"Whitelodge": The Wrap-Up

About a year and half ago, I looked back over the short stories I had been writing and decided to give writing a novel another try. There were a couple of factors that played into that decision, but the biggest one was the sense of confidence I'd gained from the 30-odd stories I'd just finished.

I had always been the kind of writer who waited until a good idea came up, and then worked it around in my head until I deemed it complete enough to write down. This was how just about every one of the stories in my first collection, Dream Escapes, came to be, and it also explains why more than a few of them are described as "dreamstories"; on the rare occurrence that a nighttime dream would stick around into the next day and still make narrative sense, I felt the need to capture it somehow, as if my own mind had thrown me a creative freebie.

It wasn't until I took an adult creative writing class (during my unemployed period, after Borders closed down) that I realized I was going about my process all wrong. I surprised myself with what I was able to come up with when we did our free-writing exercises, in which we took a random item from a box and had ten minutes to make up a story about it on the spot (several of these are now listed as the first few "Fast Fiction" items on this very blog). I began to realize that when I showed up to the page and trusted myself, more often than not inspiration would meet me there, and automatically start taking on forms that I would never come up with if I left it to my rational mind.

After the class ended, I experimented with just grabbing any random image that hit me the right way (and, in the process, learned to recognize that when it happened) and making a story out of it. Over the next year or so, I imposed quick-turnaround deadlines on myself and ended up with what are now my eight "We're All Light" mini-ebook collections. I was almost uniformly pleased with results, but I also started wondering what else I could do if I applied myself to it with the same discipline.

I had tried writing novels before, but my still-underdeveloped writing muscles felt like they needed a pre-made structure to follow, a safety net to fall back on if I lost my way or my drive. That's why my first few semi-finished original works are based on other works that I admired: the general tone and shape of my screenplay "Syzygy" (which is actually posted below) was based on Tom Waits' Bone Machine album, although it changed a lot along the way; my novella "28 IF" is based on -- and fully incorporates -- the Beatles' Abbey Road; and my unfinished Wizard-of-Oz-in-Hell novel "Nadir" is clearly superimposed on Botticelli's map of Dante's Inferno.

With a few dozen short stories under my belt, however, I felt like I should give a bigger, more original, project a try. And it was an intriguing experiment... could I take the make-it-up-on-the-fly ethos I was using for short stories and spin it out into a novel? The results are the 150,000 words I've just finished. And now that it's over, and I know what happened to everyone, I've come up with what I think is a fitting title... which I will reveal in just a minute.

Before that, a side note here: Let's not fool ourselves. Short stories are fun, but in today's writing game, novels are where it's at. For a long time we could claim that internet attention spans would make people tend to gravitate toward short stories, and ebook portability would favor any length of work evenly. But unfortunately, the trend that literature has been following for the last forty years hasn't changed much: novel-length books are the fuel that stoke the fires of bigger business. Take a look at the biggest media-spanning hits these days, and you'll find that almost none of them sprang to life originally as film and/or television. Nearly everything is based on a book, a story, a comic book, etc. But I am confident in saying that the reasons I think this project has been successful (and in my mind, "successful" can be equated with "not given up on") never included the thought of making money off of it. If I had gone in with that mindset, I would have quit a long time ago. Nor would I have posted the first draft in its entirety here on this site -- a move that I did to keep myself on task and to not overthink things, which is another metric by which I think I was successful.

So, as for the title. I've got this weird penchant for wanting to name my big works after obscure words that most people don't know (opposed to my short stories, where for some reason I'm content to use rather nondescript words and short phrases). I've got some kind of half-formed idea that it's a way of taking a tiny piece of the language and kind of owning it -- I suspect that if I really investigated it, probably as many people are alienated as intrigued. But I can't seem to turn away from the practice, much as I couldn't turn away from many of the plot twists in this story as soon as they sprang into my head, as if I had merely unearthed them instead of invented them. And to that end... I've decided to call this novel "Oubliette".

