Wreck the Halls

by Sarah Graves

  Awful thought: see the tire marks, realize what they were, and come back. “But there are enough of these little cuts into the woods,” she went on, “that this one would look like any other if he didn't see us turn. What we climbed over was mostly ice. Plowed snow, melted and frozen again.”

  So no tracks right near the road: the silver lining to an absent exhaust system. But… I turned the ignition key.

  “Um, Ellie?”

  No reaction. From the ignition, that is.

  “Something happened. To the engine.”

  In the darkness, snow clumps kept falling onto the hood. I turned the key a few more times, hoping for a miracle.

  No dice. When I was a kid, as a last resort you could sit on the fender and pour gasoline from a cup into the carburetor.

  Not anymore. Also, no gas. And no paper cup.

  “Well, I guess we're going to have to…”

  Light and sound exploded behind us as another vehicle flew over the ice bank we'd cleared and accelerated at us, engine roaring. It snarled to within inches of our rear bumper, slammed to a halt.

  A door banged. Boots crunched through snow and ice. A shape came to my side of the car and a face, flat with fury, peered in.

  “Get in the truck, you damned little fools,” Ben Devine snarled.

  Ten minutes later, lights from Mickey Jean Bunting's cabin fell onto the dissolving snow and turned the surrounding forest ghostly with rising fog. Mickey Jean's old Honda dripped fresh slush, just outside the cabin door.

  Ben snapped the ignition off, slammed the truck door hard, and stalked toward the porch, leaving us to get out on our own.

  “This is not a good idea,” I whispered urgently to Ellie as we made our way through the slush. Somewhere, Skip and Rascal were going nuts trying to get out at us.

  Devine had refused to take us back to town. I had a feeling maybe it was because he'd already dug graves for us, here.

  And his mood wasn't improving. By the time we got inside he and Mickey Jean were in the midst of a furious argument.

  “I don't care. I’m tired of running,” Mickey Jean declared. “It makes me sick, having to hide out like some kind of criminal. We have got to do something about it this time. We've got to finish what we…”

  She stopped as she turned and caught sight of us. Ruggedly garbed in checked flannel shirt, boots, and jeans, she reminded me again of Paul Bunyan. Her boots dripped slush; she'd just come in from somewhere. In her hand was some kind of a glossy brochure or magazine. Ben took it from her, tossed it into the stove before I could see much of it.

  “Finish what you started,” I said. “You don't by any chance mean Merle Carmody's murder, do you?”

  Because it was crunch time. The car was dead and I had a feeling we would be, too, soon, unless I gave these two some food for thought. “Ellie and I have been talking it over with Timmy Rutherford,” I lied.

  Fluently, I hoped. “Merle was blackmailing you,” I told Mickey Jean, “but the money wasn't your big problem, was it?”

  I waved around the warm, well-furnished room. “The biggest trouble was, if Merle knew, pretty soon everyone would. You can't keep that kind of a secret forever, in Eastport.”

  The rifle wasn't racked, which meant it was out here somewhere, and probably loaded. But there was coffee in the pot, a clean cup on the counter. I helped myself, hoping like hell that it was harder to shoot someone who was enjoying your hospitality, even if uninvited.

  And I kept talking. “But like you said, you can't keep running.”

  The coffee was fresh and strong. I poured some for Ellie, handed it to her. Her eyes said “what the hell are you doing?” but she sipped it obediently.

  “And like you said, you had to do something about it.”

  My plan was that one or the other of them would answer. My plan was, we would remember what they said. With that, Ellie and I could go to Faye Anne's lawyer, Geofrey

  Claiborn, maybe give him enough reasonable doubt to at least start raising a stink.

  My plan didn't work. When I turned back to Mickey Jean she was already coming at me, arms outstretched. Before I could even set the cup down she was shoving me, a two-handed straight-arm into my chest that sent me staggering back.

  Darn, thought the small part of my mind that wasn't occupied with trying to stay upright. “Or,” I began in what I hoped was a conciliatory tone, “it could be that this is all just a big misunderstanding, and—”

  Something made me stop. Maybe it was the rifle that had appeared as if by magic in Mickey Jean's meaty grip. I was glad the woodstove was only a small parlor model, because the look on Mickey Jean's face made me flash on the story of Hansel and Gretel.

