A couple of hours, he’d been told. After all, the area was remote and it was the middle of the night and – as Levant inferred – the operator still wasn’t entirely convinced that he was sane. That might have been partly his own fault, he realized now, since he’d been the one to mention the possibility that the whole thing was a prank. Anyway, now he’d arrived at the rendezvous point and the officers were already a few minutes late, so he sat drumming his fingers against the wheel and watching the road for some hint of lights heading his way. He kept glancing at his watch, but time was passing excruciatingly slowly and after just ten minutes he was fit to explode with anger. Finally, he grabbed his phone and tried Catherine Chandler again, only to find that the signal was too weak.
“Bloody phones,” he muttered. “When you actually need them, they never work.”
At 4.30am, half an hour after he was supposed to meet the officers, Levant decided that they either weren’t coming, or that they were going to be too late. He was increasingly of the opinion that this whole farrago was a waste of his time.
Sighing, he started the car’s engine and turned the wheel, setting off along the dark track that led down through the forest to the cabin in the valley. Part of the track wasn’t even a road, and Levant winced as the car bumped over rough terrain that he worried might cause expensive damage. He was cursing under his breath almost all the way, and more than once he began to think that he’d taken a wrong turn. Eventually he reached a point that he thought he recognized, so he kept going while muttering to himself and wishing terrible fates to everyone who’d contributed to his current situation.
After what felt like an eternity, he spotted the cabin ahead. A sprinkling of moonlight just about picked out the cabin’s roof, and the little mess of junk nearby.
He drove across the clearing and parked close to the wooden cart, and then he cut the engine before climbing out of the car. It was only now, as he felt the cold air all around, that he realized he was totally defenseless. He’d initially assumed that Chandler had been joking, and then he’d been under the impression that he’d be accompanied by police officers when he arrived at the cabin. Thanks to a combination of these assumptions and let-downs, however, he now stood staring at the cabin and he had no means by which to fight any adversary. Not that he really thought there was danger out at the cabin, of course, but the possibility still crossed his mind.
Standing completely still for a moment, he listened and heard only silence.
Letting out a loud sigh, partly to try to convince himself that everything was normal and partly to demonstrate his annoyance to anyone who might be spying on him, he made his way around the car and over toward the cabin. He was already imagining the students back at their hotel, giggling at the thought of him out at the cabin all alone, but deep down he hoped that this was what had happened. After a moment, however, he stopped as he saw that several more panes in the cabin’s window had been smashed, seemingly from the outside. He stepped closer and leaned down, and then he peered inside.
Suddenly he saw a face staring out at him.
Startled, he stumbled back, but then he realized that he’d seen the face before. He peered inside once more, and sure enough the face was that of the dead man in the chair. Still, such a sight left him feeling rather uneasy, but as he tried to look past the dead man he found that the rest of the cabin’s interior was too dark.
“Chandler?” he called out, his voice sounding so small and crisp in the cold night air. “What are you playing at? Are you in there?”
Receiving no reply, he turned and looked around for a moment, and then he spotted another car parked nearby. He wasn’t sure, of course, but he supposed that this must be Chandler’s car, which meant at least that she hadn’t been lying when she’d claimed to be at the cabin. This, in turn, made him worry a little more that her panic might have been real, but he refused to surrender quite yet to such fears. Student pranks could be surprisingly elaborate. Instead of worrying too much just yet, he made his way around to the side of the cabin and went to the door, only to find it hanging open.
Looking inside, he saw only darkness and the silhouette of the dead man set against the window.
Reaching into his pocket, he took out his cellphone and activated the flashlight app, and then he cast a glow of light around the room.
The first thing he saw was that the place was a mess. Tables had been overturned, and a battery-operated lamp lay smashed on the floor. This elevated Levant’s concerns a little further, as he stepped inside and looked all around the small space. He still didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but he couldn’t deny that it looked as if there’d been some kind of struggle. As he stepped forward and tilted his phone around, he felt a growing sense of dread in his chest as he realized that his worst fears had come true. Evidently Catherine Chandler had been alone at the site, and evidently she’d been attacked.
“Damn it,” he muttered, hurrying out of the cabin and fumbling to call 911 on his phone. “Bloody fools!”
He waited for the call to connect, but he found he had no signal. He rushed around to the other side of the cabin, and he tried holding his phone in various positions, but still he couldn’t get through to the police. Filled now with a real sense of panic, he looked around and saw no sign of Chandler, and finally he realized that his best bet was to get back to the main road and then hope he could place another call.
He hurried toward the car, but then suddenly he stopped as he heard a distant scream ring out, somewhere far off in the forest.
Turning, he looked across the clearing. The scream seemed almost to hang in the air for a moment, but then he spotted a faint flicker of light far off beyond the tree-line.
“Chandler?” he whispered, before starting to hurrying toward the light and then shouting: “Chandler! Wait!”
He began to run, which was something he hadn’t done in a long, long time. Despite his growing breathlessness, however, he hurried as fast as he could manage across the clearing, and by the time he reached the tree-line he could see the light of a flashlight in the distance, racing through the forest.
He opened his mouth to call out again, but suddenly he realized that something was missing. Turning, he saw that the body from the tree was no longer on the ground. He had no idea why Chandler might have moved the body, but he supposed that it must have been placed on or near the cart, so he put the concern out of his mind and turned back to look out in the forest. Then, cupping his hands around his mouth, he yelled at the top of his voice:
“Catherine Chandler! Where are you?”
As he called out those words, he heard her scream again, but this time she seemed to be trying to say something.
For a moment, he considered running back to his car. He could drive away and fetch help. The idea was enticing, but something deep inside made him stay. A desire to do the right thing, perhaps, or to prove to himself that he was no coward. Besides, the stupid girl was probably just having a bad trip on the latest fashionable drug.
Filled with a growing sense of worry, Levant hurried out into the forest, struggling in the darkness to keep from banging into trees. The ground was muddy beneath his feet, slowing him down, and after a moment low-hanging branches began to get in his way. He was forced to hold his hands up in an attempt to protect his face as he struggled onward and tried to head after the distant, flailing beam of light.
For the next few minutes, he stumbled through the forest with barely any awareness of the right direction. He could feel the ground starting to become steeper beneath his feet, which meant he was beginning to make his way up the side of the valley, but as he looked ahead he only occasionally spotted the flashlight. After a while, however, he heard Chandler cry out, and he was immediately struck by the realization that she sounded much closer now. Somehow, in the chaos, they were reaching one another.