All Night Long

lights?
    Something was really strange here. Maybe the bulbs had burned out simultaneously.
    She fumbled the key into the lock and turned the knob cautiously, trying to open the door without making any noise.
    The door resisted her efforts to push it inward. Something heavy seemed to be blocking it from the inside. She shoved harder.
    A terrible, stomach-churning smell wafted out through the opening. Had some animals gotten into the house? Her mother would have a fit in the morning.
    But a part of her already knew that things were horribly wrong. She started to shiver violently. It was all she could do to move one foot across the threshold and grope for the switch on the wall.
    The lights came on, dazzling her for a couple of seconds. Then she saw the blood on the kitchen floor.
    She heard someone screaming. In some remote corner of her mind she understood that she was the one who was uttering the high, desperate, frantic cries of grief, horror and denial. But the sound was distant and far away.
    She had traveled to some other place, a realm where nothing was the way it was supposed to be; where nothing was normal.
    When she returned from the journey, she discovered that her personal, private definition of normal had been altered forever.

----
    E-MAIL MESSAGE
p. DATE: March 7
    FROM: PWeb O: IStenso UBJECT: The pas i, Irene:
    I know this e-mail is coming as a huge surprise. Hope you didn’t dump it straight into your deleted file when you saw the name of the sender. But I hear you’re a reporter now, and reporters are supposed t e curious types so, with luck, you’ll read this.
    Hard to believe that it’s been seventeen years since we last saw each other, isn’t it? I realize that, given what happened, you would have been quite happy to go another seventeen years without hearing from me. But I have to talk to you, and I have to do it soon.
    This is about the past. What I need to tell you can’t be done in an e-mail or over the phone. Trust me,
    this is as important to you as it is to me.
    I’ve got a few things to take care of before we meet. Come up to the lake on Thursday afternoon. I should have everything ready by then. Give me a call as soon as you get into town.
    By the way, I never forgot how much you liked eating orange sherbet and vanilla ice cream together. Funny the things you remember, isn’t it?
    Your ex—best friend,
    Pamela

One
    I’ll walk you back to your cabin, Miss Stenson,” Luke Danner said. Irene felt the hair stir on the nape of her neck. She paused in the act of fastening her black trench coat.
Should have left earlier,
she thought.
Should have gone back to the cabin
[_while there was still some daylight. _]
    This was what came of being a news junkie. She’d just had to have her evening fix, and the only television available at the Sunrise on the Lake Lodge was the ancient model in the tiny lobby. She had ended up in the company of the proprietor of the lodge, watching the relentless stream of depressing reports from correspondents around the globe. Earlier she had seen him flip on the No Vacancy sign.
    That had worried her a bit. There were no signs of any other guests at the lodge.
    She tried to think of a reasonable excuse to turn down the offer of an escort. But Luke was already o is feet. He crossed the shabby, well-worn lobby in long, easy strides, heading toward the front desk.
    “It’s a dark walk to the cabin,” he said. “Couple of the lights on the footpath are out.”
    Another little chill went through her. She’d been dealing with her over-the-top fear of the dark since she was fifteen. But this nervy, atavistic reaction wasn’t just the usual twinge of deep dread that she experienced whenever she contemplated the fall of night. It was all mixed up with the edgy, unfamiliar awareness of Luke Danner.
    At first glance some people might have been inclined to underestimate him. She would never in a million years make that mistake, she thought. This was a complicated man. Under certain circumstances he would no doubt be a very dangerous man.
    He was of medium height with a tough, compact, lean frame and broad shoulders.
    His features were stark and fiercely hewn. His hazel-green eyes were those of an alchemist who has stared too long and too deeply into the refiner’s searing fires.
    There was a sprinkling of silver in his closely trimmed dark hair. She suspected that he was within shouting distance of forty. There was no wedding ring on his left hand. Probably