  But then a little frown creased her forehead. “You didn't, did you?” Turning to Ben: “After we saw him, you didn't go back and… ?”

  “Saw him when?” Ellie inquired gently.

  She could do this: full of sympathy. And when she wanted to, she used it like a scalpel, cutting to the heart of the matter. No blood.

  But there was pain. “The night he died,” Mickey Jean said, responding to Ellie's tone, her own voice raw with remembered anger, “we decided to offer Merle some money. More, I mean, than he asked for, one lump sum.”

  “Don't,” Ben warned, but Mickey Jean ignored him. “But never any more money. Take it or leave it, we told him.”

  “And he said?”

  “He was drunk. There in his house alone, drinking himself stupid as usual,” she replied scathingly. “To think I could be ruined again by that sack of idiot blood and guts—”

  She stopped, hearing the way that she had put it. “He refused to take the money. Said he knew what I thought of him, and how did I like it? Him having his dirty thumb on a high muckety-muck like me.”

  She laughed, not pleasantly. “He actually said that. ‘High muckety-muck.’ ”

  “And then?” Ellie had a way of listening that made her easy to talk to, like dropping pebbles into a pool. But underneath her stillness there was action going on, I could tell.

  “Then I talked,” Ben Devine replied. “I told him I was going to kill him if he harmed Mickey Jean in any way. Word or deed.”

  “Ben, you didn't say anything about Melinda? Or hurt Merle, to help her, too? I mean,” I went on, “there you had him. Full of booze, not in the best shape to defend himself. And he was threatening both the women you love.”

  Mickey Jean Bunting wasn't the standard female love object. She wasn't pretty, slender, or charming. She didn't dress nicely, or possess feminine wiles. Independent as a hog on ice, as one of my uncles used to say about me. And Ben loved her; that much, if nothing else, was perfectly clear.

  “He was an ignorant drunk,” he said, “a wife-beating stumblebum who wrecked things and hurt people for the pure mean pleasure of it. But I didn't kill Merle.”

  Another thought occurred to him. “Who do you think made that call about me?” he demanded.

  “I’d been wondering about that,” I admitted. “I thought maybe it was you. To make me think that someone else was behind all this.”

  He snorted derisively. “Yeah, I’d point a finger at myself. I sit around all day planning ways to be devious.”

  Which clearly he didn't; there was nothing subtle about him, any more than there was about Mickey Jean. But there wasn't anything subtle about that knife he carried, either.

  And no one knew we were here. “We should…”

  Call home, I was about to say. But Devine was talking again. “He's the sly one. Peter. I’ve tried to tell Melinda, persuade her she ought to get rid of him. But she won't.”

  “Or can't,” Mickey Jean said; I glanced at her. Something in her attitude had changed; now her look was meaningful. Warning.

  Go, it telegraphed to me. Because she knew about Ben's temper, or for some other reason? It was possible, I supposed, that Mickey Jean hadn't known what he'd done but now had begun figuring it out.

  One thing I did know: he was getting madder by t
he minute. Ellie glanced at me: Outta here.

  You bet, I thought back at her. But there was no way; Ben was between us and the door.

  “Peter's so sweet” Ben sneered in bitter parody of Melinda. “Manipulative bastard. But maybe it's just as well she doesn't dump him. Faye Anne Carmody did, and look what happened to her.”7

  He fingered the leather clasp that snapped over the wrapped hilt of the Randall knife. The blade was tempered steel, possibly saw-toothed. And he was a lit fuse. Even Mickey Jean was eyeing him carefully, now.

  “Ben,” she began, but he cut her off.

  “If you two had just left it alone,” he said. “But you had to help.”

  At that Ellie spoke up firmly: “Faye Anne was my friend. We wanted to help her, just the way you wanted to help Mickey Jean.”

  She took a deep breath. “There's nothing wrong with that, and I’m not going to stand here and let you tell me there was.” Saying this she stuck out her chin and looked about as powerfully effective as a leaf in a nor'easter.

