Howl of a Thousand Winds

by Howl of a Thousand Winds (retail) (epub)

  Closing the shade again, Brad’s bloodshot eyes began searching the room for his car keys. During the search, he saw the shattered cell phone near the dead fireplace.

  His day, which had started badly, was getting worse.

  He found the keys on the kitchen bar. He gathered them up, slipped on his heavy jacket, and headed into the garage.

  Fortunately, the wind had drifted the snow away from the garage door, so it raised without protest when he pushed the button. Once the door was open, Brad started his pickup truck and allowed it to warm. His plan was to engage the four-wheel drive, rev the engine, then blast his way down the unshoveled driveway into the whitened street.

  The pickup truck had no trouble negotiating the driveway, but spun 360 degrees when it reached the road. Aside from the scare of an out of control vehicle, Brad’s senses were also overloaded with a spinning world being viewed by his still spinning hangover. He sat in the driver's seat, his foot on the brake, trying to pretend he was still in control. Once both worlds stopped spinning, he reached up and pushed the button to close the garage door, dropped into drive, and started his trek north.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Once he reached the main road, driving became a little easier. The plows had continued fighting the good fight up and down the highway, allowing for better passage toward Easerly.

  As his mind began firing on all synapses, Brad began weaving threads of logic into a plan.

  The pickup truck’s fuel tank was three quarters full, although Brad’s tank was nearing empty. He wanted to stop and grab some coffee, but the first two convenience stores he encountered were closed.

  Before he knew it, he had traveled beyond the town’s limit, and was riding the snow-paved open road. Brad quieted his protesting tummy with the promise of the hot coffee that was sure to be waiting when he reached the cabin.

  He liked the feel of the tires crunching through the compacted powder, could almost feel it through the hard plastic steering wheel. As the miles rolled behind him, the thin skin of white continued to deepen over the asphalt. His front wheels danced with the soft pack, a graceless jitterbug of skid, shimmy, and spin. The snow caressed the radial tires, then slapped their sides, then eased sensually into the cavernous depths of the nearly new treads. Like most exotic dances, this one teased between danger and delight, twirling on the edge of being out of control.

  The constant drone of the eight-cylinder engine worked as a mind numbing mantra, soothing the remnants of Brad’s hangover. The steady sound displaced the ringing in his ears that often sang a taunting and cacophonous melody of a previous night’s excess. The frontal lobe throbbing that often double-dated with the ringing ears joined the aural retreat, until the only mental evidence of last night’s intoxication was the fuzziness of his thoughts. With each passing mile marker, even the fuzziness began to wane.

  For the first time since the phone stopped chittering this morning, Brad began contemplating what might have happened to Denny and the elder Mr. Enderrin. The beauty of a snowfall often disguised the calamities to be found in its midst. With heavy snow came car wrecks, smothering drifts, malfunctioning heaters, outdoor blindness, and merciless blood-freezing death. Brad tried to envision which of the perils might have caused the Enderrin’s delay, silently rooting for the more innocuous options. He hoped to find them roasting marshmallows in the roaring fireplace as a result of a dead battery in the shiny Suburban, or coming upon the two of them shoveling drifted snow away from the front of the garage. Occasionally, the more insidious image of an overturned vehicle by the side of the highway would flash across his cerebral screen, but Brad was able to blot out those scenes with warm pictures of yesterday’s meal and conversations in the homey cabin.

  After an hour of this macabre game, Brad began searching the right side of the highway for familiar landmarks, or the hint of a dirt road cutting through trees. (No, that isn’t a pile of snow covering a wrecked car, he told himself whenever a larger drift appeared just off the shoulder of the road). As a passenger the day before, he hadn’t paid much attention to the world outside of Mrs. Enderrin’s Lincoln. In this case, it didn’t matter. The snow had transformed all things familiar into white shrouded ghosts of themselves. The rock walls had become elongated drifts, and trees took on the appearance of powdered skeletons. Brad considered that, even if he knew the route by heart, he would have trouble recognizing where he needed to turn. He began to slow, partly in acknowledgment of the drifts now commandeering larger parts of the highway, and partly to make the search easier.

