The Ghosts of Winter

by Christopher Coleman

  I stood and grabbed Emerson by the shoulders and turned her, placing her like a plant on the couch where I had just been sleeping, and instantly I was across to the other side of the sectional. My heart was slamming against my chest cavity, my stomach knotted like ancient tree roots. “Charlotte! Get up!”

  Charlotte scrambled to her feet before she was even fully awake, her senses heightened now, having evolved protectively over the last few months. Immediately, she had latched her eyes upon the creature as well, and within seconds, we were all corralled at the far end of the sectional, watching the bald white beast as it lumbered forward from the room.

  “Oh my god! Betty!” Charlotte’s words were panicked, but they arrived in the air as only a whisper.

  Based on the position of its eyes, the White One hadn’t yet seen us in the virgin light of the room, but I could only assume it knew we were there, as it was making its way forward.

  How did it get in? From where?

  It took another hunched step forward, banging again against the wall to its left, nearly knocking itself to the floor. And then, as if irritated that it was no longer the agile creature it had once been, it shook itself wildly, juddering like a wet dog drying itself, and with that motion, it seemed to clear the torpor from its body. It lurched forward again, and with the next step, the White One displayed a level of bounce and energy it had not shown previously, gaining more distance in its stride. Another pace followed, and with that one, the Corrupted was standing at the edge of the sprawling family room, its stare upon us.

  “Dad!” It was Nelson, a new level of desperation in his voice, coming through in a pitch that indicated he might not have the energy to triumph another day, certainly not like the one prior.

  “Where’s the rifle, Char?”

  “Your guns have been removed.”

  The voice came from the rafters, the walkway above the family room. In unison, we all looked up to see Betty. In her hands was the same shotgun she’d held on us at the door when we first arrived on the property at the top of the steps that led from the pier.

  I looked back to the creature, measuring its proximity, and then back to the now-crazed woman looking down upon us from ten feet above. “Why?” It was the only word I could think to say.

  Betty flipped the switch on a battery-operated lantern and then took three steps to her right, where she hung the glowing lamp on a wall which had been equipped with a nail for just that purpose. The creature was directly below her now, while we were at a perfect angle for a shot from her perspective. “You seem to be very nice people. Cordial, with well-behaved children. Not all that common these days, I’m sad to say. So, I am sorry. But it’s been a long time since Timothy has ravaged. He’s been dulled for too long now.”

  I felt my face flush and a sickness arise in my stomach, as if I’d eaten scombroid-poisoned fish. I pulled my eyes back to the White One again, which was now swaying with more energy, as if emboldened by the voice of its once-mother. But its eyes were focused on my family, the orbs anxiously bouncing between the five of us.

  “What does that mean, Betty?” It was Charlotte, her voice anguished but soft and understanding. “You’re saying that thing is—”

  “He,” Betty interrupted, nearly growling the word. “He is my Timothy.” She hesitated, regaining her composure. “Did you not know about the change?”

  We stayed silent.

  “You didn’t know.” Betty seemed genuinely shocked, awed at what such a revelation must have felt like to us. In truth, however, on some level, I think we did know. It was never spoken about amongst the family, but we—Charlotte and I, and perhaps Emerson—knew it wasn’t only the original people of Warren and Maripo who had turned. “Where did you think they all came from?”

  “The injury,” I said, my voice like a distant murmur. Quietly, I had accepted that some of the White Ones which had emerged in our post-breach world over the last few months were newly turned, but I didn’t know the mechanism by which they had been transformed, and I had never allowed my thoughts to extend as far as to guess. But the attack Betty had described earlier now made it clear.

  “It doesn’t take much more than a scratch, I would guess,” she confirmed. “Based on Timothy’s wound. His turn occurred quickly.”

  “How are you...?” It was Charlotte now, and she let the last word hang in the air like an echo.

