Howl of a Thousand Winds

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

  Before he could ask another question, Brad’s reverie was disturbed by the sound of an increasing breeze blasting against the picture window. The storm had begun again in earnest, with the promise of heavy snow and vicious wind.

  “So what do we do now?” Brad asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Denny replied. “I know we should leave, but…I can’t leave…him…”

  “Well, we can put him in the back of your Suburban. If we start now, we should be able to reach town by dark.”

  “I’m sorry, Brad,” Denny responded, staring out the picture window at the snowflakes swirling in the wind. “I can’t do that.”

  ”Can’t?”

  Denny stood up and walked to the picture window. “Look at him.”

  Brad got up and joined Denny at the window, careful not to actually touch him. Across the frozen lake, he could see the house he had noticed yesterday, obviously buttoned up for the winter. The shutters on every window were closed and fastened against the elements, the back porch barren of patio furniture. And something more. Sometimes, you could look at a house and just sense that no people walked its floors. You could almost feel the absence of life energy.

  At first, he wasn’t sure what Denny was talking about. Was he referring to the trees? The windows? An animal he hadn’t noticed?

  Then he saw it.

  Coming from behind the left dormer on the roof of the house, Brad could make out a lone figure.

  It was clad in what appeared to be a white snowsuit, camouflaging perfectly with the snow on the roof. It wasn’t until the suit stepped in front of the closed green shutters that he could actually see it.

  Brad and Denny stood silently at the picture window. While they were watching, the figure began kicking the shutters. With each kick, the green wood splintered and caved into the protected window case within. Another kick shattered the window, allowing the remains of the shutters to tumble into the room beyond.

  The man pushed his way into the room, angrily punching away the last of the window frame until all that remained was a clear hole into the house.

  He reappeared a moment later and crawled back out of the destroyed window, then disappeared against the white backdrop of the pitched roof before reappearing in front of a second dormer in the center of the house. Reaching on top of the dormer, he began ripping the cedar shingles off and flinging them into the snow-covered yard below.

  “He comes with the storm,” Denny whispered, his voice low and filled with a frightened hatred.

  “And he knows there’s nothing we can do,” Brad finished. “The storm knocked out the electricity, which means the phones are probably gone too. We couldn’t call the police if we had to, and he’ll be gone long before any police vehicle could make it out here anyway.”

  Denny looked at Brad with a coldness he had never seen in the younger Enderrin.

  “He’s not afraid of the police. Or us.”

  Brad doubted that this punk from town could intimidate the local police, but judging by the enormous strength that allowed him to destroy wooden shutters with a single blow, he was obviously more than Brad and Denny could handle. Besides, they had their own tragedy to solve.

  While Brad considered this, he noticed that the man working on the second dormer had stopped, a cedar shingle held in his hand. The white-clad interloper turned and faced in the direction of the Enderrin cabin.

  Brad knew that, at this distance, the man probably couldn’t even see into the darkened picture window, much less know that he was the subject of a surveillance. And since Brad couldn’t make out any facial features of the snow suited vandal, he knew that the snowsuit couldn’t identify either of the men watching.

  But suddenly, Brad knew something else. He knew that the man was staring straight at him, straight down into his soul.

  The vandal extended his left arm, pointing at the Enderrin cabin. But he wasn’t just marking the cabin. The man was pointing at Brad.

  Then, before Brad could process the meaning of such actions, the snow-suited figure turned his back, then whipped around with a speed and strength that Brad couldn’t fathom. Flying across the lake, he could see something heading toward them like a misshapen brown pie plate.

  It was the cedar shingle.

  Brad’s logical mind knew that a man couldn’t throw a one pound piece of wood over a half-mile, the distance across the lake. But his eyes locked onto exactly that, spinning like a Frisbee toward the large window.

  The sound was like a gunshot as the shingle struck the lower right corner of the picture window. Denny and Brad both dove to the floor and covered their heads, waiting for the glass to implode on their prone bodies, but the cascade never came.

  Brad’s heart was racing while his mind tried to process the impossible. For the second time in less than 10 minutes, his eyes had witnessed something that was physically impossible, but no less a reality. Uncovering his head, he looked up at the window.

  A crack at the lower right corner of the glass marked where the shingle had struck it.

  Brad and Denny slowly came to their feet, then returned their gaze to the window.

  The snowsuited man had returned his attention to the dormer. With one powerful kick, the shutter exploded into the window, shattering the upper and lower panes.

  After kicking the rest of the window frame into oblivion, the snow suited man turned toward the Enderrin cabin a final time. Again, he raised his left arm, pointing at the cabin. At Brad. He nodded once, then turned and disappeared into the darkness of the newly breached house.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Denny and Brad stood for another 10 minutes, staring in silence at the house across the lake, but the figure never reappeared. Finally, Denny abandoned his place at the window and headed to the small bookcase to the left of the hallway entrance. Reaching behind a book called The Shining by Stephen King, he produced a half full bottle of scotch.

  “One of dad’s relics,” Denny said. “I think it’s appropriate.”

  Denny drank straight from the bottle, then handed it to Brad.

