Latham's Landing (12 page)

“
I agree,” Helter replied, to her
surprise. “But we need to stay near it, or risk falling through the
ice. Where’s your snowmobile? I’m assuming you didn’t walk out here
dragging ten gallons of gas.”

“
It fell through the ice in the
shallows,” Caroline said, flushing.

Helter stared at her.

“
What?” she exclaimed. “I couldn’t see
where the ice ended and the shore began, with all this snow. The
pictures I saw were old, before the place had been
modernized.”

Helter looked away. “Dig into the snow here
by that wall. We need to know if there is ground beneath it, or
just more ice.”

Caroline began digging in the snow with her
hands. Helter took a long rope from his pack and tied one end to
the porch, then the other around his waist. He trudged out into the
now blinding whiteness, and was lost from view. A few minutes
later, a dull roar began, then his snowmobile crept slowly into
view dragging the sled, coming to a stop right near the porch.

“
There’s earth here,” Caroline said,
showing him a bare patch of ground with dead brown weeds. “And some
kind of short wall in front of us.”

“
Good. I was hoping for that.” Helter
untied the rope from his waist, then tied it to the sled before
dismounting. “Come on, I could use your help.”

“
With what?” Caroline said still
digging.

“
Pitching the tent,” he said cheerily,
grabbing a large pack off the sled. “Unless you want to freeze to
death.”

An hour later, Caroline sat with Helter
inside a two-person sub-zero temperature tent on small flat
chemical warming heat packs, with wool blankets across their laps.
Foam and a tarp protected them from the hard ground and snow
beneath them. Helter was warming up some food with a small propane
camp stove just outside the tent. The wind was still blowing
fiercely, and the snow and ice was piling up just outside the
door.

“
Here,” he said, handing her a steaming
mug. “I hope you aren’t a vegetarian.”

“
Thanks,” Caroline said, sipping the
hot liquid gratefully. They finished their first cup of stew in
silence, then Helter handed her another, and turned off the stove,
disconnecting the propane and bringing it inside the
tent.

“
Isn’t that dangerous?” Caroline
asked.

“
More dangerous to leave it out of
sight,” Helter said darkly. “It might not be there in the morning.”
He zipped up the tent flap. “The wind at least has stopped, but the
snow is falling pretty thick. There’s six inches of fresh powder
and I still can’t see more than five feet out. We should be able to
move at first light. I want to get off this island once my work is
done.”

“
Which is?”

“
Like the ghost said, the same as
yours,” Helter said. He held out his hand. “Harold Skelt. My
working name is Helter Skelter.”

Caroline nodded. “And you’re here to destroy
the house?”

“
The entire island, if possible,”
Helter amended, then took a sip of stew. “I was hired by the
current owners to burn the place for the insurance
money.”

“
You believe it is evil?” Caroline
asked, incredulous.

Helter nodded. “You must have heard about the
two cars and truck that got uncovered in the spring flood this year
on the mainland? There are at least nine people that went missing
in the last ten years that are now thought to have come out here
and disappeared. That’s on top of the five reported disappearances,
the three actual natural deaths that happened back in the seventies
and sixties, and the fifteen deaths ‘by misadventure’ that happened
in the last two decades, half of them drownings, and the other half
murders.”

“
So why pack for an overnight camping
trip?” Caroline asked sarcastically. “You’re over prepared for
arson, Helter.”

“
Because I knew it wasn’t going to be
easy,” Helter replied, his tone implying that she’d been
underprepared in her own plans. “I did my homework, and talked to
the guy who ran the boathouse near the shore. That place used to be
part of the island, but they gave it up. The usual thing the house
does to defend itself is call up a storm or something to drive
anyone who arrives inside, or drown those that try to get back to
shore. Then the ghosts descend. I knew I couldn’t risk going inside
no matter what, but knew that I might get stuck here for a night.
So I brought supplies to camp on the shore.” He smiled at her. “And
aren’t you lucky I did?”

