Dead of Winter (11 page)

Andre pushed open the door, entering the small nave. He half expected to find the missing colonists sitting in the three rows of pews. But they were empty. One of the side windows was broken, letting in the snow, which frosted the pews.

As he walked down the center aisle, a raven landed on the sill of the open window. Andre stopped. The black bird hopped onto the edge of a pew, cawing. Two more ravens flew in. They squawked as he passed. He shooed them. He hated those black-feathered scavengers. They watched him with beady eyes, opening their beaks. “I have nothing for you. Go away.”

At the altar Andre lit the votive candles. The fire offered some warmth and light to the cold, gray nave. Stepping up to the altar, he saw that the crucifix on the back wall was hanging upside down. He righted it and crossed himself. He entered a narrow room where Father Jacques worked when mass was not in service.

Andre went through his mentor’s cabinets.

Where is his case?

Even though Andre had been his apprentice going on three years now, Father Jacques was a secretive man and never shared what he wrote in his journals. His reports went directly to the Notre-Dame Basilica in Montréal. The archbishop read the diaries then forwarded them to the Vatican, where supposedly the Pope himself read them. Father Jacques also carried a mysterious case that had always made Andre curious.

He slammed the last door. Aside from the curio cabinet, a chair and writing table were the only furniture in the room.

He must have taken the case with him.

The sound of flapping wings and cawing grew louder, startling Andre. He stepped back into the nave. Sitting on the edge of the pews, like a congregation of dark angels, were twenty ravens. A draft blew in through the shattered window, so cold it seized Andre’s breath. Behind him came the sound of wood knocking against wood. On the back wall, the crucifix was hanging upside down again.

33

At the bottom of the stairs, Chris jerked with his lantern. “What was that?”

Private Pembrook whispered, “Probably a rat.”

“It sounds bigger.” Chris cocked his pistol, aiming at the doorway to the next room. There it was again, the faint sound of a branch scraping a window. Or maybe it was claws dragging across metal.

“Bugger, I don’t like it.” Private Pembrook climbed halfway up the staircase and tried to see past the railing. “Lieutenant? Inspector?” No one responded.

“They must be at the far end of the lodge.” Chris took a few steps into the darkness beyond the staircase.

Pembrook hustled down to the foot of the stairs. “Wait, we shouldn’t leave our post.”

“Then stay.”

“Don’t leave me in the dark.” Pembrook followed Chris into the next chamber. The lantern light offered a few feet of visibility, but each time he turned, black nothingness filled in the void around them. Chris passed several columns that had been notched by hunting knives. He and Pembrook stepped into another room half-lit by pale daylight coming through a window. Foul odors burned Chris’ nostrils. His eyes watered. He held his breath just long enough to adjust to the stench.

“A ‘skinning room,’” Chris whispered. It was where dead animals were gutted, skinned, and butchered. He weaved between racks of beaver pelts stretched out for tanning. His hand grazed the soft fur. “Why would the trappers leave behind all these pelts? Aren’t they worth a lot of money?”

“There’s enough here to buy a year’s worth of rum. They must have left in some kind of hurry.”

Chris rounded a corner and explored a back room. The walls were lined with pens made of chicken wire. A kennel like the one Anika had. Most of the cage doors stood open. Tufts of fur covered the meshwork and surrounding walls.

Something crunched beneath his boots.

Bones.

Pembrook whispered, “Blimey.”

Piles and piles of dog skeletons littered the floor. Fur-covered skulls stared up at them. From the darkness, an animal growled. Turning with his lantern, Chris spotted two glowing eyes. The beast exposed its fangs.

“Shit!” Pembrook bolted.

34

On the third floor, Tom paused when he heard a crashing sound from downstairs. A strange howl echoed throughout the lodge. Tom hurried back down the stairs. “Chris?”

Private Pembrook entered the lantern’s halo, his eyes wide. “There’s a wolf in the lodge!”

Chris was missing. Panic shot through Tom as he followed the sounds of snarling at the other end of the lodge. “Son!”

Tom, Anika, and Hysmith stepped into a kennel. Their boots crunched over animal bones. “Chris!”

“Over here.”

Tom found his son hovering in a corner behind a sled. At the far wall barked a dog. Tom shone his light into the pen. The door was still closed. A tail brushed against the mesh. Growling inside the cage was a hairless husky that was all bones. It screeched and leaped at the latched door.

