An Unwanted Guest(56)

This is impossible, David thinks wearily. He can’t see the hand in front of his face without the torch, and the rest of them have no light at all. He can barely keep his footing. He turns to Gwen, ‘What do you think she’d do? Where would she go?’

Gwen looks at him blankly, her face close to his. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think she’s thinking at all. I don’t know if she’d run down the driveway to the road or hide in the trees. I have no idea.’

‘There are trees everywhere,’ David says miserably.

He cups his hands around his mouth and calls, ‘Bradley? James?’

‘I’m here,’ James shouts back. It sounds like his voice is coming from David’s right, west of the hotel. ‘I haven’t seen her either. But you can’t see anything out here. She’s not answering. Where the hell is Bradley?’

David suddenly feels anxious. Why hasn’t Bradley answered? Maybe he’s already made it into the woods and can’t hear them. He and Gwen make their unsteady way forward, towards the forest.

They’re almost across the lawn to the trees when David hears a muffled cry and the sound of someone falling down. And then it’s a penetrating cry of pure pain. Coming from somewhere behind them to their right.

‘James!’ David calls wildly. He turns and tries to hurry towards the sound. He hears Gwen panting and scrambling behind him.

‘Bradley!’ It’s James’s voice. The desperation in it makes a chill run along David’s spine.

David stumbles and slides faster and faster, frantic to reach them, leaving Gwen struggling to keep up. But when he finally sees James, he wants to close his eyes and block everything out. His weak torch picks out the dark shape of James bending over Bradley, who is lying still, apparently lifeless, on the ice-covered snow.

David comes closer until he is almost upon them. Bradley lies face down in the snow. He’d run out without a hat, and there is an ugly, vicious gash at the base of his skull. Blood is spattered all over the snow.

James looks up at him, his face almost unrecognizable in his grief. ‘Help him!’ he screams. ‘You have to help him!’

David kneels in the snow beside him and shines the feeble light on Bradley’s face. His eyes are closed, his lips are blue. He looks dead. David feels for a pulse – he can feel nothing, but for a moment he hopes that’s because his hands are shaking, frozen and numb. But it’s no use. There’s nothing. Bradley is dead.

James begins a terrible keening. It’s the most dreadful sound that David has ever heard – a loud, despairing wretchedness, the sound of a father mourning the loss of his only son. He can’t bear it. He looks up at Gwen and sees fear reflected back at him. He sits back on his heels and wants to weep himself.

He hears others approaching noisily. He shines the light towards them. He sees Matthew, and behind him is Lauren.

‘What happened?’ Lauren cries before she reaches them, before she can really see.

‘Stay back,’ David warns.

He rises unsteadily to his feet, and splays the light around. He spots something dark, dropped in the snow. He lurches towards it. Some dark shape, with blood on it. He’s seen it before. It’s familiar. He looks at it for a bit longer and then he recognizes it. It’s the iron boot scraper from the front porch. Someone picked it up and must have used it to murder Bradley. Who? When? A stranger? Or one of the people who came out here to look for Riley?

He whirls around again to face them.

Lauren steps closer into their little circle of light and stops abruptly. She looks down at Bradley in the snow, his father crouching over him.

‘Oh, God,’ she whispers, taking it all in. ‘Is he …?’

‘He’s dead,’ David says dully.

‘Oh, God, let me—’

‘Stay back,’ David says again. ‘There’s nothing you can do for him. It’s too late.’

‘Are you sure?’ She’s hysterical. ‘He can’t be dead! He can’t be!’ She tries to get past him to Bradley. ‘Maybe he’s still alive! Maybe we can still help him!’

He shakes his head and stands in front of her, blocking the way. She begins to cry and beats her hands against David’s chest, sobbing. ‘There’s nothing you can do,’ he says.

He hears someone coming closer, his breathing heavy as he approaches. Ian looms into view, takes in the scene.

‘Oh, no,’ he says.

Ian watches James weep, collapsed onto his son’s body. His shoulders jerk spasmodically as he sobs. It reminds him of his mother’s endless weeping, her relentless grief. He turns away.

‘We can’t leave him out here,’ David says finally, his voice low.

He doesn’t have to say what they’re all thinking: if they leave him out here overnight the animals will get him. The coyotes, the wolves. And God knows what else, Ian thinks to himself.

Finally James slumps back in the snow, his eyes vacant.

‘Does anyone have any charge left in their phone?’ David asks. ‘I’d like to take a photo before we move him.’

They all shake their heads.

‘Damn,’ David says.

‘What are we going to do with him?’ Ian asks David quietly.

‘I think we should take him to the icehouse,’ David says. ‘It will be easier if we take him through the hotel, rather than all the way around the building.’