Ever since I saw Jim Henson's movie Labyrinth when I was 14 I always liked the sound of that word... and the fact that it was always so hard for me to figure out whether it was a real or fabricated word in the pre-Internet age kind of fascinated me. Now I know that it derives from the French verb oublier -- "to forget" -- and is an underground prison cell with the only door being in the ceiling, out of reach of the prisoner, which is what the word is used for in that movie. I've always pictured the pocket universe containing the Deertail Lodge as being something like a cosmic snow globe, which in turn triggers images of the all-purpose magical crystal balls that the Goblin King juggles... it's an intriguing cricross of impressions in my mind, and the fact that it's a little known, cool-sounding word just cements it, and convinces me that I'd never be satisfied with any other title.

The story itself didn't start with an image, but instead, a song lyric from Harry Connick Jr. In his song "Just Like Me" (from his criminally underrated mid-90s funk albums), he muses "The world keeps spinning/Mountains vary, but the valleys [are] the same". I modified this into Harmon's first line of dialogue. I quickly found I had a ski lodge setting in mind -- a kind of place I personally know nothing about, but that's where my mind goes when thinking about mountains and valleys. I had no idea where the story was going to go, how many characters there were going to be, what the conflict was going to be or how it was all going to resolve, but I was off and running.

In reality, it was a process no more magical than the short stories that came before; it was a matter of showing up to the page every day and trying to push things forward. Some days were very productive, on others I gave up in frustration. The only difference was that I couldn't say "The End" and leave things hanging anytime I wanted to. It's part of the beauty of the short story that you can do this, and sometimes it's even the point. But at the Deertail, I was responsible for every choice, and only in the rarest instances could I decide not to follow up on something weird that I threw into the mix when I couldn't think of anything else.

In the end, every character met an end. Whether what happened was right or fair, satisfying or not, isn't really mine to decide now.

So now all that's left is to go back and revise. I've already got a short list of continuity items that I need to correct: the inconsistent placement of the moon in the sky, the incorrect name I gave to Kerren's mother in Chapter 1.1 before I truly knew who she was, etc. And I'm sure I'll come across threads that I never followed through on and can scrap, or ones I can expand on, or clarify better. Most importantly, now that I know the end of the story, I can properly tell the beginning. But in general, I don't see any major structural changes; I think this one is pretty much done.

So what's next? I have a handful of kernels for new short stories, and when they're comlete they might serve as the catalyst to put out a physical collection of stories from my ebooks, something a person can put on their shelf. There are also a few unfinished novels from years ago that I just might have the confidence and tools to finish now. Whatever the answer turns out to be, the results will end up on this page first, one way or another. And as always, I thank you for showing up. I'd be doing this anyway, but knowing that someone's paying attention just makes it all that much more fun.

Whitelodge 15.5 & 15.6

-15.5-

Carlos had seen it all as it happened. After his fall onto the second story balcony carpet had knocked the wind out of him, harder than anything he had felt in years -- and most likely cracked a rib or two -- he thought he was out of the battle for good. It took everything he had left to drag himself to the railing, and peer down through the slats at the melee taking place on the floor below.

Once he did, he wished he had breath to cheer when he saw how Kelly had ridden the Qoloni's horns all the way down the floor and kept right on fighting, or when Dale took that first chunk out of the Qoloni, or when Manoj had come into view around the end of the stairway, staggering back into the fray. And when he saw Benny's struggling hand fling the Deertail logo across to aid him? He wished he could be a part of it, but also realized how important it was to have someone to bear witness to it all, from a distance, so that they could then tell the tale objectively, even if that meant just telling those who participated in it the parts they had been too distracted by other things to notice. So Carlos lay there, taking it in and gradually getting control of his lungs back.

He didn't try to rise until after Sheryl had left his side. He needed no explanation from her; he knew precisely where she was going. She seemed to know the point when it was all but over, and then turned her attention toward getting back to the one who now needed her most.

Getting on his feet was rough. His arms and legs felt oxygen-starved, a deep burning ache that only started to dissipate once he got them moving. The pins and needles set in after that, and for a few agonizing moments he thought all his limbs were going to lock up in cramps, but then the feeling dissipated. He finally managed to draw himself up fully, using the balcony railing, and then he moved toward the stairs, only starting down them when he thought he could be trusted to balance properly.

By the time he began to descend, the alarms were gently roaring in the far distance, and their presence seemed to make his breath come even more easily. He patted Dale on the shoulder, the way you would silently congratulate the quarterback after a winning game, but Carlos wasn't sure the man even saw him. There was clearly more to be done, and the security guard wasn't going to stand around waiting for someone else to do it. It gave Carlos a little pang of guilt, for having to the sit out the last fight against the Qoloni.