  “Alive? Because I knew it was happening almost instantly, the moment Timothy began to complain of pain. Somehow it all came to me in a moment. The images that had come from the cordon, those white things in the street on that drone footage, I knew they were people. Didn’t we all? And when he told me one of them had cut him, and then he started to feel ill, I knew he was going to turn into one of them.” She took a deep breath and smiled, and though I couldn’t see her face clearly, I could imagine a glisten of water was covering her eyes. “It feels so good to talk about this,” she continued.

  “But how?”

  “How what?”

  “How did you...contain him?”

  “I tied him up.” She shrugged, as if the answer were as obvious as two plus two. “As soon as I knew what was to become of him, I reacted like I would have if he’d been set on fire. I worked as a nurse practitioner for thirty years, so I’m adept at reacting to medical emergencies, and this, I deemed, as nothing more. The cure will come someday, and until then, I will keep him alive, at least as long as there is breath in me.”

  I could sense the true madness now, and as it began to trickle forth, I could see other hints of it in retrospect. But I had been blinded by the warmth of the home, the temporary safety of my family. The smell of the stew.

  The creature remained perched in place at the edge of the great room, bent at the knees as it leaned forward on its hands, like a sprinter in his starting block. It seemed content to study us, however, as if unsure how to behave. But it twitched sporadically, shivering its head occasionally as if fighting off a mosquito, movements I took as suggestions that it would attack at any minute.

  “But the better question, I would think,” Betty continued, “is how I was able to keep Timothy subdued for all this time. And subdue him is what I’ve done over these six months.”

  The statement was begging for a follow-up question, so I entertained one. “How did you?”

  Betty had been looking toward her former son as she spoke, but hearing my voice, she turned back to the five of us and blinked wildly, as if she’d forgotten we were there. “If you can believe it, David,” she said, her voice mischievous now, as if preparing me for the secret of a lifetime, which, as it turned out, it was. “He doesn’t much like the cold.”

  We all remained silent; the kids were still in shock, while Charlotte and I weren’t quite sure what to make of this new data.

  Betty chuckled. “Or perhaps it’s not a matter of not ‘liking’ the cold, but rather, it keeps him quiet. Or maybe ‘muted’ is the better word. He’s always quiet, of course; their tongues disintegrate during the change, did you know that?”

  I paused and then shook my head. “They don’t like...the cold?”

  “I know! It seems not to make sense! They were born of something like snow—at least to hear the stories be told—but that snow wasn’t the kind that comes naturally from the atmosphere. It was May when that supposed blizzard arrived, which is impossible for that part of the country. My guess is there was something artificial in that snow, something chemical that changed those poor people in those counties to the beings they became, beings like Timothy. But the snow and the cold that followed wasn’t God’s snow, God’s cold, and when the Earth warmed once again, most of those beings died. But those that lived, they could still pass the chemical to others, changing those people just as they were changed.” She looked to the ceiling for a moment, as if re-structuring some of the details in her hypothesis, and then she said, “That is the theory at which I’ve arrived anyway, a theory about which I’ve thought quite a bit about over these last several months. Ti
mothy has allowed me time to test it quite rigidly—the part regarding the cold that is. A generator and an icebox amount to quite the laboratory it would seem.”

  The White One flexed its legs and stood erect for just a moment before collapsing back to its more natural simian stance, dropping as quickly as a popped balloon in the rain. But the movement was quick and supple, dexterous, suggesting the beast was close to recovering from whatever cold paralysis Betty had cast upon it.

  “The turning of the weather is the only reason you’re still alive. They were all along the banks, weren’t they? Waiting for you? It was only the one you spoke of, so desperate with craving that it plunged itself into the water. But rest assured, had the lake not been the frigid reservoir it is today, they all would have come for you, as surely as alligators in the Everglades.” Betty stared again at the creature that had at one time been her son, casually measuring his behavior, no longer moved by the remarkableness of what he had become. “As you can see, as they begin to warm, they become livelier.”

