I shook my head. It was bad enough I’d gotten her blood on me, but now we were talking about tampering with a crime scene. If things hadn’t gone to hell already, they were there now. Of course, they’d gone to hell long before that. This was just more icing on top of this fucked-up cake.
“Let’s just go,” I said. “I’ll feel safer with the others.”
I led the way out of the closet and bedroom and we started down the stairs. Pictures of the family hung on the wall. Here was a younger Eleanor and Mikey, wearing life jackets and standing on a boat in the very lake that was in the process of freezing behind us. Here was another of Ed with a pair of dark shades, a fishing hat, and a bad sunburn, holding up a large bass from a cut line. Here was Angie, now dead and rotting in her walk-in closet above us, next to a group of grade-schoolers. The plaque some kid in a red polo was holding in the front row read Mrs. Hark’s Third Grade Class 2009. She was a teacher, or had been…but now she’d never teach again.
Jonas nudged me onward. Good thing, otherwise I might’ve started bawling. It was all so damn horrible.
The stairs ended by the front entrance. Near the top of the door was a single window, and the window was completely white. I didn’t know if it was because the snow had piled that high or if it had stuck to the glass and gave off that illusion. I hoped for the latter, of course, but there was no telling at this point.
Jonas said, “Maybe we should stay. We can’t leave here when those things could be out there waiting for us.”
“What about the others back at our lake house?” I said. “They’re stuck in an icebox without heat. All they have to eat and drink are hot dogs and beer—”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing…”
I ignored Jonas’s attempt at humor. Wasn’t the time and place for that. “There’s nothing for them to wear, either. If we wait much longer, I think they’ll be dead by morning.”
“Morning,” Jonas repeated as if transfixed by the word. “Morning.”
“Yeah, the morning…” I said.
He sprung at me and grabbed my shoulders. “That’s all we have to do. Wait ‘em out. When the sun rises, there’s no way those things’ll still be around.”
“How do you know?”
“Nothing scary hangs around to see the sunrise. Haven’t you ever watched a horror movie?”
“Oh, you mean fictitious stuff?” I said with more than a hint of sarcasm. “Stuff that’s not real?”
“I know what ‘fictitious’ means, Grady.”
“I wasn’t saying you didn’t. I was only emphasizing the point, you know, of horror movies being fake.”
“I don’t follow,” Jonas said.
“Just because Dracula is afraid of the sun in the book and the movies doesn’t mean a vampire would be afraid of the sun in real life.”
“But vampires aren’t real.”
I rolled my eyes. “Never mind.”
“All I’m asking is that we wait. It’s a smart decision. I think it’s in our best interests. We won’t have to wait long, either.” He glanced at the clock on the wall above the kitchen table, which was scattered with yesterday’s newspaper. The most visible page being the July 4th forecast. Sunny and clear with a high around 86. Hilarious. “The sun rises early in the summer. We only have a few more hours until it does. Three at the most.”
"Hours are a long time, especially when you’re slowly freezing to death, which is what’s happening to the others as we speak…”
“But they have the fire and blankets.”
“Blankets are worthless against this weather, and who knows how much wood is left to burn?” I said.
Jonas gave no answer, he just stared at me with desperation in his eyes. I went on and pulled the ace up my sleeve free. This was the last thing I was trying before going out there myself. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t leave the others the way they were. If Jonas wanted to stay here, I’d drop off the goods at our lake house and come back, a plan that made my skin crawl. But hey, Stone and Jonas were more than my best friends; they were family.
I said: “Jonas, quit being a pussy, all right? We can beat whatever’s out there. As long as we stay together, I know we can. That’s how we got here, wasn’t it? We had each other’s backs like we always do. And this time, we know what to expect.”
Biting his bottom lip and furrowing his brow, all signs of him deep in thought, Jonas said nothing. I thought maybe I’d hurt him, bruised his ego and kicked his masculinity below the belt at the same time, which was never my intention, so I began mentally preparing an apology.
