A Time in Heaven (12 page)

“We still have each other and that is still so beautiful.  I fully expected to spend the re
st of my life alone. Now I see my
future with you,” Jesse lovingly told her.

“But what
kind of future
?  We don’t have
a great deal of
food and with winter coming, we will either starve or freeze
to death
. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Jesse, but how long is that life going to be?
Can you tell me that?
”

She wrapped her arms around Jesse’s neck and started to cry harder.  Jesse held on to her tightly. Tears were streaming down his face, too.

Jesse
picked her up from the
chair
and
gently laid her down on the bed.  He lay down beside her. He kissed her ever so lightly, first on the cheek, then on the lips.  Katie looked at him lovingly in the eyes as she kissed him on his mouth. She took him by the hand and kissed his hand before placing it on her breast.  Jesse tenderly caressed her.  They kissed more passionately this time.  Making love seemed to be the only thing making sense to them. 
The only certainty right now was their ever growing love
for each other
.

It was late in the afternoon when Jesse kissed Katie between her breasts before getting out of bed. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could just do this forever?” he
asked Katie
as he put on his pants.  “
But, let’s face
facts;
w
e
can’t live on love alone,
my dear.”

Katie stretched out her arms inviting Jesse to come back into bed with her, “We coul
d try.  Please come back to me,” she
pleaded.  Jesse took off the pants and got back into bed with her.  They made love
again
.  Every movement was a discovery of each other’s body, and of each other’s spirit. Katie and Jesse fell asleep confident of the other’s love and commitment.

When Katie woke up, the full moon was filling the cabin with
muted
light.  She looked over at Jesse.  She could hear his soft breathing.  She took a deep breath and thought of how much she loves this man sleeping beside her.  “How lucky we were to find each other, Jesse,” she said quietly.  “You’re
right;
we have to do all we can to survive until
someone comes.” Katie paused,
“Even if it means going back into the lodge.”

In the morning,
the sun was just peaking over the mountains to the east when
Katie got out of bed
.  She showered
and dressed before making breakfast
.  While the coffee brewed, she took Sadie out. When they came back, Jesse was still asleep. She poured a cup of coffee for herself and one for Jesse, and took it over to the bed.  As she sat down beside him, he st
irred a little.  “Good morning!”
she said loudly to intentionally wake him.

He opened his eyes, sat up and yawned.  He went to kiss her. She pulled back a little telling him, “Not now.” 

“
Not now
? “
Jesse thought to himself as he gave Katie a rather hurt look.  Had he done something wrong last night?

Katie handed him his coffee.  “I was awake a lot last night thinking about us and how
fortunate
we were to
discover
each other here.  Jess, I want to live a long, long time at your side.  I’m not about to let it end
too soon, so let’s go and find as much food and supplies as we can.
” She took a deep breath.
“
That includes going to the lodge.” She smiled and kissed him.

Jesse had a look of relief on his face when he said
,
”
Katie, this thrills me more than you can imagine.  I was afraid I was going to have to go into the lodge myself.”  He kissed her on the cheek. 

“You would have
gone back to the lodge alone
?
You would have done that for me?”
She looked at her man willing to face the horrors of the lodge for them.
  The compassion she saw in him was one of the qualities that made her love him more every day.

They spent the better
part of the morning searching the other cabins for anything that they might be able to use in the coming weeks.  They gathered up canned food, dry goods, blankets, and even extra pillows. Part of the things they found were taken back to their cabin and stored.  The other
things
Jesse said needed to be put in the cabin next to theirs, just in case something would happen to their cabin.  A fire would destroy everything leaving them to freeze or starve.

The bear that gave them such a scare hadn’t been seen in several days, so Katie left Sadie off her leash while they worked.  Jesse kept an eye on the dog, not only for her protection but to catch if she started acting like there were wild animals nearby.  Sadie was just happy to be able to run again.

Lunch time came and everyone was hungry. Katie made sandwiches from some canned meat they had found and what was left of the bread.  Sadie got what was left of the meat.

With their bellies full and a second wind, Jesse suggested that they should get to the lodge.  Neither of them wanted to face the nightmare of the dead body
lying
in the upstairs hall,
but the task had to be done.
Before they left the cabin, they decided that they should be respectful of who ever had died in the lodge.  They would bury the body a distance from the lodge, but the unknown person would get a decent burial.

They walked hand-
in
-
hand down the path to what their minds were telling them was a house of horrors.  As they came along the side of the building, Sadie ran around the corner.  She quickly came back with her tail between her legs.  She went behind Katie and hid between her legs.  Katie and Jesse had stopped when Katie said, “There’s something scaring Sadie around that corner!”

Jesse told her
and the dog
to wait while he went and looked.  Katie would have none of that, so, still holding hands, Jesse went in front of her.  They cautiously turned the corner of the building so that they could see the double front doors.  There was nothing.  “The doors are open again,” Jesse observed.

“What do you mean again?” Katie asked.

