Page 98

The Lamp Stayed Dark

Once you were north of Barrow there was not a lot of civilization. It was a six-hour drive to the Canadian border, and if you avoided certain roads you would hardly see anybody, especially at this time of year.

Mary knew the route; she had taken it as a child many times. Over the years it had barely changed; after she came off the highway there was a gas station and a country store, followed by a series of turns onto ever more rural roads that led eventually to the shores of the lake. The houses were all situated along their own rough, untarmacked, narrow lanes. Hers was at the end of a lane with the unimaginative name of Lake View. There were two other houses on Lake View, both obviously unoccupied. As she arrived it was going dark, and there were no lights anywhere: not in the houses, not across the lake.

Ryan and the kids were not there yet. She had thought they might be, but Ryan had the shopping to do, and Otis and Sally were probably getting clothes, or arguing about the route.

She pulled to a stop just before the turn into Lake View and waited in the silence, listening for the sound of a car or the glint of lights in the trees. There was nothing.

Satisfied that there was no way anybody had followed her, she moved off, and, minutes later, Mary pulled up in front of the house. She closed the door with a thud and retrieved the key that had been badly hidden under a pile of logs for as long as she could remember.

The lock turned with a click and she opened the front door. A damp, musty smell ballooned out of the house.

The smell of camp. The smell of comfort and safety.

She sat in the kitchen, a weak light illuminating the counter. There was a box of bottled water by the sink. She took one out and took a sip. It was warm and tasted of plastic, but it was all there was until Ryan arrived.

This time of year it went dark quickly; there had been some light in the sky when she arrived, but now all she could see out of the window was darkness. The only indication there was a lake there at all was an oily smoothness among the shades of black.

She didn’t mind. She had been here many times over the years and the darkness and quiet were familiar and comfortable. She did not find them threatening; rather, they made her feel safe.

She looked at her phone. Ryan, Otis and Sally should have been arriving any moment.

She had one bar of reception; enough, maybe, to call them.

It went to voicemail. She tried Otis, then Sally.

All straight to voicemail.

Which meant they were nearby. The farther you got from the highway, the worse the coverage was. Anywhere near the lake it was spotty at best, so they should be there soon.

Good. She was getting hungry.

She tried a group message.

What time are you arriving?

She went into the living room and sat in an old, threadbare armchair. She remembered sitting on her dad’s knee in that chair; it still smelled of him. On the table next to it was a copy of The Economist from during the pandemic. She and Ryan had come up here with the kids to get away from the madness.

She opened it and flicked through the pages, the graphs and articles talking about R-values and variants and mortality, and she thought We lived through history and then We’re always living through history, though.

She put the magazine down and looked at her phone. It had been fifteen minutes since she sent the message and there was neither a reply, nor any arrivals.

Which was starting to be a bit weird.

She went through the timing. She had spent about fifteen minutes talking to Ben in the office, so she had expected them to arrive soon after her. Maybe it was an hour for Ryan to get groceries; an hour – tops – for the kids to pack a few things.

They were well past that.

So where were they? If they were still in Barrow, or on the highway, they’d have a cell signal. If they weren’t, they should be here by now.

She felt a mounting disquiet, a disquiet, given what had recently happened, that began to build into something closer to panic. There was a problem; something was wrong.

She took a deep breath. There was nothing wrong. This was over, it was Dylan who had been causing all the trouble, and Gray Turner would soon sort him out.

Soon.

Dylan had disappeared. Yes, they knew it was him, but Gray hadn’t found him yet. Maybe he had heard he had been busted and had gone rogue.