William Giraldi - Hold the Dark

“And you decided to come here why?”

“To help,” Core told him. “She said wolves had taken children from this village. It’s in the letter. See for yourself. She said no one would help. I came here to help.”

“Wolves did take two kids from here last month. They weren’t found. We came here to try and help these people, but I’m not sure how anybody can help that. You can’t just walk onto the tundra looking for wolves.”

“But no wolf took Bailey Slone,” Core said.

Marium flattened his filter into an ashtray, then stood back from the table. Core did the same.

“We’ll have to get it all figured out.”

“Are the others on their way?” Core asked.

“The others who?”

“The others. The police to find Medora Slone. Shouldn’t there be more men here? Investigators? The TV shows have investigators.”

“Investigators? Mr. Core, things don’t happen here the way they happen anywhere else. And definitely not on TV.”

“No investigators? Just you?”

“For now. You have to understand where you are. We don’t have full membership to the rest of the world. And we mostly like it that way. But let’s take one thing at a time, please.”

“What time is it? Midnight?” His watch was missing from his wrist.

“It’s six o’clock, Mr. Core. You’re not acclimated here. You said it was just dark when you arrived back here today? That was three-thirty, then.”

“That can’t be. I left before dawn. I wasn’t gone for so many hours.” He felt at his left wrist as if he could rub his watch back onto it.

“Dawn is at ten a.m. now, Mr. Core. You’re not acclimated here.”

“My watch is missing. I don’t understand.”

“Apparently a woman is missing too.”

Core sat again. “I tried to talk to these people but they wouldn’t talk to me. Did they tell you anything?”

“Nothing much. Not yet,” Marium said. “We spoke to some outside. As you saw, they don’t talk much to anyone who isn’t one of their own. Let’s go back down to see the boy.”

In the root cellar the men clicked photos of the body on the floor, of the cavity clawed into the earth. The fat one scratched in a notepad; another with a mustache stood before a laptop on a crate. Core pointed, explained how he’d found the boy, that the man called Cheeon had removed him from the hole and unwrapped him from the plastic sheeting.

“He was upright in there?” Marium asked. “Wedged in?”

Core nodded. “Look at his throat,” he said. “She strangled him.”

“Someone did.”

“It was her,” Core said.

“One thing at a time, please, Mr. Core. When you came back here today after your hunt she was gone?”

“She was gone. Look at her bedroom, the back room up there. She packed. Her truck is gone. She’s gone. She must have left me here to find the boy.”

“Left you here to find the boy. Why would she do that, Mr. Core?”

“Why? Are you the police? You tell me why.”

“We’ll find out why. We’ll get everything figured out.”

“Someone has to tell the father,” Core said.

“Vernon Slone is at the war.”

“You know Vernon Slone?”

“If you live around here, you know of Vernon Slone.”

“Someone has to tell him,” Core said.

“Would you mind waiting upstairs please, Mr. Core? I’m sorry to ask that. Would you mind?”

“I put that blanket on him,” he said, and did not move. “I covered him.”

“We’ll take care of this boy,” Marium said. “Don’t you worry. We’ll take good care of this boy.”

Core made to leave.

“And, Mr. Core?” Marium said. “Please just have a seat up there. Please don’t touch anything.”

Core went upstairs to the armchair and sat on his hands.

Hours later Marium and the men laid Bailey Slone in the bed of a police pickup. They walked cabin to cabin throughout the village, looking for the parents of Medora and Vernon Slone. Core remained by the police truck in the road and watched them, smoking from Marium’s pack, taking sips of whiskey when the cold cut through him. Keeping solemn watch over the boy. Retreating to the Slones’ cabin to feed the fire when he could bear no more cold.

In the back room he looked at the messed bed of Medora Slone, the boy’s tiny bed beside it, on the sheets superheroes faded from washing. He kept rubbing his wrist for the missing watch, kept feeling turned-around without knowing the time.

When Marium finally returned, Core was almost asleep again in the armchair.

“I’m going back to town,” he said. “My guys are staying here. You should follow me back, to a motel there. It’s way too easy to get lost in the night. And more snow’s coming soon. You can’t stay here.”

“Why not?”

“It’s better you don’t.”

“But why?” Core said. “These people think I have something to do with this?”

“I didn’t say that. But you can’t stay here.”

“What’d you find?”

“Nothing yet.”

“Her parents? Or the husband’s parents?”

“Nothing yet. Follow me back.”

“No one knows anything?” Core said.

“We’ll know something soon.”

Core started his truck, let the engine warm, saw his breath frozen on the windshield from the day before. For sixty slow miles he stayed trained on the taillights of Marium’s truck, two eyes ashine on a face of unbroken black. He fought to keep his own vehicle from slipping across unplowed roads, fought to stop sleep from slamming onto him. The window half open to let the frozen air slap him awake. The radio loud, an upset singer complaining of heart pain. Hard to tell how close the hills and trees came to the road. Impossible to know if there were humans in that darkness. He remembered nothing of this route from the day before.

At this hour of night he could have no accurate notion of the town. He’d expected some lesser oasis at the center of this dead world but the town seemed barely that. In its sickly fluorescent light the motel beckoned from the road without a sign to welcome. He followed Marium into the parking lot, then went to his driver’s window to cadge a cigarette.

“How long you staying?”

“I don’t know,” Core said. “How long should I?”

“A few days, I’d say. At least. Until we get this figured. You can’t remember anything she said to you about where she might go to?”

“She didn’t say anything to me about leaving. We talked about wolves and we talked about this place. That’s all.”

“You’re sure she did this, but tell me how.”

“With a rope. I don’t know.”

“I don’t mean what’d she do it with. I mean how .”

“I’m not prepared for this, Mr. Marium. You have to talk to the people of that village.”

“A tiny old woman came to me when I arrived tonight, as soon as I got out of my truck. She was just standing there. She told me Medora Slone was possessed by a wolf demon. She called it a tornuaq. That’s what you get when you talk to the people there.”

“I’m not prepared for this.”

“You see this main road out here?” He pointed with his cigarette. “Our station is at the end of it, on the left down there. Across from the market. Come talk tomorrow please. You should go catch some sleep now.”

But sleep would not come. He stretched on the bed in this dank room, hungry without the energy to eat. And he imagined Medora Slone’s face in the dark above him. He remembered the flesh of her from the night before, her naked form quaking against his own body.

He could name the facts of nature.

A quarter of all lion deaths are the result of infanticide. A male bass will eat his offspring if they don’t swim away in time.