ABANDONED

by Katie Berry

  Enormous chandeliers sparkled from the hammered copper ceiling high overhead. Red and gold bunting flowed along the walls like shining satin rivers. Along one wall, a long table bedecked in colour-coordinated fabric offered a full midnight smorgasbord with seemingly every delicacy a person could imagine. Across from it, a massive ‘Happy New Year 1982’ banner ran the length of the room near the ceiling, dangling over the tops of dozens of high windows. Outside, gusting snow scraped along the window-glass on crystalline claws, and the wind howled as if a beast possessed, trying to get inside.

  They strained to hear any sound coming from within the room; a laugh or giggle perhaps, or maybe a drunken New Year’s kiss being stolen in a corner somewhere. But there was nothing, and silence now held reign.

  The dance floor was littered with balloons and streamers that had fallen from netting overhead, released when the clock had struck midnight. They lay undisturbed in a circular pattern on the floor underneath the netting, with no sign of anyone having danced through them after they’d fallen.

  Full drinks sat next to plates stacked high with sweet and savoury delicacies. Cigarettes and cigars burned away in the heavy crystal ashtrays, with minimal ash dangling from their tips, looking as if freshly lit, ready for their respective owners to take their next drag.

  Esmeralda Cruz glanced back over her shoulder at Leonard Hunter. Their gazes locked for a brief moment. In his eyes, she could see he was struggling with the same things she felt inside — confusion, disbelief, and utter terror.

  There was no sound to be heard inside the vast room because there was no longer any living soul inside of it to make any noise.

  At the stroke of midnight, December 31st, 1981, ninety-eight beautiful people vanished without a trace from the grand ballroom of the Sinclair Resort Hotel, never to be seen or heard from again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  December 23rd, 2021, 1831 hours

  The highway wound back upon itself at every serpentine curve, coiling and caressing the cloud-shrouded mountains, the sun only a dim memory as the winter storm smothered the remaining life from the cold, December afternoon.

  A heavy layer of fresh snow covered the road. Lively Deadmarsh drove the hazardous highway with a skill honed from years of experience, giving him a confident ability that he might not have otherwise possessed, growing up, as he had, in the mild winter rains that seemed trademark to Vancouver, British Columbia.

  According to the gauge on the dashboard, the temperature had dropped another four degrees over the last three treacherous kilometres. The higher he went, the worse it got, making what had started out as a damp, showery afternoon at Vancouver’s harbour-front helipad, into a snowy, miserable winter’s evening higher up in the mountains.

  The SUV’s heated, leather-wrapped steering wheel and seats kept Lively more than comfortable. But perhaps a little too cosy, in fact, as he’d felt himself on the verge of drowsing off as he piloted the Toyota 4Runner into the storm.

  Leaning to the right, Lively elbowed open a cooler on the seat next to him. He extracted a can of Barq’s Root Beer with his right hand. Bracing it between his legs, he cracked the can open. The cold liquid hit the back of his throat, coating it with a burbling blend of caffeine and sugar. Though the soda kept him somewhat alert behind the wheel, it also had the unfortunate effect of filling his already full bladder to almost bursting.

  Propped up on the dashboard, his cell phone displayed a map of his current location. “Okay, Emily.” The phone’s artificial intelligence system beeped, confirming its undivided attention to his upcoming request. “Find the closest restroom.”

  After a moment, the map program did its search, and a smooth, slightly robotic female voice came out of the 4Runner’s speaker system, “There is a provincial rest stop five minutes ahead. Would you like to set a temporary waypoint?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “Waypoint set.”

  “Gracias, Emily.”

  “De nada,” the cell phone replied.

  Surprised to receive a response to his expression of gratitude, in Spanish no less, he smiled. He was amazed by the new capabilities and human-style interactions constantly being added to cell phones and other devices — some days he truly felt like he was living in the future.

  Lively drove in silence for the next few minutes, squinting through the windshield at the storm currently battering the four-wheel drive. Wind-driven ice crystals scoured across the windshield like a sandstorm with some of the gusts threatening to tear the steering wheel from his hand. After several tense seconds however, the wind died down for a moment and snowflakes as big as salad plates began to surge hypnotically past the SUVs high-intensity headlights, making it look for all the world like he’d somehow managed to bump the 4Runner’s speed to warp factor one. Moments later, the illusion was shattered when another huge gust of wind came along and shredded the delicate latticework of large flakes, rending them to ice crystals and raking them across the windshield once more.

  “Your destination is on the right,” Emily chimed. With a sigh of relief, Lively spied the rest stop, barely visible due to snow blanketing most of the blue and white rectangular sign.

  Feeling as if his kidneys were preparing to high-five his bladder in excitement, Lively slowed the Toyota to a crawl, starting to pull in, but stopped when he saw a two-metre-high snowdrift blocking the rest stop’s unplowed entrance. He frowned through the passenger-side window at the happy stick people camping beside their stick tents and picnic tables. A small sign was plastered diagonally across the bottom proclaiming the rest stop to be ‘Closed for the Season’. Some smart-ass with a can of spray paint had added, ‘Reason? Freezin!’.