  Looking at the label, he noticed that the bottle contained single mull scotch that was 12 years old back in 1979. If aging made the scotch better, this one must be nearing perfection.

  “To your dad,” he said, then tipped the bottle and drank deeply before handing it back. The neck and spout of the bottle were ice cold.

  Denny placed the bottle, now nearly empty, on the end table beside the sofa and sat down.

  The two men drank in silence, allowing their thoughts to coagulate.

  “When a man builds things, he leaves a legacy,” Denny said, staring into the now dying flames. “Children can be a legacy, but they often become independent, unrecognizable. A building can undergo changes, remodeling, but it will still stand as a testament to the man who built it.”

  “I wouldn’t know about either,” Brad replied. “I’ve never built anything. No children, either.”

  “Does it ever bother you that, when you leave this world, you won’t leave anything behind?” Denny asked.

  “When I was younger, it never crossed my mind,” Brad said. “But now that I’m older, I can’t shake it.”

  “I know. I’m like you. No kids, no monuments - nothing to even mark that I was here. My dad at least left this place. I’ve left nothing.”

  Brad began feeding the next batch of logs to the quivering fire. “Sometimes I can taste my own mortality. It’s like an emptiness, the way I think it’ll be after. These days especially, I ache knowing that, if I died tomorrow, nobody would miss me.”

  “We’re all missed,” Denny offered. “Whether it’s the guy at the 7-Eleven that notices you haven’t been in for a while, or the secretary in your office that wonders whatever happened to you. It’s not really a question of whether we’ll be missed, but how long will we be missed. When you leave children, or any other true legacy, the meter runs a little longer.”

  “How about your mom? The fuse might not be as long, but she wou
ld remember you. That is, if you went first.”

  Denny considered this for a long moment, looking for an answer in the amber liquid still filling a quarter of the bottle on the table.

  A new voice broke the silence, stopping Brad’s heart for the third time this day.

  “Does any of it matter?”

  The earth turned, time racing against land and speed on its axis. Brad could almost feel that rotation, his equilibrium toppling like a child’s top at the end of its spin.

  The voice was familiar.

  His eyes wide, he looked at Denny for some lifeline of sanity. There was no lifeline to be found in the empty face still staring at the remaining Scotch.

  Jimbo Enderrin walked over to the fireplace and began warming his hands.

  “No matter how big the fire is, I can never seem to get my hands warm.”

  Brad slowly turned to face the big man beside him. Jimbo was dressed just as he was when he left dinner the night before. There was no sign of ice or snow, his skin smooth and undamaged.

  “This isn’t real,” he said, backpedaling toward the door. “You’re not real. None of this is real! Goddamn it, you’re DEAD!”

  With the final word, Brad spun and raced to the front door and burst into the returning storm.

  “I’ve got to leave! I’ve got to get out of here!” his mind babbled, offering explanations to legs that churned aimlessly.

  Kicking wildly against the snow, he finally chose the most direct route to his silent pickup truck. He opened the door and jumped in, the keys jangling in his shaking hand as he inserted the square headed tag of Ford metal into the ignition.

  The engine caught immediately. Without taking a split second to offer gratitude to any deity, he jammed the truck into D and tried to push the gas pedal through the floorboard.

  All four tires immediately began to spin in the snow, burning quick ruts before catching purchase on the hard ground beneath. The truck lurched forward, then began to spin as Brad yanked the steering wheel in the direction of the exiting driveway. Too panicked to remember the ice-driving techniques he had learned as a teen, he continued yanking the steering wheel in conflicting directions, the pedal never leaving the floor, until the truck managed to complete two full 360 degree spins.

  Finally surrendering the gas pedal just long enough to lock up the brakes, Brad took a deep breath before easing back onto the gas and guiding the vehicle toward the path.

  He made it another 30 feet before the engine began to cough, starved for the liquid that gave it life. By the time he neared the tree line, the motor offered up its own ragged eulogy before conceding to the silence of the snowfall.

  Brad kicked the gas pedal like the bass drum in a punk rock band while twisting the ignition. The rhythmic whine of the starter testified to the eulogy offered earlier by the dying engine; the vehicle was out of gas.

  Refusing to accept the pickup truck’s mortality, Brad continued to grind the starter until it too passed into the land of the automotive deceased, marked by the death rattle of a clicking solenoid.

  “Damn, damn, DAMN!” he shouted, opening the door and jumping out of the useless machine.

  Brad’s feet began pushing toward the carriage house even before he realized that this was the destination.

  The Suburban was still sitting behind the hinged garage doors.

  Using his shoes and ungloved hands, he managed to frantically push away enough snow in less than a minute so that he could open the left door.

  Once inside, he found himself as scared as he had been standing next to the dead man at the fireplace.

  When he had arrived at the cabin yesterday with Mrs. Enderrin, the garaged Suburban had appeared to gleam through the window, a testament to the care given by a man with an appreciation for his ride. Now, Brad stood before a dulled vehicle that had spent decades coated with the dust and cobwebs that could only be found on a palette of time and inattention. The mudded license plate confirmed what he already feared; an expiration date of 1988. The car had lived untouched in this vehicular mausoleum for over 20 years.

