Missing Persons

Whitney dropped to her knees as another bolt of lightning struck the mountain. The thunder came, and the narrow ridge ahead disappeared in white light. She pressed her palms against the rock, afraid to move. There was nothing on either side of her but a drop straight down, and the wind kept pushing at her back. She watched herself crawl toward the edge, watched one hand reach over and feel for something to hold on to. She wondered what would happen if she jumped. The thought was hers, but the version of herself on the ridge was only concerned with getting across.

A knock against the Jeep door jolted Whitney upright. Her feet slid off the passenger seat, while struggling to remember where she was. She looked around at the white clapboard church. To the left, a white volunteer tent stood beneath security lights. Whitney had parked near the trees at the edge of the gravel lot, near two police cruisers.

Benna leaned toward the open window.

“Did you sleep here all night?”

“Not really.” Whitney rubbed her face. “As much as anybody, I guess.”

Benna recommended Todd as a therapist after Whitney’s nightmares and sleep problems nearly cost her her job the year before. She knew how little sleep Whitney got, but now wasn’t the time.

“Hansen kept a constable here all night,” Whitney said, reaching for her shoes. “Sometimes two. People kept dropping things off. I helped him sort supplies. Fell asleep around one.”

Benna stepped back while Whitney climbed out. She carried two flashlights and a Rubbermaid tub on her hip with reflective vests spilled over the rim.

“Here, give me that.”

Whitney took the tub as they walked toward the tent. The sun wasn’t up, and the church lights shone on the wet gravel.

“How’s Samuel holding up?”

Benna took a moment.

“Not good.”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“He barely said anything last night. Kept going over everything Jacob said, trying to remember when he saw them last.”

Whitney shifted the tub.

“Did he sleep?”

“Maybe an hour. Probably not.”

She wanted to ask whether he’d eaten, whether he’d remembered a jacket, whether he’d done anything but picture what might have happened to them. But she knew Samuel better than that.

“And Jacob?”

Benna shook her head, and Whitney set the tub on a folding table.

“He keeps going into their rooms,” Benna said. “Back and forth. Back and forth.”

Whitney pulled a vest from the tub and started sorting, but her hands shook.

“Blaming himself?”

“Of course he is.” Benna set the flashlights beside the sign-in sheets. “He keeps saying he should’ve noticed sooner. Should’ve done a hundred things.”

Whitney looked around. Soon people would start arriving.

“Is he coming this morning?”

“Yeah. Samuel’s bringing him.”

Whitney finished with the vests and looked at Benna.

“What about you?”

“I’m fine.”

“Ben.”

“I said I’m fine.” Benna dropped her pen, picked it up, kept her eyes on the clipboard. “Can you check the batteries again?”

“Benna.”

“Whit, please. Not right now.”

Her voice cracked on now. Whitney heard it. Benna knew she had.

“Okay. I’m here.”

“I know you are.”

Benna turned her back to everyone and went to the coffee pot at the end of the tent, fiddling with the lid.

Whitney heard the hushed chatter all night. Two kids don’t walk out of a yard in broad daylight and leave no trace. She tried to tune it out but couldn’t. Instead, she locked the Jeep door, as if that mattered with the windows down, and stared at the trees.

People were already asking where their dad was in all this. Whitney wanted to get out and tell them to shut the hell up. In one ear, out the other, she kept telling herself. She’d known Jacob for years. Not as long as Benna and Samuel had. He’d already moved out by the time the three of them became friends, but still.

The kids had gotten turned around in the woods, that’s all. The crews would find them today. Cold, hungry, but fine. She’d told herself that all night, even said it aloud to the trees. The trees didn’t care.

By five-thirty, the church women had breakfast ready. Rubbery eggs, burnt coffee, and casseroles from the night before. Mrs. McAllister, who’d taught Whitney and Benna Sunday school, clapped her hands and told everyone to bow their heads.

Whitney kept her eyes open. She'd never understood what good it did to ask God for something when there were people willing to go out and look for it. Benna, however, had bowed her head in earnest, and Whitney knew she'd spend the day pleading for divine intervention. Whitney had considerably more faith in earthly persuasion.

Hansen was running through the search grid when she caught him alone beside his cruiser. He smelled like coffee and yesterday’s shirt.

“Anything yet?”

“Nothing useful.”

“The lake?”

“Taking it myself this morning. Divers on standby.” He rubbed his jaw. “Hope to hell I don’t need them. You look like shit, Whit.”

“Thanks.”

“Keeping busy?”

“Trying.”

“Well. You know where to find me if you need company.” His eyes went down her and came back up slow, like he wanted her to see it.

“Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

“I can do two things at once.”

She laughed, because that was easier than hitting him. Two kids missing and he was still shopping. Hansen had always been generous with certain women, as long as they were generous first, and Whitney had quit mistaking that for kindness long ago.

“You’ll tell me if they find anything.”

“You’ll be the first.”

