The Ice Bridge Read online

  The

  Ice Bridge

  By Kathryn Meyer Griffith

  For the cherished memories I have of and for the beauty of Mackinac Island; where my husband and I spent our twenty-fifth anniversary.

  ~

  And for my beloved late husband of forty-three years, Russell, who passed away August 27, 2021. I will love you forever & always.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  The Ice Bridge

  Prologue | January 2008

  Chapter One | October 23, 2007...two-and-a-half months earlier

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three | November and December 2007

  Chapter Four | January 2008

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen | Five months later

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  Other books by Kathryn Meyer Griffith:

  Evil Stalks the Night

  The Heart of the Rose

  Blood Forged

  Vampire Blood

  The Last Vampire (2012 Epics EBook Awards Finalist)

  Witches

  Witches II: Apocalypse

  Witches plus bonus Witches II: Apocalypse

  The Calling

  Scraps of Paper-1st Spookie Town Murder Mystery

  All Things Slip Away-2nd Spookie Town Murder Mystery

  Ghosts Beneath Us-3rd Spookie Town Murder Mystery

  Witches Among Us-4th Spookie Town Murder Mystery

  What Lies Beneath the Graves-5th Spookie Town Murder Mystery

  All Those Who Came Before-6th Spookie Town Murder Mystery

  When the Fireflies Returned-7th Spookie Town Murder Mystery

  Egyptian Heart

  Winter’s Journey

  The Ice Bridge

  Don’t Look Back, Agnes

  A Time of Demons and Angels

  The Woman in Crimson

  Four Spooky Short Stories

  Human No Longer

  Dinosaur Lake (2014 Epic EBook Awards Finalist)

  Dinosaur Lake II: Dinosaurs Arising

  Dinosaur Lake III: Infestation

  Dinosaur Lake IV: Dinosaur Wars

  Dinosaur Lake V: Survivors

  Dinosaur Lake VI: The Alien Connection

  Memories of My Childhood

  Christmas Magic 1959 short story

  *All Kathryn Meyer Griffith’s books can also

  be found in eBook, paperbacks, and audio books everywhere.

  Prologue

  January 2008

  THE EVENING SUN WAS setting and the Straits of Mackinac, blanketed in a rapid moving winter fog and frozen over since the first day of January, was a path of glittering cold ice—six feet thick above the frigid waters. The amethyst shadows, a snow twilight that was not quite night but no longer day, had drifted in and the whiteness of snow and frozen water wreathed in mist created an eerie landscape that seemed like no place on earth.

  Mackinac Island sat to the right of the straits between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. The island’s lights were flickering on as the day faded. People were closing their shops, locking the doors and going home for the night. The tiny houses lit up the snow.

  Looming behind the island like a monstrous sentinel, Mackinac Bridge, a five-mile structure of metal and concrete, connected the lower and upper peninsulas of Michigan. The Canadian winds caused the bridge to sway fifteen feet in opposite directions. It was decked out like a carnival with strings of gleaming ruby, emerald and white lights.

  Though the inhabitants of Michigan appreciated the bridge and its convenience, many travelers were wary because it moved so much. Some refused to drive across it. Even macho truckers sometimes gave up the wheel to a bridge attendant, a braver soul, and let him drive the rig across for them. On the other side, the truckers would reclaim their truck and go on their way, never telling anyone they’d been too frightened to do it themselves.

  In the late winter when the ice of the straits froze solid, not everyone used steel bridges to get from one piece of land to another. Some used another kind of bridge—a bridge of frozen water.

  That night in the dusk, a solitary figure on a snowmobile was chugging across the ice, from Mackinac Island towards the mainland of St. Ignace, and staying in close to the curve of cast-off Christmas trees that had been stabbed into the frozen surface. The ice bridge, as the islanders called it, was a narrow path stretching three-and-a-half miles across the straits that separated Mackinac Island from the St. Ignace mainland. To the locals the ice bridge meant freedom to come and go for up to two months a year without paying ferryboat or airplane fees. It meant freedom to go day or night, on no one’s schedule, to the mainland to seek entertainment, visit friends, and bring back the supplies they needed. Or it meant freedom to go for a late rendezvous.

  The snowmobile was building speed, zipping across the ice, sure of the course in the misty light. A quarter of the way across, the driver noticed a slushy area and swerved off the path to the right. A soft snow had begun to fall from the night skies and the lone traveler, from a distance a larger pale blur among the smaller ones, became more difficult to see.

  Someone who fidgeted in the woods impatiently watched from the trees on the north side of the island with a pair of binoculars and saw everything the rider did. The man, bundled in second-hand clothes and a shabby coat, observed the snowmobile’s progress with cold calculating eyes. He dropped his smoldering cigarette from a shaking hand, and stamped his feet to stay warm as his breath puffed out in pale wisps between the trees. He noted the exact moment when the snowmobile veered off the trail.

  Then with a vindictive smile the man knelt down, pushed a button on a box by his feet, and eagerly observed, as far out on the path the ice cracked and gave way beneath the snowmobile’s treads.

