The Ghosts of Winter

by Christopher Coleman

  “What...what do you mean?”

  “I mean which part? How did I know to dress the kids warmly, or that those things were coming again?” She paused. “Or that you didn’t really leave us? At least not forever.”

  I dropped my eyes, knowing the true meaning of shame for perhaps the first time in my adult life. “My god, Charlotte, I...I am so sorry. I can’t...I just wanted to—”

  “Prove to me that it was safe, right? That we could make it to the river?”

  “I...yes. I’m sorry.”

  She smiled. “It’s safe when we’re together, David. Always remember that. When the family is apart, that’s when things go to shit.”

  I nodded.

  “That said, you were right. We have waited too long.” She paused and added, “And that part was my fault. That day at the bridge...how many of them there were, it...it just spooked me. I couldn’t imagine ever trying again. But we should have. Weeks ago. And obviously we have no choice now. I don’t know what’s on the other side of the Mississippi, whether it’s salvation or a death sentence, but I do know what’s on this side, and it sucks.”

  I chuckled. “Yes. Yes, it does.” I looked down at the dead creature at my feet. “Sucks for these guys, too. Helluva couple shots you fired off back there.”

  Charlotte smirked and nodded, as if she’d impressed herself as well, and then she looked to Emerson and Ryan. “Had some steady hands helping me.”

  I looked to the kids, searching for any signs of distress. “How we doing, Nelson?” I asked, the boy now standing between his older siblings, wedged there as if for safety.

  “I’m fine, I guess.”

  I looked at Charlotte, eyebrows raised, verifying.

  Charlotte was visibly choked up by the question and gave only a quick nod. “We need to get across. That’s all. I thought I had the inhaler with me but...I don’t know, I don’t. And we had an episode when we started but...we worked it out.”

  Charlotte started to tear up, and I quickly put an arm around her, quelling any sobs that were lingering within. I hugged her alone, separate from the kids, who now stood on the lake bank and watched their parents flounder.

  Charlotte rallied and I stepped back from her and stared at my brood once more, each of whom seemed to be bundled in seven layers of tees and jeans and hoodies, many of the clothing items mine which I hadn’t seen in years, ones I’d left stored in the cabin never to be used again. “You guys ready to do some hiking?” I asked. “We’re halfway to the prize.”

  They all smiled and nodded. Newton at their feet meowed on cue.

  “David, no!”

  “What?” I was genuinely confused. “What’s wrong?”

  “We can’t hike the trail to the end. How far is it from here? Ten miles?”

  “Maybe a little more?”

  She looked at Nelson and then back to me again. “We can’t risk it.”

  “I don’t know what choice we have, Charlotte. Either way we’re going to have to walk. The lake runs out in another five or six miles and then we’ll have to go by foot. Lake Sloman doesn’t go—”

  “I know where it goes, David.” She didn’t yell, but the text of Charlotte’s words suggested condemnation. “I got this far, didn’t I?”

  I frowned and dropped my eyes, discouraged that the joy from moments ago had already disintegrated to tension. “Charlotte, I just—"

  “Six miles is less than eleven or twelve, and...” She broke off the sentence.

  “And what?”

  The tears that had been mostly held at bay earlier now streamed down Charlotte’s cheeks like raindrops. “They could be waiting for us.” She looked up at me now, bewildered at why I needed clarity on her statement. “Anywhere. Anywhere along the trail! And if they are and we have to run, how are we...” Charlotte put the heels of her hand to her forehead and slowly dipped into a crouching position, and then she let her head drop and stared at the ground below. Soon her torso began to heave as she sobbed quietly. Finally, she rocked back and collapsed onto her backside and stared up at the sky, which was now a bulging blend of white and gray shades.

  I waited a few beats for the wave of emotion to wash over Charlotte before I said a word, all the while giving reassuring smiles to the kids, a signal that all would be fine. I then walked beside Charlotte and stood for just a moment before sitting beside her on the beach, bending my knees and hugging them to my chest, matching her posture.

