Page 30 of Mazywood

Beneath that, a generic metal sign looked more recent: PRIVATE PROPERTY: KEEP OUT.

No gate stood in the road to stop him. Rory drove on.

The lodge’s driveway was wider than the road, also freshly plowed, so it was as “impossible to miss” as Garrett had promised, a clearing cordoned off by a wooden gate. The two-story lodge stood thirty yards beyond the gate, bracketed by snow-laden branches of spruce and mountain pine trees at least fifty feet high. The lodge’s windows were dark and somehow unfriendly, their upstairs shades drawn like two half-lidded eyes. It reminded Rory of the farmhouse in Misery, more a modest residence than a lodge. The house might not be more than twenty-five hundred square feet, but it projected breadth despite its faded paint on the wood panels that might once have been barn red, now reduced to streaks of sun-beaten rust and gray. The wooden sign on the post near the gate had identical script to the one on the road, but offered more information in addition to a profile of a bear’s head: BEAR CREEK LODGE. ESTAB. 1949.

The gate barred his passage. Rory pulled his Jeep up beside a four-foot snowdrift so he wouldn’t block the driveway. He turned off his Jeep. His music died mid-shriek.

“Well, shit.”

Rory didn’t like nosing around on private property, and not only because it wasn’t strictly legal. Garrett had danced around why he’d been here, and now it was obvious that he’d known he was trespassing. Garrett had said his nephew had told him about a hidden ski slope for tubing and snowboarding, but if there was a slope here, it wasn’t open to the public.

Rory opened his glove compartment to pull out his pack of clove cigarettes and a lighter. He’d given up smoking when he was thirty, when Monica got pregnant. Their son had died after fifteen hours, and subsequently so had their marriage, but Rory had stayed quit until his first round of chemo two years ago. As consolation, he had given himself the gift of a single clove cigarette—his former love. That became one or two cigs a day, still holding steady. By now, he was lying to check No when medical and insurance forms asked if he was a smoker, but he’d been smoking a pack a day before, so it was the spirit of the truth. And the hooks were in him again: Smoking soothed his nerves so much that he always felt the pangs of desire to light the next one. And the next. One more uncomfortable burden to add to his fucking list.

Just one today, he promised. Maybe he would quit again on Monday. Like last week. But it was hard to give up a simple pleasure when death was stalking him.

After a couple of pulls, the nicotine flooded Rory with clarity. He would knock on the door and hope someone was home. If not, he would quickly tour the property and try to find the spot near the slope where Garrett had gotten spooked. If he found a trail or anything didn’t look right, he would shoot photos or video and ask permission later. Then he would get the hell out of here. The property didn’t look like it had security or wildlife cameras, but it might.

Rory clipped on his lapel mic and checked his phone to make sure the Bluetooth was on.

That was when he noticed his bars had flatlined. A cell phone dead zone.

“Well, shit,” he said again. So much for calling Garrett if he had any questions.

Rory grabbed his fleece-lined denim jacket from the passenger seat and slipped it on. Then he climbed out of the car, leaving his keys in the ignition. Why not? He checked his car door to make sure it was unlocked before he closed it with a muted thump that echoed across the tree trunks. Only now did he realize how close he’d parked to a ditch that was partially buried by snow. Three reflectors on stakes outside the driveway warned motorists not to get too close.

Dodged that bullet. Rory breathed with relief as he surveyed the property from the gate, which might be ten acres, with more behind the house. Two small cabins were off to the side, mostly hidden by snow-adorned spruce and pine trees. One cabin was in such bad shape that a fallen branch had caved in the roof, the door roped off with red CAUTION tape. But the cabin farther back looked passable as a hunting shack even if it wouldn’t fly on vacation. The main house retained its dignity, but the cabins reminded him more of the sites of ghost hunts, which were his most common investigations. Like all relics, these cabins stank of the dead.

An icy breeze skated across the back of Rory’s neck. He raised his warm coat collar, but the tingling felt more like nerves than weather. He didn’t always feel anxious at the site of an investigation, but this one rubbed him wrong. He eyed the snowy ditch again to make sure nothing was moving behind him. Scanned up and down the empty road.