Everyone stepped back. The dog’s front teeth chomped at the metal. Its eyes gleamed solid white. As the dog snarled, strings of gray saliva dripped off its fangs.

Anika yelled, “It’s got rabies.”

“Everybody stand back.” Hysmith pressed the barrel of his shotgun against the cage and fired, splattering the dog’s head across the wall. The wound didn’t kill it though, because the headless beast continued to ram the cage door, smearing red across the chicken wire. With each attack, the mesh bulged, snapping the wood frame. Tom and Hysmith fired several more shots into the husky’s chest and ribs until the white flesh was riddled with red holes. The slain dog flopped on the ground with its legs still kicking. Hysmith reloaded and continued to shoot it until all the life finally shuddered out of the writhing mass.

Tom helped his son to his feet. “You all right?”

“Yes, sir. Just spooked.”

“Next time I tell you to stand post, you stay there.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tom knelt beside Anika, examining all the dog carcasses that covered the kennel floor. They had been eaten, many of them torn apart.

“Could the killer bear have gotten in here somehow?”

Anika shook her head. “Doorway’s too small for a grizzly. There’s no scat or bear paw prints.”

“Then what in hell attacked the sled dogs? And don’t tell me it was a manitou.”

“I’ll tell you what happened,” said Hysmith. “The huskies caught rabies and turned on each other.”

Tom stood and reloaded his pistol. “Well, there could be more in the lodge, so everybody stay alert.”

Hysmith checked his watch. “It’s time to head back.”

Tom said, “We still don’t know why the trappers abandoned their post. I’d like to keep exploring.”

“No way in bloody hell!” Hysmith pointed to a window. “You hear that wind out there? There’s another storm rolling in.”

As if to emphasize the lieutenant’s insistence, the wind howled and sleet began to hit the windows.

Anika said, “If we don’t leave soon, we’ll have to stay the night here.”

Tom said, “Fine, we go then.”

The four of them returned to the front den. The door opened, and Sgt. Cox entered with a gust of frosty air. He approached his lieutenant. “Sir, snowstorm’s gettin’ worse.”

“Tell the men to saddle up. We’re leaving.” Hysmith looked around. “Where’s Pembrook?”

Anika said, “He stayed behind at the stairs.”

“Did he go outside?” Hysmith asked.

The sergeant shook his head. “No, sir, we haven’t seen him.”

From the back part of the lodge a door slammed.

Lt. Hysmith called out, “Pembrook, get your arse back to the front!” When the soldier didn’t come, he said, “We have to find him.”

Tom felt a gnawing in his gut. He turned to the soldier. “Sergeant, bring in two more men. Chris, get your horse and wait outside the gate with the soldiers. Anika, go with him.”

“Come with us,” she pleaded. “Let the soldiers find Pembrook.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Tom said. “Just have the horses ready when we come out.”

Chris and Anika exited the lodge house as three more soldiers entered.

Tom and four gunmen searched the second floor, crossing back through the skinning room ,past the kennel and into a dining hall. Still no sign of Private Pembrook. The last room was a kitchen. The storm blew sleet in through several shattered windows.

Tom aimed at a silhouette with long hair who was standing in a corner. “Who’s there?”

“Don’t shoot, it’s just me,” spoke a man with a familiar French accent.

Tom raised his lantern to the Jesuit’s face. “Andre, what are you doing here in the dark?”

“I came in through the back door. The wind blew out my lantern.”

Tom said, “Have you seen Pembrook?”

“No, no one.”

One of the soldiers yelled, “Sir, I found blood.”

They all gathered at a door. There was a marking on it. Blood had been smeared on the door in the shape of a handprint. Tom touched it. “It’s dry, so this couldn’t be Pembrook’s.”

Tom pulled the door open and was knocked back by a rotten stench. Bloody steps led down into a dark cellar. He listened for a moment, but all he heard was the wind rattling the windowpanes.

Tom descended the stairs first, holding his lantern and pistol. One by one, the soldiers followed. At the bottom was a splintered door. It had been chopped open. Tom crossed the threshold into the cold, dark undercroft. The earth floor was covered in black puddles. Barrels and stacked crates lined the walls. Windows were boarded over. The soldiers fanned out. The depths of the cellar seemed endless.

Tom bumped into a twin bed. There was a row of them, with bloodstained mattresses. At the closest bed, a rosary hung from the shadows. Tom raised his lantern. Mounted on the bedpost was a severed head.