As my lips moved to give it, he said, “Fine. I’ll go with you. But know that when we both die, I’m kicking the shit out of you in the afterlife. I don’t care if God throws me out of Heaven, either.”
“Fair enough,” I said with a smile. “And funny how you think we’re going to Heaven.”
He flipped me the bird, an old staple in Three Musketeers’ sign language, as we moved toward the door.
But, as it turned out, Jonas never went outside again.
He got close. By close I mean only a few feet from stepping beyond the threshold of the sliding glass door leading to the deck. Before we went, we made a detour to Ed’s gun cabinet. Jonas grabbed a rifle and a box of ammunition. Holding the gun gave him a bit more confidence.
“You ready?” he asked.
"As I'll ever be.”
He led the way.
I trailed behind him, my arms full of bags of food and balled-up winter clothes. Jonas had the same, but he also carried something more important than what I carried.
The rifle.
Jonas stopped abruptly. I bumped right into him and dropped one of my bags. Cans clattered on the floor, went rolling into the shadows. I was about to get down and look for them when Jonas said, “Is that...is that Ed?”
I never gave him an answer, but as I craned my head toward the glass door and my eyes settled on the figure standing on the deck, obscured by the frost and the falling snow, I knew it was Ed.
Then a sound like compressed thunder ruptured through the air, and the door shattered.
Things slowed way down.
I blinked, and by the time I opened my eyes, Jonas was on the ground gasping for breath. He didn’t breathe much longer, either. If you heard the sounds coming from his throat, all wet and thick with the blood flooding his lungs, you would’ve been surprised he lasted as long as he did.
My eyes flicked from Jonas and the pool of red spreading around him to Ed, who stepped inside holding the rifle, a little puff of smoke trailing out from the barrel. Glass crunched beneath his bare feet, which had turned a dark color. Ed looked like he was walking death. His cheeks were windburned, his eyes were blank, his lips black with frostbite, but the worst part was the dark, jagged line running down his forehead to the bridge of his nose. I didn’t know what it was, and like with most of the world now, I still don’t, but I pictured those shadow things reaching toward Jonas when we came over here, and I knew if it had touched Jonas then, he would’ve never made it as far as he did. He would’ve become like Ed, a rabid monster wearing the face of a loving father and husband.
Ed leveled the rifle at me now. I put my hands up, but no words came from my mouth. I didn’t beg, mostly because I couldn’t. The situation froze every muscle in my body. I wasn’t sure I was even breathing myself.
Jonas made a croaking noise to my left, and that reminded me I should probably move, or I'd die.
I turned, briefly met Jonas’s eyes. His lips moved, and a wheezing breath escaped his lungs. If he said anything I didn’t hear it, but he pointed. I followed the line of his finger and saw the rifle that had been slung over his shoulder seconds ago lying a few feet away.
Ed took another step toward me and pulled the bolt. The sound seemed louder than the actual gunshot, somehow.
We perform our best, I think, when we’re not thinking. Take sports as an example. If I went into a game of basketball worried about how many points I
was going to score or how I’d match up against the other team’s biggest players, I’d probably be lucky to put the ball in the basket once or twice, and the team most likely would’ve lost. But if I forgot all of that, just went out there and played the game I knew and loved, and didn’t think or worry about my next shot or the fourth quarter, I’d usually play lights out.
If I had thought about grabbing the rifle on the floor, lifting and pointing it at Ed, and about the consequences and the mess and all that crap, I wouldn’t be telling you this story. I’d be dead. I’d have eaten lead and died next to Jonas on the kitchen floor in a stranger’s house.
That didn’t happen because I didn’t think. I just acted.
I snatched the rifle up and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked back and threw me into the kitchen cabinets behind me. Ed was thrown back, too, but an explosion of red sprayed from his midsection. He clutched his stomach, and more red cascaded through his clenched fingers. As he fell to his knees, a momentary flash of normalcy came to his eyes. Another blink-and-you-miss-it moment. Sadly, I didn’t miss it, and the realization and guilt of what I’d done hit me hard.
