An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena
She thinks of her therapist, Donna—the woman who has been helping her regain a sense of control over her life, or at least trying to. With Donna’s help, she’s been trying to learn how to manage her negative thoughts. She certainly wouldn’t be happy with the way Riley’s using alcohol to cope this weekend. But she’s trapped in a remote inn with a bunch of strangers, and people are being murdered. She imagines being in Donna’s office, telling her all about it. She would say, You have experienced some terrible things. Yes, she has. She would say, Because of this, your mind will sometimes play tricks on you.
“Are you all right?” Gwen says suddenly. Somehow Gwen is standing right in front of her. She doesn’t remember seeing her move from the sofa. But Gwen is squatting down in front of her now, looking intently into her eyes, concern stamped on her face.
“I don’t know,” Riley whispers. Gwen stares back at her, alarmed. “I don’t know,” Riley repeats, more urgently. She’s in a strange place. Hell isn’t imaginary; it’s real. It’s a real place and it’s also a state of mind. And she can feel herself slipping into the pit, she can feel the fear taking over, the paranoia, the need to react. She doesn’t want that to happen. God, not here. Not now. She grabs Gwen’s hand tightly. “Stay with me,” she says.
“Of course,” Gwen says, and sits down beside her, the tension between them seemingly forgotten, at least for now. “I won’t leave you,” Gwen promises.
* * *
• • •
Inside the woodshed, a sudden rattling sound coming from the direction of the door to outside startles Matthew. He whirls toward the sound and trips over something, dropping the flashlight before he can turn it on. Completely blind, he senses something in the darkness, something moving. Matthew fumbles from cold and nerves, clutches the gun and raises it. He fires wildly in the dark.
* * *
• • •
David followed Matthew as best he could. He felt his way up and down the second-floor corridor, and then made his way up the main staircase to the third floor. He walked down the west side of the hall, quietly calling Matthew’s name, and then the east side, finally finding himself outside the servants’ staircase.
He pushed open the door and listened carefully. It was dead quiet. It was also dark as pitch in the back staircase. He wished fervently that he had a light. He had to find Matthew. Matthew didn’t know what he was doing. He was liable to shoot at anyone.
He called softly, “Matthew?” There was no answer. But he could be there, in the dark stairwell. Perhaps he’d turned off the flashlight. “It’s David.” He waited and listened, but there was no answer. He stepped cautiously into the stairwell. He felt around clumsily for the handrail. He searched for the first step with his foot, found it. He started down the stairs, moving slowly, feeling for each step, listening carefully. Where the hell was Matthew? David was frustrated at how difficult it was to know what was going on in the dark. The darkness was so absolute that it was disorienting. It was like floating in space, with nothing to mark where you were. He felt unmoored; he’d felt that way since they’d discovered Dana dead that morning.
He found his way to the second-floor landing and hesitated. He had a pounding headache. He thought longingly of the bottle of aspirin that he had in his carry-on in his room at the other end of the second floor.
David opened the door onto the darkened second-floor hall. He made his way to his own room at the other end, ears sharpened for any sound. When he got to his room, he fumbled with his key and opened the door with relief. His room was not quite as dark as the corridor. There was the briefest glint of moonlight coming in through the open drapes of the windows—and then it disappeared. David closed the door behind him. He felt around for his bag and found it on the floor, by the nightstand. He searched for the aspirin and then made his way to the sink. He poured himself some water into a glass by feel, and took the tablets, relieved to be alone, if only for a few minutes. Spending so much time with all the others, under so much strain—he wished it were all over. He was so tired. He wanted to lie down on the bed, burrow under the covers, and never get up. Instead—despite the cold—he spent a couple of minutes splashing icy-cold water on his face.
Feeling a bit better, he left his room and returned to the servants’ staircase, intending to resume his search for Matthew on the first-floor hall along the back of the hotel. He could be in the kitchen, the cellar, or in any of the other rooms on the first floor.
David is coming down the back stairs when he hears the gunshots.
He feels the shock through his entire body, a spurt of fear. He freezes. Tries to focus on where the shots came from. He thinks from somewhere on the first floor. From the woodshed, maybe. He stumbles down the rest of the stairs as quickly as he can. His breath is ragged. What if something has happened to Matthew? What if he’s too late?
* * *
• • •
Matthew feels the kick in his hand from the pistol and whirls and flees. He’s not sure what he saw, doesn’t know what he shot at. He doesn’t want to stay and find out. He clutches the gun tightly in his hand and bolts out of the woodshed and down the dark hall. He stumbles his way back into the library and stops, breathing heavily, trying to listen over his own noisy gasps.
* * *
• • •
The sound of gunfire finally sends Riley over the edge. She springs up abruptly, flinging Gwen off. Gwen tries to calm her but Riley is too agitated; she takes off suddenly toward the front door, as if she needs to escape. Riley doesn’t know what she’s doing, Gwen realizes—she’s just reacting, running blindly.
“Riley!” Gwen calls after her, pointlessly. “Stop!”
But Riley pulls open the door and flees into the blustery night, leaving the door open behind her.