35

Outside Manitou Outpost, a gray tempest spiraled above the lodge house. Thunder rumbled. Snow fell in heavy sheets, pounding Chris Hatcher as he walked his horse outside the gate. Under a cropping of trees, Anika and one of the soldiers were readying the horses for the ride home. The boy mounted his skittish palomino and waited.

Anika climbed onto the saddle of her horse. “Don’t worry, they’ll be out soon.”

Chris tried to hide his fear, but his hands were trembling. He was still shaken by the sight of that rabid husky. His clothes were smeared red where he’d fallen onto the pile of dog carcasses. The beast in the cage had been so diseased that it took several shots to kill it. There could be more dogs inside the fort, hunting for food. He watched the gate, wishing his father and the soldiers would come out. Chris imagined them inside the lodge, fighting off a pack of rabid dogs with white eyes.

“Anika, what happened in there?”

The native tracker stared at the lodge house. “The post is haunted with dark spirits. I sensed it when we arrived.” She reached into a furry pouch and sprinkled tobacco and feathers on the ground, whispered some phrase in her Ojibwa tongue. When she was done, she looked toward the woods. “This whole forest is a bad place. We are not wanted here.”

Chris stared at the surrounding pine trees. Snowflakes swirled among the shaking branches. The forest was alive with eerie sounds: howling winds, snapping wood, the constant cracking of the ice that covered Makade Lake, and underneath it all strange, distant moans.

“Do you really believe there’s a spirit world?”

The native woman nodded. “It’s all around us.”

A hawk flew over them, screeching. Something fell between Chris and Anika, landing in a snow dune. The tracker hopped off her horse, reached into the deep impression, and pulled out a dead rabbit by its feet. The head was missing. Blood spattered the snow.

“Hawk Manitou is warning us,” she said. “We should go get them.”

“No,” barked Private Wallace. The red-coated soldier was the only sentry who had remained outside. “Orders are to stay put until they return.”

“But they might need our help.” Chris rode his horse toward the open gate.

Wallace, who was on foot, marched after him. “Kid, get back here!”

“I’m not…” Chris froze. He spotted a white form moving through the woods behind Anika. Inside a spinning wall of snow and branches, a blurry shape was charging right towards her.

36

Tom swung his light around him, then back to the bedpost where the head stared with hollow eye sockets. Long white hair hung around the dead man’s ghoulish face. His cheeks and lips had been eaten away, leaving behind a skeletal grimace.

“Oh dear God!” Brother Andre gasped. His knees buckled and he looked away, leaning against a pillar.

Tom gazed at the rosary that hung from the bedpost. “Is that Father Jacques?”

Lt. Hysmith nodded, in shock.

“Here’s another one.” Tom set his lantern on the dirt floor beside a human skeleton that had been gnawed to the bone. A skull was still attached to the neck, suggesting that it was a second victim. He couldn’t discern if it had been a man or woman.

Lt. Hysmith said, “The dogs must have broken through the door and eaten them.”

Tom shook his head. “Dogs didn’t mount a head on a post. The priest wrote in his letter that the colonists had suffered some kind of ‘madness.’ If the trappers were isolated here for over a month, I’m guessing their food ran out, and they resorted to cannibalism.”

“Then the killer could still be here,” Hysmith said.

Tom scanned the surrounding darkness. Something glinted. A silver cross jutted from a post. He pulled it out. The cross’ bottom half had been sharpened into a dagger. The blade was well-crafted, the work of a sword maker. Engraved into the metal was a fiery sun, the emblem for the Jesuits.

He showed it to Brother Andre. “Do you recognize this?”

The young missionary was a blubbering mess. He shook his head.

“Why would a priest carry such a weapon?”

Again, Andre had no explanation. Was he lying, or was his mentor a man of many secrets? The cryptic diary Father Jacques wrote in Aramaic suggested the latter. Along one of the walls Tom came across a desk with blood-speckled parchment and an inkwell. There were several holy articles laid out on the desk: silver crosses, a bottle of holy water, and a black book with a red cross on the cover. The priest had been performing some kind of ceremony. Perhaps offering a final Mass to the survivors before they were overtaken. Tom sensed something in the gloom above him. He raised the lantern to a large circle of blood smeared on the stone wall. Stepping back, he realized it formed a pattern. A red spiral.