The Snow Garden

by Christopher Rice

  Bravely, she prodded the area—it didn’t look like a bruise—with one finger.

  Randall didn’t stir.

  She pushed up the cuff of his jeans and was shocked to see that the mark extended up his shin with the same consistency and color.

  “Randall?”

  But he was down for the count, his breaths slow and deep and his head tilted to one side against the pillow. She released his foot and rose from the mattress. April stood in the open door.

  “He just needs to sleep it off. He’ll be all right.”

  But April was staring past her. Kathryn followed her gaze.

  Jesse’s mattress was stripped, the wall above it a shock of white cinder-block. The surface of his desk was clear. The large desk calendar was missing.

  Kathryn looked to April for confirmation that she wasn’t hallucinating.

  April just shook her head.

  Kathryn went to his closet and pulled back the curtain. Even the hangers were gone. She let the curtain fall, turned to April, and lifted both arms in a gesture of silent belief.

  Randall started to snore.

  “I don’t know,” April said, more agitated this time. “Some people just flip out, Kathryn. One of my lab partners lost her shit over the break and told her parents she’d rather die than come back. I mean, think about it—it’s not like Jesse had any friends here.”

  Kathryn watched April shove her arms hurriedly into an extra large T-shirt. By contrast, Kathryn was almost placid, sitting on the edge of her bed with her hands folded in her lap.

  “Maybe he withdrew?” April asked.

  “You’re more upset than I am. I don’t even like him.”

  April’s face clouded. She sat down on the edge of her bed, maybe hoping to find Kathryn’s calm by matching her pose.

  “This might not have anything to do with anything. And I wasn’t going to tell you.”

  “But you are. Right now.”

  April gave one last sigh. “The night I left, I ran into Randall standing outside the door, listening. Jesse was obviously with someone.”

  “You do realize that Randall, every time he wanted to go in his own room, he had to stop and figure out if Jesse was screwing someone?”

  “Yeah, well. This time it was a guy.”

  Kathryn grunted and lowered her eyes from April’s, afraid of where this was headed, even though she had suspected it for months now. “How do you know?”

  “I heard. And so did Randall.”

  “Well, I always thought Jesse had it in him,” she said wryly. “Is that all?”

  “Randall went in the room.”

  Kathryn focused on April again, as if the sight of her was an anchor amid the swirl of her revelation. “How do you know?”

  “Because I pretended to leave, but I waited down the hall, went back, and checked.”

  “Congratulations. You were right.”

  “That is not why I told you, Kathryn!”

  “Why, then?”

  “Because . . .” April paused, obviously thinking on her feet. “

  Maybe it’s poetic justice,” Kathryn said brightly. “Jesse screws whoever he wants and gets rid of them whenever he wants. Maybe this time he picked someone he couldn’t get rid of.”

  Kathryn raised her eyebrows. As the larger implications of her words settled over them both, April snapped her mouth shut. “That is so not what I meant. I’m not saying Randall did—”

  “What are you saying?” Kathryn asked sharply.

  “Maybe Jesse went home, Kathryn. Maybe once he got there—”

  “He told me he wasn’t going home.”

  “Maybe someone made him go home. Look, we might all waltz around here like we’re independent adults, but we’re not the ones writing the check for this place.” It was a tempting theory. Maybe Jesse had simply feigned self-possession and independence, and maybe his father, who he had described to her with a strange detachment, had decided to yank the rug out from under Jesse’s new life.

  What exactly was it that Jesse had said? Kathryn tried to remember. It was time for him to move on, but his father hadn’t realized it yet. Cozumel, Randall had slurred only a moment earlier. Jesse went to Cozumel to escape his father?

  Her head hurt.

  April killed her desk lamp. “Just ask Randall in the morning. I’m sure he’ll know.” She buried herself in the comforter.

  After several seconds of staring at the floor, Kathryn got up and went back to Randall’s room.

