The town was best known, and we weren’t known for much, for the unsolved disappearance of four hikers more than two decades earlier. The Fraternity Four, they were called, even though they hadn’t been members of any frat together. But they were in their twenties, youthful and carefree, and they had last been spotted here in town, had set off toward the Appalachian and were never seen again.
Here one moment in Cutter’s Pass, gone the next. No clues, no leads. Just vanished. Over the years, their story had morphed into something of an urban legend, layers added with each retelling, rumors spreading in absentia.
Maybe the mystery would’ve faded with time, attributed to circumstance, buried with history, if not for the string of disappearances that continued to follow, with haunting regularity.
Most recently: Landon West, onetime resident of Cabin Four. He’d vanished four months before, in early April, when the inn was still ramping up to high season.
We didn’t notice, at first.
His disappearance had kicked it all up again: the stories, the press, the headlines calling us the most dangerous town in North Carolina.
It didn’t matter that the first thing a visitor saw when they passed the sign for Cutter’s Pass and took the wide bridge over the river was a welcome center and, across the street, the sheriff’s office. Didn’t matter that there were bright painted signs for rafting and horseback riding and adventure tours around the town green, where people milled around each morning as the vendors set up for the day. Or that thousands of visitors came through our small town to experience all we had to offer. The simple truth was that Landon West had vanished on our watch, just like all the rest.
“This is you,” I said as the path snaked off to the string of cabins, set back in the trees. There were technically only two cabin buildings, but we had subdivided them with a poorly insulated wall, the separate doors side by side in the middle of each log-home-style building. The only light coming from any of them was the soft glow of the floor lamp in Cabin One, visible in the curtain gaps of the front window. If Trey wanted real dark, he could walk the twenty yards into the trees around the back of his cabin and face the mountain.
I handed Trey the umbrella, slid the key into the lock of Cabin Four, felt the gust of cold as I opened the door, my hand stretching for the switch on the inside wall. Here, the wood paneling gave way to smaller windows that slid open on the front and back walls, to let in the fresh mountain air. There was a heating unit under the back window, for off-season stays.
The cabin furniture was simple and spare: a wood dresser, a nightstand, a four-poster bed with a quilted blanket, a desk and hard-back chair. Everything was shades of brown, except for the hotel guidebook, a white three-ring binder of information, perfectly centered on the surface of the desk.
Trey remained on the other side of the entrance, still holding the umbrella over his head. Now he was looking at the place Landon had once slept, the chair he’d once sat in, the place at the foot of the bed where Georgia had found his suitcase, mostly packed but still opened, only his hiking boots noticeably missing.
“Okay, well, I’ll leave you to get settled,” I said. I took the umbrella from his hand, which prompted him to finally step inside, switching places with me. He looked shell-shocked, unprepared. “If you need anything, the phone at the front desk will reach me.”
“Thank you, Abby,” he said, one hand on the door.
My hand lingered over his for a moment as I placed the key in his open palm, cold and wet and unsure. It took some time to get your bearings here. “Welcome to the Passage.”
CHAPTER 2
GEORGIA WAS STANDING AT the registration desk, the inn’s landline phone halfway to her ear, when I returned.
“The lines are down,” she said as I shook the rain from the umbrella and leaned it in a groove beside the entrance. She held that same pose, that same haunted expression, as a door opened somewhere on the second floor—the cry of a hinge I’d have to get fixed.
“Probably the rain,” I said as I crossed the lobby. It was more the wind than the rain that managed to cut us off most times, though we weren’t the only ones. The entire grid of the town center had been known to lose power from a downed tree limb—or, once, a car that collided with a telephone pole. It was that sort of night.
“I heard it ringing,” she said, quieter this time. “It just kept going, and I came out to answer it, but…” I took the phone she extended my way—nothing.
Well, not quite nothing. There was a low clicking sound coming from the receiver, something between dead air and static. It had happened before.
“It’ll come back,” I said, replacing the phone in its cradle. Georgia’s gaze flicked to the dark windows, like she expected something to be out there, watching back. A year working here, and she still wasn’t accustomed to the whims of the weather. The coincidences she took as signs. The sound of the local wildlife outside our windows at night. The dangers she feared could exist behind a dropped phone call, a missed connection.
When she’d first arrived, I couldn’t help but notice our similarities: We’d both come to the area soon after losing a parent, and we’d both chosen to remain—a waypoint that had turned permanent. It took longer to notice our differences: Georgia seemed to process everything by sharing, expecting me to do the same. She said whatever she was thinking, airing her insecurities, and her fears.
But Georgia always seemed on high alert, just by nature of the shape of her face—narrow and fine boned, with large brown eyes and her blonde hair in a pixie cut. You could almost imagine her as some mystical creature, something you might catch a glimpse of hiding between the trees, if not for the fact that she was nearly six feet tall, sharp angles and long limbs and very hard to miss.
“Was that a hiker you just checked in?” she asked.
I shook my head, straightening the paperwork into the binder behind the desk, just to have something to do with my hands. “Actually, it was Landon West’s brother,” I said without making eye contact. I could imagine her expression well enough.
She stood perfectly still, waiting for me to look up. When I finally did, I lifted one shoulder, as in, I know.
“Are you going to tell Celeste?” she asked.
“Wasn’t planning on it.” After nearly a decade of working with her, Celeste now paid me to keep the details from reaching her, content to spend her time in a semiretirement. And I wasn’t sure whether this was a problem just yet.
I started closing up for the evening, shutting down the computer, gathering anything of value to store in the office behind us, which would remain locked until the morning.
“How much longer until this rain breaks?” Georgia asked, pulling out her cell and taking it into the back office, which was the best place to get any signal here—the closest to the town center you could get, the better. “I can’t get any bars,” she added, her voice going tight. She’d been on edge to some degree since Landon West’s disappearance in April, and it didn’t take much to push her over now.
“Soon, I think,” I said, for no other reason than wanting to ease her nervous energy, which had only succeeded in making me anxious as well. The weather; the phone lines; Trey West’s arrival—like there was something beginning. Something gathering force. I shook it off as I tucked the locked case of receipts and cash under my arm; this was why Georgia rarely worked the late shift.