At the bottom of the stairs, the mood was much lighter.

Manoj had realized what was on the threshold of the door to Harmon's room, pushed only slightly ajar by Benny's mangled body. Manoj was just stepping over the author's sprawled form to get to him, letting out an incoherent yell of shared triumph.

Carlos saw Manoj recoil at the full sight of Benny, and understood. At first look (not to mention second and third), Benny was in horrific condition, his head a mess of dried blood and scorch marks, eyes unfocused, and his lower lip hanging down ponderously. It was hard to believe that he could have aided the fight at all, much less throw the Deertail sigil accurately to Manoj when the time came. Luck must have played more than a small role in that.

Nevertheless, Manoj was bending down to see if Benny was okay, and as he did his injured knee gave way under him. Fortunately, instead of falling against the door and crushing Benny, he twisted so that he ended up slamming his shoulder hard against the wall on the other side, and slide to the floor. He ended up half-sitting next to the injured man down on the floor.

Kelly was halfway over to him before he landed, and Carlos could see that she would have thrown herself in the path of his fall if she had time. As it was, she could only drop to her knees close to the fallen men. She took a look at them, and said, "You must be Benny."

The fallen wreck of a man managed to raise his hand and turn it on its side, clearly meaning to extend a hearty handshake. This charmed Kelly enough to make her laugh.

Carlos came up to the little group, cautiously eyeing Bruce's body as he went by it. It looked even more forlorn now, lying out in the middle of the lobby rug alone, all evidence of what it had been through erased. He thought that he had never seen anything so entirely still, and that sent a cold flash through his arms and legs. Unnerved, he quickly turned his attention back to his comrades.

Kelly had just finished gingerly shaking Benny's hand, and she then reached out for Carlos with the same one, this time turning her palm down, as if urging him to take it so she could ease herself to the floor with the rest of them. He did just that, and was soon in a small, informal group of four sitting just outside the door of Harmon's room.

Carlos nodded back toward the front windows, where the sounds of the avalanche sirens seemed to be coming from. "Sounds like the cavalry's finally on the way."

Manoj looked behind them, at Bruce's body, pondering. "I don't know if it was destroying the Qoloni, or Bruce dying, but it appears we've reattached to our... home world." There was something about the way he said it, that made Carlos wonder if Manoj was hedging his bets on just how many such worlds he thought there were.

Instead of pursuing this, Carlos turned to something that had been on his mind. "When they do get here, what do we say?" He made an expansive gesture around him, one that encompassed the Deertail and everything in it. There were at least two people dead, random handheld objects strewn about, a broken mirror from the second floor...

Kelly took a quick look, and then said, "You know, I don't think we need to say much of anything. You and Benny were in the kitchen when it happened, Benny got hurt, you triaged him and brought him out here. That's easy enough."

The sound of voices upstairs were becoming more apparent. It seemed that Dale was coaxing people out of their rooms, finding out if anyone else was hurt (a couple of pained cries evinced that some were), and the upper hallway was starting to fill. Kelly looked at Manoj when she said, "Noj and I can blend in. Our room was half destroyed. We got lucky. If you think about it, the person with the hardest job is going to be the investigator who finds the snowmobile on the roof."

This prompted her to laugh cautiously, and the others picked it up. At that moment, any future problems they might have seemed trivial. That they had all managed to survive, for the moment, trumped the fact that so much else had been destroyed. Carlos wondered how much of this night was purely coincidental, and how much had been fated. They didn't even know how much of their misfortune Bruce was directly to blame for. So many people here knew the fabled Sarah, including Bruce, although he had used her as the protagonist in a book that at least two of them had gone on to read. Kerren's presence seemed to have somehow triggered them all to bring aspects of that book to life, including its horrifying villain.

But that brought him back to the quartet he was currently celebrating/commiserating with. Why had they remained here, in the Deertail, when they had no discernible connection to Sarah? Why hadn't they temporarily winked out of existence like others, and missed the whole thing? He would be considering this for a long time after this night, and the best he would ever come up with was simply this... they were all there because they had to be. The story wouldn't have ended correctly if they hadn't been.