Ed fell onto his side, and his eyes went blank again. Just like that, he was dead.
I scrambled across the tile and grabbed his rifle from him then retreated to Jonas’s side. I guess movies had distorted my worldview because I expected Jonas to make it. The heroes always do. At the very least, I expected him to give me his last words, some kind of meaningful advice, and for him to say it was all going to be okay.
None of that happened.
When I looked down at Jonas, his eyes were as blank as Ed’s. A rivulet of blood fell from the corner of his mouth, rode the edge of his ear, and pooled in his hair.
I grabbed his hand. It was cold because of the storm, but I thought I felt his flesh growing colder.
The wind blew through the shattered sliding door, bringing bits of glass and heavy snowflakes toward me.
I looked outside. Standing against the white backdrop of still-piling snow were a dozen of those human-shaped shadows. Some were close and getting closer, while others hovered near the lake. I saw no faces or eyes, but they were watching me. I felt that.
I had to go. I hated that I did, that I couldn’t mourn Jonas, but if I stayed any longer, I’d become the same thing Ed had become. A blank-faced monster.
I leaned over and kissed Jonas on one bloody cheek, then I swiped a hand down his face, closing his eyes. It was all I could do.
My whole body was shaking, and stars danced at the edge of my vision. I might’ve fainted if I didn’t move on soon.
So I gathered up as much of the goods as I could hold and hurdled over Ed’s body, out into the snow.
By myself.
In the frozen wasteland, all I cared about was getting through the snow and inside to safety. I ran as fast as I could, always looking over my shoulders for the dead boy.
For most of the trek, I was in the clear, but when the house came into view, I saw flames.
It was him.
“Where’d you go, Mister Fireman? You left me out here in the cold, and I was all shivery—”
That was all he got to say because I shot him—it—with Ed’s rifle. Doing so proved difficult, especially since this apparition looked so closely to the real boy, but then the bullet hit him, and the illusion shattered. There was a puff of gray smoke and a terrible high-pitched screeching noise and then nothing besides the snow.
I screamed, partially aware of the tears falling down my cheeks. They didn’t roll far before the cold froze them.
I kept on running, moved as fast as the snow would let me, which wasn’t fast. Each step felt like trying to get out of mud. The temperature zapped all the energy from my muscles and chilled my bones. I thought I’d never reach the place, but I did, thank God, and no other apparitions followed.
“Stone!” I shouted only a few steps from the door. I didn’t think I’d make it. “Stone! Mikey! Eleanor!”
The door opened. It was Mikey. He saw me, and I don’t know how because the snow had nearly swallowed my body entirely.
Then he and Eleanor rushed out and pulled me in.
I remember that, and I remember babbling about the shadows and about Ed and Jonas. I remember falling to the floor inside. I remember the sweet warmth of the dwindling fire. I remember Stone shouting my name over and over again until my eyes opened and focused on him.
I remember the blackness coming over me as I became unconscious.
I woke up a few hours later. It was still dark out. I thought it was all a terrible nightmare, that I had drank too much and passed out and then suffered from some very vivid dreams.
I was wrong, of course.
What first gave it away was the cold. Even inside, it was beyond bitter. When I exhaled, a cloud of vapor left my mouth and dissolved as it floated toward the ceiling. My body felt like ice. I hardly had any feeling left in my fingertips, and I was pretty sure I had frostbite on the tip of my nose.
I looked at the clock on the wall in the kitchen to my right. It was eight, but the sun either hadn’t risen or I’d slept over twelve hours. I was exhausted, I remember that, but there was no way I could sleep that long.
I sat up. Looked around. Eleanor lay on the couch, asleep. Stone sat in a chair, his head tilted back, a spot of drool falling down the corner of his mouth. Mikey, I didn’t see, and that made my stomach flip. Automatically I assumed something had happened to him, that one of those things got him or he’d gone insane like his father. I stood and walked on numb legs down the hallway. He was on my bed, wrapped in about a hundred blankets. His face was the only visible part of him, and his eyes were wide open. Again, I thought he might’ve been dead, but only until his eyes flicked over in my direction.