  That’ll teach you, he thought smugly. You’ve always had it so easy. Not anymore. I warned you, didn’t I? But you wouldn’t listen. You wouldn’t give me what’s mine, so now I’ll just take it. There. He chuckled spitefully. Rest in peace. You got what you deserved.

  The heavy machine sank swiftly into the frigid waters, pulling its rider and one of the evergreens into the hole with it.

  There was only time for one scream to drift up from the tear in the ice, but with a ghostly echo, it haunted the night for a brief time and then, like the snowmobile and rider, it was gone. The darkening dusk was silent again. The ice that covered the water—water nearly two hundred feet deep at that spot—folded over the fissure and began to refreeze into a tomb of ice.

  The shadow person in the woods laughed gleefully and picked up the box, tucked it beneath his arm and went in search of warmth and food. He was tickled that he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do. Proud that, for once in his wretched life, he’d been brave and clever enough to do what he’d had to do. Mother, you old witch, wouldn’t you be proud of me? It’s a shame you’re not alive to see it—a real shame. This time his laugh was softer and full of some strange satisfaction only he understood.

  The man left the woods and began the hike back across the straits. He knew it would be a long walk and he’d be frozen by the time he climbed into his junky car and headed home. He didn’t care. He smiled the whole way through the snow and hummed an old song his mother used to sing to him when she wasn’t too drunk or out of it. He hummed and plotted his next step and it kept him warm.

  A few evenings later, the missing tree and the frozen-over hole where the straits had swallowed the snowmobile were
discovered by two other islanders on their way back from St. Ignace in the middle of a snowstorm.

  They reported the anomaly and the next morning at dawn island police were called in to investigate. The storm was nearly a blizzard by then, but one of the policemen was insistent that they examine the ice immediately. He believed someone might have fallen through, but if so, past experience pointed to an accident. People had gone into the water before while crossing the ice bridge and it was tragic but not unheard of. It happened and sometimes, as awful as it was, it was the cost they paid for using the bridge. Often the ones who fell in managed to get out or were yanked out; were rescued, but not always. One time fourteen years earlier a man had gone through the ice, and by the time they’d dragged him out he was dead from the frigid water. It’d been a long time ago, but accidents did happen.

  That January morning the police chopped into the ice, dredged the water below but couldn’t locate a body or a snowmobile. They knew they might not find either until the spring thaws, if they ever found anything. They discovered a mitten, though, embedded in the ice, and someone recognized it as belonging to one of the full-time residents of the island—a woman. They noticed the slushy spot nearby that had already refrozen and speculated as to what might have happened. In the end, the chief of police had to write it off as an accident because, as he put it, who’d want to harm the victim? No one any of them could think of.

  “The ice bridge has only been in use a few days and the victim’s only been missing, that we know of, for about the same time,” the chief spoke aside to his lieutenant. “It’s easy to see how there might have been a weak spot in the ice this early. She went off the path to avoid what she thought was an unsafe stretch and, instead, hit a real bad patch. It broke beneath her and sucked her in.

  “Poor thing. At least she died quickly. Drowning in freezing water isn’t the worst way to go, Lieutenant. I don’t need to tell you that.”

  “I know,” the other officer replied. “You lose consciousness and fall asleep about the time you run out of air.”

  “It’s pretty quick.” The chief snapped his chubby fingers in the air. “Terrible thing. But nothing we can do for her now except keep looking for the snowmobile, her body, and fill out the forms. We’ll speak to people and investigate further, but I’d wager a week’s pay it was accidental.”

  His lieutenant didn’t think so. He had nagging questions and was determined to get them answered. There were things at the scene that hadn’t looked right to him. He’d never convince his superior of that. Chief Bill Matthews was a pragmatic kind of guy. If it looked like an accident, then it was—simple as that.

  Yet at his lieutenant’s insistence the chief let the other officers circle the site in yellow crime tape, so people would avoid it, and afterwards, the ice bridge was reopened. Everyone who used it swerved to the left and went nowhere near the scene of the accident. Many made the sign of the cross over their chests as they passed the spot where the woman might have disappeared, or they said a swift prayer so the ghost of the dead woman wouldn’t appear to them.

  People on the island were superstitious that way.

  Chapter One

  October 23, 2007...two-and-a-half months earlier

  IT’D BEEN A LONG TIME since Charlotte had been to Mackinac Island. Nearly fifteen years if she wanted to count them.

  Her Aunt Elizabeth, whom everyone called Bess, lived there and owned a modest house on Lake Shore Road, down past the Mission Point Resort. It contrasted sharply with the rich people’s huge cottages that were sprawled across the island. Charlotte used to spend summers with her aunt when she was younger. They’d been happier times she needed to revisit.

  Now, as she stood on the top level of the Star Line’s ferryboat and shivered in her jacket, her eyes fell on the island as it came towards her across the choppy water of the Straits of Mackinac. She remembered how much she’d once loved the place, how she’d ride her blue one-speed bicycle with the dented basket all over the island, and how she’d chase the seagulls or stare at the boats droning in and out of the harbor for hours.

  She remembered how she’d adored the horse-drawn carriages, equine taxis, that transported people along the miniature asphalt roadways to Fort Mackinac or up West Bluff Road towards the Grand Hotel for lunch or high tea.

