Winter Wake

by Rick Hautala

  Julia was pacing back and forth between the living room and the kitchen. Every time she entered either room, she would go to one of the windows and peer out into the blinding sheet of flying snow. John had called from the office over an hour ago, saying he was heading home, but because of the storm, they shouldn’t hold supper for him. He’d settle for a sandwich whenever he got home.

  Well, Julia thought nervously, we finished supper, and Bri’s almost finished with the dishes. He should be here by now.

  She didn’t want to say anything to Bri that might upset her, but her pacing was message enough.

  “I reckon if you don’t have school tomorrow, maybe we’ll have an opportunity to playa few games of checkers,” Frank said. “‘S I recall, I’ve got a few games to catch up on yah.”

  “Sure,” Bri said, smiling even though the worry her mother was feeling had been transmitted to her. She was thinking about the term paper that was due next week in History. She hadn’t picked a topic yet, and a long weekend might give her a chance to get started.

  Julia hadn’t stopped staring out into the snow and sighing. She turned and walked back into the living room but had only taken a few steps when the house lights flickered. They dimmed for only a few seconds before brightening again.

  “Frickin’ brownout,” Frank said matter-of-factly.

  “Do you lose the power during storms often?” Julia asked nervously. She had noticed the stack of years-old firewood in the garage and figured — if worse came to worst — they could build a fire in the fireplace to keep warm.

  If worse comes to worst, she thought grimly, John won’t make it home tonight … Please let him drive safely.

  “We don’t have much trouble with it,” Frank said. “You might want to get some candles handy just in case, though.”

  While Julia fished around in the cupboard for candles, she kept telling herself that it was foolish to worry. Traffic leaving Portland on any given night was slow enough. In a storm like this, it would be terrible.

  Besides, she thought, if something happens … or I get a phone call from the police … at least I’ll know … It’s waiting and not hearing that’s so hard.

  She found little reassurance in that thought.

  She found some candles and placed them on the countertop and stood there for a moment, waiting to see if the lights flickered again. Once she felt certain the lights weren’t going out — not yet, anyway — she walked back into the living room and stared out onto the street.

  It looked like there were at least three inches of snow on the ground already. With the wind swirling the snow into drifts, it was impossible to tell. By the streetlight, the snow was a thick halo around the feeble light.

  “Jesus Christ, I wish he’d call!” she whispered, slapping her fist into her open palm. Her breath fogged the window, and she was about to head back into the kitchen when the telephone rang. Its harsh br-ring cut into her ears like an ice pick.

  “I’ll get it,” she shouted, her voice wound up tightly as she dashed into the kitchen and snatched up the receiver fully expecting to hear — not John’s voice — but a state trooper’s.

  “Hello?”

  “Guess who?” the voice on the other end of the line said good-naturedly.

  Julia had been so startled by the phone ringing it took her several heartbeats to register that it was John on the line.

  “Sweet Jesus” was all she managed to say as she slumped back against the kitchen wall, her body flooding with relief. For an instant, she locked eyes with Bri, who then turned back to her job at the sink. Frank seemed unconcerned as usual.

  “Where the hell are you?” she said into the receiver, still not believing she was hearing John’s voice. Her frightened imagination was telling her she hadn’t really heard him … that the next words would be spoken by a state trooper who would tell her they’d found John’s car wrapped around a utility pole on Route One.

  “I –ah, had a little trouble at the bridge,” John said.

  “You what?”

  “The visibility was crap in the snow, and I sorta … I missed the turn.”

  “Good Lord! Are you all right?”

  Julia was torn between feeling relief that John was all right and nervous that he wasn’t home yet.

  “I’m fine,” John replied. “I went off the road by the bridge. It was —” He paused and had to swallow before he could continue. “It was … strange.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “As I was driving onto the bridge, I could have sworn I saw someone — that I bumped into a person walking along on the side of the road.”

  “Oh, my God. No one was hurt, were they?” Julia asked with a gasp.

  “No, no. Everyone’s fine,” John said, his voice taking on a husky edge. “I was — I got out, and there wasn’t anyone there. I don’t know. Anyway, a guy who lives nearby saw me swerve off the road. I’m at his house. He and I tried to push the car back onto the road, but it’s stuck pretty good. There’s a tow truck, but it might be a while. I didn’t want you to be worried, is all.”

  “I haven’t been worried,” Julia said, and she caught the sidelong glance Bri shot her over her shoulder. “Couldn’t you leave the car where it is and walk home?” She wished now more than anything that he was safely home. To hell with the car, as long as John was safe.

  “A guy named Smokey — I knew him in high school. He runs the Mobil station nearby and said he’d be along with his tow truck when he could,” John replied. “I can’t leave it here. It’ll get plowed under, and we wouldn’t find it till spring. ‘Sides, I don’t particularly relish the thought of trudging a couple of miles in this snow. It’s pretty bad.”

  “Well, be careful,” Julia said. ‘I’ll have a pot of coffee ready for you when you get here.”

  “‘Kay,” John said. “See you in a bit.”

