Snowblind

by Christopher Golden

  “What kind of person does this?” Ella demanded, eyes wide with disbelief.

  Grace … Martha … pulled free of her grip, staring at Ella. “You haven’t been where I’ve been. You don’t know. I only need to stay safe until the storm dies down—”

  “Will it ever?” TJ asked. “Will they let it?”

  “They don’t bring the storm,” Grace said in that wise old little-girl voice. “They only ride it.”

  TJ racked his brain, trying to figure out where they could hide where the wind could never reach them.

  Overhead, he heard the attic roof beams groan with the weight of the snowfall, threatening to cave in.

  And what then?

  Detective Keenan sat on his sofa, wrapped in a blanket and reading Lonesome Dove by candlelight. Without heat or electricity, the only sounds in the house came from the rattle and creak of glass and wood as it stood firm against the storm outside. His wife, Donna, had taken the boys and gone to her parents’ house in Hingham the night before. They had lost power during the last three major storms to hit the Merrimack Valley and Donna had just not wanted to deal with keeping the boys warm and worrying about keeping them calm when they both were so afraid of the dark.

  He missed them, but a night or two of quiet would be welcome. Or it would have been, were it not for the lack of heat and the way the cold seemed to take root in everything, its icy grip tightening as the temperature dropped. Had he been able to go with them down to the South Shore, where they would be getting half as much snow and the storm couldn’t even be called a blizzard, he would eagerly have done so. But Lieutenant Duquette had made it clear that, on duty or not, the entire department was to stay on call in case of emergencies, particularly once the storm had ended.

  So here he was, alone on his sofa with his book and a couple of candles and a plate with the crust from his peanut butter and banana sandwich on the coffee table.

  Headlights washed across the living room, casting his surroundings in an unearthly glow. Keenan glanced up from his book, listening for the scrape of a plow, but this engine was too quiet for one of those lumbering metal beasts.

  Folding the page of his book, he set it on the coffee table and rose, going to the window. The snow fell so heavily that he could barely make out the snow-covered vehicle parked at an angle in front of the snowbank at the bottom of his driveway. Then the blue lights turned on, strobing the blacked-out houses up and down the street, and he saw the driver step out. The officer was a giant, and as he made his way through the sixteen inches or more of snow already on the ground, Keenan knew who he was long before he reached the front steps.

  The detective didn’t wait for the cop to knock. He pulled open the door.

  “Evening, Harley,” Keenan said. “Not much warmer in here than it is out there, but come on in.”

  Officer Talbot stepped inside and stomped the snow off of his boots and Keenan swung the door shut behind him.

  “Better get your coat, Joe,” Harley said. “I kept trying your numbers but the landlines are tied up and your cell is all static. The storm is messing with everything.”

  “Shit,” Keenan muttered.

  All through this storm he had been unable to avoid thinking of the blizzard twelve years past and all those lives lost. Sitting alone in his cold, dark house, he had been grateful that he would not be the one to respond first if something awful happened. Yet here was Harley, dragging him out into the snow, and he wondered if the night would be any less terrible simply because he hadn’t been first on the scene.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Keenan asked. “Don’t tell me we got a homicide in the middle of this.”

  Harley narrowed his eyes. “No. It’s nothin’ official, actually. Nothing I wanted to call in.”

  Keenan had grabbed his boots from the spot by the door where he’d left them to dry, but now he paused to shoot Harley a curious look.

  “What’s that mean?” he asked.

  “Remember how I said Jake had been acting weird?”

  “Jake Schapiro?” Keenan said, pulling on his boots.

  Harley frowned. “Yeah. Who else? I went—”

  “Up to his door, right? You thought he had a girl inside.”

  Harley looked queasy, like whatever thoughts were in his head had made him sick.

  “He had someone inside,” Harley said. “But it wasn’t a girl.”

  Keenan had knelt to tie one boot, but he snapped his head around to look up at Harley. A little tug of suspicion pulled at his gut, but he didn’t want to believe it.

  “Whatever you’re trying to say, I wish you’d spit it out.”