Gwen hesitates for only a second, casting a desperate look at the others for help, and then grabs her coat off the coat hook and follows Riley outside. She’s wearing her sneakers. She has no light, and she must feel her way. It’s pitch dark, the moon hidden behind the clouds. She hurries after Riley. Gwen is terrified of going out into the darkness, but she can’t let Riley go alone. She wishes David were with her.
She can hear Riley somewhere ahead of her in the cold, can hear her scrambling on the ice, falling and picking herself up again, can hear her panicked, heavy breathing. Gwen follows her out over the icy lawn, barely able to stay upright. She slams hard into the broken tree branch that she’d forgotten was there and falls, her bare hands scrabbling at the ground. Gwen realizes Riley is running aimlessly, like a frightened animal—she’s running and that’s all. She may not even be aware of where she is. She must reach her and calm her down. Persuade her to come back inside, where it’s safe.
She hears voices behind her. She stops briefly and looks back. She can see James and Bradley dimly outlined in the doorway; they are coming to help. The door closes and all is dark again. She can hear them behind her, quickly catching up. She glances over her shoulder and sees nothing until Bradley and James are almost upon her. Then she sees them, looming toward her in the darkness. She feels intensely grateful that they’ve come after her. They don’t have a light either; they are all swimming in the dark.
“Which way did she go?” Bradley asks.
“I don’t know. She was ahead of me, but I can’t hear her anymore. I don’t know where she went,” Gwen says anxiously.
The front door of the hotel opens again, and Gwen barely discerns, in the faint light of the open door, Lauren and Ian coming out to join them. Gwen thinks of Henry and Beverly sitting alone in cold animosity back in the lobby. What if something happens to them? But she doesn’t really care. They’re not her problem—her first duty is to help Riley. The killer might be out here somewhere and Riley might run right into his arms. She turns away from the hotel and looks out into the darkness.
“Riley!” Gwen screams. They all hold still, ears cocked.
But all they can hear is the lashing of the trees in the wind.
“We should spread out,” Bradley says. He moves off to her right; James moves off to her left.
Gwen moves forward over the ice, toward the drive, the tree line looming to the right. She’s slipping and falling, her ungloved hands freezing from contact with the icy ground. Where did Riley go?
She can’t see anyone anymore. They’re there, but they’ve all slipped away again into the darkness. The trees and shrubs are menacing shapes in the dark. We have to find her, Gwen thinks, as she slides precariously forward.
TWENTY-SEVEN
David’s heart is pounding so loudly, his breath coming in such short, loud rasps, that he can’t hear anything over his own fear. He feels his way, touching the wall of the first-floor hall with his right hand as he makes his way to the door of the woodshed. When he reaches it, he takes a deep breath and pushes the door open. He curses himself again for not having a light.
“Matthew?” he says. “Are you there?” He’s met with absolute silence. And he can’t see a thing.
* * *
• • •
Riley runs wildly into the cold, icy dark. The terrible fear has taken over, driving her. She runs and slides, falls and picks herself up again, instinctively searching for somewhere to hide, some low place where she can crouch unseen. She needs to take cover. She senses the forest ahead of her and heads for it. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she knows to stay hidden, not to make a sound. She reaches the edge of the forest and crawls into some brush. She crouches on the ground, turning herself into a tight ball. She squeezes her eyes shut and rocks back and forth, her hands over her ears, trying to block out everything.
* * *
• • •
Gwen has never been so frightened in her life.
There’s some comfort in knowing that the others are out here with her, even if she can’t see them. It’s like she’s alone in a dark void. She can’t bear to think about David, what the gunshots might mean. Is someone else dead? She wonders if soon there will be no one left at all. She wants to live, but she hopes that if she has to die, she isn’t the last one. She doesn’t think she could bear it. She is defenseless. She thinks of the small, sharp letter opener that had been lying on the writing desk in their room. She wishes she had it with her now.
She keeps going, past the lawn to the drive, every footstep treacherous on the ice. “Riley!” she calls. “Where are you?” She takes a few more steps down the drive and stops to listen. She can see nothing, hears nothing ahead of her. How she wishes she had a flashlight! Suddenly she hears a wild howling. Coyotes, she thinks. Or wolves. She stops in her tracks, overwhelmed with terror. How has it come to this?
She suddenly realizes that she can’t hear anyone else. “Bradley?” she calls urgently. But Bradley doesn’t answer. No one answers. Perhaps they can’t hear her over the furiously gusting wind. Gwen’s heart pounds frantically; she can hardly breathe. She turns around, looks back toward the hotel, where she last heard the others. “Bradley? Lauren?” she cries again, more loudly, her voice infected with panic. But no one answers. She can’t think. She is all alone.
Gwen stops moving. She doesn’t know where anyone else is, whether there’s a killer out here. There’s a crushing pain in her chest.
She thinks she hears a sound like something falling heavily, but she can’t tell where it’s coming from. With the darkness like a void and the wind swirling around her, everything is distorted; she doesn’t trust her senses. For a moment, she does nothing. She doesn’t move, for how long she doesn’t know. She has lost all sense of time. Maybe a minute, maybe ten. She’s so frightened, so cold, that she doesn’t think she can move. She has to wait for the ache in her ribs to subside.
