Alaskan Dawn

by Edie Claire

  No matter. Haley’s spirits were so buoyed by the natural beauty surrounding her that she wasn’t nearly as tired as she thought she would be. She would have a quick look at her uncle’s place, then drive on to a hotel in Seward.

  She found the crossroad she was looking for without difficulty, but as she turned onto it, her muscles began to tense. The road wasn’t paved. It was little more than a gravel lane, and as she followed its twists and turns deep into a dense woods, the rain began to pick up again.

  Bad idea, Haley.

  She considered turning around, but the narrow road offered no convenient place to do so, and the next crossroad on the map was less than a mile from her uncle’s place anyway. She steeled herself and kept going. In a few minutes, the road opened up again, and she breathed a sigh of relief as several other houses came into view. Her uncle wouldn’t live in complete wilderness, after all.

  As she drove up level with the houses, her enthusiasm dimmed again. One of them was all right — a standard A-frame with cedar siding. But the other two looked like they’d been thrown together by grade-school boys using gleanings from the local dump. Dented metal roofs, bare plywood, exposed blue fiberboard, random fluffs of insulation… and seriously, was that an outhouse?

  Haley’s hands gripped the steering wheel tighter. The road surface had become more and more pitted, and every pit was filled with rainwater. She flinched as her front tire dropped sharply into a hidden hole.

  Oh, please. The last thing she needed was a flat.

  She made her last turn. The new gravel road was no better than the last one, but at least it wasn’t any worse. Haley followed its winding turns uphill and deeper into the woods, weaving constantly to avoid suspicious-looking puddles. Just when she was about to bag the whole idea and try a three-point turn, she spied another building ahead, right where her uncle’s rentals were supposed to be. She relaxed a bit as two picturesque log cabins came into view, standing on either side of a wide gravel driveway. The cabins were small, but solidly built, and their chink-and-daub construction, stone chimneys, and inviting porches made them every bit as cozy-looking as Haley had hoped. Furthermore, if the multiple wires connecting them to the poles on the road were any indication — and they certainly should be — the cabins were fully equipped with power and phone service.

  Haley smiled to herself as she drove on past them and down the drive. Her uncle’s own house must be quite nice, indeed.

  She followed the drive about a quarter of a mile before the larger structure came into view, and she craned her neck forward anxiously to see it. The rain was getting worse again, and to her dismay, her uncle’s driveway had only deteriorated the farther she drove from the cabins. The thickly graveled parking area by the road had turned to a mere smattering of gravel over dirt, and here, at journey’s end, she saw nothing on the ground but old tire tracks in the mud.

  She lifted her eyes with trepidation.

  Her uncle’s house was a friggin’ nightmare. Balanced on short, clumsy looking stilts, the L-shaped monstrosity was a hodgepodge of weather-treated decking, warped plywood, tacked on tar paper, exposed drywall, corrugated sheet metal, and small, dirt-covered windows. A square roof covered the open part of the L, forming a dark and uninviting porch littered with plastic bins, lawn chairs, paint cans, bottles, two rusted grills, and a giant stack of rotting firewood.

  Haley put her foot on the brake and shifted into park.

  Are you kidding me?

  Who in their right mind would live in such a dilapidated mess while renting out such attractive cabins? Thoroughly baffled, she pulled her keys from the ignition and looked through the ring for a likely candidate to open the front door. That she and Micah would wind up selling the place was already a foregone conclusion. But she had come this far; she might as well go in and look around.

  She put a hand on the door handle, then paused. Her eyes scanned the forest surrounding her, and her breathing quickened. The idea of a bear bursting out of the brush didn’t seem nearly so outrageous as it had while she was in Anchorage. Still, people lived here, didn’t they? People who, almost certainly, did not allow themselves to be paralyzed with fear every time they walked between their houses and their cars.

  She got a grip on herself, took another quick look as far as she could see into the rain, and sprinted to the door.

  Made it. Ha!

  She clicked open the lock with the first key she tried, pushed open the door to let herself in, then shut it tight behind her.

