CHAPTER 4
A
fter Walden was gone, Rob sat alone at the table and stared with an unfocused gaze across the room into the flames of the nearest hearth. He considered the riddle about the beast and the path for a time, the riddle with no solution. He found it particularly ominous after Walden’s story which revealed the depths to which he was willing to stoop. He felt as though he had walked in on the eerie calm before some cataclysm. An unknown evil lurked in the corners of the massive timber building, something only spoken of in whispers behind closed doors.
Rob brought his dish and silverware to the counter and set them in a plastic bin with a stack of others that awaited the staff to come and take them for washing. He returned to his room through the dimming hallways of the lodge. It wa