  But it stopped him: grudging admiration in his eyes, that he didn't scare her. Or that she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of showing it.

  “Ellie,” I said cautioningly.

  No good. “Maybe,” she went on, not dropping her gaze, “you killed Merle to keep him quiet and solve Melinda's problems with him. Then you threatened Faye Anne with that knife.”

  Oh, how I wished she hadn't mentioned the knife. It was the last thing I wanted him thinking about.

  But Ellie wouldn't quit. “Maybe you told Faye Anne you'd kill her the same way you killed Merle, if she didn't keep her mouth shut. You thought you'd got rid of a possible witness with Kenty Dalrymple. And if you ran into Bob Arnold out at Melinda's place, and he'd seen something he shouldn't… well, now he's out of the picture, too. Or you hope he is, maybe.”

  Another deep breath. “But now you're worried. What else do we know? And who else might we tell? We could get Mickey Jean in more trouble than Merle could, now. And you know it.”

  Putting her under suspicion as an accomplice, Ellie meant. She might as well have thrown nitroglycerine through the door of that parlor stove. Ben's face went white as he lunged at Ellie, his big fist raised.

  “Ben!” Mickey Jean cried.

  His move cleared the path to the door. I scrambled, snagging Ellie's coat collar, and we were out, the dogs still going crazy back in the darkness behind the cabin.

  “Why did you say that to him?” We stumbled in the slush toward what I hoped was the snow-filled way out to the road. What we would do there I had no idea. Freeze to death, probably. But it was better than being carved up by that Randall knife.

  “He was already mad. I didn't think he'd kill us in front of her, though. And I wanted to hear his answer,” Ellie replied as calmly as she could while nearly going tail-down on a patch of ice. Cold droplets splattered my face: half rain, half sleet.

  I glanced back. No one. Yet. But while we were inside, fog had thickened and the temperature had dropped mercilessly. Overhead, branches clattered hollowly together, gleaming in the faint light from the cabin as the wind rose.

  “Maybe Mickey Jean will call someone to come get us,” Ellie said.

  More rain, each droplet stinging frigidly. Soon they would coat everything, freezing on each surface, jacketing it in lethal ice. The power line running from the road to the cabin was already heavy with it, creaking as it swung overhead.

  “What are you talking about?” I pulled out the cell phone.

  “Oh,” Ellie said delightedly. “I thought you'd…”

  “Forgotten it? Not in a million years. And it has a backup battery,” I added, proud of this; those well-prepared fishermen with their fancy safety equipment had nothing on me. “So I didn't have to…”

  Wait for it to charge, I would have finished. But just then something swung suddenly past me with a hot, sizzling crackle. There was an explosive, lightning-bolt crash, and the pale reflections on the iced surfaces around us winked out as all the lights in the cabin behind us went dark.

  The power line: down. “Jesus,” I breathed. “Where is it?”

  “I don't know. Wait…”

  A thin beam of light appeared; Ellie, God bless her, had brought along a pocket flashlight. “There.”

  The downed line lay behind us, on the ice. Harmless looking now, but…

  Suddenly I realized I had dropped the cell phone, too.

  Somewhere in the darkness; I bent to search for it.

  “No,” Ellie said urgently, “we need to be away from here, the water on the ground will conduct…”

  Electricity; lots of it. “Go, go, go!”

  A hundred yards down the snow-filled rut, punching through with each step: “I don't get it. Good way to get rid of us, but how'd he bring a power line down on us?”

  “Jacobia. Look around you. Listen to what's happening. Don't you get it?”

  I listened. While I listened, tiny, cold objects pelted my face. Overhead, the clattering sound intensified to loud clacking as the wind rose higher. And all the while, rain: cold rain.

  Freezing rain. My feet were soaked; my jacket weighed a ton, its collar stiff and prickly.

  Frozen. We were having an ice storm.

  “Keep walking.” Ellie's voice came from the darkness in front of me. “I don't think we'd better go back, no matter what.”

  She was right: that live electrical wire. And the phone in the cabin had been one of those nifty cordless jobs: no power, no voice connection. So even if Ben had a change of heart (unlikely) or Mickey Jean did it in spite of him (more possible, but I wasn't banking on that, either), no one was on the phone calling help for us.