  Everything was as she had left it, including Randall, who was still stuporously asleep. She went to Jesse’s desk and opened the middle drawer. Empty. So were the other three. She scanned the place again. Not one single shred of Jesse, and that was what bothered her. What-. ever the reason for his departure, it had to have been hurried. Wasn’t there one thing that would have been too heavy to pack? Moreover, if Jesse was leaving Atherton, why did he bother to take all his textbooks with him?

  He didn’t, moron, said a voice inside her head. He threw them in the trash.

  Disgusted by her swelling suspicion, she sat down on the mattress. It didn’t give the way she knew it should and she heard springs squeak, the sound slightly choked. Off. Down on all fours, she peered under the bed, scanning the underside of the bed frame through shadow. Finally, she saw what had caused the strange sound.

  Something was wedged between the mattress and the springs, shoved back to the far left corner, almost to the headboard.

  She got to her feet, glanced again at Randall to make sure he was still out, and then lifted the extra long twin with both hands. Hidden there was Jesse’s laptop computer.

  She held up the mattress with one arm and removed the laptop from the bed of coils.

  Why would Jesse bother to get rid of his textbooks and leave behind a brand-new computer he could use anywhere? Considering the thoroughness of the job he’d done, she found it almost impossible to believe that he just forgot it.

  There was only one logical answer, and even though she didn’t like it, she had to be the one to ask the question.

  Jesse wasn’t the one who cleaned out his room.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SECURITY LIGHTS THREW HALOS OUT FROM THE GARAGE DOORS ONTO the expansive parking lot between both banks of storage lockers. Randall crouched down over the padlock, working the bolt cutter with short punches. Behind him, Tim had moved in as close as he could get to Randall, safely out of the nearest corona of harsh, bluish light. Of all nights, this one was clear, windless, and, Randall thought, oppressively silent in a manner that only amplified the grating of the bolt cutter chewing against the padlock.

  “Shit,” Tim finally said in a panicked whisper.

  “Calm down.”

  Tim stepped closer, adjusting the flashlight’s beam. In his other hand, he held the new padlock they’d use to replace this one. If the son of a bitch ever came off. “So far this whole thing’s been too easy. Our luck is bound to run out.”

  “Say that again and .. .” Randall clenched his teeth as if it would add torque. There was a loud snap and before Randall knew it the lock clattered to the concrete.

  “Inside!” Tim commanded.

  Randall yanked the lever and held on to it as the garage door ascended. Tim ducked through and Randall followed into the darkness, groping to find the interior lock. He shoved the door down. It hit the concrete, bounced, and then settled an inch above the pavement.

  All Randall could see was the flashlight beam angled purposelessly toward the ceiling. He grabbed for it and Tim grunted as Randall pulled it from his grip. “We’re safe,” he assured Tim.

  “Bullshit,” Tim hissed. “I bet we’re about to make a bunch of new four-legged friends.”

  “Any rat stupid enough to stick around here is frozen solid.”

  “I’d still fell better if I was . . . Fuck!”

  Randall swung the beam just in time to catch Tim righting himself, his hands braced against something massive concealed by a canvas tarp.
>
  “You all right?”

  “It’s a car,” Tim said, catching his breath.

  Tim remained hunched over in the beam’s halo, but he wasn’t injured. He drew the tarp up with both fists until a rear bumper and license plate came into a view.

  “Make that a van. An Aerostar. Christ, my mom drove one in, like, 1983.”

  “The Volvo was new.”

  “You think this was Lisa’s?”

  “Maybe.”

  “The plates haven’t expired. It can’t be that old.”

  Randall swung the flashlight beam away from Tim, who let out a frightened, “Hey!”

  In a slow, sweeping motion, Randall revealed empty pavement and a corrugated metal wall—and a pile of cardboard boxes that might contain everything Lisa wanted to keep a secret from her husband. Breathless, he approached them. They were all empty. He kicked one of them into the others and they toppled. “Dammit.”

  “Over here!” Tim ordered. The van was obviously the only thing inside the entire locker. Randall complied, angled the beam onto the Aerostar as Tim pulled back the tarp, yanking it from the van’s roof before sending it sliding down the rear window.

