris. Was one of them regaining consciousness?

  Leaving Dorothy undisturbed, she crossed the room and knelt at the side of the low trundle to inspect the couple they were guarding. Neither of them looked as though they had stirred. She started to leave when Allison spoke without opening her eyes. Excited by this first indication of improvement, Lane leaned close to her friend, trying to understand her brief, unintelligible mumble.

  “...won’t tolerate it...make sure island remains unspoiled...what my father intended...don’t care, I tell you...don’t care...there, that’s better...you’re being sensible now...sensible...”

  Was Allison’s mind replaying an actual dialogue, or was she merely rambling about nothing of any consequence? Lane laid a hand affectionately against her cheek and tried to reach her.

  “Allison, can you hear me? Try to concentrate on what I’m saying.”

  Allison failed to respond. Her eyes stayed closed, and her muttering died away. She lapsed back into total unconsciousness. Lane waited a moment, hoping for another encouraging sign. But both people on the bed remained motionless.

  Disappointed, she went back to her chair, wondering if she should attach any significance to Allison’s delirium. It probably wasn’t important. On the other hand, she couldn’t forget what her friend had started to confide in her this morning. Something about remembering things in the night. Things that could explain the murders. The solution was right, she’d claimed, and yet it wasn’t possible, either.

  Lane shook her head. It was a riddle that made no more sense than Allison’s ramblings just now. Whatever the truth was, it was locked inside Allison’s brain, and for the moment she was incapable of communicating it.

  It was lonely without Dorothy’s company. Lonely and nerve-racking. Lane considered waking her. Before she could make that decision, the guesthouse was plunged without warning into complete darkness. She was so shaken by the sudden loss of the lights that for a second she didn’t know what had happened. And then she understood. Not only was there a total blackness in the room, there was also a full, dismaying silence. Something was missing. The generator, she realized. She could no longer hear the reassuring hum of the generator below. Their vital power had abruptly failed.

  “Dorothy!” she called in alarm. She got to her feet and started to grope her way toward the sofa. Something clattered to the floor, making her jump. The little table near her chair. She had collided with the table and upset it.

  Dorothy came awake on the sofa. She could hear her befuddled voice across the room. “What happened to the lights?”

  “The generator quit on us. Is there another flashlight?”

  “On the mantel. Stay where you are. I’ll get it.”

  Lane heard her fumbling around the fireplace. A moment later there was the welcome gleam of the flashlight in her hand.

  “Candles,” Dorothy said, sweeping the beam around the room. “There are candles here someplace. And an oil lamp. But where did I put the matches?” She searched quickly through the bag she had brought from the lodge. “Here, I’ve got them.”

  Lane helped her to find and light the candles and the single lamp. They placed them in several safe locations around the room. The weak, fluttering glow helped the situation, but there was a shadowy quality about this kind of light that emphasized their danger.

  Lane could scarcely bring herself to voice the fear that had almost instantly occurred to her. “Maybe it’s no accident the generator quit.”

  “Sabotaged?” Dorothy considered the possibility, then shook her head. “There’s only one way into the generator room down there, and the door is always kept locked. I have all the keys for everything right here with me. Believe me, I wasn’t overlooking anything when we left the lodge, if I could help it.”

  “It’s an outside door, isn’t it? He could have broken in.”

  “Not without our hearing it. Did you hear anything?”

  “Not a
sound. Then what did happen to the generator?”

  “I think I know. There are two large gas tanks that fuel the power plant. We’ve been pulling a lot of current this weekend. I imagine we’ve emptied the first tank. That’s all it is.”

  “But wouldn’t the system automatically kick over to the second tank?”

  “Afraid not. It’s a pretty old-fashioned setup. You have to open the valve by hand. It’s not complicated. Nils showed me how to do it. I could—”

  “No!” Lane forbade her. “It would mean going outside. It’s much too risky. We’ll survive without the generator.”