“You’re awake,” he said in a flat tone.
“I am. Thanks for dragging me out of the snow.”
“Yeah, no problem.” Mikey turned away, and I left him alone.
In the den, the fire barely flickered. I added a few more logs, and that livened it up a bit. Eleanor stirred when one of them popped loudly then her eyes opened when the wind shrieked. Or at least I thought it was the wind that had done the shrieking.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
Her eyes were heavy with sleep. Blue bags had puffed up beneath them. She looked like she had cried a lot, and I supposed she had. In one night, she had lost both her parents.
“Are you okay?” she asked me.
I nodded. It felt cheap saying I was okay while Jonas and Ed were dead, along with probably a million other people who were caught in this seemingly supernatural storm.
She said, “I know you did what you had to do.”
“I’m sorry. He killed Jonas, and he was going to kill me—”
“I believe you. I saw him shoot my mom. I saw his eyes, that blank look on his face. But I know that wasn’t my dad who pulled the trigger. My dad died before he did any of that.”
“I know,” I said, but I still felt terrible. I don’t think the shock of killing someone had really hit home yet. It would in the oncoming days, I was sure.
Eleanor sighed. “This is…I don’t even know what this is. It’s beyond insane. Is there a word for that?” She uttered a small, humorless laugh. “Hey, maybe we’re all in an asylum—a loony bin, as my dad would say—and we’re having the same crazy fantasy.”
“I wish,” I said, putting my hands out toward the fire. The heat felt good, but short of dousing myself in lighter fluid and striking a match, my body couldn’t get enough. I was like a desert after a rainstorm. If you never saw the rain yourself, there’d be no evidence it had fallen at all. “How much did I tell you guys when I came back?” My memory of the situation was spotty. I remembered mumbling, but the words had no meaning to me. Apparently, I already told Eleanor and Mikey about their father, and it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together about Jonas since he wasn’t with me.
Eleanor told me what I’d said. She cried while she
talked. When she finished, I approached her with caution, sat next to her on the couch, and put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. She sobbed silently against me for a few minutes.
In her recap of what I’d said after they pulled my near-lifeless and frozen body from the snow, she made no mention of her mother’s corpse in the closet. I had struck that from the record. I’d guess I mostly did it because so much more had been on my mind, but I certainly didn’t plan on telling her now.
We said nothing else, allowing the silence to settle over us like the snow had.
The wind screamed, the house creaked, and we went on breathing together, wrapped in each other’s arms. Her body heat felt better than the warmth of any fire. I could say it was because Eleanor was an actual living being and the flames weren’t, but that’d be a lie.
The truth is simple: Eleanor was Eleanor, and no one else would have felt so good against me.
We both eventually dozed, and I swayed in and out of consciousness a few times before falling into a deep sleep. Blessed sleep.
When I awoke four hours later, the clock showed a quarter past noon and the sun hadn’t yet made an appearance.
And the snow was still falling.
Two sunless days later, a rush of freezing air blasted inside the lake house, and woke me up. The wind whistled loudly through the eaves, and any chance I had of remaining asleep disappeared.
“What are you doing?” I said, my voice groggy.
Stone was at the front door, which hung open, but he ignored me. He wasn’t wearing anything more than a t-shirt and a blanket. Going out like that would probably kill him.
“Stone,” I said, “what are you doing?” This time a little louder so I could be heard over the wind. He turned and met my stare. He looked terrible, like he had a flu virus ravaging through his body. That wasn’t it, though. He was torn up about Jonas. I was, too, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it without a time machine.
“I’m going to my car,” Stone said. He flashed his keys. The fire reflected off of the metal. Without the sun or electricity, it was the only source of light in the lake house.
The Snow: A Supernatural Apocalypse Novel Page 8