  Oh, my.

  Her nose wrinkled. She was in a kitchen, of sorts. It had a sink, a stove, and a refrigerator, the latter of which was making a comforting humming noise, assuring her that the house at least had electricity. Unfortunately, the amenities appeared to stop there. She could tell by looking at the blue plastic barrel just inside the door that her uncle did not have city water. The holding tank was connected to a pump, with one pipe branching out to supply the sink and another heading through the wall. The kitchen counters were cluttered and grimy, and the vinyl flooring was brown with mud.

  Warily, she stepped around to her left through an open doorway to the main room. A filthy square of burnt orange carpeting, its edges unevenly sawed off, lay uninstalled over a plank floor. A wood-framed couch and loveseat lined the far walls, their misshapen cushions upholstered with a montage of guns and moose antlers. Real antlers, definitely not from a moose, hung on the near wall beside a wood-burning stove. The entire room was littered with stereotypical “man junk” including empty beer bottles and cigarette packs, dirty dishes, dirtier magazines, discarded clothing, and what she guessed to be a spittoon.

  Choosing her steps carefully, she moved just far enough around the corner to see into the front room. The equally cluttered space proved to be a small bedroom, with a slumping, unmade double bed conveniently placed on the other side of the stove. A shotgun hung over the small front window. On the far wall, a closet with broken doors spewed forth clothing like a cornucopia. On the near wall adjoining the kitchen, a tiny alcove roughly three feet square had been carved out and lined with fiberglass panels. A pipe and shower head stuck out near its ceiling. There was no toilet.

  Haley stepped back out into the main room and noted the narrow wooden backdoor tucked into its corner. She crossed the room to the rear window, leaned over the nearly waist-high stack of pornography piled up between the couch and the wall, and looked outside.

  Yep. An outhouse.

  She had seen all she needed to see. She turned, walked back out the front door, and locked it behind her. The rain had slowed to a sticky mist, and she walked back toward the car more slowly this time, her eyes scanning over the rest of the yard. The house sat in the middle of a clearing about twice the size of its own footprint. Besides the outhouse, there were two other buildings in the back that looked like sheds. Her uncle’s nearly new truck, emblazoned with a door decal for Taku Lake Boat Sales, sat hauntingly idle not far from the side of the house. The rest of the clearing, if it could indeed be called that, was littered with pieces of rusted metal, gas cans, water barrels, chicken wire, the corroded base of a onetime pop-up camper, broken boat trailers, a set of box springs, chains, tools, and a crudely made target of a moose torso with two-by-fours for legs.

  The mere thought of sorting through the mess made Haley mildly nauseous, and she was profoundly grateful that her uncle hadn’t chosen to make his nieces his executors. All she and Micah had to do was say “sell it,” and Ed and an estate company would handle the rest. Whatever the company’s fee might be, she was confident they would earn it.

  Her eyes rested on the area outside the back door, and a chill slid up her damp neck. Her uncle’s body had been found there. Had he been working in the yard, then suddenly felt ill? Or was he simply on his way back from the outhouse? She pushed thoughts of marauding bears firmly from her mind. Perhaps he had seen a bear, and was running because he was afraid. From what she could recall, he had been overweight just like her father. With the family’
s genetic predisposition for heart disease, the combination of exertion and fright could certainly be lethal.

  They said the body had been mauled by something.

  Ed’s words rang in Haley’s ears as she moved back towards her car. She was only a few feet from it when a sign nailed to a nearby tree caught her eye. She hadn’t noticed it before — no doubt because she’d dashed so quickly through the rain.

  Her pulse quickened. The sign was red, with the black silhouette of a bear at the top. Large letters underneath read, “DANGER.” She stepped closer. The bottom of the plastic sign had a laminated piece of paper attached. “Please read,” a typed portion stated. “A bear or bears sighted in this area have been determined to represent a higher than normal threat to human safety. This area may or may not be closed to the public. Extreme caution should be taken in this area until further notice. Incident details and further instructions follow.” Below the type, an uneven hand had scrawled two more lines in blue ink. “Man found deceased on June 16 after reporting that a large black bear near home was exhibiting predatory behavior.”