  As he feared, he was 100 yards past a snow-blanketed cut in the tree line before he realized that it was the dirt road he had been looking for. Checking his side mirrors to make sure he wasn’t backing into an oncoming semi, Brad put the pickup truck in reverse and eased back toward the entrance to the Enderrin property.

  Once he was parallel to the now-white dirt road, Brad considered how he was going to get onto the path. A four-foot berm of plowed snow blocked the access, the handiwork of state crews trying to keep the highway clear overnight. He believed his four-wheel drive vehicle could climb the impacted ice, but was concerned that he might high-center the truck’s bed, which would keep any of the four wheels from reaching solid ground.

  Dropping the automatic transmission into D2, Brad eased pressure on the gas pedal as he approached the berm. It would be a balancing act, keeping enough power to the drive trains to overcome the climb, without over-revving and causing the tires to router out slippery grooves in the ice. He watched the nose of his vehicle begin to point skyward as if in heavenly contemplation, until it reached the top of the pile and returned to earth with a scraping complaint of metal on ice. The front wheels spun in open air while the back wheels continued to move the truck up and over. Finally, the front wheels gained purchase, pulling the back of the truck bed over the ice hill and onto what yesterday had been a dirt road.

  Unfortunately, ice wasn’t the only thing that scraped the bottom of Brad’s vehicle. Just below the top layer of snow, a metal mile marker post lay hidden. When the pickup slammed back down, the post punctured a neat “V” shaped hole in the gas tank under the vehicle, allowing the strong liquid to trace his progress in the snow as the fuel leaked out.

  “First obstacle down,” Brad mumbled to himself, oblivious to the damage that had just befallen his four-wheel drive. Keeping light pressure on the pedal, he guided the pickup truck along the path. He remembered a drop-off on the left side of the path, and tried to gauge where the right side of the wilderness began.

  Driving slowly down the path, he began to notice the accumulations on both sides. It appeared that the snowfall had been heavier here than in town, which was about 70 miles southwest of this wilderness. It appeared that the dirt road had amassed over 14 inches of snow, and probably would have been deeper without the protection of the overhanging trees. Some of the trees had lost weaker branches under the weight of last night’s flaky precipitation, with a few smaller branches strewn across the drive. The tops of the trees were barely sprinkled in white, an indication that the wind had been pretty strong during the storm. In calmer snowstorms, the tops of the trees would have been covered.

  About 200 feet down, a small tree had lost its battle against the elements, uprooted and laying parallel to the road. Apparently, the storm had turned mean in this part of the state. Brad eased his pickup truck past the downed pine tree and began looking for the outline of the house.

  Another hundred feet away, the opening in the tree line was stuffed with a three-foot drift of snow. Over the drift, he could see the second floor of the house. The good news was that the house was still standing. The bad news was the lack of smoke from the chimney. It appeared that the Enderrins were gone, making this entire trip worthless. It also opened the door to an even greater uneasiness: if they weren’t here, where were they? Had they slid into a ditch somewhere on the road back? Were they holed up somewhere between here and town?

  Brad goosed the engine, press
ing the truck forward. Instead of climbing the berm, as it had on the highway, the pickup crashed right through the snow, bogging only slightly as it breached the other side. Once through the snowdrift, he pulled the truck up to where he estimated the driveway curved in front of the main door, and put the vehicle in park.

  He glanced at the carriage house at the end of the driveway. Because of the wind direction, the snow hadn’t drifted too badly in front of the double doors. It had also left the windows in the doors relatively clear. Brad felt his lungs catch. Through the windows, he could see the outline of the red Suburban.

  As he turned off the truck and opened the door, Brad tried to begin a list of explanations for the lifeless appearance of the cabin. Maybe Denny and Jimbo had headed over to Mr. Berube’s house before the wrath of the storm had announced its presence. Maybe they had dampened the fire earlier to conserve firewood. Maybe they were still asleep after riding out the storm deep into the night.