Not only this, but in the darkest hours of future nights, he would not even be able to discount that other, random inhabitants of the Lodge could have done the things they did. No one but him could have been able to keep Benny from bleeding out on the kitchen floor -- and probably wouldn't have been stupid enough to tackle the Qoloni when he did. None but Manoj's outsider thinking could have figured out what was happening to them, and Kelly's leadership had kept the group together and made crucial decisions at the right times. Even Benny had played his role. Speaking of which...

His coworker and friend was actually turning around on the floor, sliding his back up against the doorframe and determinedly pushing himself up into a sitting position. It was an amazing feat, considering everything the man had been through. He still looked like a horror show, but the amount of muscular control he was exhibiting was kind of miraculous.

"Benny," Carlos asked, "are you feeling better?"

All heads turned toward the injured man, and he responded by tremulously lifting his hand in a thumbs-up. With his other hand, he pointed to something inside the room he sat on the edge of, and Carlos realized he knew what that something was. Harmon was still in there, sitting on the cot.

-15.6-

Harmon's body had remained still throughout his travels. After he had tried to help Glenda, and came back with only a message for the man she loved, he was distraught. What good was this power if he couldn't use it to help people? He needed to see whether he really could enact any kind of positive change. So he turned to the next person who required the most help.

Benny's mind was still in a state of near-total disarray as he entered, but he felt welcomed there. He couldn't tell if this was something Benny himself was doing, or if Harmon was merely going becoming familiar with foreign ground he had already tread upon. Either way, the tangle of misshapen, planet-sized electric storms and vast mental continents cracked down their centers didn't seem quite as intimidating. Harmon did a quick search, found a place that didn't seem quite as bad as others.

To his surprise, when he focused all his attention on it, the places that had become disconnected began to fuse. He wasn't entirely sure what he was doing to them, but he watched as he eased them close, and became fascinated with the way they began to reach for each other, as if by will they were able to complete the job of returning to their original configuration. He guessed that Benny was making just as much effort in this process as he was.

So he could help a small portion of Benny's mind to heal. It wasn't much, but it was a start. He began to think that if the two of them could work together, given enough time, he might be able to completely restore Benny's mind to the way it was before its trauma. He hoped that this suddenly, intensely intimate friend of his would be willing to help him find out. The possibility of using his abilities this way was so heady that Harmon immediately began to wonder about what more wonder might lay beyond... could he help heal other parts of the body? More specifically, could he help Kerren?

His mind was unable to keep from returning to her. The connection they had was now irrefutable. His mind had accepted it readily as fact with no effort at all. It made perfect sense. The idea was still frightening, though, with its own measures of guilt and awe. He felt such a sudden sense of responsibility...

He pushed the thought away again, refusing to deal with it for the moment. Instead, he convinced himself that he needed to take one more tour of his surroundings before returning to his body. This state of projection, as he was starting to think of it as, allowed him to see the world at all its scales, or so it seemed -- he hadn't found the boundaries of the ability yet. So he drew back from Benny and took a long sweep through the Deertail. Rescue crews were definitely on the way, assembling now down in the village, and would take only a few hours to excavate a path up the road to the Lodge. Harmon felt that, considering the strangeness of all that happened in the missing hours, he was obliged to assess what they would find when they arrived.

The group in the lobby had fared the best. Harmon already knew he could help Benny, and the others were relatively unharmed. He was mildly amused by the bright filaments of affection, the bond of affection bonding Manoj and Kelly together, which were multiplying even as he watched; it was clear that they were going to be part of each other's lives for a long time. He also noted that, once the adrenaline dropped off, Manoj was going to find out that he was much more injured than he currently thought. He would need all the help Kelly could give him then, and Harmon had no doubt that she would do so, without a second thought.

Carlos had an entirely different aura about him. There was a strength inside him that he hadn't been aware of before this night, but now that he had made contact with it, Harmon saw the way it had changed his focus entirely. What the man would do with this newfound purpose remained to be seen, but Harmon guessed that it would manifest in some undeniably positive way. Perhaps he would return to his kitchen and nourish people from the inside; perhaps he would run for office and do the same from without. There were a multiplicity of possible paths emanating from him, and every single one was open.