  Creeping around to the left side, Brad opened the driver’s door. The absence of illumination from the dome light announced that the battery had long since failed its Die Hard test. It was a meaningless statement, since the ignition was empty anyway. The Suburban would stay here, just like those who currently inhabited the cabin.

  Brad closed the door and headed back toward the half-opened garage door. Once outside, his mental list of options began to recede.

  Keeping a wide berth, Brad headed toward the tree line on the left side of the cabin. He needed to find a phone. He needed to find people, someone who could help. He needed someone who could help him find reality.

  Working his way around the side of the cabin, he began to kick through the snow toward the lake. An idea began to form in his head.

  There was a house on the opposite side of the lake. While he didn’t relish the idea of consorting with vandals, he thought that there might be a phone in the violated house. Or, he might be able to convince the interlopers to take him to safety. Or, as a last resort, he could hijack the vandals’ car and head to the nearest highway patrol barracks. At this point, any option was more palatable than returning to the cabin where the Enderrins lived. Or didn’t live.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Brad carefully made his way to the dock that extended into the lake. He turned and looked at the cabin rising behind him. The picture window was vacant, save for the small crack that was visible in the lower left corner. He knew they were still there, but for the moment at least, they weren’t watching.

  Returning his attention to the dock, he began easing his way toward the ladder at the distant end. It occurred to him that the ice might not be strong enough to walk on, and that he needed to climb down the ladder and test the surface before heading across.

  Halfway down the dock, he stopped to look at the house on the opposite shore. The falling snow would have given the house a Currier and Ives appearance, if not for the dormer windows staring malevolently into the storm like a feral animal with its eyes removed.

  A chill that had nothing to do with the temperature took over Brad’s body, bringing his teeth together in an unbidden chatter. He stood immobile at the dock’s midway point, considering which of the two choices he now faced would constitute the lesser evil.

  While warming in the cabin earlier, he had seen the vandal through the window, at a distance. Even from there, he could sense the foreboding.

  But in the cabin behind him, he had shared the frigid air with two men he knew to be dead. Or were supposed to be. He began to replay his conversation with his friend, his dead, frozen, walking-around-and-talking friend. And the sight of the man he had seen frozen and covered with snow in a bed less than two hours ago, who had joined him by the fire. He didn’t sense the same foreboding, but he couldn’t get his mind around the idea of cadavers who now didn’t look dead.

  Brad shook off the snow that had quickly accumulated on his head, face, and shoulders, then resumed his trek toward the water-ward end of the pier. Reaching the ladder, he took a deep breath that pierced his lungs with bitter cold air and stepped onto the first rung. Six downward steps brought him close enough to stretch his foot down to the frozen surface of the lake.

  There wasn’t even an audible “crack” as his boot passed through the slushy membrane and into the frigid water. He jerked his now-soaked foot out of the lake and cursed the result. The lake was frozen over, but not frozen solid enough to walk on.

  Two steps up the ladder, his eyes came level with the snow covered surface of the dock. The first thing his eyes beheld was a pair of dark brown ski boots.

  His eyes slowly rising, the ski boots disappeared under the banded cuff of tan ski pants, which eventually became obscured mid-thigh by a matching tan parka.

  “He’s going to kill you, you know.”

  Brad looked up at the beautiful face of the woman standing before him, her long br
own hair cascading over the parka’s downed hood and brown turtleneck sweater underneath. Her soft brown eyes were at the same time concerned but melancholy as they looked at him. He couldn’t see her hands, which were stuffed deep into the jacket pockets.

  “Who are you?” he asked, taking another step up the ladder.

  The woman looked into Brad’s eyes, reaching deep into his soul with a silent message of worry and love and terror.

  “No one warned me,” she said. “There was nowhere for me to go. You can find warmth at the cabin. But he’ll kill you anyway.”

  “But why? Why would Denny and his father want me dead?”

  The woman looked up into the increasing snowfall, terror filling her face. She quickly turned and began running toward land.

  “Wait!” he yelled, scrambling up the last few rungs of the ladder. “Please don’t leave! I need to talk to you!”

  Not wanting to slip on the ice-encrusted wooden two-by-fours of the dock, Brad’s fast walk was no match for the woman’s gait. As the distance between them increased, Brad noticed that there was no snow accumulating on the woman’s hair or parka. In fact, it almost appeared that the snow was passing through the parka.

  A few more steps, and the woman seemed to blend into the whiteness of the thick falling precipitation. Then she was gone.

  His walk slowed as he tried to convince himself that it was a trick of the storm. But when he looked down, the final vestiges of logic dashed through the open window of shock. The only footprints in the snow were his.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The intensifying snowstorm had created a photographic negative of a starless midnight sky, the blinding whiteness making the senses of contrast and depth perception almost non-existent. The wind was in full voice, passing through the surrounding trees like an unending breath through a thousand clarinet reeds.

  Silent and motionless, Brad was oblivious to the aesthetic qualities of the sights and sounds accompanying Mother Nature’s winter show. The adrenalin flowing through his wide-open blood vessels kept his mind from acknowledging the places on his face and hands where frostbite would soon set up shop.