The Lodge In The Snow

The thought steadied her more than the rail did. A small antique instrument, silver-cased and engraved with a starburst on its lid, was supposed to be waiting in the lodge’s private collection. Clara had been hired to examine it before its sale. One look, one signature, and she could return to the valley with her fee and no questions about why the owner had summoned her in such haste.

The snowcat ground to a halt.

“Off!” the driver shouted. “Quickly. The drift is moving.”

The passengers climbed over one another toward the rear hatch. A tall man in a charcoal coat went first, landing knee-deep in snow. He turned immediately to offer his hand to a woman with a red wool hat.

“I can manage,” she said.

“I’m sure you can.”

“Then don’t make me prove it.”

He withdrew his hand. She jumped down, sank to her thigh, and swore.

Behind Clara, someone gave a short, humorless laugh. The speaker was a broad-shouldered man with a leather satchel strapped across his chest. He had spent most of the journey watching the road rather than the scenery.

“Charming company,” said the woman beside him. She wore a cream-colored coat and held a fur-lined hood against the wind. “We’ve known one another six minutes.”

“Seven,” said the thin man near the hatch. He had round spectacles fogged white from the cold. “The driver introduced us at the lower station.”

“No one asked you to count,” the broad man said.

Clara stepped down before the argument could grow. Snow swallowed her boots. It reached her knees at once, cold pressing through the leather. She seized the nearest suitcase and dragged it toward the lodge.

The entrance lay twenty yards away, but the storm made it seem farther. Wind shoved snow across the drive in low, racing sheets. The lodge’s porch light flickered, went black, then returned in a weak yellow pulse.

“Not that way,” called the driver. “Keep to the stones. There’s a drop beside the porch.”

Clara stopped. The stones were invisible.

The tall man in the charcoal coat began unloading the luggage. “Which one is yours?”

“The brown case.”

“There are three brown cases.”

“The one with the broken strap.”

He found it and hauled it free. Clara saw the leather satchel on the broad man’s chest and noticed that his hand never left its clasp.

“Mr. Vale,” he said, catching her glance. “Daniel Vale.”

“Clara Weiss.”

He looked at her gloves, her boots, then the lodge. “First time here?”

“Yes.”

“Then don’t wander. The mountain has a way of making distances dishonest.”

“Is that advice?”

“An observation.”

A gust tore the hood from the cream-coated woman’s head. She caught it with both hands and shouted at the driver, “How much longer can you keep the engine running?”

“Not long enough for a conversation!”

The lodge door opened.

A man stood inside, framed by firelight. He was in his late sixties, with a white beard and a wool sweater pulled over one shoulder. “Bring the cases in!” he called. “The pass is gone already.”

The words cut through the wind.

Clara turned toward the road. The track behind them had disappeared under a fresh bank of snow. No tire marks remained. The snowcat’s rear lights glowed red for a moment, then blurred.

“Move!” the lodge keeper shouted.

They moved.

The narrow porch was worse than the approach. Snow had piled against the steps, leaving only a sloping channel between the railings. The tall man carried two cases at once. The woman in the red hat crawled forward on hands and knees. The thin man lost one of his gloves and stopped to search for it.

“Leave it,” Clara said.

“It has my passport inside.”

“It has your hand inside it. Keep moving.”

He stared at her, then shoved the bare hand into his coat and lurched toward the door.

A crack sounded overhead.

Everyone froze.

A slab of snow slid from the roof and broke across the porch rail, exploding into powder. The cream-coated woman screamed. The tall man seized her arm and pulled her against the stone wall.

“Inside,” Clara said. “Now.”

She grabbed the thin man by the collar and pushed him through the doorway. The lodge keeper caught him on the other side.

“Where’s the last case?” Clara shouted.

The broad man stood below the porch, one hand on a black trunk. Snow streamed around him.

“Leave it!” someone yelled.

He looked up, jaw clenched. “It isn’t mine.”

“Then leave it!”

A second crack came from the roof.

Clara went back down.

The broad man stared at her. “You have a death wish?”

“No. I have eyes. Move.”

Together they dragged the trunk. It caught on a buried stone. Clara dropped to her knees, dug both hands into the packed snow, and freed the wheel. The wind slapped her sideways. For one instant the porch light went out, and the lodge vanished.

Then the light returned.

The broad man shoved the trunk through the doorway. Clara followed, slamming the door behind her as snow burst across the threshold.

The lodge keeper dropped the iron bar into its brackets.

The sound was final.

Inside, the air was warmer but no kinder. Wet wool, woodsmoke, and tracked-in snow crowded the entrance hall. A stone fireplace burned at the far end, though the flames leaned strangely as if a draft moved through the room. The lights overhead flickered again.

