The Voice Beneath the Snow

By noon, Ava had stopped asking whether she was ready.

Readiness belonged to people who had time to prepare for what they might find. She had a dead mother, a town beginning to choose its version of the truth, and a phone in an abandoned bunker that had waited fifteen years to speak.

Lucas drove them to Morrow Farm in the county cruiser. Neither of them mentioned Tom Greer or Martha Bell. The bakery confrontation remained between them like a third passenger, filling the cab with its silence.

Snow had erased the tire tracks from the night before. Lucas followed the fence line by memory, steering around the collapsed section where the old access road dipped toward the burned farmhouse.

“You should have brought someone else,” he said.

“Nick’s shoulder is worse. Silas went to find a recorder and a camera.”

“I meant someone who doesn’t have a history with this place.”

Ava looked at him. “Then you shouldn’t have come.”

His hands tightened on the wheel. “I know what that phone can contain.”

“You know what happened to Belinda.”

“I know what I did after she left the hospital.”

“That isn’t the same sentence.”

“No.” His eyes stayed on the road. “It isn’t.”

The cruiser stopped beside the bunker entrance. The steel hatch was half covered by wind-packed snow. Ava climbed out first, carrying the flashlight and the paper bag that held two batteries, a digital recorder, and a pair of gloves. Lucas remained by the vehicle for a moment, staring at the black mouth beneath the farm.

“You coming?” she asked.

He looked older than he had in the bakery. Not tired. Used up.

“Yes.”

Inside, the bunker smelled of cold metal, old dust, and the faint medicinal sharpness of the supplies June had once left for Elise. Their footprints from the previous visit were still visible along the concrete corridor, preserved beneath the dry grit that had sifted from the ceiling.

The second phone lay where Ava had abandoned it beside the repeater cabinet. Its screen was dark. The cord ran into a nest of equipment, and one green indicator blinked steadily beneath a layer of dust.

Ava crouched and picked up the phone.

It rang.

The sound struck the room so hard that Lucas flinched.

Ava almost dropped it. The display showed no number, only a recording symbol pulsing in the upper corner.

“Don’t answer,” Lucas said.

“I’m not.”

The ringing stopped. A file appeared on the screen.

NOVEMBER 20, 2009 — 2:16 A.M.

Ava looked at Lucas. “You knew there was a date.”

“I knew Helen kept tapes. I didn’t know this one survived.”

“Who recorded it?”

He did not answer.

Ava pressed play.

For several seconds there was only static and the low mechanical hum of the bunker. Then a woman breathed close to the microphone.

“Say your name.”

The voice was young, hoarse, and frightened.

“Belinda Bell.”

Ava closed her eyes.

The recording continued.

“Do you know where you are?”

“Under the farm.”

“Do you know who brought you here?”

There was a pause. Fabric shifted. Somewhere far away, a pipe knocked twice.

“Lucas.”

Beside Ava, Lucas made a sound that might have been a breath or a warning.

“Did he hurt you?” Helen asked.

“No. He drove. He told me if I stayed at the hospital, they’d take the baby and say I died. He said he could get me out.”

“Did he tell you where you were going?”

“He said north.”

“North where?”

“He wouldn’t say.”

Ava opened her eyes. Lucas stood with his back against the concrete wall, one hand pressed flat to it.

“Why did you leave the hospital?” Helen asked.

“Because you told me the baby was alive.”

A pause followed. The silence carried a weight that made Ava grip the phone harder.

“Which baby?” Helen asked.

Belinda’s breath hitched. “The one they took from June. The boy. I heard him crying. I heard Martha say his name wasn’t on anything.”

“He wasn’t yours,” Helen said.

“I know.”

“Then why were you asking for him?”

“Because he saw me.”

Ava’s skin prickled.

Belinda continued, her voice thin but steadier now. “He was in the room when they brought me in. He was wrapped in a gray blanket. He looked at me, and I knew he’d remember my face. They were going to move him again. I thought if I found him, I could tell someone.”

“Tell them what?”

“What they did at the plant. What they did to Elise. What they did to the babies.”

The recording crackled. Helen’s chair scraped across the floor.