  “He had cards in his hand when he came to the door,” Harley said, his nose wrinkling in disgust or perhaps dismay, the words coming reluctantly to his lips. “I thought they were playing cards, man. But a little earlier, I realized they were something else. I recognized them, Joe. The guy was holding a bunch of Pokémon cards.”

  Keenan’s gut gave a sickening twist. “You’re saying he’s hiding a kid out there?”

  Harley only stared at him, jaw grimly set.

  “You think it’s Zachary Stroud,” Keenan said.

  “I think it could be,” Harley admitted. “But if we report that and we’re wrong, Jake’ll never live it down. Never mind forgive us. He’s my friend, Detective.”

  “And if he snatched a lost kid whose parents were just killed?” Keenan asked.

  “Then that isn’t my friend out there in that farmhouse. It’s a damn monster.”

  Keenan finished tying his second boot, then grabbed his jacket and gloves and hat from the chair by the door.

  “Let’s go find out.”

  Allie sat in silence in the passenger seat of Miri’s rental car, wondering where Niko had gone. Swaddled in her white down coat, she huddled into herself, constantly checking her peripheral vision for ghosts. Stop, she told herself, but she couldn’t deny the chill that danced along her spine. No man had ever been as kind to her as Niko Ristani. She had loved Jake and Isaac’s father but they had married because she had gotten pregnant with Jake and just assumed that true intimacy would come in time. That had never happened; the army had kept him away from her more than he was with her, and then he had been killed in action. Allie had never really understood what it meant to be in love before Niko, never felt as if her heart had set sail from her body. Allie had lost him and grieved for that loss ever since, had wished for just one more day, one chance to tell him what he truly meant to her.

  But not like this.

  She felt as if she ought to be thankful, but instead she was terrified, pins and needles all over her skin, unable to catch her breath as she looked for some sign that the ghost might be in the car with them. It—he—had vanished into the storm the moment they had left Allie’s house, but had said he would be with them. Allie felt something in the car, an unsettling frisson in the air that might have been the presence of the dead or simply a prickling fear that would be with her for the rest of her life.

  “You okay?” Miri asked.

  Allie jerked in her seat, turning to stare a moment at Niko’s beautiful, grown-up girl. She uttered an anxious laugh.

  “Are you kidding?”

  Miri frowned, hands tight on the wheel, driving so carefully in the storm as the wind buffeted the car.

  “You’re afraid of him? He’d never do anything to hurt you.”

  Allie shuddered and covered her face with her hands. “I know. I do know that.”

  Miri said nothing. After a moment, Allie dropped her hands and looked over to see a tear sliding down her otherwise expressionless face.

  “I’m afraid, too,” Miri said. “I don’t want to be, but I can’t…”

  Allie lowered her voice to a whisper. “He’s dead, Miri. He’s not supposed to be here. People … we’re just not meant to know the dead.”

  If Niko’s ghost was in the car with them, it gave no sign of having heard. Still, Allie felt his presence, felt a chill that the car’s heater co
uld never drive away. As Miri turned onto Bridle Path Road, trying to keep her tires in the tracks of other cars that had passed through the inches of snow that had fallen since the last plow had passed that way, the two women fell into a wary, fearful silence.

  I’m sorry, Allie thought, knowing she should speak the words aloud. Her fear felt like a betrayal.

  “Check it out,” Miri said. “Gustafson’s got company.”

  Allie had told her the story of Eric Gustafson crashing his car into others in the drop-off line in front of the school on Monday and the way Gustafson had behaved, the way he’d cried while confessing that he had no idea how to drive a car. When Niko had been talking about the return of those killed that awful night, her thoughts had gone immediately to the city councilman and the frightened, childlike look in his eyes that morning.

  Now they pulled up in front of his house to find that they were not his first visitors. A police car sat in Gustafson’s driveway, only a fresh dusting of snow on the windshield—it hadn’t been there very long.