  Unfortunately, the short list didn’t satisfy the elusive nerve that usually allowed Brad to know that everything was going to be all right. In fact, that nerve wasn’t going to make an appearance today.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  In the two hours since her frantic call, Mrs. Enderrin had managed to find her center. The tears and agony that had accompanied her uncharacteristic hysterics had subsided. She was light years away from a clear mind, but she was coherent enough to recognize that she had put a young man’s life in jeopardy.

  She reached for the portable phone beside her bed and pressed the redial button. She heard seven unmelodic tones, then nothing. The phone lines were still down.

  After putting the phone back onto the nightstand, Vi tried to organize her thoughts and cajole them into action. The unsteadiness in her eyes reflected the general unsteadiness she felt throughout her body. She swung her leg over the side of the bed and fished for her slipper with her toes. Once her foot was snugly encased in flannel, Vi considered a bolder move, one that involved actual standing. As she prepared to push off the side of the bed with the help of a single crutch, movement attracted her eyes to the curtained bedroom window. What she saw drained the last of her energy and stole her will.

  The shakiness in her hands had nothing to do with her age. They were testaments to her fear. She pulled her foot back onto the bed and under the covers, the flannel slipper still attached. Her foot would not be gracing the land in Easerly this day.

  Once again, it had started to snow.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It took a few minutes for Brad, equipped with nothing more than his size 11 shoes, to kick the snow away from the front door of the cabin. Part of him hoped to find the doorknob immovable, part of him hoped to find it unlocked. The more courageous part was rewarded when the knob turned easily to the right, allowing Brad to open the door enough to grab the edge with both hands. He yanked the door against the remaining snow at the bottom, eventually creating a slot that he could slide into.

  Once inside, he closed the door to keep out the cold. Unfortunately, he quickly discovered that the cold had already claimed the inside of the cabin. He had to force his exhalations downward in order to keep the mouth steam from blocking his view.

  “Hello?” he shouted. “Denny? Jimbo? Anybody home?” His voice sounded strange, caught between the embarrassment of entering someone’s home uninvited and the urgency of making the inhabitants aware of his presence.

  The large picture window allowed plenty of light into the main room. However, anxious for the company of some evidence of civilization, he flipped the light switch beside the door. The useless click echoed against the far wall, taunting him from the opposite end of the main room. The Northern Pennsylvania Electric Cooperative wasn’t going to have his back today.

  The first stop was the large fireplace next to the picture window. It was cold, filled with the ashes of the very logs Brad had placed there yesterday. It appeared that the fire had been ignored until it burned itself out sometime yesterday evening.

  He stood and looked around the room, hoping for some sign, some explanation of where the Enderrin men had gone.

  Heading into the kitchen, Brad found everything as it had been left yesterday. The dishes were put away, the towels folded neatly on the towel bar over the sink. Not a single glass graced the counter.

  From the kitchen, Brad visited the dining room. The chairs were in their delegated places, sentinels of the large wooden dining table. The half-burned candles rested in their holders at the center of the blue tablecloth, which covered the place where an intimate dinner had taken place less than 24 hours ago.

  Brad took one of the candleholders from the table and returned to the main room. Retrieving the long matches from behind the clock on the fireplace mantle, still heralding a silent 9:20, he lit the candle and tossed the remaining stick into the fireplace. He considered climbing the stairs to the second floor, but decided to tackle the back rooms first.

  The light from the main room surrendered at the doorway to the hall, leaving it enveloped in blackness. When Brad stepped into the corridor, his candle etched a beachhead of light on the walls, but did nothing to challenge the punishing cold.

  Brad stopped and tapped at the first door on the left before opening it. Inside, the bathroom was just as he remembered it from yesterday. In fact, the hand towel lying on the sink counter was in exactly the same place he had left it after dinner the previous evening. Nothing else had been disturbed.