She didn’t believe his shit.

Samuel pulled in with Jacob. Whitney caught his eye, but he only nodded and followed his brother toward Hansen. He was wearing yesterday's wrinkled shirt and had bloodshot eyes. She wanted badly to go to him, but stopped herself.

The search teams headed into the woods.

By noon, she’d walked miles. Twice she stopped, certain she’d seen a dark shape darting between the trees, but each time it vanished before she could make it out.

Mrs. McAllister caught Whitney rubbing her eyes and pushed a folding chair toward her.

“Sit down a minute. Have something to eat.”

Whitney sat, too tired to argue. She got through two bites of ham sandwich before setting it aside.

Jacob was in Hansen’s face about the perimeter. Samuel stood beside him, head turning between them like he was watching a wreck.

She found Benna behind the church, wiping her eyes. Whitney reached for her, but Benna shook her head and went inside, slamming the door.

By dusk, everyone was frayed. Hansen answered the same questions while Jacob demanded they search farther out. It was becoming futile.

They'd start again at first light. At least it wouldn't get too cold tonight. But the kids hadn't eaten since yesterday, and Whitney couldn't stop thinking about where they might be sleeping. She pictured them huddled beneath a tree in damp clothes, Birdie holding Brant close. Two small bodies in the dark.

“You coming back to Jacob’s with us tonight, or heading to Saint John?” Benna asked.

Whitney glanced toward the brothers. Samuel looked ready to fall over. She wanted to go with him, wanted it badly. They’d only started figuring out what they were to each other before all this happened.

“I’ll head back.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. You three need each other.”

Benna hugged her hard. “Love you.”

“Love you, too. See you in the morning.”

Whitney watched the taillights disappear down the road, then climbed into the Jeep and locked the doors. She’d slept maybe a few hours in the last several days, and her whole body hurt.

She reclined the driver’s seat and lay back, but couldn’t stop looking at the trees. Somewhere out there two kids were cold and alone, or worse. Her journal was wedged between the seat and the console, and she dug it out. Todd wanted the dreams written down, along with a dozen other things to help. She wrote about the mountain, the lightning, and the woman on the ridge, then closed her eyes and breathed the way he’d taught her, in for four and out for six.

She tried again. And again. Finally, she gave up and held her breath until her chest burned and she couldn’t stand it. A headache pounded behind her eyes. She climbed into the back, folded the rear seats down, and stretched out, hoping the extra room might help. She’d shower at the church in the morning, before anyone arrived.

During the night a thick mist spilled out of the woods and swallowed the lot. Something, or somethings, flickered between the trunks. The security lights caught the shapes for a moment before they vanished into the trees.

Whitney didn’t think. She kicked the door open and screamed Birdie’s name, then Brant’s, and ran, briars tearing at her clothes. The shape flashed ahead of her again, and every time she gained a step, it slid farther into the dark.

The ground turned to rock under her feet, and the mist became so thick the night closed to an immense black, hiding her own hands. She knew this place. The ledge waited somewhere ahead, and whatever she chased was too far ahead to be anything but shifting darkness. She screamed their names and ran anyway, until her foot came down on nothing.

Her stomach flew up into her throat, and the air tore past her for one long, helpless second before black water hit her like a slab of concrete. The cold clamped around her ribs, driving out what air she had left. She kicked and clawed in every direction but couldn’t find up. Her ears pounded, her chest cramped, and the weight of the lake pressed on her skull as she sank. She held on until her body made the decision for her, her mouth tearing open as the last of her breath went up in a rush she couldn’t see.

She braced for the burn of water pouring into her lungs and then the end.

But it never came. She took a breath, then another. She could breathe in this water as easily as air. She hung in the dark of the lake and realized this couldn’t drown her.

A car horn blared, and Whitney jolted upright in her seat, gasping.

“Jesus Christ.” The clock said four. She dry-swallowed two ibuprofen as a River Valley Search and Rescue truck pulled out of the lot. Hansen’s cruiser was still there. She grabbed her shower bag and went inside.

His voice carried down the hallway.

“Go home and get some sleep, Joe. We start again at six. You come after a couple hours.”

“You think there’s still a chance?”

Hansen sighed. “You know what we're looking for by now. It's a recovery, whether we call it that or not.”

Whitney stepped back out of sight, waiting until Joe's taillights passed the window before approaching the office.

“Sleeping here again?” Hansen called.

“Too far to drive home.”

“Figured. Been watching you.”

“Thanks.” She knew what kind of watching he meant. “You really think they're dead?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Whit, I know they're your friends, but it's been two days. You know how this goes.”

“But you're still looking?”

“Ground search starts at six. Divers are coming with sonar equipment, and the RCMP have the roads covered. We're not giving up.”

“But you think they’re dead?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t even look sorry. “From the minute I got the call, I thought they were already dead.”

Whitney wanted to know what made him so sure. And if he was already convinced, she needed to give him a reason to keep looking.

