by Maurer, Dan
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To Lori and Caroline, for
their love, encouragement, and the
freedom to follow my own path
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Map
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Author’s Note
About the Author
Acknowledgements
About the Audiobook
Disclaimer
Contact Information
Copyright Information
“Snow and adolescence are the only problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough.”
– Earl Wilson
“I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.”
– Mae West
PROLOGUE
January, 1975
TAP...TAP, CLANG... TAP...TAP, CLANG...
“Hello?”
My voice was cautious as I called into the darkness. It wasn’t my house and I had no business being down in that cellar. By the look of the boards on the windows upstairs, and the weeds that strangled the front yard, it hadn’t been anyone’s house for a long time. But still, even at ten, I knew in my bones that I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.
One of the windows was busted at the corner, and the cold wind whipped and whistled at the breach. Outside, a loose metal trash can rolled and rattled and knocked about with each new gust. It made a soft, distant sound.
Tap...tap, clang... Tap...tap, clang...
The only light was an old Coleman lantern that I found there. It lay at my feet, the mantle fading and sputtering. Beyond the meager glow that lit no more than my boot-tops, it gave me the terrifying certainty that someone was here, or close by, and would soon –
Was that a sound? I held my breath and listened carefully, trying hard to dismiss the pounding pulse that thrummed in my ears. Was that a shuffling sound, maybe feet moving and scraping across loose dirt?
“Hello...? Anyone here...?”
I squinted hard but it was useless. The darkness was unyielding and oddly thick with the smell of freshly turned earth. Someone had been digging down here.
Tap...tap, clang... Tap...tap, clang...
Running into the house to hide from the police was my only option. The place should have been empty, long abandoned. But it wasn’t, and I knew now that I had to get out. I turned to leave, to run; then I heard it, a word from the darkness. It was whispered and pitiful and – it was my name. Someone in the darkness called my name.
“B-Billy?”
“Who’s there?” I called out.
“I... I... didn’t d-do nothing wr-wrong, Billy.”
Both the voice and its stutter were familiar. Just hearing it made my guts twist.
Tap... tap, clang... Tap... tap, clang...
I snatched up the lantern at my feet, recalled my scout training, and worked the pump to pressurize the kerosene. The lantern’s mantle hissed a bit, burned a little brighter, and pushed back the darkness.
“Holy shit...”
The light washed over a young boy. Like me, he was just ten, and I knew his name.
“...Tommy?”
It came out like a question, but it wasn’t. Tommy Schneider lived next door to me and was part of our snowball fight just a few hours before.
When the light touched him, Tommy flinched and turned his shoulder, as if anticipating a blow. He shivered and folded his arms across his chest, hands tucked in his armpits. He paced and shuffled his feet in a small circle, as if his bladder was painfully full, and he whined and muttered; half to himself, half to me.
“It w-wasn’t m-my fault, Billy. I... I just w-wanted to play.” His eyes were swollen and red, and the tears ran streaks through the dirt on his freckled face.
Tap... tap, clang... Tap... tap, clang...
“Tommy, what the hell are you doing down here?”
“I... I... I’m sorry, b-but I d-didn’t do nothing wrong, Billy. I’m s-sorry.” He kept his hands tucked under his armpits, but motioned with his chin. And that’s when I saw it, just a few feet from where I stood.
Naked and half buried in a pile of loose earth lay the dead body of a boy that appeared to be our own age.
“Jesus Christ... what the hell, Tommy.”
“No....” His whining grew and fresh tears were coming.
“What the hell did you do?”
“Nooo...” he whined more and covered his ears. “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”
Frantic now, I held out the fading lantern, quickly looking around. We were still alone. The scene before me was unfathomable.
In the half-shadows of the cellar where the lantern struggled to reach, there was a pile of fresh, moist earth and broken shards of concrete. I saw some tools – a sledgehammer and a shovel, and I think a pickax, too. A few brown sacks of cement mix were piled against the wall. And there was a large hole; a gaping wound in the cellar floor that reached beneath the foundation of the house, a hole that led down into a place where the lantern’s light could not touch. Nearby, a stray boot lay in the dirt, just beyond it a gym sock, and another lay close by my feet. A faded, wadded up pair of jeans was perched at the edge of the hole.
Tap... tap, clang... Tap... tap, clang...
I shivered, despite my layers of clothing and new winter coat. Tommy was freezing. He wore only jeans and a t-shirt pulled over a long-sleeved sweatshirt. His breath, like mine, fogged in the January air, and his jaw waggled helplessly from his shivering.
“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing to the body.
At first, Tommy’s eyes followed my finger, but then he just moaned and cried some more, and turned away.
I couldn’t tell if the boy on the ground was from our immediate neighborhood, or my school, or Boy Scout troop, or baseball team. It was difficult to discern much about him at all. He lay on his belly in a pile of dirt, and the loose earth covering his face and parts of his torso were, it seemed, tossed on him carelessly by whoever dug the hole. The backs of his pale white thighs glowed in the lantern’s light. The only stitch of clothing left on him was a pair of white Fruit of the Loom jockeys tangled around one ankle.
