The Spirit Bear Secret: Secrets, #4

By Gayle Siebert

She's determined to start over. But launching a new venture could be a fatal mistake… 

 

Kathy Klein is pinning her hopes for a brighter future on the mountain lodge she's just inherited. Desperate to make her business and marriage work, she brushes off dire warnings from the local elders of a malevolent spirit lurking in the woods. When her spooked staff and selfish husband abandon her, she thinks things can't get worse. Then the grisly murders begin.

 

Cut off from the world by an avalanche, Kathy and her best friend Astrid Ingebritson struggle to protect guests from a gruesome killer free to gut them one by one. And as suspicion of the culprit's identity spreads among the survivors, Kathy's idyllic resort seems doomed to become a failure.

 

The Spirit Bear Secret is the fourth standalone novel in the spine-tingling Secrets thriller series. If you like strong heroines, frightening twists and turns, and chilling action, then you'll love Gayle Siebert's bloodcurdling tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gayle Siebert
• Release date: Feb 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781990180064

Gayle Siebert

Gayle has always loved horses, reading, and writing. She has been a trail rider, barrel racer, and dressage rider. Now retired after more than 3 decades as an insurance adjuster, she lives on a horse farm near Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada, writes, reads, and yes, still rides. 

Book preview

One

Felix Helin, hereditary chief of the Tsilhquot’in Nation, sits across the table from Kathy, stirring a third teaspoon of sugar into his coffee. At the other end of the otherwise empty room, his driver is perched on a stool at the bar, silent, watching.

Felix puts the spoon down, encloses the mug in both hands, and says, Many of our dogs have gone missing.

Oh, no. A cougar, do you think? Kathy asks, and wonders, did he really come here to tell me about missing dogs?

Could be a cougar, he agrees. He lifts the mug and slurps noisily. He’s a handsome man despite his large nose and the sculpting of his face over his many years. Snowy-white hair cascades around his shoulders, held in place with a beautiful beaded headband. That he’s wearing such a valuable artifact tells her it’s definitely more than an informal visit. His black eyes are intense as he continues, A cougar or a bear. If it’s one of them, we would find a kill site. We have not. People say the Spirit Bear is angered, and he is taking them.

Spirit bear?

This is the reason I came to see you. So you’d know why many of our people avoid this place and don’t want to work here even though the jobs are good. One of our Elders is Sensitive. She had a Dream.

I think I know who you mean. Joan, right? Joan had a dream of a spirit bear?

Yes.

She did a smudge of the building when I first came here. She didn’t say anything about a spirit bear then.

The Spirits don’t always come to her.

Of course not, Kathy thinks. Felix is more than just a prominent Elder of the Tsilhquot’in; he’s so well-regarded it would be more accurate to say he’s revered. She likes and respects him, so although she doesn’t believe in ghosts or spirits, she doesn’t voice her opinion. If his people believe, it doesn’t matter whether Kathy thinks it’s nonsense or not. But she had a dream? Since she was here?

It was last night. In her Dream, there was a Gathering of Spirits. They were angry. There was much blood. Felix slurps his coffee and for a moment seems to have lost the train of his thoughts. Then he says, Did you know a man who lived just over the ridge was mauled to death before you came here?

Kathy draws in a deep breath. Yes, she knows. The man her friend’s daughter called Bear Man. He was her brother, but she didn’t know that until he was dead, and she, as his only living relative, inherited this place along with the millions from the biological father she never knew. A windfall, but tainted, because it proved her father was a serial killer. She feels the rush of emotions that courses through her whenever she remembers. Yeah, she says. I know.

Silverface killed him. He was known as Silverface because of the patch of white on his face. He is a Spirit Bear now. Spirits of the Bear People are powerful. Usually helpful. But he’s angry. He hunts humans because they took his eye. Maimed him. And because he has found a liking for the taste of human flesh. Chief Helin’s eyes narrow as he nods as if to punctuate this last statement, then lifts his mug and takes a long draft of his coffee.

Kathy shudders, remembering her meeting with Silverface when he was still very much alive. She pushes the memory to the back of her mind and rushes on, So the spirit bear, Silverface, he eats humans?

