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His concern is so tempting, but she must guard against it. She feels herself go suddenly cold, emotionless. ‘I’m fine.’
She knows her voice sounds harsh, as if she’s pushing him away. She wants to push all of these horrible people away – especially Matthew, playing incessantly with his gun. But, she tells herself, it must be very disorienting to suddenly, violently, lose someone who knows you better than anyone else, someone you’ve counted on to anchor your world.
Sunday, 1:10 AM
David slumps back against his seat, exhausted, stinging from Gwen’s rebuke. Matthew’s fidgeting is putting everyone on edge.
David says abruptly, ‘Matthew, put the gun down, it’s making everybody nervous.’
Matthew’s hands go still, but he doesn’t put the gun down. Instead he says, ‘You can all sit here and wait. I’m going to go after this sonofabitch.’ He gets up suddenly from his chair. ‘Where’s that torch?’
‘You can’t,’ David tells him sternly. ‘You can’t go anywhere on your own, even with the gun. It’s too dangerous.’
‘What do I care?’ Matthew looks with contempt at the rest of them. ‘Are you going to give me the torch or not?’
‘It’s almost dead,’ David reminds him, as Matthew snatches it up.
‘Don’t do this,’ David says. This is what he feared, the group splitting up. He thinks they should stick together. He doesn’t want Matthew going off on his own – nobody wants a jumpy, overwrought man running around with a gun in his hand. His little flock is coming apart. There might be someone out there, waiting for one of them to break ranks and run into the dark to be his next victim. Or the killer might be right here within arm’s reach.
Should he just let Matthew go?
Maybe he will be killed out there, and then they will know it isn’t one of them. He’s tempted to use Matthew as bait, David realizes with a sickening feeling.
‘Does anyone want to come with me?’ Matthew asks.
David wrestles with himself – should he go, too, leaving the rest? He glances at the others, watching Matthew nervously. No one else answers, either.
‘Fine, I’ll go myself.’
‘But,’ Gwen says, ‘how do you think you’ll find him? We’ve been all over this hotel. Stay here, with us. In the morning, we’ll all go together out to the road.’ She pauses and adds, ‘Please.’
He gives her a last, dismissive look, turns away towards the staircase, and is slowly swallowed up by the darkness.
Beverly watches anxiously as the group remaining falls into a fraught silence. There are nine of them left sitting around the fireplace: Gwen and David sitting across from one another; Lauren and Ian on one of the sofas; she and Henry sitting in armchairs across from each other; Riley, who has left the sofa where she’d been sitting with Gwen and moved to the hearth; and James and Bradley sitting together close by.
Beverly wonders if Matthew has just gone to his death.
Suddenly David gets up, mutters an expletive, and follows Matthew into the inky blackness.
Riley says, ‘What an idiot.’
Beverly wishes fervently that David would come back. She wants to get out of here alive. She wants to survive the night. She can’t bear that he has deserted them.
For Matthew, the loss of Dana has been completely destabilizing.
He walks quickly up the dark staircase and arrives on the second floor of the old hotel, holding the fading torch, which casts a faint light on the floral carpet.
He pauses in the corridor. How cold and dark it is up here, he thinks. It’s as cold as a morgue. He hears a sound below him. He looks back over his shoulder towards the staircase behind him, fading to black. He switches off the feeble torch and immediately can’t see a thing. He stands perfectly still and listens carefully, tilting his head. Then he hears David, calling his name. It sounds like he’s on the first floor, below him.
Matthew doesn’t answer. David will only want him to go back to the others. But Matthew doesn’t feel like part of this little group. He doesn’t have to follow their rules. And he has a gun. His heart pounding, Matthew makes his way quietly along the hallway to his right, silently trying all the doorknobs as he goes. His hands are sweaty. All the doors are locked, of course. Coming back down the hall towards the stairs, he peers into the dark sitting room. He stands still for a moment. There is the faintest light coming in from the windows; it’s slightly less dark than the corridor. But all he can pick out are the ghostly shapes of the furniture – chairs and sofas, empty and sinister-seeming. Then he hears someone coming up the stairs to the second floor. He steps quickly into the sitting room and stands behind the wall as still as a sentry. He tightens his grip on the gun. It’s David – he can hear him quietly calling his name. Matthew waits while David searches this side of the staircase – passing the sitting room, peering in, seeing nothing – and then walks slowly down the hall on the other side of the stairs. After a short while, Matthew decides David must have gone down the servants’ staircase.
Matthew follows in his footsteps, to the other end of the hall. The door to the housekeeping closet is unlocked and opens beneath his hand. He steps inside, turning the weak torch on briefly. He turns it off again. Continuing down the hall, he reaches the back staircase and pushes the door open and finds himself on the narrow landing. The door closes behind him, and he stands motionless, listening. Satisfied that David is no longer on the back stairs, he switches the torch back on. He ventures slowly down the staircase to the first-floor landing, all senses on alert.
He turns the torch off again and cautiously opens the door to the first floor. He doesn’t hear David calling him any more; he’s probably given up and gone back to the lobby. Here, on the first floor, is the room that he and Dana were sharing.
He peers down the first-floor hall, listening. It’s so dark that without the torch on he can’t tell if anyone else is here. He walks quietly down the corridor, peeking into the housekeeping closet and the sitting room, then returns to the back staircase and finds himself once again on the ground floor. The servants’ staircase opens into the dark hallway outside the kitchen. He makes his way silently along the hallway at the back of the hotel and turns, finding himself outside the library. He steps inside. The faintest sliver of moonlight falls now through the French doors. For a moment he just stares around the room.
He spies a large book open on the coffee table. He switches the torch on, and sees a picture of a nineteenth-century ship locked in the ice. He wonders who was reading it. He sweeps the torch around the room and turns it off again. Losing interest, he pauses at the doorway. If he goes right, he knows he will find another sitting room and wind up back in the lobby. He doesn’t want that. Instead, he turns to his left, and moves back along the rear of the hotel. This time he recognizes the door to the woodshed. He hesitates, then pushes open the door.
Chapter Twenty-six
RILEY IS GLAD that David is gone. She thinks he’s reckless, and she’s glad he’s gone. Maybe he’ll get himself killed.
She hears the muffled sound of a door closing somewhere in the hotel and her nerves jump.
‘What was that?’ she says, frightened.
Henry answers nervously, ‘It’s probably just Matthew, or David.’
