The Resort by Sarah Goodwin

Author:Sarah Goodwin [Goodwin, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2022-11-01T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

I opened the car door and immediately felt the drop in temperature. It was cold enough during the day, but at night it felt as if the air would stop my heart if I let it. The moonlight was all that cast a glow over the woods, intermittently blocked out by dense cloud. The storm that had been blowing up wasn’t that heavy yet though and I couldn’t stand waiting. With all my things stashed in Ethan’s bag across my shoulders and some food in my belly, I hurried along the gulley.

As I climbed up to the road, fear started to erode my sense of purpose. The shifting of branches in the wind sounded a lot like footsteps, or a prowling animal. But I swallowed the whimper of fear that scratched at my throat. If I was right there was nothing ghostly about Ethan’s disappearance. Ghosts don’t need trapdoors.

It had come to me out of nowhere, reading those sparse notes. Every time I’d thought of the footprints I’d been stuck in a loop of terror and paranoia. I’d not been able to let go of my dread of something out there, watching me, out to get me. That superstitious fear had kept me from looking at it in terms of straight facts. If no one had come out of the door, but the cabin was empty, there had to be another way out. Not the window as I’d briefly considered, not a zip line to the trees. But a trapdoor to a cellar or something under the cabin.

I still had no idea who had done this, or why, but I was utterly convinced that I now knew how. The rest I was hoping to find out when I got through that trapdoor.

Still as I got closer and closer to Witwerberg’s ashy ruins, my steps became smaller and slower. Was I really about to jump feet first into a hidden cellar? What if it was a serial killer’s lair or the den of some kind of creature? No matter how much I wanted to shut out thoughts of supernatural monsters, they came anyway. I didn’t have a weapon or even a torch to light the way. That had vanished along with Ethan.

What choice did I have though, in the end? I had nowhere to go and no one to save me. If I cowered in the car I might live long enough to starve to death. Unless whoever was out there decided to finish me off first. By doing this I wasn’t just taking control of the situation, I might also be able to surprise them. So far I’d just run around like a scared little girl; like they probably expected me to. This was different. I was acting unpredictably and there was a chance they wouldn’t be ready for me.

As I approached the remains of my cabin I wondered if Ethan was somewhere underneath it and had been the whole time. Tied up, gagged, listening to my footsteps overhead. Hearing me sob in terror and talk to myself, feeling the heat from the flames.

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