“Come on, Becky,” Deidre shouted.
Becky heaved and coughed up water. “They’re real,” she whispered. “And they’re not going to let us go.”
Deidre lifted Becky’s head and cradled it in her lap. She could feel the heat emanating from the blazing cabin and was grateful for the bit of warmth to cut the winter chill, even if only slightly. She heard a sound like light rain, and looked around. Needles were falling from the pine trees, leaving them barren and forlorn. A gray, rotten-looking fungus was spreading across the trunks of the other trees, and a moldy, rotten stench filled the air. A hissing sound was coming from the lake.
“I don’t think I can go on anymore,” Becky said.
“We have to,” said Deidre. “We’re not dying here. There’s a way out of this, I know it.”
Becky shook her head. “Look around. Even the forest is dying.”
“Eddie was right,” Deidre said. “Whether we’re hallucinating or whether this is all real, the answer lies at the lodge. That’s why it forced us out. It’s protecting something, trying to hide the answers before we find out what it is. Come on, we’re heading back up.”
The sun came out and chased the chill from the air. Becky nodded and stood up. They found the hatchet and the makeshift club and headed toward the woods, watching every movement about them. The forest seemed dead, and the only movement they saw was the fluttering of wisps of ash coming off the burning cabin. The fire had been confined solely to the cabin. Not a branch or leaf had been touched by flames.
“Don’t look at it,” Deidre said to Becky as they passed by the edge of the cabin.
As they continued on, the air about them warmed, and the ground quickly dried, hardening beneath their feet.
Becky stopped suddenly and pointed at a small object lying in the weeds just off the trail. “My cell phone. It must’ve slipped out of my pocket on my way down the hill.”
She picked up the phone and turned it on. The tiny screen brightened and came to life.
She looked at Deidre. “I can’t believe it. It still has power.”
“So maybe we have been hallucinating,” Deidre said. “There’s no way it would have power after all this time. Or what seems like all this time. Do you have a signal?”
Becky checked the bars on the screen and shook her head. “Remember, the manager said there was no signal out here.”
She thumbed through her settings, and a thought dawned on her. She had taken dozens of pictures with the phone during her stay. As the words of the groundskeeper rang in her mind, she called up the snapshots.
“Deidre, do you remember when that old man said I should be careful about what pictures I took?”
“No, not really. Why?”
“Because I think I know why he said it.”
Becky held the phone in front of Deidre. The photo on the screen showed the outside of the cabin. Bizarre symbols, glowing with an eerie light, covered the cabin’s walls. Standing next to the cabin was a shadow—the shadow of the lodge’s manager.
“Those symbols, they were in the old man’s diary,” Deidre whispered. “They’re some kind of protective tokens.”
She peered closer. “But what is that?” she asked as she gazed at the small shadow that appeared beside the cabin. “It seems to be moving.”
From the woods came a hissing sound, and a shadow emerged from behind a withered pine tree. Deidre and Becky turned toward the sound and saw the outline of what looked like the lodge manager. But instead of the professional in a business suit that they remembered from the day of their arrival, this creature looked wild and demented, her features twisted and deformed. It walked toward them carefully, eyeing the axe in Deidre’s hands.
“Give me the camera, give it to me,” it whispered. Suddenly, other shadows slipped through the trees and drew closer. They heard a sound like massed whispers.
“It’s the picture,” Deidre said. “We’ve captured her soul somehow.”
As the apparition walked closer, the image on the digital screen tried to crawl away, moving as if it were trying to escape from the cell phone.
“Delete the picture!” Deidre shouted.
The manager’s hiss rose to a high-pitched wail as she raced across the dead woods toward them. Deidre raised the axe and shouted at Becky to delete the picture, but Becky’s hands were shaking. Deidre threw the axe at the ghost, which dodged away, and then snatched the cell phone from Becky’s hands. She pressed the delete button, and the apparition faded into nothingness, screaming as it died.
