Page 1 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

Prologue

Ihad wanted to die that day, back then, in that freezing Canadian winter. I remember the cold wind blowing down the mountainside, the sky a steel blue without a single cloud in sight. Then, I saw you—and you touched me. Something about you told me that it was too soon to give up. I swear, Lou, I had no idea what it was. If I had known, back then in that freezing winter in Canada, I would never have abducted you. This you have to believe me.

At first, I thought it was your eyes, your deep northern sky-blue eyes that seemed as innocent as new life. They expressed freedom—or so I wanted to believe.

Or maybe it was your hair and the way it caught the sunlight. These days, it’s hard to say, it all happened so long ago.

Still, Lou…it was so much more. It was all nothing compared to what I found in you. Today, I wish I never had found you because then looking back wouldn’t hurt so much.

I wish you could still be that laughing blonde girl who spun around in her white dress in the garden in Ash Springs. And I, the boy who only knows darkness.

After all, darkness protects us from the things we don’t want to remember.

But how could I not remember you?

Chapter

One

There’s only wind. Then nothing. Not even me. Only the Chinook winds slashing across the jagged ridges like the howling of a pack of wolves.

For a moment, I look around confused. Disoriented, like I’ve lost all my memories, I’m standing in the middle of frozen-over Quiet Lake.

That’s been happening quite often lately. I keep forgetting what I was going to do, sometimes even losing my train of thought. Maybe I’ve been alone for too long, too in tune with the wild so that all my thoughts fade. Images of the steel-blue sky, conifers, cold, and the wind are all that’s left.

My gaze wanders over the edge of the snow-covered spruce trees along the shore. Gusts bend their tops and handfuls of snow trickle from their branches and atomize into millions of crystals in the air. Still, this pure white beauty leaves me untouched.

For a moment, I tread in place. The snow-covered ice crunches under my feet as if it might crack open at any second. What would it be like, breaking through the ice at six degrees? How long before I’d freeze to death? Or would I drown?

Was that what was going through my mind before I drew a blank? I open and close my cold fingers in my lined gloves before I pull my wool hat lower over my face.

Less than thirty feet from me is the hole I had hacked in the ice so I can easily scoop water in wintertime. Next to it are two buckets with my ax in between.

Suddenly, my thoughts become clearer again and I remember all the things I meant to do today. I must make a list of supplies since I opened the last can of carrots yesterday. I also wanted to crank up the chainsaw and cut up the felled spruce tree behind the cabin into logs so I’d have enough firewood in case I get sick. I also planned to fix the leaky roof and just now I was about to break open the hole in Quiet Lake again so I can get to the water, since closer to shore the lake is frozen solid to the bottom.

I glance over my shoulder at the log cabin above the low embankment. My tasks seem insurmountable, akin to ascending Mount McKinley. Doing things for tomorrow, even thinking about tomorrow, crushes me. Tomorrow will be like today. Empty and lonely. There is no escaping my life. Never has been.

Colder than the sub-zero temperatures, a darker shudder grips me, whispers of mute horror and never-forgotten fear. Sometimes, I think things get particularly bad in winter. Not only the shadowy sense of dread but also the loneliness. When the cold silently covers the land like a cloak of ice, I think of Christmas and New Year’s Eve, of happily reunited families in festive living rooms, turkey with chestnuts, sweet potato casserole, and about all the moms and dads who shower their kids with mountains of gifts as if there’s no tomorrow.

I keep walking away from the cabin, away from the hole in the ice, further out onto the lake. Last week’s harsh temperature fluctuations caused the ice in the back to break. The sheets are close together and look like a white mosaic.

Maybe it would be best if the ice beneath me broke. Nature would swallow me. Nobody would miss me and I wouldn’t miss anything. And I wouldn’t have to think about Jordan, the monster, or happy families.

I’ve been here since November, in the middle of the great solitude of the Yukon. I haven’t seen a soul, not even during the summer. When was the last time I saw a human? Eight months ago? Nine?

The ice beneath my black boots creaks like a row of decaying floorboards. It’s still firm, apart from the southern part of the lake where water oozes over the mosaic sheets like lymph from a wound. Shivering, I wrap my arms around myself and run.

The hard resistance under my feet gives way to the feeling of swaying wooden boards. It occurs to me that I now have a good reason to stop. Unlike before. Then again, the danger is like an undertow and my inner self seems to be one with nature. The rift in my soul is as great as the fracture between ice and water.

Images well up inside of me. Images of the gray lake that draw me into their depths as if they had a will of their own.

So dark… I can’t hear anything anymore. Can’t see anything… Breathe, breathe. Mom, it’s so dark…

I don’t know where this childish voice came from, but it haunts me like an echo. When I give in to this voice, I slip into the abyss, into the unknown, which robs me of all memories every time without ever truly letting me forget.

I jump from one ice floe to the next, the gullies in between are wider than they first looked. The snow covering the frozen lake is being carried away by the water here and I can catch a glance at the bubbles in the ice below the gray-green water. I close my eyes.

So dark… Mom…where are you?

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