  Dorothy didn’t argue with that decision. But the two women had forgotten that their source of heat depended on electricity. Within minutes they could feel the drop in temperature, and now that it was full night the cold was even worse. They huddled in their coats, wishing the fireplace wasn’t blocked. There were no spare blankets, either. They had used the last one to try to keep Allison and Chris warm.

  Sick with worry, Lane kept thinking about Jack, wondering why he hadn’t returned. Dear God, keep him safe. Don’t let the killer touch him.

  In the end, Dorothy said stubbornly, “I can’t take this anymore. It’s freezing in here. And if we’re this miserable, think how dangerous it could be for them.” She nodded toward the cupboard bed.

  Dorothy wasn’t exaggerating. There was a raw, penetrating quality about the cold. Why was it, Lane wondered, that an unheated room always felt more frigid than the outdoors?

  “I know,” she agreed, “but it’s also dangerous to try to fire up that generator.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not going to risk my brother any further.”

  Lane couldn’t dispute that. Both Chris and Allison had suffered enough. “All right, but what if this is all a trap, and he’s waiting out there?”

  Dorothy thought about that hazard. “Well, look, the steps down to the generator room are on that side of the building.” She pointed in the direction of the clearing. “That puts them just around the corner from this door. That’s not far to go, and we have the loaded pistol. All you have to do is cover me until I can slip down there and unlock the cellar door.”

  “How long will it take to switch over to the other tank?”

  “Not long. A few minutes. But you’re not to wait out there. I’ll lock myself in while you do the same here so that Chris and Allison aren’t left alone. When I’m done, I’ll shout for you, and you can come out and escort me back.”

  “Let’s do it.” And pray their plan worked, Lane added to herself as she moved quickly to the cupboard bed. The time had come to put Allison and Chris out of sight. She slid the trundle under the main bed, where it sealed shut with a little click. Then she rejoined the older woman.

  Dorothy was familiar enough with guns that she was able to give her a quick lesson in the use of the Beretta, showing her how to release the safety catch. Lane had no experience at all with firearms, and this one made her nervous. She wasn’t sure she could fire it if it proved necessary, but this was no time to raise objections. Dorothy was depending on her.

  “You’ll need the flashlight down there,” Lane directed. “I’ll take this for my light.”

  One of the candles was shielded by a glass chimney inside a decorative lantern with a convenient carrying handle. The oil lamp would have been too awkward to manage along with the pistol.

  Armed with the essentials, they slipped cautiously out of the guesthouse. Dorothy locked the door behind them and slid the key into Lane’s pocket.

  For a moment they stood there on the arcade, taut and wary as they tested the situation. It seemed strange to Lane that, after two days of an unrelenting wind, not a breeze stirred. There was only the silence and the uneasy blackness of the night.

  Lane was uncomfortably aware that, with their lights, they must make clear targets for a high-powered rifle. She had to remind herself that the killer couldn’t finish them off without learning where Chris was hidden, but he could surprise them. Conscious of that possibility, they kept their backs pressed to the building as they left the arcade and eased around the corner.

  When they reached the place where the stairs descended into a narrow well along the side of the guesthouse, Dorothy directed the flashlight over the flag steps. “You see. No one has been down there since that flurry we had last night. There’s not a sign of a footprint in the snow.”

  Lane, wishing she could find comfort in that reassurance, waited at the top of the stone flight with the pistol shaking in her hand while Dorothy made her way to the solid door below.

  “No sign of any entry here, either,” she called back as she fitted the key into the lock. “It’s the only entrance, and there are no windows. It has to be safe.”

  “Shouldn’t I wait for you up here?”

  “No, we agreed we wouldn’t take that chance. Go back inside and wait for my call.”

  Lane watched, holding her breath as Dorothy entered the generator room. Only when the door had closed behind her, and she heard the sound of the lock being secured from inside, did she permit herself to move. Then she couldn’t get back inside the guesthouse fast enough.

  Relieved once the door was locked behind her, she rid herself of the pistol and the lantern. She listened for the sounds of Dorothy restoring the generator below, but she could hear nothing. While she waited, she prowled restlessly around the room, hating her sudden aloneness.

  Jack, where are you? Why don’t you come?