Deidre continued to delete the pictures Becky had shot, stunned by the horrid shadows on the screen as she filtered through shots of the lake, the lodge, and the woods. Spirits emerged from behind dead pines and rushed toward her as she deleted images, and ghostly screams filled the air as the apparitions winked out of existence. More than once, Deidre felt an icy hot hand on her back or shoulder, but each time the sensation faded as she deleted the next image.
“I’m killing them,” she said breathlessly.
When she erased the last picture, the screen went blank, but a vision began to emerge on the dark glass, like an old Polaroid picture developing. Deidre stared at the screen as an image of Becky appeared on it. In the image, Becky was standing in the woods, her face distorted, her eyes pure white, as if she were possessed by a demon. A chill went down Deidre’s spine. She turned and called to her friend. She saw her standing only feet away. Becky’s hair had turned gray and coarse, and her body was nearly rotted through. Her dead, white eyes stared at Deidre.
“Help me,” Becky whispered before vines entwined around her arms and legs and body. They pulled her to the ground and dragged her into the woods. Deidre stood frozen, fear tightening her in its grip like a vise. Deidre heard Becky scream one final time, and then all was silence. Deidre was on her own.
She hurled the camera into the woods and searched frantically for the axe, scrabbling through dead leaves and rotting twigs and branches. She felt a stab of relief when her hands finally closed around the handle. She stood up and glanced around. It was still calm and quiet. Winter was over. But death was near.
She was determined to complete the mission she and Becky had begun. She resumed the climb up the trail, toward the top of the small mountain and the lodge. She reached the wide clearing and saw the lodge standing in the middle of it, looking like a desolate and forbidding outpost for lost spirits. She crossed the parking lot and stood before it, gazed at the doors that were slung wide open. She knew what she had to do. She had to destroy the picture above the mantel of the hearth.
She trembled at the thought of entering the awful building again, but she forced herself to climb the wooden steps to the wraparound deck. She walked to a window and peered through, but the inside of the building was dark, as if the abundant sunlight pouring down was unable to penetrate a domain of darkness and despair. Deidre gripped the axe tightly and stepped inside.
The darkness was unnatural, a gloom of shadows upon shadows. Deidre could barely see, but she let her memory guide her toward the hearth. The bear was gone, but the painting still hung crookedly on the wall. Deidre raised the axe and then cried out. The man in the picture had vanished. Only the image of the hearth remained. Suddenly, the gray paint that formed the image of the hearth began to crumble and drop from the canvas.
The lodge began to shake. Mortar crumbled off the hearth, and heavy dust filled the room. Deidre slowly backed away from the hearth and then turned toward the door to escape. She caught a shadow out of the corner of her eye and realized it was the doctor. He was destroying the building to keep her from reaching him. Anger and rage overcame her fear, and she ran toward the shadow as it fled to the basement.
Deidre bolted down the stairs as the building continued to shudder and shake. She held on to the handrail to steady herself as she went, but she didn’t slow down. The shadow fled toward the pool, and she lost sight of it. She ran into the pool room and looked around. She saw a set of double doors leading out
the back of the lodge, but they were closed. She walked to the edge of the pool and peered into the deep end. She saw nothing. She dropped to her knees and plunged the end of her axe into the water.
The doctor shot up out of the pool like a Trident missile launched from a submarine. Hatred filled his eyes as he glared at Deidre, and she felt her skin burning under its malevolent power. He floated across the water toward her at a speed that defied nature and logic. She drew her arm back and swung the axe, striking his forehead as he reached her. He screamed in pain and fell back. He screamed again and tried to get away, but Deidre ran to the exit to the hallway and stood there with the axe in her hand, like the last Spartan at the pass of Thermopylae. He shrieked again and fled the other way, blasting through the double doors and into the forest beyond. The impact sent glass exploding in a million pieces.
