Daniel said, “The Feds and BCA went over that cabin, right, Monte?”
“They did. According to Dross, they didn’t find anything useful.”
“They were looking with their eyes,” Meloux said. “There are other ways to see. Come with me, Little Rabbit.”
Jenny, who stood behind her son, gripped him fiercely. Meloux put his hand over hers and said, “You call him Waaboo, but he has the heart of makwa.” Which meant bear. “Come, too, if you wish.”
In the end, they all followed Waaboo and the old Mide.
In the investigation conducted earlier by the FBI and BCA, the lock and hasp on the front door had been pried off. Meloux stopped there. “Little Rabbit?”
“Inside, I think,” Waaboo said.
“Hold on.” Monte took a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and pulled them on. “Nobody touch anything.” He reached out and opened the door.
Daylight fell through the doorway, illuminating the inside of the cabin. Dull light filtered through the dirty panes of glass on the windows as well. The place smelled of mildew, and there was a chill inside, which Daniel attributed to the coolness of the night before. But Waaboo stopped and said, “It’s cold. Bad things.”
“What do you mean ‘bad things’?” Monte asked.
“I don’t know. Everything is all mixed up. Afraid. Mad.” Daniel’s son squeezed his eyes shut. “Sad. Really sad.”
Monte looked around and said, “What did they miss?”
“Dark,” Waaboo said. “All dark.”
He held himself as if he were cold, and Jenny knelt and put her arms around him.
Like Meloux’s cabin on Crow Point, Paavola’s cabin was a single room. An ancient cast-iron stove dominated one wall. There was a bunk without a mattress, a sink with an old hand pump for water, a table in the center of the place with two chairs, and against one wall, a large, badly scratched wood cabinet. A few vestiges of Erno Paavola’s time there remained—stacked pans, a kerosene lantern on the table, a dish, fork, and knife in the sink, all crusted brown.
“Not much to see here,” Monte said. “Maybe a dark place outside?”
Waaboo shook his head. “In here.”
Daniel slowly walked the room. There was no pantry, no place for storage, except the big, scratched-up wood cabinet. He opened the doors. Inside, the shelving was wide and deep, and although they may once have held food, maybe canned or dry goods, the shelves were now empty. He turned and surveyed the single room. He didn’t have Waaboo’s extraordinary sensibility, but he felt that something wasn’t right. It took him a minute to put his finger on it.
“There’s no dust on the floor,” he said. “Nobody’s lived here for two years. There should be dust everywhere.”
Monte carefully eyed the floor and nodded. “Someone swept up. Probably making sure they didn’t leave any footprints or other traces.”
Daniel tried to think dark. Dark as in night? This far from the lights of any town and on a night without moonlight, the dark would be nearly impenetrable. The cabin had no electricity, only the single kerosene lantern on the table. So, maybe dark as in no interior light?
Or, Daniel wondered, maybe a different kind of darkness altogether. He’d stumbled onto so many empty, forgotten places in the great North Woods, and the souls of these abandoned places had always struck him as sad and dark.
LuJean said, “The wood cabinet.”
Daniel said, “I looked. It’s empty.”
“No, check the floor.”
Then Daniel saw it, too. Scratches on the old floorboards. “It’s been moved.”
“Give me a hand,” Monte said.
Although it was empty, the cabinet was heavy, and the men grunted as they slid it away from the wall. When they’d finished, they both saw it—a trapdoor with a small metal ring in the center. Daniel hooked the ring with his gloved index finger and lifted. The trapdoor came up as a piece, and Daniel set it aside.
Cold emanated from the dark space beneath and with it came an odor that Daniel recognized only too well.
“Poowah,” LuJean said, which in the Ojibwe language meant “It smells.”
Wooden steps led down. Daniel took his cell phone from his pocket, tapped the flashlight app, and shone it into the dark below, illuminating a small room whose wood walls were lined with shelves stacked with canned goods.
LuJean, who was looking over his shoulder, said, “His stockpile for the end of the world?”
“Is that a cot down there?” Monte asked.
Daniel shone the light into a corner of the room. Monte was right. There was a cot. And on it a blanket with something beneath.
“I think you have found Little Rabbit’s dark,” Meloux said behind them.
“We don’t need to be here any longer,” Jenny said. “I’m taking Waaboo out.” And with that, she guided her son out of the cabin.
Daniel eyed Monte. “I’ll go,” he said.
There were ten stairs, the incline quite steep. Daniel descended carefully. He felt the cold in that room, which seemed to him more than just the result of being insulated because it was underground. It felt unnatural, and he thought he understood something of what Waaboo had sensed.
He stepped onto the wood planking of the floor. Here, the dust had not been swept away and there were myriad footprints. He walked in a straight line the four steps to the cot, which was shoved against a wall beneath some shelving. The foul odor that had come up when he’d lifted the trapdoor was strong there. He hesitated a moment before he pulled back the blanket.
“Well?” Monte said from above.