Felix gives her a look that tells her he knows she’s skeptical. Yes. As he did before he entered the Spirit World. When they trespass into his territory.

And the dogs?

Him and the other Spirit Bear take the dogs.

Other spirit bear?

"Yes. Years ago, people disappeared. Like the dogs now, there was no trace. Some people said they seen Sasq’et. What you call Sasquatch. Others said it was Dzunk’wa, the Wild Woman of the Woods. Still others claimed it was a Spirit Bear. Then the sightings stopped and for more than twenty years, no more people disappeared. Before you came, the old lodge was built. Your people killed a sacred Kermode, those that are called Spirit Bears even before they die. Your people had him stuffed and used him as a decoration. We asked them to give him to us so we could keep him with us, to be respected, but they refused. His spirit destroyed the lodge and he began walking among us then. Then this lodge was built. And more people disappeared."

"But they weren’t my people, Kathy objects. Then she realizes they were in fact her people, by blood. I guess they were, Felix, but I never knew them, you know..."

I didn’t come here to accuse you. I came to warn you.

Oh, I see. Kathy takes a deep breath and tucks her hair behind her ear. So there are two Spirit Bears.

Maybe three, if the Ancient One is back. You have nothing to fear. You were tested and are marked as a Warrior, he nods at her ear. But others will yet be tested.

Kathy had forgotten her mutilated ear. She pulls her hair forward to cover it. How could he know about her so-called test? She tells herself he didn’t know. He noticed her missing earlobe and partially-amputated index finger, and took a guess. Neither mutilation was necessarily something that was deliberately done to her. Either could just as easily have been an accident, or she could have been born that way. Felix is intelligent enough to know that no matter what the cause, it could still be considered a test, so there was no risk of him being wrong. Still, a feeling of unease squeezes her insides. Others will be tested.

But these bears, the spirit bears, she says, steering the conversation safely away from her ‘warrior’ status, they can go anywhere, right? They aren’t just here, are they?

This place, he sweeps his hand in a half circle to take in the entire room, but meaning the whole property, there are Spirits here. They have been here since the time of the First Man. They guard the Rock.

You mean the pictograph rock? I know it. It’s near the trail to the lookout.

Since before my time and my grandfather’s time, my people have stayed away from this part of the forest. Only a few of my people have seen the Rock. Larson is one of them. With a lift of his chin, Felix indicates the younger man. When Larson was a young man, he made a Quest to see it. That was many years before the fence was put up to keep us out.

She considers telling him the fence wasn’t to keep people out, but rather, to keep escaped girls in until they could be recaptured, but she doesn’t want to open that discussion. Instead she tells him, We’re going to have to move it, you know. We’re having trouble figuring out how to do that without destroying it. You know it’s not just a rock? It’s a rocky outcropping. It’s marked on the original survey of this property. That’s the reason work on the new landing strip has stopped.

We know of the work that is being done there.

You don’t have to worry about the pictograph rock. We value it. We’re going to make it a feature of the patio out front here. Then everyone can see it. It’ll be under a roof, protected, so it doesn’t erode any further. Your son, she indicates his driver with a nod, and all your people can come and see it whenever they want.

My sons are all with The Ancestors now. Larson is the son of my granddaughter. He is one of the few still alive who has seen the Rock. It has been there since the time of the First People. It is a Gathering Place. The Bear People and my people have been linked together since Creation. The Ancestors gather there still. The Spirit Bears are anchored there. It is a mistake to move it. We think perhaps it is the work you are doing there that has angered the Spirit Bears. They are taking dogs as a warning. We are worried that as in the past, they will not stop with dogs. I have come on behalf of my people to request that you leave it where it is.

Kathy rubs her temple, takes a deep breath, and says, Okay. I’ll have the engineers look at options, and let you know.

SHE WATCHES THE LIGHTS of the truck disappear around the bend in the road half a mile past the gates. It reminds her of watching Rick’s truck go down the road, and she sighs. Seems like I’m always watching people leave.

Then she thinks about Felix saying Larson is his great grandson. Larson must be fifty something, so if that’s true, Felix would have to be over a hundred. No wonder Larson had to help him down the steps and into the truck.