  “Okay, Charlotte,” I said, staring out at the water as I spoke, “if you think the water is the way to go, then the boat it is.”

  THE COLD WAS MORE BITING now, and the sweater I’d offered earlier, and which had been declined by the group, was now draped across Ryan’s shoulders, the child who had always hated cold weather most. Thankfully, the wind wasn’t blowing, but the air was thick with the threat of frost, and the feeling of late fall was rampant.

  In spite of the throng of creatures that had been roving along the edges earlier, we kept the boat relatively close to the shoreline as we rowed east, thirty yards or so from the bank, along the side of the lake opposite from the trail, where the row of lakeside homes sat on the hill high above the water. It was the side where the larger horde of White Ones had stood captivated by Charlotte and the kids when they passed several miles back; but there were few large beaches like that one that we could see in the distance, and we didn’t want to drift too far into the middle of the lake, in the event a storm suddenly arose, or the boat became further compromised, both of which seemed possible, if not probable.

  The home-side bank had other benefits as well, not the least of which was access to the various piers that extended from the backs of the properties. Thus, unlike on the trail side, which offered stops only at the beaches beneath the overlooks, on the house side we could reach a pier in a matter of moments.

  After another ten minutes, we came parallel with the next overlook along our route, indicating we’d traveled another three miles, and, from our position on the opposite side of the lake, we could see the bank was empty of White Ones. Charlotte and I locked eyes for a moment and sighed, knowing it was only a few more miles before we reached the end of the lake, at which point we would be forced to leave the boat behind and travel the rest of the way by land. If all was clear—which was an ‘If’ as big as an elephant—we would hopefully make it to the river by sundown.

  Of course, the thought of just reaching the river or some tributary thereabouts seemed daunting when I laid it out in front of me, and the idea of actually finding a way to cross the river rendered as nothing short of impossible. There was no use agonizing on the future, however, the only focus I needed was on the matter at hand. Reaching the end of the lake.

  I pivoted my shoulders left to check on the condition of my children, all of whom seemed cold and tired but hanging in. Ryan and Emerson were positioned on either side of the boat, bundled fetal-like, their shoulders pressed against the gunwale. Nelson was in the back with Newton, centered in the boat, his breathing shallow, his eyelids dipping and opening instantly before settling again. It was going to be a tough slog once we reached the far bank, but there were few other options.

  I turned forward once again and continued rowing, dipping the oar faster now, encouraging Charlotte with my eyes and a nod of my head to keep pace, which she did, and suddenly we were energized, feeling that last shot of adrenaline we would need to reach our goal.

  Splash!

  The sound had come from directly behind the boat, and though I’d heard it clearly, it arrived to me as if from a memory. The reality of the sound lagged only a second behind, however, and as I turned to see the source of it, the piercing rattle of Charlotte’s shriek hit me like an electromagnetic pulse, as if her scream had come through a portal from another world, dampened and echoey. I felt staggered, my brain heavy and dulled, as if some primitive defense mechanism had been triggered deep inside to keep me from panicking or fainting or acting rashly. For an instant, I was rendered incapable of receiving bot
h the sound of Charlotte’s terror and the absence of my youngest son from his position on the stern seat.

  Nelson had been in the boat woozy and struggling only seconds earlier but was now gone. Disappeared. As if some invisible lagoon magician had waved a wand and made him vanish, leaving only Newton behind.

  “Nelson?” It was Emerson, and this time the name of my son brought me alive to the moment as my muscles flooded with cortisone, and I rocketed to my feet and began frantically searching the water for my son, slowly and focused, knowing there was not a second to waste if my son were going to live.

  But the area of the lake behind the boat was a steady wake, unexceptional; I couldn’t find him.

  Charlotte was already standing, not hesitating for a second, the rifle instinctively up to her face, ready to fire. But the lake to the naked eye was absent of danger, no target to speak of. Then, like a snowball rising to the surface of an oil slick, the head of the Corrupted breached the water, twenty yards away, perhaps, the dome of its head like a bobbing orb as it hovered in place for just a moment before skimming the surface, away from the boat. A second later, the top of Nelson’s head appeared behind it, his too moving away, following a few feet behind the creature, towed like barge.

