Dead of Winter (6 page)

Remembering that malevolent whisper
from the back of Jake’s mind brought a rush of guilt so strong it
was almost debilitating and only a quick glance at the seething
white mass engulfing his feet kept him moving.

Six blocks did a respectable
impression of twelve before they reached Lenny’s house – a small
two-story stucco with sagging gutters and a crumbling chimney
electric heating made redundant. A television aerial, lashed to the
chimney, stood against the paler patches of wind-wracked sky like a
stitch in discolored flesh.

Jake was somewhat surprised to see
that Baxter’s car was not parked outside. If he had already set out
for Jake’s house then they would have met him on the way here. The
vehicle he had initially mistaken as the police cruiser as they
approached proved to be Joanne’s Toyota. From what he could see of
it in the grainy light, it appeared undamaged.

Lenny, who had not spoken a word since
they’d left Jake’s house, suddenly stopped at the foot of the
driveway and looked from Jake to the dark house brooding before
them as if it was an alien thing, a cold and indifferent
replacement for something he had loved. His face was
unreadable.

“
Something’s going on. I
don’t like this one bit,” he said, just loud enough for Jake to
hear. “She always leaves a light on, even when she’s out.” He shook
his head. “
Always
.”

“
Maybe she’s gone to bed
already.”

Lenny stared at Jake for a moment
before sidestepping a mound of dirty snow presumably left in the
wake of a plow, though the street certainly didn’t look as if
anything but the wind had traveled it in the past few
hours.

Heart thudding and unable to shake the
feeling that there was something amiss out here, something other
than Lenny’s deserted house, Jake looked around, his breath
emerging as ragged ghosts the wind tore away from him.

Quiet.

Perhaps that was
it
, he thought. Even for a night like this
with apparently no end to the snowfall and the bitter cold, the
streets were peculiarly empty. Miriam’s Cove was a relatively small
town but the people normally didn’t forsake its streets until all
hours of the morning. Where were the defiant drivers struggling to
get home? Where were the emergency services, the police, the salt
trucks? The absence of these mundane, but expected sights,
unsettled him. It made him feel as if he and Lenny had missed the
imparting of a monumental secret and now they were left alone in
the world with the ghosts of their neighbors circling around them
on white waves, waiting for them to realize their folly.

He shuddered and followed Lenny up the
driveway where they had to squeeze between the Toyota and a clump
of snow that resembled a misshapen hand with weeds sprouting from
the knuckles. White eddies spun above their heads like tattered
scarves blown from a clothesline. Lenny clumped to the door and
when he raised his hand to the doorbell, it was
trembling.

“
Don’t you have the key?”
Jake asked.

“
I wasn’t intending on being
out long enough to need one,” Lenny said and poked the thin white
plastic rectangle until ‘Greensleeves’ sounded within. It was a
jingle Jake hated, but now it seemed horribly ominous because he
knew deep inside there was no one in that house to hear
it.

“
Damn it!”

“
Try again,” Jake told him,
at a loss for a better suggestion.

“
She isn’t deaf and she
isn’t there.”

“
Then where could she
be?”

“
Would I be standing out
here like a fool if I knew?”

“
Maybe she’s at the police
station. Maybe that’s what Baxter wanted to tell you.”

“
Yeah, if he wasn’t coming
to tell me she’s under a white sheet.”

Under a white
sheet
. Jake swallowed. “Don’t say
that.”

“
Why? You saying you haven’t
thought it?”

“
This isn’t getting us
anywhere, Lenny. Maybe we should – ”

The street suddenly dimmed, as if
something huge had flown overhead. As one, the streetlights winked
out.

“
What the hell?”

“
Power’s out,” Lenny said
and cursed as he launched a kick at the door. Startled, Jake wiped
melting snow from his eyelashes and blinked into the dark. The
mounds of white gradually began to emerge as if possessed of their
own luminescence.

Even in the dark I can see
it
, Jake thought and shuddered. Though he
was wearing a wool-lined overcoat, cold tendrils slithered up his
legs and down his neck. He pulled the coat tight around him and
lifted one foot, then the other, alternating stances to dissuade
the cold and the feeling that the snow was trying to reach his
skin.

“
What now?” he asked,
disturbed by the tremble in his voice.

Lenny was staring at the door, as if
still expecting it to fly open.

“
Lenny?”

“
Maybe you’re right,” he
replied. “Maybe the police station is where she went. We can’t
stand around in this all night, we’ll freeze to death. At least if
she isn’t there, the cops will know the score. They can drive us
back if we need it.”

“
Right,” said Jake and they
hurried down the driveway and back onto the street.

They had only gone a few feet, the
snow blowing into their faces, when they saw lights up ahead,
accompanied by a low growling.

“
That a car?” Jake yelled
over the wind and he thought he saw Lenny nod.

“
Sure looks like it.
C’mon.”

Jake eventually managed to draw level
with Lenny and they trudged on, heads lowered. More than once, Jake
had to convince himself that his imagination was on overdrive and
that any malevolence he felt at work around him was nothing but a
reflection of his own sorrow and the result of weeks of
self-imposed isolation. Imagination, nothing more. Had to be.
Because rational men did not feel things moving in the snow around
their feet.

“
Snowplow!” Lenny exclaimed
and Jake looked up, a hand tented over his eyes against the glare
of the lights. The growling was louder now and Jake saw that Lenny
was right. A truck with a plow blade mounted on the front was
slowly making its way toward them.

Jake felt a swell of relief. And then
he noticed something odd.

He tugged Lenny’s elbow. “Why isn’t
the blade down?”

“
What?”