The sun slips below the snow-frosted treetops half a mile from where she stands on the deck outside her second storey suite. The lengthening shadows across the snowbanks between the trees and the lodge deepen to indigo, matching Kathy’s mood.

Great. That’s just great, she mutters, as if I don’t have enough problems. The locals don’t want to work at the lodge because they can’t stop thinking about the girls: some murdered decades ago, others held here until they were sold. People from town don’t want to work at the lodge because it’s too far to drive and the road is bad. And now the First Nations people think she should abandon the work that’s already been done to get the landing strip into service in the spring, because of invisible bears?

She came up to her room to freshen up before getting back to work after her visit with Felix. In truth, she needed time to shake off the uneasiness Felix’s visit stoked in her. She hasn’t succeeded. But she has to shove her worry aside and go down in case any of the few remaining guests want something from the kitchen before it closes. Kiersten is looking after Fast Eddy’s, where they can have all the pickled eggs, pickled sausages and chips they can choke down until midnight. Hopefully that’s all anyone will want so Kiersten can take care of it, leaving Kathy to update the grocery order and get it emailed.

Thirty rooms, and only five besides hers and Kiersten’s are occupied. Four thirty-something men booked two rooms for a week. What a mixed bag. A dentist, a lawyer, a mechanic and a money manager: Here’s my card. We should talk.

Friends since high school, they said. When they’re not skiing or snowmobiling or snowshoeing or riding tubes down the toboggan run, or playing two-on-two hockey, they’re in the hot tub or the pool, or in Fast Eddy’s playing pool, darts, or shuffleboard, drinking and flirting with Kiersten. Well, flirting with all the females, including herself even though she’s married, and crazy Noel who although beautiful, is old enough to be their mother, and any of the housekeeping or kitchen staffers they can catch. They went to the cowboy bar in Dark River once, but coming back up that road in the dark made a second trip unappealing, especially since none of them wanted to be the designated driver. They are unlikely to ever return, either to the cowboy bar or The Bear Mountain Lodge.

Noel has been staying in the suite next to Kathy’s since summer. She’s a novelist and is never out of her room during the day. She could be a vampire, only coming out when the sun goes down, disappearing at dawn. Of course she’s not a vampire even if such creatures exist, since George, who runs the rental shack and does other chores like clearing snow, reports seeing her on her balcony when he arrives for work in the mornings. He says that she stands facing the rising sun with upturned face and arms held over her head, chanting or singing. That she’s naked when she performs this ritual is the reason he told her about it.

If George knows about it, it’s a safe bet everyone on the reserve does too. Do they think she’s crazy? Maybe they think it’s a good thing, like a spiritual act, the welcoming of the sun.

At this time of year, sunrise isn’t until about eight o’clock, when most people would be up and about, but with so few guests, no one other than George sees it. It harms no one, and now it’s cold enough she can’t be outside for long, so there’s no need to mention it to Noel. If the young men knew about it, they might make a point of  going around to the front of the lodge, to the gazebo maybe, where they would have a good view. If she sees them heading out there before dawn, she’ll let Noel know. Not before.

The Eglingtons have two adjoining rooms; they and their young son, Ethan, are the only other guests. They claim to be here so Ethan can enjoy the various activities because that will be good for him. In fact it seems to Kathy the getaway is more for Ethan’s father and his fancy young wife, going by how often Ethan can be found alone in the great room engrossed in his tablet or binge viewing Sponge Bob Square Pants on one of the big TVs and consuming bushels of Cheetos.

With so few people around, the atmosphere is informal. People, the four young men anyway, leave their belongings everywhere. Coats and boots in the mudroom, jackets on the backs of chairs, laptops on the tables in Fast Eddy’s that they’ve claimed as their own. Kathy never would have believed the place could look so lived in. Any customers who happened along looking for a room would think they’d stumbled into a frat house. They’re all leaving soon and there’s little chance of anyone coming without making a reservation first, so she hasn’t made an issue of that, either.

And everyone’s on a first name basis. Hal, Francine and Ethan Eglington are due to leave tomorrow. Alex leaves Saturday. Nate, Sean, and Sandy are booked out next Wednesday. Once they’re gone, Noel will be the only paying customer still in residence. The first draft of her book will be done soon and she’ll pack up her crystals, caftans and incense burners and leave.