“Belinda, you have to understand. You can’t go back to Frosthaven.”

“I’m not going back.”

“Then where will you go?”

“Duluth.”

Lucas pushed away from the wall. “No.”

Ava stopped the recording.

His face had gone pale. “You need to hear the rest.”

“You know what she says.”

“I know what I was told.”

“That’s different.”

“Yes.” He looked toward the phone. “It is.”

Ava pressed play again.

“Duluth isn’t safe,” Helen said on the recording. “Wesley has the boy, but he can’t take you too.”

“I don’t need him to take me.”

“You need somewhere to sleep.”

“I have someone.”

“Who?”

Belinda’s voice dropped until it was nearly lost in the static. “The woman from the photograph.”

Helen inhaled sharply.

Ava glanced at Lucas. He had turned his face away.

“What woman?” Helen asked.

“The one whose face was cut out. She came to the barn before Martha did. She told me to run if I got the chance.”

“But you don’t know her name.”

“I know where she lives.”

“Where?”

“North of Duluth. A place called—”

A sudden crash interrupted her. The phone scraped against a hard surface. Belinda gasped.

Helen said, “Stay down.”

A man’s voice came through the static, muffled by distance. “Helen?”

Lucas closed his eyes.

It was his voice, younger but unmistakable.

“What are you doing here?” Helen asked.

“You said she was gone.”

“I changed my mind.”

“You can’t change it now.”

“Watch me.”

The recording distorted. A chair overturned. Belinda shouted something that vanished beneath a burst of static. Then Helen’s voice returned, much closer to the microphone.

“If anyone finds this, Belinda left Morrow Farm alive at 2:31 a.m. She is carrying the blue envelope and the names of everyone involved. Lucas has agreed to take her to the county road. He says he will let her go.”

Ava looked at Lucas.

He did not deny it.

Helen continued. “I don’t know whether he means it. I don’t know whether I mean to let her leave. I keep thinking there must be a clean choice, and there isn’t one. There is only the choice I can survive.”

A door opened on the tape. Wind rushed across the microphone.

Belinda spoke then, no longer frightened. “Helen.”

“Yes?”

“If you have the girl, tell her I didn’t leave because I wanted to.”

Ava’s breath stopped.

“She’s not born yet,” Helen said.

“Then tell her when she is.”

A long silence.

“Tell her I tried to come back.”

The recording ended.

For a while neither Ava nor Lucas moved. The bunker’s machinery clicked softly in the dark.

“She knew about me,” Ava said.

“Helen told her.”

“She knew I existed before I was born.”

Lucas looked at the dead phone. “Belinda knew a lot of things.”

“Did you take her to the county road?”

“I drove her there.”

“And then?”

“She got into a truck.”

“Whose?”

He swallowed. “The woman from the photograph.”

Ava stepped closer. “You saw her face.”

“I saw her from a distance.”

“You let Belinda leave with her.”

“I thought it was the only way to keep her alive.”

“You thought.”

“Yes.” His gaze lifted to Ava’s. “I was wrong about many things. I don’t know if I was wrong about that.”

The bunker door groaned above them. Snow sifted through the frame.

Ava copied the recording onto the digital device, then removed the phone’s battery and placed it in the evidence bag.

“Where was the county road?” she asked.

Lucas answered without hesitation this time.

“Highway 61. Mile marker ninety-three.”

“That’s not north of Duluth.”

“No. It’s the road to it.”

Ava opened the blue envelope Helen had left among the bunker papers. Inside was a single receipt, nearly erased by damp. At the top, a name remained legible: NORTHSTAR WOMEN’S HOUSE, TWO HARBORS.

Beneath it, in Helen’s handwriting, were four words.

SHE CAME BACK ONCE.

Ava stared at the receipt until the letters blurred.

Lucas spoke behind her. “You’re going to Two Harbors.”

“I’m going wherever the record goes.”

“And if Belinda is dead?”

Ava folded the receipt and put it in her coat.

“Then we find out who made her disappear.”

Above them, the wind moved across Morrow Farm, covering the entrance again. This time Ava climbed toward it carrying Belinda’s voice, the name of a house on the north shore, and the first proof that her mother’s story had not ended at the county road.