I picked up one of the gym socks from the ground, pinched it into a ball and held it with the tips of my fingers. Kneeling beside the dead boy’s head, I held the lantern close with one hand and used the sock to brush the dirt from his face with the other. Like a fossil being unearthed by an archeologist, the truth came slowly. As the seconds passed, the light and each stroke of my hand brought broken, bloodied and indecipherable features into sharp focus. But the crushed and jellied eyeball put me over the edge.
I jerked back from the body.
“Oh, God! Tommy, what – “ My stomach lurched.
I dropped the lantern and fell backward onto the ground. Turning and scrambling away on hands and knees, I found a corner and began to wretch. My back arched and my body convulsed uncontrollably. It was the Coney Island Cyclone all over again, but this time nothing came up, only thin strands of bile dripped from my mouth and down my lips.
In time, the convulsions faded. I finally rolled over and just sat there, looking at Tommy, w
iping the spittle from my lips with the back of a shaky hand. My head throbbed and my mind was fuzzy. No words would come.
The wind howled through the broken cellar window again. Outside, the passing cars made a distant shushing sound as they crept along Woodlawn Avenue, tires rolling through the snow and slush. My heaving, stinking breath clouded in the cold air, and Tommy just cried.
Clang, clang... Clang, clang...
I was ten years old and had just seen my very first real dead body – still and soulless, and battered beyond recognition – lying on the floor of a cold, dark cellar of an abandoned house. What the hell did I get myself into?
Clang, clang... Clang, clang...
Staggering to my feet, I picked up the lantern and held it out.
“Tommy... who did this?” My throat was dry and pained.
Just as the words passed my lips, something in my mind and in my ears opened up – popped open, really, like in the cabin of an airliner during descent. That sound...
Clang, clang... Clang, clang...
It was different. It was continuous. It wasn’t the rattling trash can anymore. The sound came from a distance but it was there, and it was distinctive. I knew exactly who was standing impatiently, hip cocked and jaw set, banging on the lip of a dinner bell with her soup ladle.
Clang, clang... Clang, clang...
Tommy looked at me. He heard it too and knew what it meant.
“Your Ma’s calling, Billy.”
“Who, Tommy?”
“I... I... didn’t d-do nothing wr-wrong, Billy,” Tommy whined. “I just w-wanted to play.”
“Tommy...”
“It was ol’ George,” he finally said. “He did it. Stay away from ol’ George.” And then he started to cry again, whimpering. “I just wanted to play,” he mumbled through the tears. “...just wanted to play...”
Clang, clang... Clang, clang... Clang, clang...
1
January, 2013
IT’S SNOWING.
The wind is picking up and the scattered flakes are swirling. Tonight’s storm is just beginning. It’s not much now, but CNN is forecasting a nor’easter. They say it should reach full strength by midnight, maybe one o’clock.
Sally dreads the snow. She’s not looking forward to an ugly morning commute, or worse, the thought of working from home; not when she’s trying to close a deal and needs face time with her client. But our boys have a different perspective. Stephen, nine, and Peter, eight, are giddy with anticipation. Not even Christmas morning holds this much excitement for them. They’re hoping for the kind of deep snow that rolls over the neighborhood in soft waves and makes everything seem clean and new and ripe for rediscovery. Above all, they look forward to a day free from the routine of school; from classes, tests and handing in homework; a day free from responsibility and accountability. Before they go to bed tonight, they will pray for a snow day.
I used to share their enthusiasm, but not anymore; not since that day when I was ten. Dr. Jeffreys keeps probing for more details, but I’ve been reluctant to share until now.
My iPhone just chimed.
The weather app has sent me a notification. It says: “Winter Warning in Effect...”
I don’t need to read the rest of the text, nor do I have to watch CNN or WNBC for storm coverage. I have my own internal barometer. You see, every time the snow falls late in the evening before a school day, the dreams begin again.
They are always the same – there’s a dark tunnel, and there’s blood, lots of blood, and someone is screaming.
God, I hate snow days.
2
January, 1975
TOMMY SMILED AND GIGGLED as he made snow angels with the little kids.
Bobby thought it was weird; so did I. Most kids thought Tommy was a little weird, and on that day Bobby had no patience for it.
“Tommy, what are you doing? You’re supposed to be helping us make snowballs.”
But Tommy didn’t pay Bobby any mind, or he pretended not to hear. More likely, he was lost in his own head, something I noticed Tommy did from time to time. He just lay on his back in a patch of virgin snow and continued to wave his arms, and open and close his legs, pushing aside the snow to form the impression of an angel. He had company. On either side of him were my little brother Rudy and his best buddy, Freddy Carlson, doing the same thing and giggling as well. We thought it was baby stuff. Rudy and Freddy were only six, so the snow angel thing was understandable. But Tommy was ten, like us, so we thought it was a bit strange. But then, Tommy always seemed to play better with the little kids.
