Page 3 of The Last to Vanish
It was already clear that Trey was different from his brother, who was closed off and blended in, whom I didn’t even notice for the first four days of his stay, because Georgia checked him in and could only remember, when pressed, that he had asked for the Wi-Fi password, and she had told him the service didn’t reach the cabins, that it was slow and barely consistent in the main building as well, which was why we had to keep the credit card slide under the register, old-fashioned carbon copies that people thought quaint, so it worked in our favor.
Other things that worked in our favor but were neither authentic nor necessary: the wooden key rings with the room names etched in by hand; the poker beside the fireplace, angled just so.
Things here were designed to appear more fragile than they were, but reinforced, because they had to be. We lived in the mountains, on the edge of the woods, subject to the whims of weather and the forces of nature.
The large guest room windows were practically soundproof. Frosted skylights in the upper-floor halls echoed the fall of rain or sleet, but were fully resistant to a branch lost to a storm. There were tempered glass panels in the thick wooden doors at the entrance, which could hypothetically stop a bullet, but thankfully had never been tested.
I pulled one of the umbrellas from the barrel, each a uniform navy blue with a tastefully small logo: a single, bare tree, white branches unfurling against the evening sky.
“Come on,” I said, “I’ll show you the way.”
This was not part of my job, but I couldn’t help myself. I never could.
OUTSIDE, THE RAIN WASunrelenting, puddles forming in the gravel lot, water seeping into my shoes. Trey West had to duck to fit under the shared umbrella, his arm brushing up against mine as we walked.
“The cabins are this way,” I explained, gesturing to the trail of marked lighting along the brick path on the other side of the parking lot.
We passed his car, that black Audi with the Maryland plates, on the far end of the lot, and he looked at me sheepishly.
“Is it always this dark?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered, because it wasn’t really that dark out front,all things considered, but he must’ve had an entirely different frame of reference. The lit pathway did a fair enough job, along with the lights of the main building, both kept on from dusk to dawn. From the edge of this lot, even, you could see the road slope down into the town center: a geometric grid of antique shops and breweries and cafés, stores that specialized in expert hiking apparel or kitschy tourist gear, all named for the thing that could’ve been our downfall, but seemed to put us on the map instead.
Down there, you could find the Last Stop Tavern; Trace of the Mountain Souvenirs; the Edge, which sold camping gear and rented out lockers but also featured a menu of coffee and hot chocolate and beer, depending on the time of day; and CJ’s Hideaway, a top restaurant of the western Carolinas, with its entrance tucked in a back alley, a commitment to the con, even though it boasted a growing waiting list on most nights during peak season. Each storefront a subtle nod to what the rumors implied: that there was something hidden under the surface here. Some secret only we knew, that we weren’t letting on.
The town was best known, and we weren’t known for much, for the unsolved disappearance of four hikers more than two decades earlier. The Fraternity Four, they were called, even though they hadn’t been members of any frat together. But they were in their twenties, youthful and carefree, and they had last been spotted here in town, had set off toward the Appalachian and were never seen again.
Here one moment in Cutter’s Pass, gone the next. No clues, no leads. Just vanished. Over the years, their story had morphed into something of an urban legend, layers added with each retelling, rumors spreading in absentia.
Maybe the mystery would’ve faded with time, attributed to circumstance, buried with history, if not for the string of disappearances that continued to follow, with haunting regularity.
Most recently: Landon West, onetime resident of Cabin Four. He’d vanished four months before, in early April, when the inn was still ramping up to high season.
We didn’t notice, at first.
His disappearance had kicked it all up again: the stories, the press, the headlines calling usthe most dangerous town in North Carolina.
It didn’t matter that the first thing a visitor saw when they passed the sign for Cutter’s Pass and took the wide bridge over the river was a welcome center and, across the street, the sheriff’s office. Didn’t matter that there were bright painted signs for rafting and horseback riding and adventure tours around the town green, where people milled around each morning as the vendors set up for the day. Or that thousands of visitors came through our small town to experience all we had to offer. The simple truth was that Landon West had vanished on our watch, just like all the rest.
“This is you,” I said as the path snaked off to the string of cabins, set back in the trees. There were technically only two cabin buildings, but we had subdivided them with a poorly insulated wall, the separate doors side by side in the middle of each log-home-style building. The only light coming from any of them was the soft glow of the floor lamp in Cabin One, visible in the curtain gaps of the front window. If Trey wanted real dark, he could walk the twenty yards into the trees around the back of his cabin and face the mountain.
I handed Trey the umbrella, slid the key into the lock of Cabin Four, felt the gust of cold as I opened the door, my hand stretching for the switch on the inside wall. Here, the wood paneling gave way to smaller windows that slid open on the front and back walls, to let in the fresh mountain air. There was a heating unit under the back window, for off-season stays.
The cabin furniture was simple and spare: a wood dresser, a nightstand, a four-poster bed with a quilted blanket, a desk andhard-back chair. Everything was shades of brown, except for the hotel guidebook, a white three-ring binder of information, perfectly centered on the surface of the desk.
Trey remained on the other side of the entrance, still holding the umbrella over his head. Now he was looking at the place Landon had once slept, the chair he’d once sat in, the place at the foot of the bed where Georgia had found his suitcase, mostly packed but still opened, only his hiking boots noticeably missing.
“Okay, well, I’ll leave you to get settled,” I said. I took the umbrella from his hand, which prompted him to finally step inside, switching places with me. He looked shell-shocked, unprepared. “If you need anything, the phone at the front desk will reach me.”
“Thank you, Abby,” he said, one hand on the door.
My hand lingered over his for a moment as I placed the key in his open palm, cold and wet and unsure. It took some time to get your bearings here. “Welcome to the Passage.”
CHAPTER 2
GEORGIA WAS STANDING ATthe registration desk, the inn’s landline phone halfway to her ear, when I returned.
“The lines are down,” she said as I shook the rain from the umbrella and leaned it in a groove beside the entrance. She held that same pose, that same haunted expression, as a door opened somewhere on the second floor—the cry of a hinge I’d have to get fixed.