“
The plow blade. It’s raised
up. There must be almost a foot of snow out here. Why isn’t he
using the blade?”

Lenny turned back to look at the
truck, then shrugged. “Maybe it’s damaged. I don’t know. Or maybe
he’s calling it a night.”

Jake persisted. “That’s Carl Stewart’s
truck. The guy always has these streets cleared before it gets too
deep. For Chrissakes the town gave him an award for it a couple of
years back, remember?”

“
Yeah.”

“
So I don’t get why he isn’t
using it now. And look at the way he’s driving.”

The truck’s lights swept across their
faces, washing the walls of the house to their right before
returning to dazzle them once more.

Lenny moved in the direction of the
truck. “You need to calm down a tad,” he called over his shoulder.
“It’s snowing and snowing hard. Ol’ Carl’s tires are slipping
that’s all.”

But for whatever reason, Jake didn’t
think so and was about to tell Lenny as much when the truck
provided all the confirmation he needed.

The headlights dipped then crawled
over the burgeoning plain of snow and fixed on them, turning Lenny
into a black scarecrow amid a swarm of snowflakes. The old man
tensed, his back hunching into a defensive posture. The truck came
on, now less than twenty feet away, its engine roaring, steam
billowing from beneath the hood, the upraised blade like a grim
smile in the remnants of light it stole from the
headlamps.

“
Hey!” Lenny called then,
waving his arms.

The truck kept coming, the suspension
jerking as the vehicle bounced over hard-packed snowdrifts, the
tires slipping and sliding.

“
Hey, Carl!”

The beams found him again; the engine
growled and whined.

Ten feet.

Jake shook his head and reached out a
trembling hand to Lenny. “If he’s seen us, he’ll stop.”

Lenny nodded, but continued to wave
his arms with the fervor of a man who is not yet sure how much he
has lost but is compelled to find out. In the headlights, Jake
noted how very, very old he seemed.

Five feet and now the lights were as
bright as the sun in their faces. On instinct, Jake lunged forward
and grabbed a handful of Lenny’s coat, tugging him back hard enough
to send them both sprawling on their backs into the snow. The cold
was immediate and fierce and Jake had to struggle not to panic at
the feel of it pressing against his skin.

“
What did you do
that
for?” Lenny yelled in
his face, but sat up just in time to find out.

The truck hit a drift hard enough to
make the front end rise, a lower corner of the blade scything
through the snow. As Jake and Lenny watched, the truck showed a
brief glimpse of its undercarriage before slamming back down, the
plow blade twisting until it hung aslant on the grille. The back
end of the truck slid out, tugging the truck clear of the drift and
sending it slipping backwards toward where the two men had stood
watching mere moments before. Snow flew from both sides of the
truck as it carved its way past where they sat gasping, spinning
one last time on the frozen ground before it met the side of Mabel
Brannigan’s house and stopped with a bang that sent sparks racing
up the wall.

“
Jesus,” Jake said, easing
himself up. Steam from the melted snow and whatever damage had been
done to the truck billowed from beneath its crumpled hood. Only one
headlight worked now, its single eye blazing into the
dark.

Lenny got up and brushed himself off,
disbelief contorting his face. He looked about to say something,
but instead dropped his gaze and studied the deep grooves the tires
had left in the snow not three feet away.

Jake watched him for a moment, then
shivered and started toward the truck.

“
What are you doing?” Lenny
called over the shriek of the wind.

“
I want to check on Carl.
See if he’s okay.”

“
If he is, let me know. I
want to give him what-for. Damn fool almost ran us
down.”

Jake reached the truck and resisted
the urge to warm his hands over the heat flooding from beneath the
warped hood. He was so cold now that all consideration for Lenny
and his quest had frozen and shattered. He was going home, he
decided, which was where he knew he belonged, ghosts of light and
shadow bedamned. He would drink the memory of Julia’s death and the
ticking of that accursed deathwatch away, if only for a few hours,
and if it led him to the box beneath the bed again, then so be it.
Misery had been his lot for too long now and the ice on his bones
only fed it.

Rubbing his hands together, he moved
around to the driver side door and tugged on the handle. Something
cracked but the door did not open. The glass was pebbled with ice
and through it he could see the dim green glow of the instrument
panel.

He looked back to where Lenny was
still staring at the snow. “Lenny, I need your help. The door’s
stuck!”

Lenny looked up, but if he replied,
his words were stolen by the wind.

“
Lenny!”

No answer.

Great
.

Jake turned back to the
door.

And heard a dull thump as a horribly
misshapen head flattened itself against the glass.

“
Christ!” Jake jolted, his
body immediately flushed with the welcome warmth of adrenaline as
his hand clamped over his heart. The heat rapidly abated however,
replaced by an inner cold that radiated outward.

The electric control for the window
whined and slid down a crack, before stalling, ice grinding and
snapping against the rim.

Jake composed himself and moved
closer, his heart thumping so hard it almost hurt, his breath
wheezing from his lungs.

Too much
, he thought.
This is too much to
handle. I need to get home
.

It had to be the frosting on the
window that made the silhouette in the vehicle seem so out of
proportion, for surely no one could survive with that much of their
head missing. The green glow from the dashboard illuminated the
slope of a bleached white cheek. Shuddering.

“
Carl?” Jake called,
pressing his hands to the glass and struggling to make out the
man’s features. “Carl, are you all right in there?”

The shadow bobbed, twitched, moved
away from the glass, as if the man was stretching. Or in
pain.

“
Carl? Can you
talk?”

The whisper that floated out from the
cracked window made Jake move back a step as he frowned at the
window and the flinching figure behind it.