  “Don’t do this, Betty,” Charlotte said. “We can help you. We can get you across the river. And with what you’ve learned about them, about how they react to the natural cold, maybe you can help scientists find a cure for...” She frowned and swallowed nervously. “Maybe not for Timothy, but for others in the future. For the country and the world.”

  If Betty’s theory was true—that the artificial, chemical cold which had mutated these beings was, in fact, a handicap to them when experienced in its natural, atmospheric form—it was one almost certainly known by whatever government entities had caused the catastrophe in the first place. Or at least some version of the theory was. But, of course, that wasn’t the point of Charlotte’s speech; she was trying to save our lives, to create a gap in the moment for us to escape.

  “Even if you do make it to the river,” Betty replied, “how ever do you expect to get across? In what? Surely you can’t drag a boat six miles. And even if you could, do you think your patchwork lake boat can make it through the tributaries and across the Mississippi?”

  She was right about the boat, and I had no intention of trying to drag it. How we got across the river was something I hadn’t yet figured.

  “And besides, even if the Oxford crew team awaited you at the closest tributary, the Corrupted will be everywhere once you reach the riverbank. Cold and sluggish, perhaps, but numerous and hungry. So many people retreated to the river in those early days, I remember all the cars passing, and I’ve no doubt most of those people got stuck by the river as quite something else. The closer you get to the river, the more of them there will be.”

  The White One stood again and made a sudden leap forward now, this time slamming its chest against the back of the long row of the sectional, nearly toppling itself over onto the cushions but instead bouncing backward to its stoop. Emerson and Ryan screamed, Newton scuttered toward the door, while Nelson simply closed his eyes and squeezed tightly against Charlotte’s leg.

  Betty had the shotgun pointed down at us again, fully engaged with her aim. “At least one of you will be his. Timothy is owed that.” She paused, considering. “Once he’s begun, whichever one of you is chosen, the rest of you can attempt to leave. Though, as I said, I don’t expect you’ll get far.”

  “I’ll stay, Betty,” I said instantly. “I’ll...allow it to be me. I’m offering myself to him now! Please, just let them go and have the chance you spoke of!”

  “David, no!” Charlotte chirped.

  “Dad!”

  I turned to my family and locked eyes for a moment, and in that look was the expression of fear and pain and love all at once. I turned back to the White One once more, which was now encroaching. I nodded as I studied the beast and said, “Yeah, this is okay. You guys can make it. Just stick with the original plan. Get back to the boat and take it to the edge of the lake. If...Timothy gets out, it won’t be safe on the road. Once you get to the end, head straight ahead. A few miles to the tributaries.”

  “We didn’t tie the boat down,” Charlotte said, and I was thankful she was at least considering an attempt to follow my instructions. “What if it’s gone?”

  It was too much to process though, the thought of the boat not being there, and I could only shake my head and shrug. “It’ll be there, Charlotte. It has to be.” I looked back to Betty and put my hands up, and then I took a step forward, placing myself between the White One and my family. “This is fair, Betty. Let them go. Like you said.”

  Betty hesitated, as if debating whether to agree to this offering, perhaps considering whether the thing that was once Timothy would have preferred the hunt. But I knew she was a reasonable person, at least in the outer regions of her brain, that section which had not yet been infected with insanity.

  “Go,” I said again, still looking straight ahead.

  “Davi—”

  “Go!”

  Charlotte hesitated another beat, and then she lifted Nelson with one hand and grouped the other two kids into a pair and shuffled them quickly toward the door. Only Emerson looked back to me, her face a spectacle of sadness.

  Betty followed them in her sights with the shotgun, but I knew she wouldn’t shoot, and within moments—following Newton who was out the door first—Charlotte, Emerson, Ryan, and Nelson were outside on the back lawn heading toward the lake and the boat I prayed had come back to us.