  Miri put on the car’s hazard lights and they climbed out, instantly assaulted by the freezing white savagery of the storm. Bent against the wind, they trudged up the driveway, calf-deep in snow. Allie kept glancing around to see if Niko’s ghost would appear but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Weird,” Miri said. “The cop just plowed in here. No way he’s getting out.”

  Allie looked at the police car and understood immediately. The driver had plunged his vehicle into the unplowed driveway and must already have been lodged there in the entire blizzard’s depth of snow.

  “Let’s be careful,” she said.

  “And ready to run,” Miri replied.

  They went up the steps and rang the bell. Councilman Gustafson’s neighborhood was one of the few they’d passed through where the power was still on, but though there were plenty of lights burning within, the bell brought no reply. Allie rapped hard several times, and then again. They didn’t have time to be polite. Niko’s ghost had said they needed to warn all the spirits of the dead who had escaped the hell the ice men had made for them, and she was willing, but not until after she had seen that Jake was safe and learned whether Isaac’s spirit had found its way to his brother’s house.

  And what then? she thought. Will you be afraid of him, too? Of your baby boy?

  Allie knocked again, even harder. She had agreed to this first stop because she had seen Gustafson with her own eyes and because the house was practically on the way to Jake’s.

  “Forget it,” Miri said. “Let’s just—”

  The door opened, but it wasn’t Mr. Gustafson who greeted them. The policeman who’d so deeply committed his car to the snowed-in driveway stood staring at them. His name tag read TORRES.

  “Can I help you?” Officer Torres asked.

  “Is everything all right, Officer?” Allie asked. “Is Mr. Gustafson—”

  “Who the hell are you people?” the cop said, his eyes narrowing.

  “We need to talk to Mr. Gustafson,” Miri said. “And I’m wondering if maybe we need to have a talk with you as well.”

  Allie saw the suspicion with which Miri and Officer Torres regarded each other and suddenly understood what Miri was suggesting. It all seemed so unreal to her that if she had not seen Niko’s ghost for herself she have thought that Miri had lost her mind, and if she was wrong about this cop they might both end up in handcuffs.

  “My name is Allie Schapiro,” she said. “Mr. Gustafson’s daughter is a student at the school where I teach. I need to speak to him.”

  “In the middle of a blizzard?” Officer Torres demanded.

  “Dad,” said a voice inside the house. “It’s okay. Let them in.”

  Allie took a step back. Dad?

  Officer Torres opened the door wider and they saw Gustafson inside, that same scared-little-boy look in his eyes, and Allie knew, then. She understood it all. Only one father-and-son pair had died during the blizzard twelve years past.

  “Did you know they never found your body?” Allie said, barely aware that the words had come out of her mouth. “Everyone assumed you had died that night, but we could never be sure.”

  The cop’s eyes went wide for a moment, and then he dropped his gaze, embraced by a sorrow it pained Allie to see. Gustafson came up beside him, one comforting hand on his back.

  “Gavin?” Miri said, looking stricken.

  “Hello, Miri,” Gustafson replied.

  Allie could find no words, not even the warning she had intended to offer. Carl Wexler and his son were reunited, but in the bodies of a policeman and a city councilman, both of whom must also have people who loved them. They had no right to intrude upon these lives. When the storm had passed, perhaps their spirits would go on to a final rest, but what if they tried to hold on? The thought revolted her. The dead were dead. They did not belong to the world any longer.

  “Does your mother know?” Miri asked.

  Gustafson shook his head.

  “And she’s not going to,” Officer Torres said. “She has a new life, a new husband and a little girl. This is temporary. Telling her would only hurt her.”

  “On that we agree,” Allie said, her skin crawling. “We came to warn you—”

  “They’re here,” Gustafson said.

  “Yes,” Miri said. “But if you can make it through the storm…”

  She faltered. Allie didn’t know what had silenced Miri until she saw Gustafson’s gaze and the fear in his eyes. She spun and saw something darting through the storm, a figure moving in the snow, saw it stop and turn and look at them, hanging there as the blizzard howled through it. Its eyes were like holes bored through into a frozen world of endless winter. Ice seemed to grip her heart and race through her veins, all warmth driven from her, and a terrible sorrow enveloped her. It felt as if the bottomless pits of its wintry eyes were leeching out her soul.