She stepped closer, between Hansen and the church kitchen counter.

“Well, thank you for not giving up on them.” She let the back of her hand brush against his crotch as she straightened.

Hansen glanced down, then smiled.

“You know me, Whit. I always appreciate being appreciated.”

“Well, I do have my shower bag.” Whitney smiled. “Maybe you could tell me a little more about what you know while we're in there.”

He knew something he wasn't telling her, and she knew the quickest way to find out.

He caught her smoking dope on a back trail one night the summer after high school, and when he bent her over the hood of her car, she learned two things about him while in the dark listening to his balls slap against her. First, he always knew more than he let on, and he was willing to bend rules for young women.

Whitney stepped out of the church into the cold morning air with her wet hair dripping down her damp shoulders, and still felt him on her.

He’d said the dogs followed their scent to the edge of the woods, where it stopped. It suggested a car and someone else involved. Foul play. But Whitney wasn't convinced.

Mist crawled out from between the trees and spread around her. The church lights shrank to pale smears and then went out. Something moved along the tree line, one shape or maybe two, sliding between the trunks.

Her stomach dropped. She knew this part: the woods, the mountain, the ledge. She turned toward where the church should have been, toward the shower and Hansen’s hands inside her, but as the mist thickened, it felt like a story somebody told her. Her hair was still wet. She could feel it against her neck, proof that something had happened. But she couldn’t remember closing the shower door, or Hansen leaving, or how she’d gotten outside.

The shape moved again, closer this time, and it seemed to wait for her. She heard children’s voices somewhere in the distance.

Whitney lunged off into the trees, and the mist closed around her ankles like it had been waiting for her. The shape stopped at the edge of the dark, then vanished into the mist. Whitney spun around, but already there was nothing left to chase.

The cold hit her all at once. Her hair froze instantly against her skin, and the air burned so badly in her lungs that she couldn't draw another breath. The mountain was freezing her to death, but she'd drowned in the lake, too, and lived. She forced herself upright. If the water couldn't kill her, maybe the cold couldn't either.

The trees thinned out, and the ground gave way to blue ice split by a crevasse wide enough to swallow a truck. Above her the black line of the ridge cut across the sky. She dug her boots and her bare hands into the ice and hauled herself up, and somewhere over her head the voices started again, getting louder with every step.

She dragged herself over the ledge and found them on the far side of the gap, hiding in a dead tree where the rock split open. Birdie and Brant held each other, watching her with a distant vacant expression, as though neither recognized her.

“Thank God,” Whitney screamed. “I thought you were dead.”

“Help us,” they said together.

“I’m coming. Walk to me, both of you. Right now.”

Brant shook his head. “We’ll fall.”

“No.” The wind shoved at her as she looked down into nothing. “Nothing hurts you here. Not the cold, or water, or the fall.”

Birdie screamed first, then Brant, their mouths opening a little too wide. Both pointed past Whitney’s shoulder. She turned and found the shape crouched at the lip of the ledge she'd just climbed over, pulling itself up. When it raised its head, she recognized her own face. It was the Whitney she'd watched crawling across the ridge in her dreams.

“It’s the other it,” Birdie said. Whitney heard her voice utterly without emotion.

“What’s the other it?” She started to take steps backwards, towards the kids, onto the ridge.

“The other everything.” Brant’s voice cracked. “It was the other Birdie first. Then it was the other me. That’s how we got here, because we followed them.”

“And now it’s the other you,” Birdie said.

The thing on the ledge smiled without moving the rest of its face and started to rise again.

“Run!” she barked. “Now!”

She darted along the ledge. Lightning struck ahead of her like all her dreams before, thunder shaking the mountain. She ducked her head and ran straight into it.

The next bolt hit her.

She screamed as her foot slipped off a steel crossbar. Her body dropped through the lattice, and she caught the bar above her with one hand. Rain lashed her face, lightning flashing across the water tank beside her. She was hanging high above the ground, barefoot, with the wind swinging her out over open air. Her fingers slipped against the wet steel.

Whitney clung to the ladder, unable to remember climbing it.

Beside her, the water tank loomed in the dark, a blue wall close enough to touch. Lightning revealed Saint John painted across it. The city lay below, but the church, the woods, everywhere she remembered being, were gone. Her hands ached from gripping the steel, her feet were cut and bleeding, and she couldn’t tell whether she’d climbed here tonight or been climbing for days.

She hung against the tower, her heart hammering, trying to separate Hansen’s body from the Jeep, the ledge, and the thing wearing her face. The cold, the water, and everything that followed blurred together until she couldn't tell what had been real.

The next bolt hit so close the whole tower shuddered.

Her hand was slipping, just like her understanding of reality, and she let go.

Darkness. Crickets sang in the trees, and the familiar smell of pine and damp earth hung in the warm summer air. Her cheek rested against smooth metal, still warm from the engine.

And beneath it, the rhythm of slapping reached her ears.