As for Bruce, the author? Bruce was gone. Harmon truly wanted to spare some kindness for the man, who had disappeared so far into the enchantment of his own mind that he no longer understood the difference between reality and his fantasies. Harmon was quite sure that this, more than anything else, had been the original source of the great discontinuity they had witnessed tonight. Either Bruce had caused the avalanche, or the avalanche had been what triggered Bruce. Regardless of the true origin, Harmon doubted that it was the sort of thing that could never happen again. Such things likely happened every day, and only if they were deemed good or ill did they take on names such as "fate" or "miracles".

He rose up, up to the second floor, where Dale was rounding up the survivors. He did so solemnly, for Harmon could feel what the head of security was already sensing -- that there were going to be more victims found amid the wreckage. Only Glenda and her knowledge of the room assignments would have known for sure, but it seemed inescapable that Bruce was not the only occupant of the wing that had collapsed. Harmon recalled the group of young people he had spoken to in the restaurant earlier in the evening, all of whom presumably were here somewhere, either being roused by Dale or forever trapped beneath the wreckage. Either way, Dale would not rest until they were all accounted for, all karmic ledgers balanced. It was just the kind of person he was. There was grief powering him now, but Harmon could see that when that dark force faded -- as eventually, it would -- the gears of his compassion would be gilded with fierce courage, and nearly unbreakable.

With a slight reluctance, he moved farther down the hall, passing faces that he remembered from the day before. Then, it had been his job to surreptitiously scan them all, to take the measure of their intents and report them all back to Jimmy Gough. Now, with the practice he had gained over the course of their collective ordeal, he saw every person differently, still as human beings, but as so much more as well, their spiritual selves all origamied open, infinitely regressive layers of heart and mind. It was hard to resist diving into each one and immediately learning more about human nature than most can learn in a lifetime. But for now, Harmon had to move on. The room at the end of the hall was his ultimate destination.

He passed through the first room, into the open chill of the next. Three women were there, and among he could number his greatest failure and his greatest achievement. Between them was Sheryl, a woman who had come here looking to renew her belief in love. This was the glow that was radiating from her, a new understanding of her place in the lives of others, and theirs in hers. It was funny; in all his years of watching and studying people, Harmon had never found the level of self-awareness that Sheryl had gained in one night. It was clear she would emerge from this nightmare with her soul renewed, having discovered that it had not originated in her beloved at all.

Finally he came to those last two women, one with light hair, the other dark, both laid down and motionless under the cool moonlight that speared in through the open hole in the roof. Looking at the latter, he sighed with grief. He had done all he could for Glenda, and he could only hope that in the end it was enough, that he brought her and Dale some kind of comfort. It was a small comfort, but he would take all he could get.

Kerren was the most difficult to look upon. Now, as he gazed down from his vantage point somewhere below the ceiling, he couldn't help but smile. He could continually study her face, finding pieces of Sarah, pieces of himself; the angle of an eyelid, the swept-back ear. In a few moments he was going to return to his body, and would rise and greet his friends anew. Then he was going to walk up the grand stairs of the Deertail Lobby and into this room, and together he and his daughter would begin to work toward understanding this unusual world they had managed to unlock together.

Kerren opened her eyes as she lay with her head in Sheryl's lap, and looked directly up at him.

Whitelodge 15.3 & 15.4

-15.3-

Manoj couldn't allow himself to accept that it was all over. He wasn't even entirely convinced that he had survived the tumble down the stairs; every part of him that he wasn't sure was broken, ached. It was only the unnatural coldness of the metal logo in his hand that kept him upright and conscious. Though as still as the air around him, it seemed to hum in his hand, as if the force with which he had jammed it against the Qoloni's horns still resonated within it imperceptibly. In turn, he felt his body was humming as well.

The three of them hovered, still in position over the spot where the Qoloni had dissolved, for much longer than necessary. Dale still knelt on the rug, looking down at the spot he had punched repeatedly, and Kelly still stood nearby, shattered mirror held before her like a shield. The utter silence and stillness after all the violence seemed to make the perfect moment for one final jump scare, just to make them walk away wondering if sleep could really come easy from then on... Manoj vowed to hold as long the others did;

Finally, he felt that he would be unable to keep from collapsing if they waited any longer. "Is it over?" he asked. He finally dared to look over at Bruce's collapsed body, realizing that for the author, it definitely was. The arms and legs were unbroken, but bent at rag-doll angles. Blood flowed in thick streams from clearly-defined holes to form a spreading pool underneath. Its edge had just spilled over the edge of the rug and now sped away along the miniscule cracks between the floorboards.