  “They’re here,” Gustafson said again. And this time there was no misunderstanding.

  “Get out of here, Allie,” the wind whispered in her ear, snapping her alert as if she’d woken from a trance. The snow whirled beside her and became Niko’s ghost, his face etched with panic. “Miri, go! It’s not you they want, but they’ll kill you if you stay!”

  Allie tore her gaze from the thing in the storm and felt her fear become hatred as she remembered Jake talking about the ice men. Another of them slid through the blizzard and circled the first and they seemed almost to be dancing. She had thought Jake had imagined it all, had constructed some fantasy to accompany the trauma of his brother’s death. She had turned her own heart to ice that night and her relationship with her surviving son had never been the same.

  “Bastards,” she whispered.

  Then Miri grabbed her wrist and Allie was in motion, lurching and stumbling down the snowy steps and across the deep snow of the yard toward Miri’s car.

  “The wine cellar,” she heard Gustafson shout behind her. “Dad, come on!”

  Allie heard Miri screaming her name and looked up just in time to see the thing flying at her through the snow, its face chiseled from ice, its mouth open in a shriek of frigid wind that showed jagged white teeth. It reached for her with spindly icicle fingers and grabbed fistfuls of her coat and Allie screamed as her feet left the ground. The wind seemed to aid the force that carried her aloft. She felt its cold insinuate itself into her flesh and bone and heart, felt unclean in her own spirit as its malignance washed over her. The storm spun her around in the air and she kept screaming, thinking of the frozen limbo that Niko had told her about and that perhaps it wouldn’t seem quite so much like hell if they were together.

  Please, no, she prayed. I don’t want to die. For years she had been grieving, a shadow of herself, and now she mourned all the time that she had lost.

  Allie saw Miri thirty feet below, arms reaching skyward, crying out for her.

  And then she saw Niko. His ghost appeared beside Miri, reached out to touch her hair with insubstantial hands
, and then lofted himself into the air with a gesture. He did not so much fly as appear and reappear in different snowy gusts, a violent winter zoetrope that lasted only heartbeats. Allie twisted in the demon’s grasp to get another glimpse of the ghost, and even as she did Niko appeared in front of Allie’s captor and swung his spectral fist. The ice man felt the blow and bared its needle teeth, whipped around, and dived after Niko’s ghost. It lost its grip on Allie and she screamed, flailing at the air, snow whipping at her as she fell, landing on her back with an impact that knocked the breath from her lungs.

  Miri appeared beside her. “Anything broken?”

  “I don’t—” Allie began, and that was all she managed before Miri grabbed her hand and hauled her up out of the nearly foot and a half of snow that had broken her fall.

  Disoriented, it was all Allie could do to keep her feet beneath her as they raced toward Miri’s rental car. She heard shouting behind her and turned to look back at the house, at the dead father and son who were haunting the bodies of the cop and the politician.

  “Go, go!” Officer Torres shouted, but inside, Gustafson was calling to him—Gavin Wexler pleading with his father, Carl.

  Torres slammed the door and turned to face the snow as it built itself into a pair of ice men, spindly ice fingers curled into claws as they rushed at him. Allie head Gavin screaming inside the house, the ghost of a little boy with the voice of a man.

  “Get to the wine cellar!” Torres shouted, but he didn’t turn his back on the demons that flew at him. And then, loud and anguished, as if the words had been torn from his chest, he screamed out his love to his son.

  Miri shouted at Allie, who turned in time to find herself careening into the side of the car. She bumped against it and then flung open the passenger door as Miri raced around to the driver’s side. They tumbled in and Miri jammed the key into the ignition and started it up. As the engine roared, Allie glanced out and saw Niko’s ghost reappear once, just ahead of them, beckoning them down the road. Her heart soared, knowing that he had escaped being dragged back into that hell. Not alive, but not one of them.