  “Well, you got that part right, my friend.” Lively said, looking glumly at the graffiti on the sign. He put the 4Runner back in gear and pulled out onto the highway, shaking his head. He was getting close to just stepping out of the SUV and letting things fly, but some internal sense of propriety held him back from doing so. Well, if worse came to worst, he reasoned, he would just have to emulate a trucker and ‘check his brakes’ in another few kilometres. “That’s just lovely, isn’t it, Emily? No rest for my bladder at this stop,” he commented, shaking his head.

  Hearing its name mentioned, his cell phone’s always-listening AI responded, “The next nearest rest stop is located thirty kilometres away in Entwistle, British Columbia. You are now approximately fifteen minutes from your current destination of Overseer Mountain. Would you like to change destinations and plot a new course back to Entwistle?”

  The snowfall outside of the windshield was almost horizontal now that the wind had kicked up again, and Lively knew that Emily’s estimate was lollipops and rainbows time. It would actually be much longer since it was nearing whiteout conditions on the road and it slowed his progress to a crawl. But he also knew he had no choice and responded, “Cancel, Emily.”

  “No problem, your original destination is still set.”

  A flash of headlights up ahead suddenly informed him he was not the only person stupid enough to be out on the roads tonight. A couple of seconds later, a snowplow blasted by, kicking up a snowstorm of its own. He reconsidered his thought — that guy wasn’t stupid; he was getting paid to be out here. “Rather them, than me”, he muttered, turning up the heat a bit more as he watched the snowplows’ taillights dwindle to twin red specks in his rear-view mirror. He smiled suddenly, thinking that he, too, was getting paid to be out here. But Lively’s job wasn’t one for the public’s safety; instead, it was to try and shed new light on a mystery more disturbing than anything he’d ever encountered so far in his career. Amazing what one does for money, he mused.

  The road up to the resort was private and like the hotel, had been closed to the public since the incident had occurred in order to keep the looky loos of the world at bay. At least it seemed that whoever controlled things regarding maintenance at the resort was keeping the road clear for their arrival. Lively didn’t know what it would cost to have a p
rivate firm plowing a thirty kilometre stretch of road like this. Probably more than the twenty bucks he remembered charging as a boy when he would shovel his neighbour’s laneways during Vancouver’s single, annual snowstorm that hit each winter.

  Unfortunately, that storm was what the West Coast had been experiencing for the last forty-eight hours now, and it was a doozy, battering the coast for two days straight so far. He squinted intently through the windshield, willing his overfull bladder to hang in there for the next little while and not make him a candidate for Depends Undergarments as he crawled the SUV toward the resort. Despite the road being recently plowed, it was still slow going due to the limited visibility.

  Lively was not a winter person. He liked to avoid the worst that winter had to offer in Canada, especially nights like this, having grown up and lived most of his life on the rainy West Coast. Somehow, the thought of freezing to death in the mountains on his way to an abandoned resort didn’t seem particularly appealing, and although he drove with confidence, he also drove with caution.

  This afternoon he’d choppered in from three-hundred kilometres out at sea. What had started out as a relaxing vacation had devolved into something else entirely when his ship picked up something while at sea in the middle of the cruise. And this something had not been a flu virus or food poisoning, there was no question of that. However, it had been deadly, and the surviving passengers and crew ended up with a vacation experience they would not soon forget. He’d hailed a taxi to his condo and grabbed his Toyota 4Runner from the garage. Everything that he might need for his trip to the Sinclair had been packed into the SUV before departing for his cruise. Not a man to leave anything to the last minute, he usually tried to go wherever he was going, prepared.

  And now here he was on his way to this new case. But calling it ‘new’ was a bit of a misnomer. Although he was opening a fresh investigation into the Sinclair Incident through his personal investigative agency, what had happened up there was definitely not new. The Sinclair Resort, high in the mountains of Western Canada, had long fascinated millions of people around the world. It was an event that left everyone questioning their own reality as they tried to understand what had occurred that bizarre evening.

  One such group still trying to understand was the holding company that had taken over the resort just after the event occurred. A couple of weeks before the cruise, a bulky document had arrived by registered mail. For whatever reason, the holding company had requested Lively’s assistance in helping ‘restore’ the resort and make it available to the public again. Multi-use scenarios were bandied about in the letter, from a refurbished hotel and condos to an outright tourist attraction based on the mysterious disappearance.

  Of course, by the word ‘restore’, he knew they actually meant that they wanted him to help ‘cure’ the place of whatever malignancy had taken it over. The fate of the people in the ballroom was now legendary and filled with as much speculation as that of the first Roanoke Colony. And like any company, if some money could be made from their investment after all these years, then they were going to try and collect on it.

  Since the building had been tightly sealed after the bankruptcy, not much was known of the interior’s condition. Now, after forty years, the company wanted to know once and for all if it was safe for anyone to set foot in the door. Lively had been chosen to be that someone and he’d accepted in a heartbeat, no questions asked. It wasn’t really a hard choice for him, seeing as the incident was his own personal Holy Grail of unexplained happenings since early childhood. And a nice bonus had been the retainer cheque for an ungodly amount of money that they’d included with the query letter. Ultimately, it all added up to something to which he could not say no.