  “Fuck me,” Tim whispered. “Give it over.”

  Randall did, and Tim aimed the flashlight through one of the van’s side windows. The two backseats were filled with cardboard boxes, some taped securely, others spilling sleeves through their top flaps. More clothes than Randall had found in Paula Willis’ guest bedroom, and personal belongings too, it looked like. Several open flaps revealed what looked like scrapbooks, as well as hardcover books left over from Lisa’s brief postgraduate career. When they came to the driver’s side door, Tim pulled the handle. The door popped open.

  “Get in,” Tim ordered, and Randall rounded the nose of the van before climbing into the passenger seat.

  For a relative antique of a minivan that had spent extended time inside a locker, the Aerostar was surprisingly clean. The seats and carpet were vacuumed, and the flashlight beam glinted over a full, capped bottle of water wedged between the cup holders.

  “She was on her way here,” Randall said.,

  “What?” Tim jerked forward in the driver’s seat, angling the beam toward the ceiling, which filled the van with diffuse light. The words had come out of Randall’s mouth before he even had time to process the thought. “Keep going,” Tim urged him.

  “She doesn’t want him to know she was leaving until he gets the note. This way it can be a big surprise. She rents the locker so she can take her sweet time packing up all her things. A couple boxes at a time, never so much that Eric gets suspicious. Then, when she’s ready, she hops in the Volvo like she’s going to her sister’s, but instead she comes here. And Eric doesn’t have a clue until he gets her little good-bye note. And it’s the perfect revenge. Because he’s ignored her for so long, just assumed she would always stick around. And she’s gone before he even has the chance to know what hit him.”

  “If only she could have skipped the scotch,” Tim muttered.

  They sat thinking through this scenario for a few seconds before Tim began sweeping the flashlight across the rear of the van. “So what now? We go through her scrapbooks?”

  Randall’s eyes followed the beam.

  “There’s no way we can go through all of that back there. We have to unload it.”

  “Randall, this just looks like clothes and photographs. I mean .. .” Tim froze the beam in mid-scan, and Randall saw what had caught Tim’s attention. The sealed manila envelope rested on the carpeted floor behind them between the two middle seats. Randall reached back and retrieved it. He turned it over on his lap as Tim shined the flashlight down on the address.

  “David Handler?” Tim asked.

  “No clue.”

  “Maybe Lisa had something on the side too.”

  Randall grimaced, tore the envelope open, and dumped the contents onto his lap: a cover letter clipped to what looked like some sort of lease. Randall took the letter and handed the document to Tim, who turned the beam back to the ceiling.

  “Attorney at law!” Randall read off the address line at the top left corner of the page.

  “This is.. . Wait a minute ...”

  Randall began reading the letter aloud. “Dear Mr. Handler, my apologies for the delay in getting back to you, but since our phone conversation last month, I have gone on a sort of fact-finding mission that will hopefully make my case somewhat stronger than you considered it to be last month.”

  Wordy, Randall thought. Like the way her sister Paula Willis had tried to get everything out before her time was up. But Paula Willis was cancer-free, and Lisa probably had no idea that her own days were numbered.

  “This is a deed. Or something,” Tim said without looking up from the paper he’d flattened against the steering wheel.

  “I recently discovered that my husband is the owner of a property not far from our own home. He has, according to county records, owned this property since his senior year at Atherton, and has never seen fit to make me aware of it. This is probably because without my consent, or even advice, he decided to hand this peace of real estate over to one of his graduate students.”

  “Mitchell-fucking-Seaver?” Tim cried out. Randall looked up before realizing that Tim had read the name right off the deed, which he held up in one hand for Randall to examine. “He gave that loser a house?” Randall examined the real estate deed. It handed over ownership of 231 Slope Street to one Mitchell Clarence Seaver on the second day of October, the previous year. “The Adamites,” Randall whispered as he saw Kathryn emerging from Mitchell’s car, then typing furiously on the computer.