  Haley scrambled back to her car, swung open the door, lost her footing in the mud, caught herself, fell onto the seat, and slammed the door behind her. She turned her keys in the ignition and shifted into drive. Her breath came in heaves.

  Predatory behavior. What the hell did that mean? She had a pretty good idea what it meant, actually, but she didn’t want to think about it.

  Predators kill prey. They kill it to eat it.

  “Oo-kay!” she cried aloud, attempting to calm herself. “This was fun and all, but we are out of here!” She turned the car around quickly in the muddy drive, spinning her wheels several times in the process. Once back on the rutted lane through the trees, she drove away from the house in earnest. “How about we get back to that nice scenic, paved Seward Highway now?” she chattered to herself. She flinched again as a back wheel bumped roughly in and out of a rain-filled hole. “The wilderness is definitely overrated. Asphalt is where it’s at, people! Lots and lots of wildlife-deterring asphalt…”

  She spied another suspiciously deep-looking pothole and swerved to the side. To her horror, the car tipped slightly, then slowed. She stepped on the gas and her wheels spun. “Oh, no,” she murmured, still talking out loud. “No, no, no…” She shifted into reverse and pushed the accelerator again. The car jerked briefly, but went nowhere. She tried to steer the tires back up onto the road, but they continued to spin.

  Haley planted her face on the steering wheel. This could not be happening. Swearing under her breath, she cracked opened the car door and looked down. The muddy shoulder of the road had collapsed, dropping both of her left-side tires into a shallow, rain-filled ditch. A good two inches of water swelled over the tires, and the whole body of the car was slanted to the side.

  She closed the door and pulled out her cell phone. No service. Duh.

  She swore some more. Then she did another faceplant. Fabulous. Now what?

  If she weren’t so blasted nervous, she would probably be laughing. Just a few short hours ago she had been back in ordinary civilization filling out paperwork at the car rental agency, assuring her sister and mother that their fears for her safety bordered on the pathological. What could happen, after all? Please.

  And yet, here she was. Stuck in the mud with no cell phone and no way to call for help in the middle of a forest inhabited by a potentially homicidal bear.

  It really was too ironic.

  Haley allowed herself a good three minutes of self-pity. Then she got a grip. She could either stay in the car all night and possibly any number of days waiting for a good Samaritan to happen along. Or she could suck it up and head back to the cabins on foot. They couldn’t be more than a couple hundred yards ahead. At least one of them was occupied, according to Ed. And the cabins had landlines.

  Her teeth gritted. She didn’t have a choice. The rain had stopped, at least temporarily, and it was still light outside. She glanced at her watch and was amazed to see that it was after ten o’clock. Freaky.

  She dropped her keys and her phone into her purse and threw it over her shoulder. Her worthless jacket was wet again, but it would have to do. She scooted over to the passenger door, took a deep breath, and hopped out onto the road.

  She pointed her feet toward the cabins and ran like hell.

  Chapter 5

  Haley drew deep gulps of breath and leaned against the back wall of the nearest cabin. Her hand went instinctively to her abdomen. The physical exertion, she wasn’t worried about. She had continued to run and do aerobics throughout the pregnancy, so the sprint itself was hardly noteworthy. Running while panicked, however, required a good deal more oxygen.

  She rested until her breathing slowed, then got her bearings and tried to think. Though she had nearly twisted her ankle a few times, she had seen no bear, thank God, and had reached her destination unscathed. Now all she needed was a phone.

  She walked around to the front of the cabin and compared it to the one on the other side of the drive. The porch of the near cabin was empty, with the exception of a plastic Adirondack chair. The other cabin, however, had several inexpensive lawn chairs on the porch, as well as a grill and a dirty pair of hiking boots.

  Haley headed toward the boots. The cabin was clearly occupied, although there was no vehicle parked beside it. She walked up onto the front porch and knocked. After a suitable period of silence, she crept to the window beside the door and peeked in.