  In the intervening weeks, while he’d been ‘relaxing’ on his cruise, Lively had been able to do quite a bit of research on the Sinclair. He’d requested and, surprisingly, received copies of the police reports from the lead RCMP investigator at the time, Chief Inspector John Harder. Also included were interviews of guests and staff who had reported strange happenings before and after the event. Lively had taken some of his holiday time to compile all of this material into a journal. All in all, he had almost three-hundred pages of information about that snowy December evening four decades ago when the power went out.

  Lively snapped out of his reverie as the SUV’s tires temporarily lost traction. The rear end of the vehicle began to fishtail, and his winter driving skills kicked in automatically. In one smooth adrenalised motion, he turned the wheel in the direction of the skid, bringing the vehicle quickly back under control. He was a confident driver, thanks to hundreds of hours of training, including extensive, in-the-field experience with defensive and offensive driving techniques. Of all the courses he’d taken over the years, extreme winter driving was his favourite.

  “Well, I gotta say, that shot of adrenaline perked me up more than the Barq’s did.” But now, suddenly thinking of fluids again, Lively found the jiggling movement of the SUV made his full bladder chatter even more insistently. But despite this need to pee, he pressed on through the driving snow, but took it slow — there was no other way to go.

  He was in no hurry to meet any of the other parties involved in the case at this point since there was no one else to meet. After the disappearance, the entire resort had been temporarily shut down as an open crime scene in order that the investigation could proceed unhindered. But what was supposed to have been a short closure turned into weeks, which stretched into months and finally dragged into years. No further reservations were taken after the incident, and the hotel never reopened, finally declaring bankruptcy in 1985 after the massive payout incurred from the lawsuit settlement.

  For almost four decades now, no one had entered the building, and it had remained untouched. Whatever walked the darkened hallways of the Sinclair Resort Hotel since then, had walked alone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  January 1st, 1982, 0602 hours

  Inspector John Harder of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police thought he’d seen it all. He’d been involved in several missing person cases over the years, including a possible murder-suicide up here at the Sinclair many years before, but he’d never had a case where so many people had just disappeared all at once.

  He’d been awakened at 12:30 A.M. by the insistent ringing of the phone next to his bed. Not being ones to stay up late, he and Helen had turned in early last night. Despite the magical night and all of its lovely romantic connotations, after being married for twenty-five years, they were both content just to be together and found themselves napping side by side in their chairs by nine.

  So now, here he was, only six hours into the new year with less than two hours of sleep, overseeing an investigation that might turn out to be one of the biggest mass disappearances in modern history.

  As he surveyed the interior of the grand ballroom, he was reminded of the Mary Celeste. That ship was found adrift at sea with all hands and all passengers missing. When boarded, nothing was found disturbed or out of place. It was as if everyone on board had vanished right in the middle of whatever they were doing. The galley had dinner laid out for everyone, with bowls of soup and cups of coffee still warm to the touch. There were no signs of violence or struggle, which seemed to rule out pirates. Had that been the case, the ship would have shown some signs of looting or disturbance, but there was nothing.

  It was the same here at the Sinclair: flutes of champagne sat full and untouched, cigarettes and cigars in ashtrays were burnt down to stubs as if they’d all been lit by their owners and then completely forgotten afterwards. The smorgasbord was still laid out on its table, growing cold and dry. John hadn’t wanted anything removed; he’d mandated that food, table settings and drinks stay where they were until samples could be taken of everything.

  Scratching his head, Harder smiled ruefully. He’d just finished interviewing the first people to arrive on the scene, a young Hispanic woman and her supervisor. As of right now, he knew as much as they did
, which was just about nothing. The young woman, one Esmeralda Cruz, had arrived just moments before her supervisor, and neither had seen anyone in the corridor departing the room as they approached. In fact, the woman recalled hearing the band playing music as she rode up in the elevator from the basement. When the power had gone out halfway through the journey, the music stopped, which she said she found strange. Once the power came back on, she’d hoped the band would start playing again, but they never did.

  Her supervisor, Leonard Hunter, had come hustling up the stairwell from the basement-level kitchen, wanting to make sure that everything was running smoothly.

  Harder asked the manager why there were no other staff in the ballroom before the occurrence. Hunter had been evasive at first, but when John pressed him further, the man had admitted to allowing some of the staff to start their New Years early and have a few drinks down in the kitchen. He admitted to feeling both ashamed and relieved that the rest of the staff was not in the ballroom when the incident occurred, thanks to his impromptu staff party.

  John shook his head. All told, there were ninety-eight people in that room, plus nine band members — all now gone. It was as if they had been erased from existence. How had that many people disappeared in the short space of fifteen seconds? It wouldn’t have been long enough to get even half of that many through the emergency doors for a fire drill. Maybe in a full minute, but not fifteen seconds.