I was lucky. You saved my life.
“And
what if the house falls on you or something?” Caroline teased
darkly.

“
Tell you the truth, I was worried that
the snowmobile was going to fall through the ice,” Helter said,
biting his lip. “More people drowned in the water here than
anything else…even the ones later found on the island or inside the
submerged part of the house always had water in their lungs. That’s
why I came in winter, to avoid the water.”

“
Me, too,” Caroline agreed softly. “I
tried to burn it before, this past summer, and never got further
than the water before a storm pushed me back to shore. How did you
know it wouldn’t burn?”

“
Because no one hires a demolitions
expert when they could pay far less for an arsonist,” he replied,
sipping his stew. “I got the feeling I wasn’t the first person that
had been hired, when the owners contacted me. That made me uneasy,
so I did some research.”

“
But you still took the job,” Caroline
said, in disbelief.

Helter shrugged. “Money is money. I’m not
afraid of ghosts. They can’t hurt you, just scare you.”

Not here, Helter.
Here, they can
kill you.
Caroline rubbed her eyes. “So what’s the plan? We
take turns sleeping and in the morning blow the place up?”

“
I’m too wired to sleep,” Helter said.
“But get some if you want. At the first sign of the storm clearing,
I need to set the charges and blow the place up. Then I’m out of
here.”

“
What if it doesn’t clear up?” Caroline
said. “What if we get buried? We both agree this is no natural
snowstorm.”

“
Are you always this optimistic?” he
said with a laugh.

“
For someone in this situation, you’re
way too cavalier,” she replied evenly, lying down. “Are you going
to tell me a good bedtime story too, so I have sweet
dreams?”

“
I have no personal stories with good
endings,” Helter said with a hard edge to his words.

“
So there’s no Mrs. Skelter at home,
cleaning the extra dynamite?”

“
I loved a girl, Sheila,” he said,
after a lengthy pause. “It was a long time ago, and it ended badly.
It was my fault. I left her in LA with no explanation. But she
caught up with me six months later in the middle of a job in
Atlanta.”

“
What happened?” Caroline
asked.

“
The usual,” he said with a grimace.
“She told me she was there for me, and she had an Uzi. I offered
her a partnership.”

Was any of this for real, or was he
bullshitting her?
“Why?”

“
I liked the gleam in her eyes,” he
said wistfully.

Carolyn rolled her eyes.

“
She was in the business I was in,”
Helter added, defensive. “You have no idea how much easier that
makes a relationship for someone like me. There’s so much you don’t
have to hide, or gloss over. We made a great couple, and an even
better team. So we decided to get married.”

His tone had turned bitter, the familiar
chord striking empathy in Caroline.
Had his true love gotten
killed, too?
“So what happened?”

“
She and I got caught in a terrorist
attack when we were vacationing in Europe,” Helter said
defensively. “She and I banded together, and we got home because of
it. We had to kill for the first time. It messed us both up.” He
paused, sipping his stew. “We’d always taken jobs that didn’t
involve anyone else. They were go in and get out fast kinds of
contracts. Taking a life changed how we thought about what we
did…and what we thought about ourselves for doing it.”

“
So this story doesn’t have a happy
ending? You sound like a match made in Heaven.”

“
She became a government agent, and I
became a merc,” Helter continued. “We separated for a while. Then
she got in a tight spot and called me, when her new white-collar
buddies left her hanging in a Lebanese prison. I got her out, with
a little hardship.” He laughed, a short staccato burst, then took
out a .44 clip and began to load it with hollow point bullets. “And
she decided my outlook on life was better. We were together ever
since.”

“
This sounds like a happy tale to me,”
Caroline said wistfully, thinking of Rob, and all they had never
gotten to share. “You had some great times together, you got
married—”

Helter shook his head. “Nope, we never
married. She was at my side. That was all that mattered.” He pushed
in the last few bullets, then snapped the clip into the handgun and
chambered a bullet. “She died a few months ago.”