  She was looking at a kitchen. It was tiny, but serviceable, being equipped with full-sized appliances. The counters were a bit cluttered, but like the wood-laminate floor below them, they were not unclean. The kitchen wasn’t a separate room, but was merely an alcove off the larger main room, which had just enough space for a queen-sized bed on the back wall and a couch at its foot that faced the large stone fireplace in front. Haley smiled to herself. To say that the cabin was “tidy” would be pushing it. But compared to her uncle’s place, the assortment of clothes, shoes, and camping equipment scattered about it looked pleasantly civilized.

  Unfortunately, whatever civilized human being lived there was currently not at home. Haley studied the keys on her ring with indecision. She probably could get in. But she was fairly sure that would be illegal. And as unnerving as the past half hour had been for her, she doubted her predicament would rate a true emergency. Particularly when she had keys to the other cabin, too.

  She walked back across the drive, still obsessively scanning the tree line at every step. Keep it together, Haley. It’s all good. She stepped up onto the porch, selected two likely keys from the ring, and inserted one into the door lock. The first didn’t fit. But the second one did.

  She opened the door, stepped inside, and turned the slide bolt behind her with satisfaction. The floor plan of this cabin, not surprisingly, was the mirror image of its twin. She walked up to the sink to turn on the tap and was relieved when a thin stream of water poured into the basin. She moved quickly out of the kitchen and around the corner by the bed to where she expected to find a bathroom.

  A sink, a shower, and a toilet. Thank you, God.

  She made use of the facilities, which mercifully worked just fine. When she reemerged, she noticed a retro-looking landline phone attached to the wall beside the front door. She rushed to pick it up, but her hope dissolved quickly. There was no dial tone. Could she really expect her uncle to continue paying a monthly bill for an unrented unit? She was lucky he had kept the water and power on.

  She studied the rest of the cabin. Besides the bed, side table, dresser, and couch, it was empty. It was reasonably clean, however, and the mattress looked fairly new and was protected by a zipped plastic cover. So why hadn’t her uncle rented this one?

  Haley sank down on the edge of the bed and realized she didn’t care. Now that she was out of the rain, away from marauding bears, and had access to indoor plumbing, she felt safe again. She also felt suddenly, horribly sleepy. Despite the deceptive Al
askan sun, it was past her bedtime. And bedtime was a ritual she practiced religiously, even before she got pregnant.

  “I can’t do anything until he gets home, anyway,” she muttered to herself, taking off her shoes and rolling her damp jacket into a pillow. “I might as well relax until I hear a car or something, right?”

  She stretched out on the thick mattress and closed her eyes. Within minutes, she was asleep.

  ***

  The annoying rapping sound disturbed Ben Parker’s slumber not a bit. His brain simply wrote it into the script of his dream. He was out on his own boat in the Au'au Channel between Lana'i and Maui. The water was calm, the sky was blue, and spinner dolphins were leaping in the air off the port side. The rapping was coming from inside the boat’s bathroom, otherwise known as “the head.” His nephew Brandon had gotten himself locked in again. Ben chuckled to himself, left the wheel long enough to jiggle the stubborn door open, then returned. “It stinks in there!” the eight-year-old complained with a grimace as he joined his uncle at the bridge. “Hey, do you think those dolphins will bow-ride with us?”

  Ben smiled and turned the wheel. “Let’s see!”

  The rapping started up again, but this time it must be his sister trapped, because the voice he heard was clearly a woman’s. What was Maggie doing on his boat? She might let her son go with him, but she hated the ocean. He wondered briefly if it might be his sister Lara, but surely she was smart enough to get herself out. Jenna would be more likely to screech at him, but why would she be yelling at him to wake up? He was driving the boat!

  Ben’s curiosity got the better of him. He was tugging at the stuck door of the head, admonishing whichever sister it was to calm down and knock it off, when gradually he came to the bizarre realization that he was, in fact, lying in bed.

  Say what, now?