  She remembered how the beauty of Lake Huron’s waters contrasted against the milky sky with thick swirling clouds and how the Round Island Lighthouse and the Round Passage Light beamed their lights off shore. Memories brought back the awesome magnificence of the Mackinac Bridge as it spanned the waters between St. Ignace and Mackinac City. At night, it reminded her of Christmas with its long expanse covered in multicolored twinkling lights.

  Most importantly, she remembered how she’d loved the island because it was where she first realized she wanted to be an artist or a writer. But how could she not have become an artist of some sort—on an island with Mackinac’s natural beauty of rocks, shore and water, and the picturesque boats and woods full of wildlife around her? Then there’d been the vivid skies above the island and the straits where the waters were beautiful with swirling shades of green and blue. It made her smile just to look at it again.

  Oh, Mackinac, I’m so happy to be back...why did I stay away so long?

  The island was a little piece of land eight miles in circumference that didn’t allow motorized vehicles, except snowmobiles in the winter. They’d outlawed cars in 1901 saying the island was too small to accommodate them and that they made too much noise and fouled up the air. Mackinac was a throwback to a simpler world of Victorian cottages, horses and interlacing bicycle trails-1,800 wooded acres dotted with historic national landmarks and most of it under federal protection. It was a place where police officers patrolled on ten-speeds and people walked through a quaint village filled with fudge shops, souvenirs and artsy crafts. It was the home of the Grand Hotel, a sprawling structure famous long before the movie Somewhere in Time, starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour (featuring Mackinac and the hotel) came out.

  Her Aunt Bess had worked at the Grand for over thirty years, waiting on tourists who came to the Grand Buffet. Though she was tired of the job, she loved the hotel. She said it was like being in another world filled with antique opulence and old ghosts.

  Her aunt loved the island, too, and would never leave it as her sister, Charlotte’s mother, had done so many years before. Charlotte’s mother had been looking for a different, better life on some mainland far away. She’d found it and never returned.

  But Charlotte, her eyes puffy and red from crying, had returned, older and wiser and with a damaged heart. She should have been on her honeymoon out in the Caribbean somewhere sipping strawberry daiquiris and spending passionate nights with her new husband, Lucas Sanders. But she wasn’t.

  Instead, she was running away from a world in which her fiancé had waited until a day before their expensive wedding to send her an e-mail—one of those pesky ones that made you accept them right away so the sender knew you’d received it—saying he wasn’t going to marry her. He was already married and on the dream honeymoon that should have been hers...with her now ex-best friend Rachel.

  Shock wasn’t a strong enough word to describe what she’d felt when she’d read that e-mail. After all, she’d been engaged to Lucas for five years. And to break up with her in an e-mail? The least he could have done was telephone her and tell her in his own voice. Well, it was over.

  She fought back tears as her thoughts touched on her doomed wedding. Her eyes hurt and her hands clenched on the rail until her knuckles were white. She shook her head, mumbling in a low voice. He’d taken a chunk of her life, a lot for a man to steal from a young woman. Oh, she hated him. Hanging would be too good for him. Electrocution would be too good. She wished she could....

  “Miss, are you all right?”

  She turned her head and met the eyes of a tall man standing behind her on the boat. The angry tears in her eyes kept her from seeing him clearly. Yo
ung, she registered, and though not excitingly handsome, his face was kind.

  She glanced around. She’d been so preoccupied with her sorrow and dreams of revenge that she’d been leaning over the railing. Her cheeks were wet with tears she didn’t recall shedding. He probably thought she was going to jump or something.

  No man was worth that. Not even Lucas.

  But she would have liked to throw her ex-fiancé over the railing into the chilly waters below, him and Rachel. She almost smiled at the thought of the two thrashing around in Lake Huron like abandoned baby dodos, the ferryboat chugging away as she waved goodbye to both of them.

  She’d teach them to hurt other people—to hurt her. “I’m fine,” she sighed, composing herself, as she turned to face the stranger. No doubt she’d had that murderous look on her face before, the one her mother warned her would scare off Santa Claus. “I just had some unpleasant thoughts on my mind, that’s all.”

  She wiped her eyes and looked at the man again. He was around her age, somewhere past thirty, had brown hair that the lake spray had ruffled into unruliness and brilliant sky blue eyes that smiled when his lips did, as they were doing now. He wasn’t as handsome as Lucas, but attractive in a healthy puppyish kind of way. He looked sure of himself and casual in his lemon-yellow shirt and faded jeans.

  Lucas, on the other hand, had been short, dark-haired and lean with cold gray eyes. Eyes that only smiled when he knew he had something other people wanted or when he was thinking about money. She wondered if those shark eyes were smiling now and the thought that they probably were made her sad.

  Ooh, what did any of it matter now? Lucas had betrayed her. Lucas was gone and she had to move on. Move on. That was the healthy thing to do.

  It’d be a long time before she trusted a man again.

  “Miss?” The stranger was staring at her, his hands lifted as if he was ready to catch her should she try to jump.

  “I’m okay, really,” she replied softly. “Don’t worry about me.” She felt the tears coming on again and swung away from him.