  Closing the door behind him, Brad went across the hall and tried the door on the opposite side. The candle showed a small twin bed, covered with a handmade quilt, sitting next to a yellow pine 4-drawer bureau. The film of dust on top of the bureau testified that this room hadn’t been used in quite some time. Pulling the door shut behind him, he returned to the hall.

  Brad opened the next door on the left and discovered shelves of neatly folded towels, hand towels, and washcloths. The door across from the linen closet was a coat closet stuffed with old jackets, some fishing gear, and unlabeled boxes on the top shelf.

  Coming to the end of the hall, Brad knocked twice before pushing the door open. As soon as the door cleared the jamb, the candle blew out without so much as a warning flicker, but the light from inside the room ensured that the candle wasn’t needed anyway. However, the cold pouring from the room at the end of the hall was a different story.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  As Brad’s body shuddered a rejection of the intense cold, his eyes struggled to accommodate the brightness of the room. Looking to his left as he opened the door further, he saw a mahogany dresser with an ornate mirror above it. He couldn’t see a reflection, because the glass was sheened in frost.

  On the far wall, the light poured in through the top half of a large double hung window. Through the bottom half, snow had poured in, creating a snowdrift that spread out and even covered a part of the double bed located against the right wall. Apparently, last night’s storm had broken the window and allowed winter to commandeer this room.

  A small pile of snow had accumulated at the end of the bed, covering the face and shoulders of Jimbo Enderrin. Through the snow, Brad could make out the contour of the older man’s craggy facial features. It was obvious that no warm breath had challenged the ice covering his nose and mouth.

  The drift extended down to envelope his entire right side in virginal white. It eventually ended halfway down the bed, leaving the original blue quilt to outline the legs and feet of the dead man. It appeared that the snow had broken through and frozen Mr. Enderrin in his bed. Brad had never been this close to a dead body, but needed no special expertise to recognize that Jimbo had died during the night.

  Brad’s stomach rolled, devoid of anything to purge, distracting him from the fact that his heart had momentarily stopped then restarted a beat later. Feeling his knees surrendering to the shock, Brad pulled the door against himself for support. When he saw the silent figure behind the door, he let out a low-pitched scream.

  Si
tting in a bentwood rocker at the foot of the bed was Denny Enderrin. The snow had not reached him, but his frozen stare confirmed that death had visited this room twice. His skin was as colorless as the snow that entombed his father, the pale blue eyes dry and lifeless. Frost coated a knitted afghan that covered him from mid-chest to his feet. Small icicles hung from the tips of his fingers where they gripped the arms of the chair. The watch on his left wrist had frozen and stopped, forevermore trying to convince the world that it was 9:20.

  Inside his head, Brad began to shriek. “They are dead. Oh my God, they’re dead! They were alive but now they’re dead and I knew them but they’re frozen and I can’t do anything and they’re dead!”

  Tears filled Brad’s eyes as the quarreling emotions battled inside him. He was concurrently terrified, saddened, and revolted at the macabre scene. Dropping the dormant candle, he scrambled around the door and slammed it behind him as he raced up the hallway into the main room.

  Snatching ragged breaths, Brad looked around the room, looking for answers to questions that he couldn’t even comprehend. Finding no comfort in the silent room, he began pacing back and forth in front of the picture window, oblivious to the flakes that were now falling on the other side of the pane like an enormous snow globe shaken by a petulant child.

  Another list tried to form itself in his head, a logical and symmetrical security blanket of options.

  Call for help. Cell phone. House phone. Drive to town. Neighbors. Get away.

  Instinct led him to begin patting the pockets of his parka, but his now-crisp memory interrupted the search with a cerebral snapshot of his cellular phone in pieces by the fireplace back home. Then, even as his eyes began the involuntary scan of the room, his memory scratched an imaginary line through the idea of using a phone in the house, since Mrs. Enderrin had mentioned yesterday the absence of such a device.