Business since Kathy took over a year ago is disappointing. There was no established clientele because the lodge was a membership-only gentlemen’s club. In fact, the gentlemen’s club was cover for the real business: drugs, human trafficking and money laundering.

It’s a safe bet the old business didn’t have the cash flow problems she’s facing. It’s not a great time to be spending money on infrastructure, but she hopes the landing strip will boost business. An hour’s flight from Vancouver makes it a nice weekend getaway. Fly your own plane in or get on a Northward Aviation charter. It should pay for itself.

It’s surprising how many people have only come to see the infamous basement. Dark tourism on a tiny scale. But that traffic is dying off. Maybe I should rent those rooms, she thinks. Not really rooms, they’re windowless and no bigger than jail cells. At least they each have a shower and toilet, so theoretically, they could be rented. Maybe instead of downplaying it in hopes it will eventually be forgotten, she should capitalize on the morbid curiosity. Charge a small fortune for the privilege of a holiday where the girls were kept while they awaited buyers. Start promoting the rumor that ghosts linger there. Sell T-shirts reading I SURVIVED A NIGHT IN THE BASEMENT.

Ghosts, spirits or Sasq’et, she doesn’t believe in them, but as Chief Helin said, many First Nations people do. Early on, her First Nations employees told her they felt a menacing presence in the basement and refused to go down there. Fortunately it’s not really the basement, but the sub-basement, out of the way, its entrance hidden and locked.

Besides the taint of human trafficking, they claim the ghosts of the murdered girls whose graves surrounded the old lodge linger still. That their remains were removed and returned to their families makes no difference. And now, on top of that, spirit bears have claimed an entire swath of forest? The smudging meant to banish all the malevolent spirits hasn’t, apparently, worked. Putting the biggest padlock Price’s Locks could supply on the cabinet that conceals the door to the basement hasn’t worked either.

She can’t do anything about any of it, but thankfully, there are a few locals who aren’t bothered by ghosts. Housekeepers, kitchen staff, grounds maintenance, George and the other guys who man the ski, skate and snowshoe rental hut, when it’s busy, anyway. She’s planned a Christmas staff party to thank them.

There’s a skating party scheduled for the week before Christmas and the rooms are fully booked for the Christmas and New Year’s festivities, so that’s something to look forward to. Too bad it’s still a month off. It looks as though there won’t be any revenue until then.

Chin up, girl, she mutters. It’s a learning curve.

Her friend Astrid claims to have had a rough go when she started managing Dark River Forest Products, even with her husband to help and a well-established staff to lean on. So, Kathy’s doing well, at least according to Astrid.

Maybe Rick was right and it was a mistake staying open this winter. Maybe they should have hired a caretaker and both gone to spend the winter in Pillerton. It’s no warmer there but at least the roads get plowed and there are other people around. There’s plenty of time to cancel the few January and February bookings. She could still go.

But when Rick announced he was not going to spend a second winter out in the bush where for days at a time you can’t go anywhere except on a snowmobile, he reminded her he didn’t want to come here in the first place. His resolve was cemented when the first snowfall came right after Labour Day, unusually early even for this part of the world, and was followed by more snow, week after week. The first week in October, he left. He even took the dog.

With a start, she realizes if she closed the lodge, she wouldn’t have to go to Pillerton. She could go anywhere. Somewhere warm. Maybe Mexico or Costa Rica. But the idea of travelling by herself and spending months in a strange country has no appeal. Should she ask Rick to join her? Even if only for a few weeks? It could be a second honeymoon. Or rather, a honeymoon, since there was no first unless you count a night at the Holiday Inn half an hour down the road from Pillerton.

Well, he picked a good winter to bugger off, she thinks. It has snowed more than any November on record. Then unseasonably warm spells have been followed by record low temperatures and more snow. That’s the new reality. Climate change. Twice this month guests had to stay an extra night because they were snowed in. She comped the rooms for the extra night, of course, and gave them a coupon for a free night on their next visit. As if they’ll ever come back.