She begins to feel her way back toward the hotel, body low, arms outstretched, looking for Bradley or James, Lauren or Ian—anyone who can make her feel less alone. Less terrified. Even as she does so she’s aware that she’s abandoning Riley to her fate. Riley, her friend, who is afraid, and vulnerable, and irrational. Riley, who needs her.
But she doesn’t care. Right now, she can’t think of anyone but herself. She stops for a moment in the dark, trembling violently, listening, convinced now that the killer is nearby, that he has murdered the rest of them without a sound. And then she is fleeing back to the hotel, reckless on the ice, slipping and sobbing, terrified that she will be next. She aims for the hotel, which is hulking in the dark, desperate to get back to the lobby, to the light of the fire.
* * *
• • •
Alone in the lobby, Henry and his wife sit frozen in silence and fear. He watches her stare into the fire, which is starting to falter. He needs to add another log.
Somewhere out there David is searching for Matthew, who is armed and possibly a killer; Riley and Gwen are outside. He can understand why James and Bradley felt they had to go after the two women, but once they did, he doesn’t see why Lauren and Ian had to go after them too. He’s angry at them for choosing Riley and Gwen over him and Beverly. Now he and Beverly have been left to fend for themselves. What if the killer comes for them?
He watches his wife carefully. He no longer feels a shred of affection for her. He loves his children, that hasn’t changed. But something about her—something about her fills him with revulsion. He thinks of her flabby white thighs, the veins that run in little maps along her legs. Her breasts that are too heavy. The perpetual look on her face of being fed up. As if life is only to be endured.
But it’s more than that. It’s the way she views him. Overweight family man. A bit of a fool. Someone whose life is mostly over, who will never do anything interesting or exciting again. Just her presence near him, knowing that she believes this about him, makes him hate her. What had she said to him?—It’s just a phase. She diminishes him; she always has. Jilly doesn’t do that. She admires him. She finds him interesting, attractive. She told him she wants to spend the rest of her life with him. She won’t get tired of him, as Beverly says.
His wife doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life with him, but she would. If this hadn’t happened. All she thinks about is duty. The tyranny of the shoulds. I should do this, or you should do that. You should be home more. You should spend more time with the kids. You should try for a promotion.
He gets up to stir the fire. He reaches for the poker with his right hand. Oddly, time seems to slow down. He grasps the poker very tight. She’s sitting right there. It would be so easy. There’s no one here to see it. He could run outside after the others, make up some story. . . .
He grips the poker tight.
* * *
• • •
David feels his way across the woodshed floor, sliding his feet along, in case Matthew is there, somewhere, on the floor. He calls his name, but gets no response. He forces himself to get down on his hands and knees and feel around on the sawdust-covered floor for Matthew. He reaches the stump they use for chopping wood, feels its rough surface with frantic hands.
All he finds is the flashlight.
* * *
• • •
Riley huddles in the forest, her entire body shaking with fear and cold, reliving some of the worst moments of her life. Memories of victims—screaming, suffering, dying—bear down on her. She presses her hands to her ears to try to block out the noise, but it doesn’t work because the tumult is inside her head. She closes her eyes tight to stop seeing, but it doesn’t help, because the images are in her mind’s eye.
* * *
• • •
Matthew hears someone approaching the library. Someone who is trying not to make a sound. Without warning, outside the French doors, the clouds part to reveal the moon, and a glimmer of ghostly light filters into the library. Matthew stands facing the door. He has his gun in his hand, and he knows there are several bullets remaining.
A
“You’d better give me the gun.”
Matthew hands the gun over.
Sunday, 1:45 a.m.
When Gwen opens the door and stumbles into the lobby, she’s almost surprised to find Henry and Beverly still there, exactly where she’d left them, except that Henry is standing near the fire with the poker in his hand. He starts and drops the poker suddenly, and it rattles as it strikes the floor.
She half expected to find them dead.
David appears suddenly from out of the dark near the staircase. Matthew is with him. She almost faints with relief.
Henry turns from her to David and Matthew and asks, “What’s happened?”
“Nothing. We’re fine,” David says bluntly. “Where the hell is everybody else?”
Gwen whispers, “Outside.” Her entire body is shaking.
Henry says, “Riley ran outside when she heard the gunshots. The rest of them went out after her.”
“We can’t find her,” Gwen says. “She won’t answer us. It’s so dark—the others are still out there, looking for her.” She can’t stop trembling.
“Jesus,” David says. “We’d better get out there. We need to find her.” He sounds desperate. He turns to Gwen and says, “You stay in here with Henry and Beverly.”
“No! I’m coming with you.” She will stay close to David. She’ll be safe with him. They have to find Riley.
“Are you just going to leave us here?” Henry splutters.
Nobody answers him.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Matthew slips off the porch and vanishes into the night. David watches him go, wondering about the wisdom of all of them tearing off in different directions. But they have to find Riley, and time is of the essence. They can cover more ground if they spread out. It’s freezing out here.