  Tim hadn’t heard. “All right, so this David Handler guy is obviously a divorce attorney. And if Lisa was jumping all over some real estate transaction, then I doubt she knew about you and Eric. So I guess we did what we came to ...”

  But Randall wasn’t listening. What had Eric told him when he asked about Mitchell? Not only is Mitchell not even homosexual, he’s barely what you’d call sexual, he said. He’d bristled at the mention of his name, turned his back on Randall in the kitchen, and accused Randall of not being able to understand an academic type like Mitchell. And he’d showed Randall the note when he knew what time the accident had happened, knew that Lisa hadn’t seen them in bed together that night.

  Randall slammed one fist against the closed glove compartment, an intoxicating blend of rage and relief running through his veins. Tim jerked in the driver’s seat. “Jesus! What?”

  “The file on Lauren Raines. Remember? The one you thought had nothing to do with this. It was an application, Tim.”

  “For what?”

  “Two-thirty-one Slope Street isn’t just a house. It’s some kind of cult!”

  “Oh, come on, Randall! It was a girl feeling sorry for herself.”

  “Yeah, and test results for every Venereal disease under the sun. Listen to me, Eric talks about this heretical sect in his book. They’re called the Brethren of the Free Spirit—”

  “Randall!”

  “Shut up, Tim. I’m serious. Supposedly, they were this group of people that believed if they held orgies they could cleanse themselves, or purge themselves, I don’t know but— ”

  “Get out of the car, Randall!” Panic sharpened Tim’s words.

  Randall turned to see the air drifting in front of the windshield had a strange substance to it, parting and shifting in tendrils, driven by invisible currents through the darkness.

  Smoke.

  Without warning, his chest tightened and his throat began to close up, turning his breaths into stabbing gasps. The flashlight beam angled at the van’s ceiling revealed a thickening cloud, and when he heard a series of popping and ticking sounds, Tim pivoted against the driver’s seat and Randall, unable to breathe, saw flickering firelight silhouetting his profile from beyond the glass.

  “Tim . . . "But it came out in a breathy whisper.

  “All right. All right. Wait a minute.�
�� Tim hadn’t heard him and was talking to himself. “Just get out and we’ll see. ...”

  “No!”

  A strange stench filled the van—the burning of pure fumes. A raw chemical smell that summoned images of twisted tracks, overturned fuel cars, and a wall of flame—specters that plunged Randall into a paralytic panic. Tim was tugging on his shoulder.

  “Randall. The whole place is metal. Calm down! We’ll just get out-”

  With a sound like muted thunder, the garage door flew open and suddenly a curtain of fire blossomed behind the van.

  “Tim!”

  Tim’s gaze shot from the flame-fringed doorway to Randall, his eyes widening when he saw his friend pitched forward, both hands braced against the glove compartment. Randall could hear Tim’s breaths , whistling through his nose, and Tim now seemed more alarmed by Randall’s panic than by the flame-filled exit behind them. Randall felt himself shaking his head in denial, and then saw Tim turn forward, hands tearing at the visor overhead before he scanned the steering wheel in front of him.

  “Son of a bitch!” Tim cried.

  When Randall saw him grasp the keys dangling from the ignition, he shouted, “No. Tim!”

  “There’s only one way out of here, Randall!”

  Randall just groaned. If he had been able to breathe, it might have been a scream. The van’s engine sputtered to life and Tim’s foot hit the gas. Randall fell backward against the seat and his hands flew to his face as orange light filtered in at the edges of his vision. As Tim backed out of the locker, Randall’s ears filled with a roar that had previously been confined to the nightmares of his past. His heart stopped hammering in his chest and his vision returned to total black.

  On the second floor of Folberg, Kathryn found an individual study carrel bare of books on its single shelf. She glanced up and down the long aisle before hefting her backpack onto the desk. For the entire day, she had walked from class to class with half her mind focused on her imminent exams, and the other half focused on Jesse’s laptop shifting around at the bottom of her book bag.