She gives herself a mental shake, turns and goes back inside. Rick is very social, but it’s not just the isolation he was escaping. There was tension between them even before they moved here. She hoped it was just the seven year itch come early and it would pass. It didn’t. When Rick left, it wasn’t on the best of terms. They’ve called and there have been texts, but nothing loving or warm. She ended their last brief Facetime with I love you. He replied, You too, the screen going dark almost before he finished. Not I love you, too, just you too. As if there was someone listening and he didn’t want them to hear. He hasn’t picked up or responded to a text since, not even the one asking why he’s not answering. Message received. No Rick, she decides, not unless he makes the first move.

But there’s no reason for her to stay here while she waits for something that may never happen. A month or two in Vancouver visiting her life-long friend Penny, would be just the thing. Penny and her partner Reese, both lawyers, have a big house and have extended an open invitation to visit.

Now, for the first time since watching the taillights on Rick’s truck disappear, she has a plan. She hurries through the master suite out into the hall, and takes the stairs instead of the elevator to the ground floor. She goes down the hall to Fast Eddy’s. All four young men are on stools at the bar now, eating peanuts and joking with the woman behind the bar.

I’ll be in my office if you need me, Kiersten, Kathy calls out, then she heads back down the hall to the office. Once in front of the computer, she logs on to the internet.

There’s no immediate need for her to decide where she’ll go, but she needs a caretaker at least a week or two ahead of leaving. She’d like to have someone from the Tsilhquot’in Reserve, someone who already works here so they’re familiar with the place, but she asked them before Rick left and they all refused. Now she knows why. They work here during the day, but even George, the I-ain’t-afraid-of-nothing retired bull rider, doesn’t want to be caught here overnight.

There may be one of Dark River Forest Products’ employees laid off for the winter who would take the job. Or maybe a couple would be better. Maybe she can still convince the horse logging guy who supplies firewood and whom she hired for the holiday sleigh rides, to do it.

Her mind replays their first meeting. What a memorable first meeting it was. He rode in on one of his big horses, a tiny man whose face was nearly lost in a tangle of salt-and-pepper hair and beard. There was a rifle in the scabbard on his saddle and a heeler like Rick’s old dog Chewie riding on the horse’s wide rump.

He told her he’d been a mechanic in his twenties, and quit that work to become a logger because of his love of the outdoors. When he saw the wreckage left behind by conventional logging, he bought a couple of draft horses and came here to get back to the land, harvesting a few logs without destroying everything in the process and living in harmony with the forest.

The way he looked at her and stood too close—so close his rancid breath and body odor nearly gagged her—gave her the heebie-jeebies. It was difficult to keep smiling. She took two steps away, and he took two steps to be too close again. But he spoke so reverently of his wife that Kathy decided he must be okay. Maybe not understanding he was intruding on her personal space. Just rough around the edges. Possibly hard of hearing.

Given his work experience, he’s got the skills. His wife would probably enjoy two or three months living here. He could keep his horses in the barn with her own. She’ll talk to him again next time he brings firewood.

There are lots of possibilities without running an ad. Still, she might as well cover all the bases. She posts an ad on the local free classifieds site, puts a We’re Hiring. notice on the website, then writes an email to Astrid.

Two

He was granted parole . Of course there are conditions, one being that he is to have no contact with her or her family. As if that would stop him. Astrid reads the rest of the email and exclaims, "Jesus H. fuckin’ Christ! Listen to this: ‘This is to inform you Ivar Ingebritson was granted parole and released September 14.’ He’s been out since September and they’re just telling me now?"

Hey, potty mouth! Are you sure the girls are downstairs? Denver puts his phone away and looks around to see if there are any little faces nearby, then turns his full attention on his wife, and says, You’re worried.

Of course I am.

He doesn’t know your married name, remember. And he doesn’t know where you live.

But what if he finds out?

How can he find out?

Marriage records, maybe?

Yeah, I guess those are public. But he’d have to go to some trouble to find that.

Don’t they have internet at the jail library?

I don’t know.

Well, even if they don’t, I bet he has friends on the outside who can help him with that. And he’s been out long enough to go to a library and use their computers.

Maybe so. But I’m sure he knows you’re not going to welcome him. Maybe he’ll have the good sense to just get on with his life. Besides, even if he found your new name, he wouldn’t be looking for you here.

"Not unless it came up in a Google search,