"Shouldn't something be happening?" Manoj asked, his throat feeling thick and swollen. He was thinking back to the movies he had seen as a child, all those parent-approved G-rated cartoons. In them, the defeat of the enemy almost always resulted in a transformation, usually of the entire environment, a glorious wave of sparkling light that turned everything it touched back to The-Way-It-Was. It was surprising that, after everything life had taught since then, he still expected it, and felt cheated when it didn't come.

His vague question made Dale lift his gaze from the spot on the floor he had been so focused on. The security guard looked around as if emerging from a dream, then lifted his hand. It was still balled tightly into a fist around the curved piece of broken mirror, and blood was forming a much smaller pool where it dropped off the sharp tip and onto the rug. He tossed the shard aside and gave his hand a cursory examination, inspecting the lacerations across the fingers and palm, and shaking it as pain began to creep in with the receding of fury-driven adrenaline.

Manoj took Dale's putting down his weapon to mean that he could, too. He let his arms (so tired, and there was something faintly grating deep within one of them) relax, and straightened his spine. It seemed reluctant to re-align, but it eventually did. Manoj turned toward Kelly, and saw that she hadn't dropped her warrior stance yet, her knuckles still white around the long tines of the mirror frame. He walked over to her, trying to ignore the protesting ligaments of his ankles, and put his hands next to hers on the metal.

"Kelly," he said softly. It took two more repetitions of her name before she looked at him. Her eyes were still in attack mode, but then she swallowed and blinked, and they cleared. She tossed the frame aside -- causing an unbelievable noise in the silent lobby -- and grabbed him with ferocity. He winced in pain, but it was worth it.

"I think it's really gone," she whispered against his neck, as if wary of jinxing the victory. He nodded in response, marveling at how she had stood so strong, even more at how *he* had stood so strong against the enemy. They had taken the darkness on side by side, as true equals.

Their third partner hadn't risen, but he had been looking around the scene. "Guys," Dale murmured, and drew their attention. He was looking at the body of the author.

The blood had been there, Manoj was sure of it. He couldn't have hallucinated the sheer volume of it. Now Bruce Casey's form was clean and ungored, though still in the same position, as if he had tripped and awkwardly fallen there.

"He's healed," Kelly said in wonder.

Dale looked a little longer, then shook his head. "Still dead, though. Maybe the thing took the damage it caused along with it." A long pause, and then, pointing at the body, "I don't think the damage *he* caused will be undone, though." Resigned, he held up his lacerated hand as evidence.

Manoj and Kelly, tightly pressed together, sighed as one. Of course not. They had been able to prevent the Qoloni from physically harming anyone else. The author would not have to pay for his crime against Glenda now. But then again... Manoj tried to give voice to the pure, nonverbal thought that sprang into his mind: "It makes sense, though. If the authorities find him -- provided they're able to get to us after all -- we won't have to explain anything."

Kelly, still pressed tightly against him, backed off a little. "What's that, Noj?"

He reluctantly left her arms, and limped over toward the body. "If the Qoloni was the thing that created this little... universe, or whatever it is we're in, then we might just be reconnected to our own world now. We'll need to look down on the lights of the town to be sure..."

As if on cue, a sound drifted into the lobby, a single tone that at first just seemed like the wind picking up and hitting the wooden eaves at a different angle. But as it rose, it became clear that it was something man-made...

"An alarm!" Kelly exclaimed.

Dale nodded. "Avalanche warning. Better late than never, I guess."

Manoj asked, a cautious tone in his voice, "Dale, where exactly are those horns?"

Dale didn't look up, but thought about it for a moment, then answered, "Down in town."

"So we're back," Manoj said. "Back in the world." It was strange how saying it didn't make him feel as good as he thought it would. The words themselves brought no relief, but then he looked over at Kelly, whose face broke into a grin that seemed to supercharge all his emotions. The sense that he was going to get to return to rational, sane life, and that he was going to do it side by side with Kelly, flooded over him. For a long moment, the two of them just stood there, looking at each other and listening to the most lovely mechanical whine either of them had ever heard.