  “‘Bye,” Julia said softly, and then she hung up, grateful that John was at least as close as the island.

  II

  John arrived home an hour and a half later. He sat down to a supper of re-heated spaghetti. After that, he started a roaring fire in the fireplace, and he, Julia, and Frank, who was impatient for a game or two of checkers, were all sitting in the living room, quietly enjoying the blaze. Bri was upstairs at her desk, silently cursing her history text. A little after nine o’clock, the lights “browned out” again, flickering a few times before completely winking out.

  “I was expecting that,” Julia said as she got up from the couch and went into the kitchen. With the flickering fire coming from behind her in the living room, she got the candles she had gathered earlier. Along with a flashlight and two oil lamps, which Frank kept for such emergencies, they were ready to tough out the power outage.

  “Bri?” Julia called out at the foot of the stairs. “Hold on a second. I’ve got a flashlight. I’ll be right up.”

  Alone upstairs, Bri had a moment of panic as she fumbled out of her bedroom and into the hallway. As soon as the lights went out, the sound of the storm raging outside increased in intensity. The wind sweeping under the gutters made a faint vibrating noise that sounded like … the low-throated rumble of organ music.

  Keeping her hand on the wall so she wouldn’t lose her balance, she made her way toward the distant glow of firelight reflecting in the stairwell. Her breathing was loud and ragged in her ears, but it was better than listening to the wind as it wrapped its cold hands around the house, sounding like …

  Church wood,

  A shiver danced between her shoulder blades.

  Her mother came to the foot of the stairs and shined the flashlight so she could make her way down. She was grateful to leave her history book behind as she joined her family in the living room.

  “Quite the night, huh?” John said, smiling at her as she leaned on the arm of the couch.

  He was bent over an oil lamp on the coffee table, trying to trim the wick evenly before lighting it. Julia followed Bri to the couch and shined the light so John could
see what he was doing.

  “Jesus! Can you not shine that in my eyes?” he shouted. He squinted and shielded his face with his hand.

  “Sorry … I was trying to help,” Julia said mildly.

  “You won’t if you friggin’ blind me.”

  “How long do you think this will last?” Bri asked in the awkward silence that followed. She looked from her father to her grandfather to her mother. She was confident there would be no school tomorrow, but it would be nice to get all of her homework done tonight so she could enjoy the long weekend.

  “You mean the storm or the power outage?” her father asked, still sounding snappish. She did her best to ignore it and didn’t reply as she watched him trim the wick below the ragged, burned edge, then strike a match and touch it to the wick. A warm, yellow flame licked across the top of the wick. Satisfied, John put the clear glass globe back on. Immediately, the flame spread and brightened.

  “Power won’t be back on for a coupla hours, at least … maybe days,” Frank said with a low grumble. He was used to watching TV in the evening, so he was angry about being cut off. “Forecaster says this storm’s gonna be with us till tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Boy, that lantern sure throws the light,” Julia said. She snapped off her flashlight and sat down on the couch, careful not to nudge John. As far as she was concerned, he owed her an apology for snapping at her. “Do you think it’d be bright enough for me to finish my homework?” She wanted to get her work done tonight, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. She didn’t want to be upstairs alone while the power was out, either.

  “It wouldn’t be good for your eyes, dear,” her mother said, shaking her head.

  “Bright ‘nough for a game of checkers, though,” Frank said, smiling.

  Bri smiled and then went to the closet where they kept the checkerboard. She set it up on the coffee table beside the oil lamp, and Frank angled his wheelchair so he could reach it. Bri plunked down on the couch and began sorting the pieces.

  Satisfied that there was enough light — at least in the living room — and that the water pipes wouldn’t freeze because of the blazing fire, John got up and walked over to the window. Holding the curtain aside, he looked out at the storm.

  The streetlights were out, and the few houses he could see were plunged into darkness. He wondered if Portland had lost its power, too. He doubted it. When he was growing up, the islands lost their power with practically every storm while the mainland remained well lit.

  Deciding that she should make the first move toward an apology, Julian came over beside John and, leaning close to him, looked out the window with him.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” she said. She sighed as she wrapped her arm around his waist and hooked a finger through one of his belt loops, tugging him close.

  John grunted and kept his eyes fixed on the snow streaking past the window. It might have been her imagination, but he seemed to shy away from her.

  “Kinda scary, too, though,” she added. A shiver raced through her. “It makes you realize how much we depend on things like electricity … how much we take for granted.”

  “When I was a boy,” Frank said, not bothering to look up while he was busy placing his checker pieces on the board, “we didn’t even have ‘lectricity out here. Like a lot of modern conveniences, you find once you don’t have ‘em, you don’t really need ‘em.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Julia said, nudging John in the side.

  “What now?”

  “How ‘bout we go for a walk.”

  John turned and looked at her like she was nuts. The scowl on his face deepened. Shaking his head, he said, “I had enough tromping around in the snow for one night.”

  “Come on,” Julia said, giving him a playful shake. “It’ll be romantic. I want to see what the island looks like with just candles and lamps glowing in the windows. It’ll be like we stepped back a hundred years.”