“Generator,” the keeper muttered. “It’s temperamental in weather like this.”

“Your name?” asked the woman in the red hat.

“Matthias Rainer. This is the Hohenwald Lodge.”

“Does the telephone work?”

Rainer’s expression answered before he did. “The line went down an hour ago.”

“And the road?”

“Buried.”

The cream-coated woman pulled off her hood. She was younger than Clara had first thought, perhaps thirty-five, with dark hair pinned severely at the nape. “You knew the storm was coming.”

“I knew snow was coming.”

“This is more than snow.”

“Yes,” Rainer said. “Now it is.”

The tall man removed his gloves finger by finger. “There are six of us.”

Rainer counted them with a glance. “Six guests.”

“Rooms?”

“Six rooms.”

“Food?”

“For a week, if no one is wasteful.”

The broad man gave a low laugh. “That sounds reassuring.”

Rainer’s eyes settled on the leather satchel. “Your name?”

“Daniel Vale.”

“And the rest?”

The woman in the red hat lifted her chin. “Elise Hart.”

The thin man pushed his fogged spectacles up his nose. “Martin Kepler.”

The cream-coated woman said, “Nadia Petrov.”

The tall man looked toward Clara before answering. “Jonas Reed.”

Clara gave her name last.

Rainer nodded as though recording evidence. “Dinner at seven. Until then, dry yourselves and stay out of the east corridor. The windows there are sealed for winter.”

“Why?” Martin asked.

“Because the mountain throws stones.”

That silenced him.

Rainer began assigning rooms. Clara barely listened. Her attention had fixed on the glass-fronted cabinet beside the fireplace. Inside, mounted against dark green velvet, lay a scattering of objects: old climbing pins, a brass altimeter, a pair of ivory-handled knives, and an empty oval of velvet beneath a small handwritten card.

She stepped closer.

The card read: COMPASS OF AUGUST WEISS - 1847.

Her surname.

The cabinet’s lock gleamed beneath the firelight.

“Miss Weiss,” said Rainer.

Clara turned. “Who owned it?”

“Owned what?”

“The compass.”

His face changed by less than a fraction, but she saw it. A tightening near the mouth. A pause before breath.

“The display is not for guests.”

“I’m not asking as a guest.”

“Then ask as whatever else you are.”

Before Clara could answer, the lights failed.

Darkness swallowed the hall. Someone knocked over a suitcase. Nadia cursed. The wind struck the outer walls with a deep, rolling boom.

“Stay where you are,” Rainer called.

A match flared near the fireplace. His beard appeared first, then his eyes. He crossed to a side table and lit two oil lamps. Their flames made the room smaller, surrounding each face with a trembling yellow rim.

Clara looked at the cabinet.

The lock was still closed.

Rainer took a ring of keys from his pocket. “Power will return.”

“Will it?” Jonas asked.

“It always has.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then we use candles.”

The generator coughed somewhere beneath the lodge. The lights shuddered back on.

A cheer did not come. No one seemed willing to make the sound.

Rainer led them toward the dining room. Clara remained by the cabinet until the others had passed. The card’s ink was faded, but the name was unmistakable. August Weiss had been her great-grandfather. The compass had disappeared from the family records nearly a century ago, turning up only three months earlier in a dealer’s catalogue.

She had told no one at the valley station that she was related to it.

“You knew,” she said.

Rainer stood across the room, key ring hanging from his hand. “I knew the object was here.”

“Where is it?”

“In the cabinet.”

Clara looked again.

The velvet oval was empty.

Rainer followed her gaze. His face drained of color.

“What?” Jonas asked from the dining-room doorway.

Rainer crossed the hall. He unlocked the cabinet with shaking fingers and opened the glass door. He touched the empty velvet as though the compass might be hiding beneath it.

“It was there this morning,” he said.

Daniel Vale stepped forward. “You’re certain?”

“I put it there myself.”

“When did you last see it?” Nadia asked.

“After lunch.”

“And who has been in this room since then?”

Rainer looked from one stranger to the next.

The storm hammered the lodge. Snow hissed against the windows. Somewhere above them, a shutter banged once, twice, then stopped.

“No one leaves,” Rainer said.

Daniel’s hand closed over his satchel clasp. “We just arrived.”

“Exactly.”

Clara moved to the front door and lifted the bar. It resisted. When she pulled it open, wind drove snow into the hall, erasing the threshold in seconds.

Outside, the drive was a blank white slope. The snowcat had vanished beneath it. Their tracks were gone.

Clara shut the door.

Behind her, six faces watched one another with the same dawning calculation.

The compass was missing. The pass was sealed. And whatever had taken the antique had left no trail beyond the lodge.

End of chapter one. 7 more chapters in the full book.