Deidre clenched her jaws and ran through the doorway, waving the axe above her head, determined to finish what she had started. Her feet hit the wooden deck with a satisfying thump, and then she was suddenly seized by a moment of pure horror and panic. Beyond the deck was a drop of more than two hundred feet, straight down. She tried to stop her momentum, but even as she tried, she knew it was no use. She flew over the edge of the deck, her arms splayed out in front of her, the axe falling away. Deidre screamed as she began her long plummet to the rocks below, where death waited for her.
“Ahhhhhhhhh,” she screamed. She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to brace herself for the sudden impact she knew was coming.
There were other screams, and they rose in intensity to match hers, but the shouts were filled with cheers and excitement.
“Ahhhhhh, we’re finally here,” Brian yelled.
Deidre opened her eyes. She was sitting in the front passenger seat of her husband’s Escalade. He glanced at her, smiled, and patted her on the leg. Deidre turned around and saw Eddie, Becky, Artie, and Cassandra in the back.
Deidre turned back and saw the top of the lodge come into view. The lodge. It was the last place she wanted to go. But suddenly, words were pouring out of her mouth like an avalanche, as if she had no control over her own speech. She couldn’t believe what she heard herself saying.
“Here we are,” she said as the Escalade rounded a bend and a big, blue lake at the base of a hill came into view. Deidre could see the lodge clearly now, standing on top of the hill that overlooked the lake. She was terrified.
“Honey, you almost missed the turn,” she said.
“Sorry, Eddie was turning me on,” Brian said as he swung the truck onto a long drive leading up to the lodge.
“Handles like a dream,” Artie said, as the big vehicle fishtailed before gaining purchase on the narrow drive.
“Hey, don’t whine, I bought this thing three days ago, just so we could all travel together.”
Deidre covered her mouth to stop herself from saying anything.
Something wrong, Dee?” Cassandra asked.
“I feel—I feel like I’m having déjà vu.”
“Girl, if you’ve been here before, that’s just nuts,” Cassandra said. “No one in their right mind would visit these backwoods more than once.”
The group laughed, and Cassandra turned to her boyfriend. “Hey Artie, did you bring your cleats?”
“You know it, love,” he said. “Soon as I have a smoke and stretch my legs, I’ll put them on and we’ll go for a hike.
“Stop the car,” Deidre demanded.
Brian glanced at her. “What are you talking about?”
“Please, Brian, stop the car and turn around. We can’t go here.”
“Are you crazy, Dee?” Eddie said. “We’ve been stuck in this tin can for hours. I need to stretch my legs.”
Deidre continued to beg as Brian continued up the winding road to the lodge parking lot. The lot was empty.
“That’s odd,” Brian said as he pulled into a space near the front door of the lodge and stopped. He cut the engine and everyone got out. The others stood and stretched and gazed at the front doors to the lodge, but Deidre clutched at Brian’s sleeve, trying to pull him back toward the vehicle.
“Please, Brian,” she pleaded, “Please, everyone, please let’s get back in the car and get out of—”
The front double doors swung open, and a man emerged from the darkness, smiling as he walked.
“Welcome,” he said, his piercing blue eyes sending a cold chill down Deidre’s spine. “Welcome back, Mrs. Hill,” he added as he walked up to her.
She was frozen with fear as she realized it was the man from the portrait. Her mouth fell open, and she felt an impossibly sharp pain as he buried an axe into her skull. She gasped and felt blood running down her face, mixing with her tears, leaving a salty taste on the crease of her mouth. She dropped to her knees. The world faded to black, and she was no more.
Deidre woke up screaming.
Within seconds, the doctor was there, taking her hands in his, restraining and consoling her. She was trembling with fear, shaking her head, waiting for the next blow from an axe or the relentless squeezing of homicidal vines or the deadly touch from phantom children.
“It’s all right,” the doctor was saying. “You have nothing to fear.”
She opened her eyes and stared at him. There were the piercing blue eyes, the brilliant blond hair, the scar down the side of his face. His visage sent a chill through her, and she flinched from him, unsure what was real and what was hallucination. But at least she knew she was alive.