“
Disease?” Caroline
ventured.

“
A job that went south. She contracted
one on the side I didn’t know about, hoping to net us enough for a
trip to Europe again. It didn’t work out.”

Sheila had died.
“I’m sorry.”

“
That’s the usual way people like us go
out,” Helter said with a shrug. “Don’t worry about it, ‘cause I
don’t.” He adjusted his blanket. “How about you? Why are you here,
Ms. Pyro?”

“
Nothing I want to bring up,” Caroline
said curtly. “Besides, there’s no point—”

“
Let me guess,” Helter said
patronizingly. “Your boyfriend got killed and you’re here because
no one could ever matter as much as he did, right?” He chuckled.
“How old are you, seventeen? Eighteen?”

“
Old enough to stand up for myself,”
Caroline retorted.

“
And you came here alone?”

“
My own house was spooky,” Caroline
said conceitedly. “Lots of people were afraid of it, but I never
was.”

“
You’re young,” Helter stated
condescendingly. “You’ll get over him in a few years—”

“
I don’t want to get over him,” Caro
shot back angrily. “I had something taken from me that mattered.
I’m taking something in return.”

“
Keep that anger,” Helter said with a
nod. “I think we’re going to need it, to finish this
job.”

There was the sound of a growl from outside
the tent. Caroline woke and grabbed for her gun. Helter brought up
his .44, pointing it at the tent flap, looking at Caroline and
holding a finger to his lips.

The growl sounded again, but this time
longer, wavering to a chilling howl that became a shriek. There was
the sound of something dragging on the ice, a soft clink of metal.
Both Caroline and Helter stayed silent, waiting.

Another howl sounded, this time further away,
wavering, then becoming a roar.

The first sounded like a wolf,
Caroline thought, holding one of her crosses in her hands.
But
that last was more like a lion. What in hell is out there?

Minutes dragged by, but the howl didn’t sound
again, and there were no more sounds. Caroline and Helter remained
motionless, anxious, worried that at any moment claws would rip
through the tent’s side. But nothing came.

Caroline opened her eyes, blinking in the
daylight shining through the sides of the tent.
God, she was
sweaty. Why was she so hot?

She put her hand where her gun had been and
felt bare blanket.

Caroline bolted upright, heart pounding,
grasping for her gun that was nowhere in sight. Afraid to call out,
she rummaged in her pack, grabbing her backup gun, another .38.
After making sure it was loaded and a bullet chambered, she
clambered out of the tent into bright sunlight.

Helter stood there with his back to her,
sipping coffee. As she emerged, he turned.

“
Good morning,” he said bitterly. He
indicated behind him with a sweep of his hand. “A little too good
for January, wouldn’t you say?”

Caroline looked behind, horror etching her
face. What had been mounds of ice and snow only last night was now
water, gently rippling in undulation all the way to the far shore.
Birds were calling on the mainland, their distant cries on the
breeze. Regular plops of snow falling off branches of pines could
be seen near her car, parked in the open for all to see now that
the snow had gone. The sun was shining brightly.

What last night had been icy mounds in frozen
lake water was revealed to be a series of ornate low walls on a
weedy lawn that stretched to a paved path close to the shore. A
long staircase was to their left. Above and to the side were a
series of much smaller staircases, stone verandas, patios, and a
few other small buildings, all interconnected with paved paths.
Trees were above them, clustered to both sides of the main house,
which seemed twice the size it had last night.

“
It must be easily sixty degrees,”
Helter said. “One of those strange mid-winter thaws of global
warming. That’s what they’ll say, anyway.” He threw a rock into the
water. “Without a boat, we have no way back to shore.”

“
There’s a boat here in the boathouse,
I think,” Caroline said slowly, trying to remember. “For
emergencies, for the caretaker. Now where is my gun?”