  “I’m cozy right where I am,” John said.

  “Ah, you’re no fun,” Julia said, swatting his arm before leaving him standing by the picture window. She walked back to the fireplace and sat down on the couch to watch Frank’s and Bri’s opening moves.

  John was convinced that her idea of a romantic walk in the snow — like going lobstering with Randy — was one of those things she was going to have to experience before she accepted that romantic notions and reality are often far apart. As he looked out the window, he saw an indistinct fluttering motion outside in the storm. Goose bumps swept across his arms. For an instant — no more than half a heartbeat — one area of the solid gray wall of snow darkened like a spreading stain that took on a familiar shape …

  The person I saw on the bridge tonight, he thought as chills uncoiled through his body. That damned idiot who made me drive off the road.

  His hand holding back the curtain clenched involuntarily into a fist, and the curtain rod sagged with the weight and almost pulled out of the wall. His eyes bulged as he stared outside, fighting back a rush of panic. He didn’t know whether he wanted to see that figure again to confirm it was there or not see it so he could tell himself all it had been was snow swirling in the wind.

  Behind him, he could hear the pleasant chatter of Frank and Bri as they played their game, and every now and then Julia would throw out a comment, but John’s mind was racing.

  Am I imagining things, he wondered, or had there really been someone out there on the bridge earlier tonight … and was there someone out in front of the house now?

  No one in their right mind would be out on a night like this.

  And why would they be out in front of his house?

  John glanced nervously over his shoulder at his family. In the warm glow of the firelight, they looked so warm and content. The scene was Norman Rockwell perfect.

  But he was standing away from the fire, even this short distance, he was chilled. The warmth didn’t quite reach him. Thin tendrils of cold brushed against him.

  When he looked out the window again, he would have screamed except that his throat closed off as tightly as if cold hands were reaching out and choking him.

  It was no trick of the swirling winds.

  It was no illusion.

  Someone was out there.

  He could clearly see a figure, bent over, coming up the walkway toward the front door.

  Panic strangled him. His breathing came in sharp, painful gasps that fogged the window as he watched, unable to move a muscle as the figure came closer to the door, trudging step after trudging step … closer … closer …

  He couldn’t possibly see who it was.

  All he could see was a small, slouched figure wearing a long, dark coat that hid her feet.

  How do I know it’s a woman? he wondered.

  The wind whipped around the figure, fluttering her coat and hair.

  Yes! He could see long, dark strands of hair twisting in the wind, writhing like snakes. She was almost up to the front steps now, and still — as much as he wanted to — John couldn’t move.

  He stood and watched with horrified fascination.

  Any second now, he thought as panic flooded through him, I’ll hear a heavy-fisted knock on the door.

  The black shape trudged slowly up the steps. As soon as she was too close to the house for John to see through her the window, he stepped back from the window with a gasp as though breaking a spell. A strangled little whimper came from his throat, but neither the checker players nor Julia noticed. His legs felt like they were bound by splints as he turned and started for the front door.

  This can’t be happening, his mind was shouting. It’s impossible! … There can’t be anyone out there … not on a night like this!

  But he had seen them!

  His hand was trembling when he got to the front door and was reaching for the doorknob.

  There’s no one out there … There can’t be anyone out there.

  He watched his hand reach for the doorknob as if it belonged to someone
else … as if it was under someone else’s control. He didn’t want to open the door. There couldn’t be anyone out on the doorstep.

  The doorknob was like ice as his fingers closed around it and began to turn it slowly. It seemed to twist forever, but then — finally — with an audible click that slammed his ears like a gunshot, the latch snapped open. Caught in a gust of wind, the door burst inward as if whoever was out there on the doorstep had slammed his — no, her! — shoulder against it. With a loud, tearing shriek, snow spiraled into the foyer, and cold wind clawed his face.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Julia shouted, looking over at him as he braced his feet so the door wouldn’t slam him back against the entryway wall.

  The storm roared into the house like an animal unloosed from its leash. As the cold air spun around him — for an instant — John thought he heard laughter — thin, high laughter — but he saw that there was no one in the doorway … no woman dressed in a long, dark coat … no one … just the raw, elemental power of the storm screaming into the house and sucking out its warmth.

  “Will you please shut that door?” Julia said as she dashed over to him. “God, you’re letting out all the heat.”

  “I —” John stammered.

  He wanted to tell her that he was convinced someone was outside, wanting to come in, but he clamped his mouth shut and — with Julia’s help — pushed the door shut.

  “For crying out loud, John!” Julia glared at him. “Are you out of your mind? It’s cold enough in here as it is. What were you doing?”

  Dazed by what had happened —

  Did I really hear laughter?

  — he snapped the lock and took a quick step away from the door.

  “No, I — ahh, I wanted to see how much snow had fallen,” he stammered.

  “Well don’t open the door again,” Julia said, rubbing her hands vigorously together to ward off the cold. “I’m convinced this isn’t a good time to go for a walk, all right?”