“Every time we have come to this place, these doors have been open.  They were open when we came here with Smith and again when we came to clean.  I remember closing them when we left in such a
hurry
that day
, now they are open again,”
Jesse said as he took a cautious
step inside. Katie followed while asking, “Jesse, what does that mean? Do you think someone is inside?”

“I don’t know if there’s someone in there now, but I do know that something or someone doesn’t like these doors closed.”  Jesse said in almost a whisper.

Sadie walked
in behind them
still a little
wary
.  She
smell
ed
the floor just in front of them.  Katie saw what looked like a set of muddy paw prints coming from the other side of the lobby to where she was standing.  She crouched down to get a better look.  “These aren’t Sadie’s tracks, they‘re too big. They’re not bear tracks either. Wolf?”   She looked up at Jesse. If th
ey were wolf tracks, what was a wolf
doing in the lodge? Did it open the doors?  Was there someone else on the island
that left the doors open
?

Jesse followed the tracks across
the room
to the staircase
.  He quickly glanced up the stairs. T
here
were
smeared,
muddy prints on the steps.  More were
coming from the dining room.  He wasn’t quite ready to go upstairs yet, so he followed the tracks through the dining room and into the camp store.  The back door was open too.  There were several sets of tracks in here. Whatever had been
here
had dragged something out the door.
The floor
from the stairs
was a disgusting mess a
nd it smelled
.
Jesse dismissed the vision he had in his mind.

In the lobby, Katie had closed the doors.  The inside of the doors was muddy.  It looked like the animal had scratched at the doors until they opened.  Looking closer, there were old scratches on the door, too.  It wasn’t the first time it had opened these doors.

“
Wait a minute,” Katie
crouched down an
d
looked closer at what she had thought was mud.  She didn’t want to touch it, but she did.  Then she smelled it.  It had the smell of rotting flesh.

Katie screamed and ran toward the dining room.  Jesse came running from the other direction.

“Jesse, that’s not mud!” she cried as she pointed to the tracks. “It smells like rotten meat!”

Jesse
squatt
ed down to look closer as he said, “There are more tracks on the stairs, and in the dining room, and out the back door. It looks like they dragged something out the back door.”

Jesse had an idea of what it was that the wolves had dragged from the lodge, but he did
n’t
say it out loud. He did say to Katie, “I’m going to check upstairs, you keep Sadie down here.” Jesse thought it a little strange that Sadie didn’t pay more attention to the tracks, but
when he looked to find her, she was hiding under the couch
in the lobby.

“But…
”
Katie started to speak. 

“You and Sadie stay here,” he said emphatically.

Katie watched as Jesse ascended the staircase.  She knew what was at the top.  She was afraid for him, and yelled, “Please come back down here!”

At the top of the stairs, Jesse stopped and looked down the hallway.
The
second floor
hall had all the same signs as the area around the back door. And it still smelled horrific!  There
were wolf tracks everywhere. 
Some had gone into the bedrooms, but most were around the closet where he and Katie had found the body.  Except the body wasn’t there!
 

The meaning of the body being gone struck
Jesse
. He
gave a sigh of relief.  Thanks to the wolves, they weren’t going to have to get the body outside to bury it.  Then he felt a little guilty.  After all, this person had been someone’s son, a living human with family and friends.  He shouldn’t dismiss him like this. Then the reality of the situation came back to him.

He and Katie were going to have to stay in the lodge to survive the cold weather coming, and they couldn’t do it with the body of this man
laying
here
in the hallway
.  With it gone, they could concentrate on their survival.  The wolves would be a concern to deal with
later.  Jesse figured he
could make it so that the animals couldn’t get back into the lodge.

Katie called for him again.  This time he answered that he was alright and coming back downstairs.

Katie quickly went over to the staircase as Jesse was coming down.  He told her what the scene was like in the hallway.  She, too, was a bit relieved that the body was gone. They agreed that the first thing they had to do was to get this place cleaned.  Jesse, also, knew he had to fix the doors so that the wo
lves couldn’t get back in.  He didn’t want them inside while
they were
t
here.

“I’ll go get wa
ter and some cleaning supplies.”
Katie told Jesse.  Then it dawned on him, “Where does the water come from? Have you wondered?  We’ve been using the sinks and the toilets.  Katie, there’s no electric so how is the water pumped to the cabins?”

Katie just shrugged her shoulders, “If there’s a water tower, it would supply water downhill. 
I haven’t seen one though.”

Cleaning was going to have to come later.  They went out the back door to scout around looking for a water tower.  It could be important to them later on.

They hadn’t
explored
the area behind the lodge.  Directly outside the back door was a gully.  It was obvious that those working at the lodge considered it a dump.  There was garbage
nearly
fi
lling the depression
.  Katie and Jesse had added to the pile when they cleaned the kitchen and dining room a few days back.

There was a path that
t
hat went past the smoke
house. The staff bunkhouse wasn’t far from the smokehouse.  Jesse arrived first and looked in the window near the door.  He couldn’t see much so he tried to open the door.  It was unlocked. He really didn’t want to go inside so he peered around the door.  The place
was a mess.  Furniture was over-
turned. Bedding was on the floor and the smell was over whelming.