“There hasn’t been a turnoff for half a mile.”
“That’s right. We’ve passed Mud Fish Lake. That’s as far as they’ve brought the hydro. Osprey Lake is next.”
“Does anybody live there?”
“There used to be Ojibwas, but we cleared them out years ago. Now it’s just cottagers in summer.”
“What about winter?”
“There’s a permanent village at the far end of Osprey Lake. Maybe fifty people. What’s left of the Ojibwas.”
The car jolted in and out of the ruts. She pulled the wheel to the right to miss a rock outcrop twenty feet high. Just in time, she saw a tree with a two-foot-diameter trunk lying across the track. Heather braked hard.
“ Shit!” Don said.
“What now?”
“We walk.” He picked up the gym bag and opened the car door.
She wasn’t dressed for this. Pant boots with three-inch heels, jeans, and a leather bomber jacket. Walking bent over, hugging herself for warmth, Heather couldn’t see any path. Don walked purposefully. She stumbled after him.
Heather tripped. Don didn’t notice; he kept on moving. She struggled to her feet, tripped again. The heel of one boot had snapped off. On her knees, she fumbled amidst the pine needles lying on the frozen ground. When she found the heel, she shoved it into her jacket pocket and lurched after Don.
The cottage’s tall windows were what she saw first, a dull gleam of glass facing the lake. Trees and shadow obscured the rest of the structure. Behind it rose a wooded hill.
“Here we are,” Don said.
“How do we get in?”
“There’s a key.”
He disappeared into a grove of evergreens and emerged with a key in his hand. He unlocked the door and stepped inside, motioning her to follow.
“It’s colder in here than it was outside,” she said.
“That’s because you expected it to be warmer.”
Don set down the gym bag and pulled out his lighter. Its brief flare revealed a massive stone fireplace. He stepped across the room, lit a candle that stood on the mantel.
The room came more clearly into view. Open rafters. Walls paneled with wide boards. Pictures on the walls. A plank table and half a dozen wooden chairs. A cluster of tubular furniture with loose cushions.
“Hasn’t changed,” he said.
“Since when?”
“Eight years ago. The last time I was here.”
“Who owns it?”
“My grandfather’s estate.”
So that was the connection. A loser like Don had summered here as a child. It didn’t fit.
“This way,” he said. She hobbled after him into a room at the back. He closed the door. “If we stay here in the bedroom, nobody out on the ice can see a light.”
“Who’s out there to see anything?”
“You never can tell.”
“At 4 in the morning when it’s ten below?”
A squall of wind rattled the windows.
She looked around. There was a double bed with an iron bedstead, a chest of drawers, and an open closet with wire hangers on a rod.
He set down the candle. Pulling two sleeping bags from the closet shelf, he thrust one at her. The fabric was riddled with tiny holes.
“You take the inside,” he said.
“Okay.” Why the inside? Because it would be harder for her to escape? But she wasn’t going anywhere. Not tonight.
Heather spread out her sleeping bag but made no move to get into it.
“What are you waiting for?”
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Bathroom!” he snorted. “There’s a privy outside, if it hasn’t fallen down.”
“Where?”
“Up the hill. I’ll show you.”
She limped after him back to the main room.
“Did you twist your ankle?” he asked.
“Thanks for finally noticing. The heel broke off my boot.”
“Huh!” He started to laugh, and then seemed to change his mind.
The back door was to the right of the fireplace. Don pulled the bolt. “Straight up the path.”
Through the darkness Heather could see a shed. That must be it. She scrambled up the path on hands and knees. When she reached the privy and pulled on the latch, the door fell off, knocking her backwards.
She pushed the door aside and hauled herself to her feet.
No time to be squeamish. Heather pulled down her jeans and panties and lowered her bottom over the hole in the board seat. Gasping at the blast of frigid air, she imagined monsters with icy fingers reaching up from the dark lagoon.
When she returned, Don was sitting on the side of the bed, smoking.
“How do you like our privy?”
“The door fell off and knocked me over.”
“Is that right? When I was a kid, I thought the privy was haunted. I never went there at night.”
“First time I ever heard of a haunted privy.”
“Family secret. When my grandfather dug the pit, he uncovered a skull and a bunch of bones. Old Indian grave. There were arrowheads and shell beads and a clay pipe.”
She shuddered. “Under the privy?”
“It wasn’t a privy then.”
“All the same, he should have put it someplace else.”
“Anywhere on that hillside would have been the same.” He tossed his cigarette on the floor and ground it out.
Heather kicked off her boots, crawled into the sleeping bag, and pulled up the zipper. She didn’t stop shivering until her body heat had finally warmed the narrow space. That was when the smell took over. Mouse dirt and mold. Her throat tickled and her breath wheezed.
Don went outside, but not for long enough to go up to the privy. When he returned, he pinched out the candle and lay down.
The mattress sagged. Heather had to hold on to the edge to keep from rolling into the hollow in the middle. Sometime during the night, gravity won. Her grip on the mattress loosened, and she woke up to feel Don’s body against hers. Then she went to sleep again.
The mattress creaked. Heather half opened her eyes. It was morning. Don was sitting on the edge of the bed, smoking a cigarette.
“Are you awake?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Look out the window.”
Rising on one elbow, she peered through the dirty glass.
Snow filled the air with feathery clumps. It would already be over the tops of her pant boots, and it was still falling.
“Do you know how to light a Coleman?” Don asked.
“A what?”
“ Jeez! Don’t you know anything? It’s a stove. It’s for cooking.”
“You mean there’s food?”
“Look in the kitchen.”
“Where’s the kitchen?”
“In a three-room cottage, you should be able to find it.”
She unzipped her sleeping bag and crawled past him. Christ, it was cold! With the sleeping bag draped over her shoulders, she tottered into the main room. The gym bag was no longer there.
Daylight brought to life the pictures hanging on the board walls. Some were the usual Canadiana: water, rocks, and trees. Others were blown-up snapshots of people having fun. A laughing girl in a canoe. A raccoon accepting food from a woman’s outstretched hand. A boy holding up a string of fish. She took a second to observe the boy. A skinny kid with narrow shoulders and fair hair. He might have been Don at twelve or thirteen.
He came up behind her as she studied the picture.
“Is that you?” she asked.
“My kid brother.”
“I never heard you mention him.”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
The kitchen was a narrow room with a door at the far end and a window that overlooked the lake. On the counter was a chipped enamel sink with a rusty hand pump mounted beside it. Also on the counter stood a metal object that looked like a hotplate crossed with a barbecue.