  His face was in the water, and it had been for almost a full minute.

  “Shoot it, Charlotte,” I said, my teeth never separating as the words flowed. “Shoot it or he’s dead.” And before the words had finished leaving my mouth, I had already taken two steps to the stern of the boat, and then I dove in. Just as my hands entered the water and the icy lake enveloped me, I heard the report of the rifle above my head and the snap of cracking bone somewhere in the distance.

  I swam like the lake was on fire, and I had Nelson in my arms in seconds, grasping wildly beneath the surface and latching onto his chest from behind just as he began his drift to the bottom. He was free from the clutches of his abductor, and though, in the darkness of the water, I couldn’t see the creature that had snatched him, I felt the beast bounce against my foot, the heel of my shoe just brushing the demon as it descended to a watery Hell.

  With Nelson in my left arm, I backstroked toward the boat, holding my son’s face high above the water, turning to measure my distance from the boat once, and there seeing Charlotte locked in a trance of terror, her jaws wide in a silent scream while Emerson provided the soundtrack beside her.

  In seconds, I reached the boat and handed off Nelson to Emerson and Ryan who pulled him inside and laid him face up in the hull, and then Charlotte joined them in helping to drag me over the bow, where I collapsed to the boat bottom like a cannonball. But I was to my knees in an instant, and I immediately leaned over Nelson with my ear to his chest. I closed my eyes and sighed. He was breathing, thank god, though his breaths came out as a struggling wheeze, desperate for a clearer path for the oxygen entering.

  But it wasn’t his breathing that concerned me, as I knew the asthma would pass. It was his temperature. He was cold.

  “Give me the sweater, Ryan!”

  Ryan followed my command and snaked the sweater from his shoulders and tossed it to me, and after quickly stripping Ryan’s wet clothes from his torso, I replaced them with the pullover, rubbing his back all the while, trying to bring up his body temperature. Charlotte knelt in beside me, nearly pushing me away as she studied the state of her son. His lips were pale, his face a ghoulish white, and I could hear the tremors of despair in Charlotte’s breathing.

  “He’s freezing, David,” she said, almost disbelieving the state of her boy. She looked at me now. “No, David,” she said, crying in full now. “I won’t be able to—”

  “Shh, Charlotte, stop. He’s going to be okay. But...” I looked up to the surroundings now, the vast lake ahead and the banks to either side. “But we have to get him warm.”

  “Give him everything!”

  I took off two more layers until I had on nothing but a tattered gray U of M shirt, and I tried my best to wrap my son in the cotton layers, squeezing them in against his body. But the air around him was too chilled. He needed shelter and his body properly dried.

  I pulled him to my chest like a newborn and continued rubbing his back, and with each breath he managed to squeeze from his lungs, I sighed, desperate for him to take one more. Then another. I looked ahead now, and though we were perhaps only a mile or less from the end of the lake, it would do no good to reach it. It was too cold for Nelson to go on now, and maybe even under the best of circumstances. Charlotte had been right about not taking the trail, at least as it concerned Nelson’s conditioning.

  “Take us to that pier, Em,” I instructed. “The next one up ahead.”

  Without a word, Emerson grabbed an oar and shot to the stern seat, and from there she began to pound the blade into the water, propelling us forward toward a long pier that jutted out from the land at the bottom of a two-story home rising high above the lake. In moments, we were at the dock, and as we had nothing with which to tie the boat to the pier, I held to the piling with my arms while Charlotte unloaded Nelson to the top of the structure, Emerson and Ryan following close behind.

  There was no other boat tied along the pier—as there hadn’t been at most of the ones we passed along the way—and since there was no rope and no time to find any, I had no other option but to leave the boat and set it adrift, hoping only that it would somehow find its way back to the shoreline.

  In truth, however, I didn’t think it would matter. The lake seemed out of play now as a means of travel; we were only a mile from the end of it anyway. The rest of the way, if we were to make it to the river at all, would be on terra firma.

