In the middle of the pool, a little red canoe lay gripped by ice. Its paintwork had blistered like a log on the flame. Peter looked up towards the arch, noticing now that it was only high enough for a canoe to pass beneath in the summer months. The cave was a boathouse, perhaps. A hiding place. A secret escape. He made his way off the ice, stooping to take the candle back in hand. It was only now he noticed the boots. There was a bunch of them lying there, all tipped on to their sides, soles facing out, in a row together. And the boots were attached to legs. Peter stumbled back, desperately cupping the flickering flame before it went out. It steadied. He steadied. His heartbeat settled back into a resting pattern and he stepped closer.

Fifty skulls looked up at him. Fifty lost souls looking back from across time. A time Peter had come to know all too well. Their huddle told him they were cold and scared. The silver snowflakes hanging from many of their necks told him the corpses were Returnees. Peter looked back across the pool to the frozen mouth of the cave. Like the cabin he and Cooper first encountered in the woods the day they herded the Dead from the lake, the community had many hiding places ready for when Henry and Darlene came to kill them. But winter had played a cruel hand in this group’s death and the ice at the cave’s mouth had locked them in. Peter gazed up at the little rectangle of light coming from the trapdoor and wondered how long it had taken for them to die down here. Were they still alive, praying for the thaw of spring when Henry moved his belongings in and slept soundly in the bed above them? He hoped not. He hoped that they’d died long before that. If you can hope for such a thing. And as that guilty little thought wormed its way into Peter’s heart, another presented itself. As terrible as this discovery was, it brought him no closer to Timberdark.

Peter wiped his eyes on the heel of his hand, saying sorry to the people buried here. Sorry for everything that had taken place at the lake back then. But he already knew about that day. He held back a moment, feeling shame at the thought that this wasn’t the answer he’d come looking for. But it was no use. It didn’t matter how long he stood here, this was all there was or would ever be. Death and misery and guilt that he’d ever got to call this place home.

Peter started to make the climb back up the ladder, watching the hole in the darkness above him get bigger with every step, when the word Timberdark came to him in another guise and he stopped.

“Timberdark,” he whispered. “Timbered Ark.”