  Or giving us any. Ben and Mickey Jean couldn't get out to us any more than we could get back in: the wire on the ground had trapped them on one side of it, us on the other.

  “Ellie. We're in a situation, here.”

  Now I was squinting, trying to keep ice pellets from penetrating my eyes. With them came enough cold liquid rain to coat everything and glaze it instantly. After that each new layer of water froze onto the ice beneath; in the morning this would all be a glittering fairyland.

  Right now, though, it was a death trap.

  “A sand truck will come along,” Ellie gasped, slogging through knee-deep snow. Her feet still broke through with each step; mine, too. We were fighting our way; between exhaustion and hypothermia it was a toss-up which one would get us.

  If another section of power line didn't come down and zap us. As if in answer to my thought, a loud crack! followed by a popping sound and another brilliant flash of sick, greenish-yellow light came from behind us.

  The weight of the accumulating ice was taking down one section of line after another. Another crash, this time from the woods, as an old branch gave up its grip on a tree that had held it for a hundred or so years. On its way down it took dozens of smaller, ice-coated branches. The sound of breaking glass seemed an odd, tinkling accompaniment as twiglets snapped and shattered.

  “If we can make it to the road,” Ellie insisted.

  I didn't contradict her. I didn't have the heart to, much less the lung power. Every breath of air was like a frozen fist slugging my chest. The cold was seeping up my leg bones, weighting them with a deep, frigid agony that sooner or later was going to stop them.

  Would I be found lying down, or frozen standing up, sheeted in ice? Only an hour or so ago we'd been at Joy Abrams’ place, looking out at those hideous yard lamps. I’d have killed to be within sight of them, now, and I was dying of thirst, too.

  But when I put my tongue out, all I could catch were needle-like ice pellets. They felt dry as grains of rice.

  Water was all around, puddled on the frozen snow. I could drink some if I could just get down to it, and then I could…

  “No! Jacobia, you'll never get back up again, your stuff is too heavy, don't do it. Look, we're almost to the…”

  Road. Ellie's face bobbed like a balloon. Distantly the
thought occurred to me that this was hypothermia; I was losing all my judgment.

  A stab of fear pierced me. “Okay.”

  My tongue felt thick. Soaked through and frozen, and too slow. Too slow for what?

  No matter. One foot. The other.

  We emerged onto the road that felt pebbled with frozen rain atop a coating of sand. Ice pellets fell with a sound like gravel pouring from a dump truck.

  There we stopped. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness: the road a dark grey ribbon, remnants of snow here and there like heaps of dirty white rags, and the woods. Dark and endless, or as good as endless for our purposes.

  “Jake,” Ellie said quietly.

  “We're done for, aren't we?”

  “No, Jake.” Her tone became insistent. “Look.”

  I followed the slow, heavy gesture of her right arm, aiming at a dark shape, silent and motionless by the road.

  A big dark, shape. It was a car. “Oh, my God.”

  I moved toward it. If the keys were in it, if we could get the damned thing started…

  Even if not, maybe we could get inside, out of the icy rain. There might be a blanket, a tarp, something. The headlights went on, the sudden glare blinding me, making me stagger back.

  Scaring me, too. “Who is it?” I shouted. “Who's there?”

  Ice bits fell thickly through the cones of pale yellow projected from the lights. Rain steamed on the hood, billowing up in clouds that obscured the windshield.

  Sitting here, I realized, with the engine running. Someone rolled a window down. A face peered out. “Who is that?” a voice called.

  My ears felt frozen all the way into the center of my head; the voice came through like someone talking underwater, unrecognizable. I moved toward it—worriedly, but it was our only hope—then stopped as Ellie said my name.

  “Jake?” she said again. Puzzled-sounding this time. As if, having come this far, she didn't understand why she had stopped.

  But I did understand: she was twenty pounds lighter than I was and four inches taller. And hypothermia is a function of time, temperature, and body mass.

  No exceptions; it was why the men had contests to see who could get into the survival suits fastest.