  When we were all on the pier—including Newtown—I took Nelson into my arms and began jogging toward the steep staircase leading to the house, which was modern in design, stylish, with clean architectural lines and windows facing in every direction, giving the owners what must have been stunning views of the lake from all sides of the house. But we weren’t there to scope out a summer rental, and though the house was quite the vision from the bottom of the steps looking up, the precipitous angle leading there was formidable.

  I mustered everything in my legs as I began the climb, landing each foot to the next stone like it had been filled with wet sand. Nelson couldn’t have weighed more than thirty-five pounds, but as I reached the top of the staircase and stumbled to the yard, I couldn’t hold him any longer, and I deposited him on the manicured grass of the property.

  I checked my son again, his breathing and skin, his temperature against my freezing hands, unable to verify his condition. He was alive, for sure, but descending, shivering sporadically now, as if his body’s natural defenses to warm itself were beginning to fail. Ryan and the girls huddled beside me, staring at Nelson like a hospital patient, and none of us saw the woman standing on the doorstep with the shotgun, twin barrels directed straight at us.

  15: The Warmth

  I lay Nelson on the chaise section of the woman’s sectional couch and began to rub his chest frantically, trying to warm my son’s cells to normal temperature while the cat brushed back and forth against the top of Nelson’s head. But the woman, who stood patiently beside me, quickly leaned over and grabbed me by the wrist, her wrinkled fingers gentle yet firm as she lifted my hand from my son’s body and moved it to my lap. I stared up at her defiantly and she smiled, and then she took my hand in her own and patted it with the other like a doting grandmother.

  “You must be gentle with them when they’re in this condition,” she said. “Bring them around slowly. He’ll be fine, but rubbing him that way could cause more harm than good. Trigger the heart to get going too fast. You and your wife get his pants and the rest of those clothes off, and I’ll be back with some blankets.”

  She left toward the back area of the house, to what appeared to be the master bedroom, and as she disappeared behind the door there, a rattling sound erupted almost instantly, followed by a crash, as if some shelf had collapsed while the woman was retrievin
g the blankets. Charlotte and I quickly undressed Nelson as instructed (swapping his wet pants out with a pair of kids’ sweats I’d bundled in the tent), and moments later, the woman returned and settled a tightly knitted quilt over Nelson, a first layer of warmth, and then followed it with a billowy white comforter that appeared to be filled with down. She then folded in half a thick, dry hand towel and applied it to Nelson’s head, flattening it out like newly pressed pants across his brow.

  “Breathing is a little raspy, I see,” she said.

  “He’s asthmatic,” Charlotte offered quickly, relaying the information as if to a doctor, hoping the new data might be of some use in diagnosing her son’s condition.

  “Aha. Not too bad though, I suspect?”

  Charlotte shrugged. “Could be worse. Mild persistent.”

  “Oh yes, it could be worse indeed. Bernard—he was my middle boy—developed severe asthma after a bout of pneumonia when he was a teenager. The attacks when they came, he always described it as if he were breathing through a toy whistle.” She laughed and then shook her head ruefully. “Shouldn’t laugh, of course, but that boy had a way with words.”

  I smiled weakly, allowing the memory of the woman’s son to play out, and then I said, “Thank you, ma’am. And I’m sorry we just showed up like this. We were—”

  The woman, who was probably in her mid-sixties, maybe even a bit older despite having the eyes and posture of someone half her age, raised her hand and shook her head more forcefully than before, not entertaining any apologies. “First of all,” she said, “my name is Betty, not ma’am. And second, I’m very glad you’re here.”

  “My name is David. This is my wife Charlotte.” I nodded toward the older kids. “My daughter is Emerson and beside her is Ryan.” I then put my hand on Nelson’s cheek and pressed, already feeling the heat returning there. “And the one here whose life you just saved is Nelson.”

  The woman frowned. “Seems to me you and your family saved your son’s life, David. All I did was give him some blankets.”