Damn if he didn’t feel like someone was watching him. Or something, his mind teased.

Rory hit record on his phone and immediately felt more in control. “Today I’m at a lodge hidden in the piney woods of the California mountains.” Better to be vague. He didn’t want to send a flock of devotees to this doorstep, a mistake he’d made in the past. “Based on a tip from a source I know and trust—which is a hell of a nice change, by the way—I’m out here playing wildlife biologist to see if I can find signs of a mysterious creature he saw in the snow. And believe it or not, folks, it wasn’t Bigfoot or a Lemurian, the favorite ‘aliens’ out this way. Papa Bear’s got a brand-new bag. Here’s hoping this investigation won’t be too hot or too cold—but just right. See what I did there?”

The corny joke—which he probably would edit out—helped Rory shrug off the feeling of being spied upon. The driveway was icy in the shade, beyond the fringes melting in the sun, so he was glad he’d had sense enough to wear hiking boots. No more hospitals, thank you.

The log gate was closed. It felt intrusive to lift the latch and slide the gate open across the carpet of snow, so instead he eyed a gap on the side of the fence closest to the cabins. The broken section looked like wildlife had muscled their way in past sagging rails to a deer trail on the property, large enough to pass through.

Almost like the gate was open, sort of.

“Hello?” he called out. “I’m entering the property!” People who exiled themselves this far away from other people didn’t like surprises—and usually had guns.

No one opened the front door or answered. A squirrel or rabbit rustled in the brush near him, and Rory hated the way he flinched. The feeling of being watched crept back too. He checked the darkened windows to see if anyone was staring. No movement from the blinds.

Rory slid past the broken rails to enter the grounds of Bear Creek Lodge.

If he’d been visiting seventy-five years earlier, an ornate brass sign hanging from a high crossbeam over the gate would have proclaimed his arrival at MAZYWOOD, more akin to a ranch. He would have walked past three state-of-the art cabins with their own porches and rocking chairs. A children’s swing set and a frozen man-made duck pond would have been in the clearing between the cabins and the house. A carport, now gone to make room for the one-car garage, would have given him a glimpse of a 1949 Cadillac convertible in bright red paint parked by a chauffeur who was on call twenty-four hours a day. Tea lights would have lit up his path from the driveway to the door, day or night. A stay at this resort had been a coveted occasion. The clerk at the gas station could have told him much more, but she hadn’t trusted the whiff of a city interloper wafting from him, the sort who was driving up real estate and coffee prices in town.

And although he was a trained journalist, Rory had not thought to research Bear Creek Lodge beyond asking basic directions. Still, as he walked past the empty space where the third cabin had been, he was aware that his footsteps were walking across history. The thicket of pine needles carpeting the cabins and main house with the snow made it look as if they, like the trees, had sprouted from the soil. A forest in a fairy tale. The spruce trees looked like early Christmas.

He was midway between the gate and the main house when the mountain mushroomed in sight in a gap between the treetops, a visual spell so enchanting that he had no choice but to marvel. This was the same spot where the original buyer of the land had said, I want to build it here, imagining how grand it would feel to claim ownership of such remarkable beauty—and to share it with guests who, like her, had so few spaces they could claim. The view was more breathtaking at dusk than midday, but it was enough, nearly a hundred years later, for Rory to think, This world is a lovely fucking place, a thought that didn’t feel like his own. Not lately, anyway. Not by a long shot. His eyes moistened with tears.

Rory remembered his recorder. Remembered who he was and why he was there.

“Fellow Yearners,” he said, “I wish I had words to describe what I’m seeing—”

Rustling came from the snowdrift against the front porch left of him, low to the ground. Rory tensed for a dog to charge from under the house, but nothing moved or made another sound. If he had fifty bucks for every time he invented noises at the start of a new investigation, his podcast would be making a profit. His imagination was most active before his first disappointment, when he was most willing to believe.

“Thought I heard something, sorry,” he explained to his recorder, his companion on this lonely day. “I know—that should be my catchphrase. Let’s see if anyone’s here.”