“Correct,” Stella said into their headsets. “Very small town, but it gets busier over the summer months.” She dipped the nose of her de Havilland Beaver. Their altitude dropped sharply. Deborah felt her stomach rise to her throat. She held her belly tighter to stop the feeling of airsickness as the waters of Taheese Lake came up to meet their little yellow bird. She caught sight of the bank of dark clouds looming in the north. Crosswinds slammed suddenly into the plane. The aircraft rocked violently. Deborah held her breath. Everyone in the plane exchanged looks of worry.
Silence thickened inside the de Havilland as Stella battled to steady the craft. She banked again and began another downward sweep in a long, lazy spiral, the wings rocking on currents of wind.
Mountains and wilderness spun around and rose to meet them. Deborah was gut-punched with awe, fear. She moved her hands to clutch her knees tightly. Her teeth clenched. The wind whomped them again, and the plane teetered violently.
“I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m sure looking forward to that welcome drink described in the email brochure,” Bart Kundera said loudly into their headsets, breaking some of the tension.
Others laughed. Uneasily.
Deborah saw small white-water caps on a stretch of the lake that was unprotected from the crosswinds.
“Oh, look!” came Monica’s voice. “I think I see it, the lodge—is that it, at the end there?” The plane turned.
Down below, at the foot of a tombstone mountain of black granite, the dark shape of a building emerged between trees that grew dense. Deborah heard Stella calling in their GPS coordinates again and telling West Air dispatch that she was coming in for an approach. She also reported the strength of the wind, and mentioned that the storm front was closing in fast.
As they neared their destination, the lodge building took more distinct shape, and a feeling of foreboding rose inside Deborah. It looked nothing at all like she’d imagined. Nothing like any of the images she’d seen in the brochure, or on the spa website.
“It . . . looks different,” Monica said, voicing what they all had to be thinking.
“That’s not the lodge,” Steven said. He turned to Stella. “That’s not the place, right?”
Stella remained silent, her hands tight on the de Havilland’s controls as she battled the crosswinds.
Deborah’s pulse raced. She closed her eyes as the water rushed up to meet them while the plane was still wobbling, and she bid a silent prayer to whatever gods might listen.
They hit with a hard thump. Deborah’s eyes flared open and she gasped.
The plane lifted, rocked, whomped, and bounced back onto the lake surface a few more times. The sound of the engine changed. They’d made it. They were down. Stella taxied slowly toward a dock that listed into the water among reeds and rushes.
Along a path that led up from the dock, a monstrous totem pole rose like a sentinel between the lodge building and the water. It had a raven’s head on top. The raven had been carved with a long beak full of wooden teeth and massive, outstretched wings. The raven caricature had in turn been fashioned atop the head of a stylized bear. The bear also had humanlike teeth, and a tongue that stuck out in an aggressive, warrior-like fashion. Another totem, slightly smaller, had been erected a short way behind the first. Paint peeled off both, and they were grayed by the weather. They stood like ancient warnings to foreigners who might dare to come upon on this shore. Not welcome. The words seemed to rise from the pit of Deborah’s stomach and whisper deep inside her brain. Not welcome.
Everyone was quiet.
Stella appeared tense. She leaned forward, studying the place as she taxied up to the listing dock.
The front of the lodge came into view. Rain began to spit. The sky turned suddenly dark. They’d entered the shadow of clouds that poured over the granite mountain behind the lodge. The wind lashed suddenly at them.
The building was constructed of logs. Double story. All the logs had been worn so dark that the building looked silvery black in this light. Rows of windows watched them from upstairs, dark-green shutters like eyelids placed at their sides. Above the front door hung a rack of bleached antlers.
The area around the lodge was overgrown with brambles and covered with mosses and lichens.
Bart said, “This cannot be right.”
“Looks like the Overlook,” Monica whispered.
“The what?” Nathan asked.
“That spooky hotel in that Stephen King novel.”
“No, it does not,” said Bart. “This place looks nothing like the one in the movie. And it’s smaller.”
“That’s how the hotel looked in my imagination,” Monica said quietly. “I never saw the movie.”
“Stella, what is this place?” Steven demanded, his voice strident in their headsets. Deborah watched Steven as he glared at their pilot. His neck was tight, his shoulders stiff. The bold and shining surgeon who could cut people open on his operating table and sew them back up in prettier shape looked as though he might be scared.
“These are the coordinates I was given,” Stella said quietly. She brought them up alongside the dock. The rain rapped harder. It ticked on the roof and against the windows and danced upon the water, making a billion pocks and bubbles on the surface. The wind gusted as the storm began to hunker down.
“Radio someone,” Jackie ordered suddenly from her seat in the back.
Deborah glanced over her shoulder at Jackie. The woman had powered on her cell phone and was checking for cell service. She came up empty. Her black, inscrutable eyes narrowed to slits. Her jaw tightened. Katie started filming out the window, silent. Deborah swallowed as a pontoon nudged up against the moss-covered dock. It looked like it hadn’t been used in years.
“Radio someone,” Jackie demanded again, louder. “Find out what’s going on. Check if this is the right place.”
“I did radio the coordinates in.”
“What did they say?” Jackie demanded.
Stella turned to face them all. The expression on her slender, angled face made Deborah’s heart sink.
“This is the place. These are the coordinates to which West Air was contracted to fly you all.”
“No, no way,” Steven said. “I did not sign up for . . . for this.” Steven waved his hand in the direction of the hulking building. “You have got to take us out of here. Fly us back. Now.”
As if on cue, the rain began to pour harder, and the wind bore down, sending waves lapping over the edges of the dock and the plane rocking.
“Let’s just take a look, shall we?” Stella said, powering down the engine. “Whatever this is, there is no way I can fly us out of here until this weather blows through. I fly visual flight rules. And with VFR you need daylight. You need to see, or we will crash in these mountains.”
“Yeah,” Bart said. “She’s right. Let’s just check it out.” He unbuckled his harness. “The actual spa could be through the trees or something, or around in the next bay. Maybe this is just a joke, or something.” He didn’t sound convinced.
“Maybe we’ve been duped,” Steven said darkly.
“But why?” Monica asked.
Stella opened the pilot-side door. The wind blew in cold and wet.
One by one they alighted from the Beaver, stepping gingerly from the pontoon onto the slippery green slime that covered the dock’s planks. Deborah was the last to deplane. Steven held out his hand to assist her.