The doctor beamed a smile at her. “Welcome back, Miss Hill,” he said.
Deidre screamed.
“Please, Miss Hill, try to calm down. It’s all right, you’re quite safe. You experienced the moment of death. The test was a complete success.”
Deidre stopped screaming. She looked around. She was in some kind of hospital room or ward. She saw five empty beds and shuddered. They looked like the beds in the lodge. She tried to sit up, but her wrists were bound to the bed rail with thick leather straps.
“Nurse,” the doctor called out. “Please remove Miss Hill’s restraints.”
An Asian woman in a nurse’s uniform appeared and bent over Deidre. She undid the straps and then smiled at her patient.
“Why was I strapped down?” Deidre demanded. Her throat was sore and dry.
“We restrain our subjects for their own safety,” the doctor replied. “We don’t want you getting physically hurt in the real world. If the dream state gets too intense, people tend to move about. We wouldn’t want you falling out of the bed, now would we?”
“Where are the others?” Deidre asked.
“They experienced the moment of death before you, as I am sure you know from your shared nightmare,” the doctor replied. “Whenever a person dies in the experience, they awake here, safe and sound in their bed. Then we take them to another room to eat and recover and discuss the experience. We even have a psychologist on call at all times, just in case the experience is too overwhelming.”
“That’s good to know,” Deidre said. “I’m very happy that you’re thorough in your care of each subject. That will weigh in your favor when I make my final report to the board about funding your project.”
The doctor smiled.
“Are the others all right?” she asked.
The doctor smiled and nodded. “They’re all fine. They’re recovering from the anesthesia. You’ll need to as well. I’m sure you’re experiencing what we call ‘the shakes’ as we speak.”
“Really?” she said, giving a nervous laugh. “I thought it was from the nightmare experience.”
“I assure you it’s not. Your friends enjoyed the experience, and the test was successful, as I told you it would be.”
“Yes, it was entirely realistic,” Deidre said. “It truly felt like real life. The scenery, the smells, tastes, the pain when I was hacked in the head. Even the paranormal twist. It really got to me, had me scared out of my wits. I even thought I was really married.”
“Well that speaks
to the level of realism we were aiming for,” the doctor said. “We try to tap into the deepest emotions we can, combining love with fear, which is why this time we gave you a husband to create a false sense of security, and then quickly ripped it away with the apparition aspect.”
“Are you saying you can create virtually any experience?”
“Absolutely,” the doctor replied.
Deidre smiled. “There are so many possibilities for this besides the moment of death. Dream vacations for people who don’t have time to actually take a vacation, for instance.”
“Agreed,” the doctor said. “But I truly believe the moment of death experience will be the most beneficial byproduct of my research, and will probably yield the greatest results in ongoing studies concerned with clinical death. It can help with terminal patients, psychotic cases, or anyone who fears death.”
“Yes, you’re right,” Deidre said. “And I can honestly say that no death that could happen to me now could be worse than what I experienced today. In fact, I feel as if I’m no longer afraid of dying, thanks to you. It certainly was bizarre. It seemed to last all winter.”
“That was our intent. My program has no time or place constraints. We can make it last a day or a year. For your moment of death experience, we chose to use this lodge, which is why we had you come a day early to explore the interior. We wanted to give you the déjà vu experience. Have you see all the possibilities of the program.”
“You certainly did an amazing job. I thought it was brilliant the way you slipped in that fake bit about the Atherton Airlines deaths. I was surprised by the airplane twist. I didn’t know you were aware of my fear of flying. To think about it now, it really freaks me out that the names on the seven obituaries that related to the plane matched that case last year that involved those seven missing hikers from this area.”
The doctor looked momentarily confused. “Well, the purpose of this experiment is to induce your deepest fears, which is why I introduced that element. I decided to use those seven missing persons from the news and tie it into your fear of flying via an airliner crash. You see, everything that occurs in your dream state has to make death a realistic possibility.”
Long, Cold Winter Page 6