-15.4-

It was all Dale could do to keep himself from pitching forward onto the rug. There seemed to be no strength left in him. It wasn't that he didn't hear Manoj and Kelly's words of celebration, or couldn't appreciate their joy at seeming to have participated in the vanquishing of the enemy; he just didn't feel able to share it. The stinging in his hand was really the only thing he was able to feel at the moment.

The muscles in his legs, which for now managed to keep him suspended over the spot in the floor where the thing had been, were starting to quiver with fatigue. He didn't know if it were from their prolonged awkward position, or if they were feeling the aftereffects of being twisted out of their usual spatial dimensions, but he had to move. He didn't want to. He wanted to stay right there, until he could be absolutely sure that he wasn't going to see that horrible shape trying to push its way back up through the floorboards.

There was no choice, however. In any event, there was somewhere else he wanted to be, only one other person that he wanted to share the victory with, and she wasn't where he was. To be with her, he had to leave where he was. So he did. He drew his legs underneath him, heaved himself up to a standing position, clenched his still-dripping fist as hard as he was able, and began walking. He may have tangentially kicked the author's body once as he passed by.

He left the couple behind and ascended the wide lobby stairs, one heavy step at a time. Most of the way up, he met Carlos, who was gingerly making his way down, keeping firm hold of the inner railing. He was hailing those below, apparently wanting to see if Benny was still alive. The cook clapped Dale on the shoulder in a solemn, congratulatory fashion as they passed each other. Dale couldn't meet his gaze, but nodded as he walked on.

The relieved laughter and general merriment increased below him as he reached the top of the stairs. What he was going to do next was clearly formed in his mind; He would go back to Glenda, gently pick her up, and climb the storeroom stairs back up to the roof, where he would sit with her in his arms and watch the world below, waiting for the rescue teams to arrive, to catalog the damage, and blame him as they saw fit for failing in his job protecting the inhabitants of the Deertail Lodge. He turned the corner to begin the long hallway plod back to her side --

And ran into a pair of people he barely recognized. They were standing just outside an open room door, around the corner from the top of the stairs. The man was taller, thin, with a long neck that housed a prominent Adam's apple. He looked like the kind of man who wore a fedora, anytime other than the middle of the night. The woman with him was markedly shorter than he, her hair jet black, cut in surgically straight bangs across her forehead.

"What happened?" the man asked Dale, his eyes already registering something dangerously close to panic. "Was there an explosion or something?"

Dale just stared at him for a moment. Then he realized that this was the room that he had been in when Manoj had looked down at the down and realized the full extent of their situation. He had noticed two arched lumps in the bedspread, as if a couple had just slipped out. Dale wondered if, when these two had reappeared, they had exactly refilled the spaces they had vacated.

After taking a moment to carefully consider his words, he said, calmly, "There was an avalanche. We're determining the extent of the damages right now, and the authorities are on their way. Would you mind staying in your room while we try to figure out the status of everyone in the Lodge?"

Dale had no idea if any of what he said was true, but it seemed to be exactly what the couple needed to hear; that the danger was over, and help was coming. They both nodded, thanked him, and retreated into their room. After the door closed, Dale continued to stand there, looking at it.

He sighed, knowing even before he consciously decided, that his plan had changed. It was like he had often heard Glenda say; it was in his nature to help people. And now that it seemed the other inhabitants of the Lodge were back, and unaware that any time had passed without them -- and it very well might be that none had -- the old familiar instincts were beginning to kick in.

Much to his bewilderment, it brought a strange feeling that he couldn't think of in any way other than comfort. Despite the fact that there were most likely people who were injured, or had even been killed, in the rooms around him, he knew that he had the capacity to help them as much as he could. Following close on the heels of this was guilt that actually physically hurt, knowing that he was putting aside the snowy vigil that he felt Glenda deserved, all because he couldn't turn away from others who needed his help.

The pain was dispelled quickly, however, when he realized that Glenda would have understood. Not just that, but she would have watched him go about his job with pride, knowing that she was witnessing what he had been put on Earth to do. If she had been next to him, she would probably even chastise him for standing there, brooding, as long as he had. He silently promised her that, when it was all over, and he had done everything he could for those around him, he would see to it that she went home. He would personally take her back to the family that loved her. He could ask nothing less of himself. And she deserved nothing less.

So, instead of going back to the storeroom, he began knocking on doors.