Tommy was a slight boy with red hair and a freckled complexion. His close-cropped hair set off his ears and one of them, his right, seemed oddly shrunken. It made me think about my cousin with the extra toe and I remembered my mother’s admonition about such things: Never stare.
My buddy Bobby always had a bit of a short fuse, and now Tommy was about to light it.
“Hey, Tommy b–”
“Tommy, you shouldn’t do that,” Lucy said, cutting Bobby short. “You’re getting wet. You’re going to get sick. Why don’t you come help us?” Lucy always knew how to defuse Bobby’s frustrations and yet still appear to take his side. She had a way with people.
“Yeah, man,” Bobby said. “You don’t even have a coat on. That’s stupid. Quit with the baby stuff.”
“Hey, Tommy?” Lucy said. “You don’t want me to ask my Mom if we have an extra coat, do you?” She was sincere, if a little reluctant to get too entangled with the kid my brother Frank used to call “the mental case.”
Tommy said nothing, still in his own head, but Bobby snorted. “Yeah, I think pink’s his color,” and then he laughed. “That would suit him just fine. What a dork. Such a Potsie.”
Lucy gave him a shove and Bobby took the hint.
“S-sit on it and rotate, B-bobby,” Tommy said in a girlish voice, and then giggled a girlish giggle.
“Th- th- that’s all, folks,” Bobby mocked, and then tossed a handful of snow at Tommy, who simply brushed it away.
Nobody thought Tommy was really retarded or anything, despite his stutter. He went to the same public school as Jimmy Barnes, and Jimmy said he was in the same grade as me and my friends, even if he was in some of the slower classes. We just thought he was odd. Like, here it was, January, over a foot of snow on the ground, and we were all bundled head to toe in coats, scarves, snow pants, hats, hoods, gloves, earmuffs, and boots. You name it, we wore it. Our bodies were thick with it, but not Tommy. He came out to play in the snow with just his father’s oversized boots, the same threadbare jeans he wore most of the year, a red long-sleeved sweatshirt, and pulled over on top of that, a free Police Athletic League t-shirt he got at the Blackwater Founder’s Day Fair. It was his favorite, I guess. He always wore it, and typically wiped his running nose with the shirt tail or a sleeve. It was white, or used to be, with big black letters that read BLACKWATER P.A.L.
Tommy would come up to me, point to the filthy shirt and say, “Hey, look, Billy. I’m your pal,” and then he would laugh, always alone.
“Come on,” Bobby said. “The big kids are going to be back soon. We need to get ready. The big battle’s coming.”
This was our first major snowfall of the year and it wiped everything else away. Our parents worried about things like OPEC pushing oil prices ever higher; President Ford investigating the CIA; and guilty verdicts in the Watergate scandal. But we were oblivious to all of it.
We woke in the morning to discover deep, rolling mounds of snow covering the little town of Blackwater, New Jersey. The sky was a hazy white-gray, and as it reached down to meet the horizon line, heaven and earth were covered by the same cold blanket, broken only by the occasional barren gable, or smoking chimney, or the rare car that slowly made its way down the road in the distance.
WWDJ Radio, the inspirational station that my mother listened to, confirmed it for us. St. Mary’s Catholic Elementary School was closed and we had a snow day. We were kids;
this was Nirvana.
We spent the day in drifts that nearly came to our knees; first building a teetering fortress of ice, then waging mortal combat with hard packed balls of snow until our wool gloves were soaked through and the cold needled into our fingers. There were eight of us plus Tommy when the day started.
The big kids – my brother Frank and his friends – didn’t mind competing in the icy melee with Bobby, Lucy and me. They were fourteen and we were just ten, but Frank figured it was fair enough. They didn’t even mind letting the little kids in on the fun. Rudy and Freddy were only six, but Frank confessed that the little kids always made the best targets when the snowballs began to fly.
Luckily, my friends and I were spared that little kids label, but it stayed with Rudy and Freddy for years. Rudy carries it still. I guess some shit just sticks with you forever.
And then, of course, there was Tommy.
“Why do we always get stuck with the little kids, and him?” Bobby said.
Tommy and the little kids ignored him. They gingerly sat up and stepped out of their snow angels, taking care not to spoil their work.
“Don’t worry about them,” Lucy said. Some strands of her blonde hair had escaped her toboggan cap and framed her face. She was pretty even then. “Just keep making snowballs.”
There was a lull in the action when Frank and his friends ran around to the other side of the block. They hoped to draw us out, to get us to follow them, but we were too smart for that. We knew that if we stayed in my backyard where we had built our snow fort, we’d be safe. As bad as it got for us in these snowball fights, there was always my mother, occasionally peeking out the kitchen window to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. On the other side of the block, out of sight from any parental gaze, the big kids could kick our asses by throwing sharp chunks of ice, or by sticking our faces in the ground and making us eat yellow snow. No thanks, we weren’t going to give up our air cover so easily. Instead, we used the opportunity to stockpile ammunition for the coming battle.