  17: The Escape

  The White One was close enough now to touch with the proverbial six-foot pole, and had it made another lunge, one similar to the move it made moments earlier when it crashed into the back of the couch, the creature would have been upon me before I could even begin to retreat. And now I knew the additional detail which Betty had offered, that whether it killed me or not didn’t matter. Even if I managed to fight it off, all it took was a scratch or a bite—perhaps even a deep bruise, who knew for sure—and I was one of the Corrupted within minutes. Maybe sooner.

  “You don’t hurt him, David!” Betty called down. “You don’t try to hurt him. I let your family go, but I won’t let you. You’re gonna die in this house one way or the other.”

  If Betty had wanted me to give my word that I wouldn’t hurt her monster-son, she should have made me agree to it before she let Charlotte and the kids leave. Because now, I had other plans.

  I took several steps backward until I was again at my sleeping spot on the sectional, and there I sat, back straight, resting my hands on the cushions beside me with my palms flat, as if I were at the home of some British aristocrat awaiting tea. I looked straight ahead into the kitchen, focusing on neither the White One nor Betty, but rather on the fingers of my right hand as they searched between the cushion and the bottom of the sofa arm. It took only a second, however, and then I had it.

  The Corrupted Timothy dipped below the height of the sofa again, and when it reemerged, it was on my side, having moved its way around like a crab.

  Crabs. When they moved fast like that, they looked like crabs.

  The White One’s posture was more aggressive now as it approached, slowly, its spine arched and stiff, hunting like a lioness.

  I waited patiently, keeping my breathing slow, my mind clear. I peeked up at Betty, barely moving my head as I did, and I could see her still in the lofted position above me. But the shotgun was at her side now, the barrel in her left hand as she prepared with avarice to take in the sight of her son devouring her houseguest.

  I cleared my voice and let boom the question, “What happened to Jane?” As the words finished leaving my mouth, I couldn’t help but think of the old Betty Davis/Joan Crawford movie from the sixties with a similar name, and how the Betty above me (the irony of the matching names!) had much in common with the Betty Davis character from the movie.

  “What?” A question of surprise, disgust.

  “Timothy’s pregnant wife, Jane. What happened to her?”

  No answer, and suddenly Betty was visibly quivering, angry.

  “You fed her to him, too. Is that it
?”

  “It was...it was only for—”

  The next move I hadn’t planned exactly, the when or how of it, and though it seemed a bit early in the dialogue for me to act, I knew my time was short, certainly to be counted in seconds.

  I stood straight with my hands behind my back, feet apart, as if placed at ease by a commanding officer. There was a moment of silence that followed, a stillness, when everything seemed to line up just so, positioned in such a way that, though I was as secular as anyone I knew, I could only think that God had arranged this for me, or at least had given me the opportunity to do with the situation what I could.

  As if prompting the chaotic scene finally to begin, Betty unleashed an incoherent, anger-filled scream, a painful reaction to my insolence regarding her daughter-in-law, the overarching truth of which I now knew.

  She had fed Jane to Timothy, and thus her unborn grandchild as well.

  And a beat later, Betty’s son—a being who was now more walking ghost than man—attacked.

  The assault started with a single hop forward, like a trepidatious bunny, yet the move was somehow terrible and hostile, a primer for the full-on assault. A second bounce forward followed, and this one landed the White One atop the large ottoman that fit neatly inside the right angle of the sectional. The creature stared up at me now like a stone-carved grotesque, appearing almost stupefied that I had allowed myself to be taken so easily. It crouched tightly once more as it prepared to spring for the final predatory lunge, but before it could release the tension in its legs and shoulders, I brought my right hand from behind my back and swung.

  The hunting knife split the air like a sword, the sharp steel blade piercing the white demon’s temple like an unripe avocado. The side of the skull crunched, and then a sucking sound followed, perhaps the brain encasing the edge of the knife. And like a prisoner executed by firing squad, the White One fell face down to the ottoman and then slowly slid to the floor, the knife protruding from its head like a malformed horn.