  A few minutes. Dorothy had promised her that it would take only a few minutes to change over to the second tank. But those minutes had already passed, and there was still no electric light, no heat. What was happening down there?

  Lane knelt on the floor and put her mouth close to the boards. “Dorothy, can you hear me?” she shouted. No answer. She banged on the floor with her fist. Silence.

  Something was wrong. Something was very wrong, and she had to deal with it. The last thing she wanted to do was go out there again. But she couldn’t cower in here. Not when Dorothy might urgently need her.

  Steeling herself to confront the worst, she rearmed herself with the pistol and the lantern. This time she forced herself to steady the gun in her gloved hand as she sidled out the door, locking it behind her.

  She paused at the corner of the building, listening for any treacherous sound as she peered into the darkness. The night was slightly less black than before. That was because the stars were out now. She could make out the unlighted shape of the lodge, massive and forbidding.

  There was no movement anywhere, no noise. But she didn’t like it. She could relate to poor Stuart’s agony as she struggled against the impulse to rush back inside the guesthouse and hide herself inside a closet like a frightened child. No solution in that. She had to go on.

  Sliding around the corner, she reached the stairwell. The candle’s glow was too weak to reveal the door at the bottom. No choice but to descend into that inky pit. She went down carefully, lantern swaying in one hand, pistol ready in the other.

  “Dorothy,” she whispered, “are you there?”

  There was no reply. She was at the foot of the well now, facing the door. It stood open to the generator room, a macabre invitation. Dorothy had locked it behind her. She wouldn’t have opened it again before Lane’s arrival. What was going on? Where was she?

  With the tension inside her as sharp as a razor, Lane thrust her hand bearing the upraised lantern inside the black cavity of the room. The rest of her hung back, ready to bolt if the candle revealed any sign of a lurking threat.

  The high, flickering light showed her a contained space crowded with the machinery that comprised the generator. There was no movement, no sign of an occupant. It was only when she lowered the lantern and started to withdraw her hand that the dim light disclosed the floor and the body stretched facedown on the coarse cement.

  “Dorothy!”

  She should have backed away, fled. Anything but what she did do, which was to push recklessly
into the room and kneel at Dorothy’s side. Even with the pistol in her hand, she was in a vulnerable position.

  He was waiting for her, just as he must have waited for Dorothy, squeezed far back out of sight in the narrow gap between the two immense gas tanks. She didn’t hear him, didn’t catch any flash of movement as she leaned over Dorothy. But he was suddenly there behind her, pressing the cold barrel of a revolver into the back of her neck.

  “No, she isn’t dead,” his raspy, chilling voice informed her. “But she will be before it’s all finished. Set the gun and the lantern on the floor.” She hesitated. “Do it.”

  Heart slamming with fear, Lane obeyed him.

  “Now crawl over there out of the way.”

  She began to scramble away on hands and knees, like a spooked animal. Something that was metal made a clanging noise as she passed over it. She glanced down and saw that it was a grate. When she looked up, she noticed the place it must have covered. An oblong opening low in the wall.

  “That’s right,” he said. “A service tunnel that feeds the power cables from here to the cellar in the lodge. Tight, but I managed to squirm through it.” His booted foot cruelly nudged Dorothy’s still form. “She never considered that possibility, did she?”

  That was how he had entered the locked room. Killed the generator. Lured them into this trap.

  Lane couldn’t see him. He stood now behind the glare of a flashlight, but she had the impression of overall whiteness. That same whiteness she had encountered in the caves.

  His voice was clear enough. Not recognizable, though. If she’d heard it before, it hadn’t been deliberately harsh, as it was now. But this had to be Nils. A Nils who was so deranged he had struck down his own wife.

  Once she was out of reach of the pistol, he recovered it from the floor. She was defenseless now. Defenseless and rigid with terror.

  “Get up,” he commanded her. Lane stumbled to her feet. “Over here in front of me. Take the key out of the lock.” She did as he ordered, feeling the revolver again behind her, this time in her back. “Any point in my telling you not to make the mistake of trying something?”