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She and Dan hadn’t found having kids easy and she’d been in her thirties before that magic double line had appeared and the pregnancy had held, unlike the others, that had all failed before ten weeks. But this time, she’d carried to term and delivered a beautiful healthy baby boy.
As soon as they could, they started trying again. Jess knew the best time to conceive was right after giving birth. But it was to no avail. Five years down the line, they still hadn’t been able to give Stephen a brother or sister. After another two, they stopped really trying. The sex dwindled. Dan began to spend more time trekking, hunting and night fishing.
Jess had told herself it didn’t matter. She was lucky to have Stephen. Lucky to have a child at all. And yet, she worried. More than she should. She never understood how other parents could be so carefree, so careless, with their children, while she spent every waking hour terrified that something might happen to Stephen; that he might be taken from her. He was so wanted and so precious and so singular.
If she lost him, what would she be left with? Nothing. It wasn’t the same if you had more children. That was the cold, hard truth. Immense as the pain might be, you could keep going because you had other children to look after. And perhaps more importantly, you were still a parent. What were you when your only child was taken from you? An ex-parent? A former parent?
The thought often plagued her and, while she knew it was crazy, part of her felt a heavy premonition that however hard she held on to Stephen, he would be lost to her. So, she clung on harder. Coddled him, spoiled him. That was what Dan often said. But he didn’t understand. It wasn’t the same for men. Never could be. Until you had carried a child and then delivered it into the world, you could never quite know the fear of losing that child. If something ever happened to Dan, she would be sad, sure. But it wouldn’t end her life. Stephen was her life. Without him she had no reason to exist.
She parked the truck up outside her dad’s house. Unchanged since Mom died. His battered truck was parked to the side, snow had been cleared from the path. Everything looked just like it always did, and yet…for some reason, a sliver of ice shimmied down her spine. What the hell was that? Nothing. There was nothing here out of the ordinary. But still, the vague uneasiness remained. She climbed out of the truck, clomped up the path and knocked on the front door.
She stuffed her gloved hands in her pockets and shuffled her boots on the compacted snow. Her dad usually came to the door on the first knock, often as he heard the truck draw up. She raised her fist and knocked again. Still nothing. She frowned then reached out and tried the door handle. Locked. Okay. She was early. Perhaps her dad was in the kitchen with the radio turned up. His hearing wasn’t so great.
She turned and crunched through the deeper snow around to the back of the house. Her anxiety amplified. The door to the kitchen was hanging open, the lock bust. Shit. She stepped inside, pulling the door closed behind her. It didn’t feel any warmer in the house, which meant the door had been open a while.
“Dad?”
She waited. No response. She looked around the kitchen. An empty whiskey tumbler sat by the sink, the bottle nearby. She walked out of the kitchen and down the short hall.
“Dad? Are you here? Is everything okay?”
The words died in her throat as she reached the door to the living room. It looked like a bomb had hit. Soot smeared the walls, logs and charred embers were scattered over the floor. A chair was overturned, cushions scattered and a lamp smashed. The whole room stank of smoke.
What the hell had happened here? Jess scanned the room, heart pounding. Then she turned and charged up the stairs, more panicked than ever.
“Dad. Dad!”
She flung open doors. Bedrooms, empty. Bathroom, empty. Nothing up here appeared to have been disturbed. She ran back down the stairs and paused in the hallway. She could hear a noise coming from the living room: a flapping, scraping noise.
She walked cautiously forward. The scraping sound came again. It sounded like something dragging itself across the floor, and it was coming from behind the upturned armchair. Jess hesitated. It might be an injured animal, maybe a rat or a squirrel. Cornered animals could turn nasty, and she didn’t want to worry about a rabies bite. She knew Dad kept his guns in a cupboard in the corner of the living room. She stepped over the shattered lamp and pulled the cupboard door open. A handgun and a hunting rifle hung in the rack. Where his crossbow should be there was an empty space. Jess grabbed the handgun.
She walked back over to the armchair and peered behind it. A bat lay on the floor. One wing was torn, and it was trying to pull itself across the floor with the other one. Bats weren’t common in Alaska, although some roosted in attics, caves and even chimneys. But this bat looked bigger than the small native browns.
Jess stretched out one boot and flipped it over. It raised its head and hissed at her, fangs bared. She recoiled. Fuck. A vampyr bat. What the hell was that doing in here? The bat flapped its good wing frenziedly, squealing in panic. Jess stared at it with a mixture of revulsion and pity. Then she raised the gun and shot it, obliterating its head and most of its body.
She turned and walked out into the snowy yard. Dad’s house backed out on to open land and then forest, stretching as far as the eye could see. Before she and her brothers could read or tell the time, their parents had taught them how to use a compass, make a shelter and avoid a bear attack if they ever got lost. Survival skills. And Dad was a survivor too. He had taken his crossbow. Had he been going after someone—or something? Jess looked down. Footsteps in the snow led away from the house toward the trees. She hadn’t noticed them before because she had been focused on the open back door. And there was something else. She crouched down. Red splotches. Blood.
She straightened and gazed out toward the forest. A mass of black sandwiched between the dark gray of the sky and white of the snow.
She tucked the handgun into the belt of her jeans. And then she followed the footsteps.
27
Barbara guided the police truck back up the road toward Doc Dalton’s. She gripped the wheel tightly. She didn’t drive a lot, and she wasn’t used to driving in snowstorms. At the turn-off for the Bell house she stopped, remembering what Al had said.
“If a storm rolls in, the air taxi won’t run…and the trunk road gets impassable pretty quickly…you might find yourself stuck here awhile.”
This might be the last day they could drive out this way.
“How d’you feel about paying Nathan Bell a visit before we head up to the Doc’s?” she asked Tucker.
“Could be interesting.”
“Okay.”
She turned on to the rough track. The snow was even thicker here, and the tires fought to get a grip. The engine revved hard but plowed on. As they rounded a bend, the trees thinned out, and a property drew into view.
The house was built of wood and slate. Two stories, high eaves. The wood was aged and dark, ivy and fungus making a home between the gaping boards. A ramshackle-looking porch ran around the exterior, misshapen and tilted down at one end, the balustrade broken in places. For some reason an old chair sat atop the porch roof, and a large pair of broken deer antlers had been fixed above the front door. Outside, the forest leaned in on every side, close enough to whisper in the windows and scratch spindly twigs against the glass.
