The vehicles before them had their lights on, but snow covered the headlamps, creating an eerie muted glow. The car directly behind his was a hatchback, but Graham couldn’t see anyone inside. The car was nearly buried, and he wondered if the occupants had abandoned it. But that wouldn’t make much sense. There was nowhere to go.
So where was the naked man going?
Graham turned to look behind him, to make sure Clark was still there. His friend was so close, he was practically on top of him, but Graham had barely felt his presence. It was as if the wind and snow forced a barrier between them.
Clark’s clothing was even less practical than his own, and Graham thought about sending him back to the car. He had come from California totally unprepared for this onslaught. But Graham himself hadn’t expected to be out in the elements. He should have been wiser.
He turned back into the wind and proceeded, passing a minivan. A woman’s distraught face looked out a snowy window by the driver’s seat. Graham thought about stopping to check on her, but she was probably nice and warm, and he was freezing his ass off. If he stopped now, he wouldn’t be able to keep going. His pant legs were soaked from the wet snow and frozen stiff, making each stride a struggle. As he passed the minivan, a couple of kids peered out from the middle seat of the van. He couldn’t even tell their genders from behind the frosted glass, but he couldn’t help wonder what they were doing out this night. They should be home awaiting Christmas morning, like his girls were.
After the minivan, there was a stretch of open highway, snowdrifts almost up to his waist. Graham didn’t know how much farther they should go. There was no sign of the naked man. There was really no place to go unless he ran off into the woods that lined both sides of the highway. Graham wasn’t sure how far back it was to the last exit.
He continued, looking back every few seconds to see Clark still behind. Each step Graham took sank into the snow. His toes were numb as well as his face. The cold bit into his body. This was hopeless.
A large RV loomed before them, dark. Maybe its occupants had bedded down for the night, waiting out the storm. That would be a nice place to be with all the comforts of home. Graham wished he were home. Wished he had never gone to pick Clark up at the airport. Damn, Natalie was right. She had told him to wear a heavier jacket, but he’d assured her he wouldn’t be getting out of the car much. How wrong that turned out to be. He should have stayed home with his girls. It occurred to him that he’d forgotten to kiss his girls goodbye before he left for the airport, thinking he wouldn’t be gone long. He told himself that was the first thing he was going to do when he got home tonight. Or whenever it ended up happening.
This is senseless, Graham thought, stopping after they passed the RV. Ahead was a darkened station wagon. He leaned up against it and peered inside. Its engine wasn’t running like those of the other vehicles. The interior was dark and empty. Another driver must have decided to abandon his car and march out, he figured. He straightened and looked past the station wagon to the empty highway behind it. Nothing but white.
Something bumped him, and he turned to see Clark, who had stumbled into him.
“I – can’t – go—” Clark struggled speaking. His face was red, his eyebrows and eyelashes crusted with snow.
His friend was suffering and Graham knew it was pointless worrying about the naked man now. If the elements were having this much effect on Clark, then there could be no hope for the other idiot.
“We’ll go back!” Graham yelled into Clark’s ear and saw some relief on his friend’s face.
He grabbed his friend’s arm, trying to turn him around to go in the other direction. That was when he heard a bell ringing.
Graham looked behind him and saw a shadowy figure lurching out of the distant mist. It staggered back and forth, buffeted by the wind, one arm raised and ringing a bell, the tones penetrating the howl of the wind to reach him.
It wasn’t the naked man, for this figure wore a long coat and a visored cap. Though he could tell it was a man, Graham saw long hair beneath the cap, falling to the man’s shoulders. The figure stopped and stood still. Maybe he had spotted them, Graham thought, or maybe he just couldn’t go any farther. The man kept ringing the bell.
“Stay here!” Graham yelled into Clark’s ear. His friend nodded. He leaned Clark up against the station wagon, afraid he wouldn’t be able to stand on his own.
Once he was sure Clark was set, Graham headed toward the bell ringer, struggling through the drifts. Though the man was not that far away, it seemed to take forever to reach him. Graham wished the man had made at least more of an effort to meet him halfway. But the way the guy kept ringing the bell gave him the impression he might not have even seen Graham at all. It was as if he was ringing the bell for help to come to him.
When Graham reached the man, he grabbed him by the shoulders, staring into a face frozen by the icy wind, or maybe just fear itself. The man looked catatonic. He kept ringing his bell.
The man had a stubbled chin and flattened nose. His coat and hat were part of a Salvation Army uniform. His long hair was saturated with icy strands. He stared past Graham, as if not realizing he stood right in front of him. Graham shook him by the shoulders and the man’s eyes rolled to meet his.
“You can stop now!” Graham yelled. “You’re okay.”
The man was silent, eyes narrowing as if trying to comprehend what Graham was saying.
“What?” the man finally asked.
“I said you can stop!”
The man still looked confused. “Stop?”
“Yes!” Graham said. “You can stop ringing the damn bell!”
The man looked down at his extended right arm, as if not even realizing he was holding the metal object.
“Oh,” he finally said.
“Did you see anyone else back there?” Graham asked through chattering teeth, wondering if he had seen the naked man.
The Salvation Army man looked back into the white wasteland behind them. He shook his head. “Ain’t nothing back there.”
“Is that your car?” Graham asked, pointing back at the station wagon.
The man nodded.
“Let’s get you back inside it.” He grabbed hold of the man’s left arm and started to lead him, but the man did not move.
“Ran out of gas,” the man said. “No heat.”
Graham nodded, trying to catch his breath. The man must have tried walking out.
“Did you see anything?” he asked the man, wondering where the exit behind them was. “How far did you get?”
The man’s face stiffened. “We ain’t where we think we are.”
There was that look of fear in his eyes. Graham wondered if this man had been driven mad too.
“Come with us,” he said, figuring he could bring him back to their car. He led the man to where Clark still leaned against the station wagon. His friend was covered in snow, almost blending in with the vehicle.
Clark grinned when he saw the two of them, as if grateful not to be alone.
Graham tried to lead the pair back the way they had come, not realizing how far they had traveled from his car. Clark stumbled and fell down into the snow. He lay there, not making an effort to get up. Graham let go of the Salvation Army man’s arm and bent down, grabbing a hold of Clark and trying to lift him. His friend didn’t move, as if content to lie in the snow until it buried him.
Most of Graham’s body was numb with cold, and he now worried none of them would be able to make it back to his car. He believed he could make it himself, but not if he had to drag these two. But he couldn’t just leave them. He needed help.
Exasperated, and almost at the point of desperation, Graham thought of just saving himself.
And then he heard a bugle call.
Chapter Thirteen
Tucker Jenks lay in the sleeper cab of his tractor-trailer figurin
g it was going to be a long night. He’d seen a snowbound highway before, about ten years ago near Buffalo. A line of cars and no place to go. There was nothing to do tonight but wait for the state to get some plows to clear the road, and that wasn’t likely to happen till the storm subsided.
It was a crappy way to spend the holiday. Tucker had planned to go to his sister’s in Cranford, New Jersey, after dropping off the load of electronics at the store in Manchester. But he saw the weather radar map as the storm swept down from Canada and then curled up the East Coast through Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey, bearing down on New England fast. That was when Tucker reversed direction and headed north, trying to outrun it. He had a trucker buddy in northern New Hampshire and had been able to contact him on his CB before service fizzled out. He had a warm bed waiting for him, if only he could get there.
Outside was a scream. Not really a scream, just the wind blowing with the force of a banshee. It reminded Tucker of a story his nana told him back in North Carolina, where he grew up. It was the tale of the Tar River Banshee, a legend passed down in fireside chats by his family. The story dated back to the Revolutionary War when a loyalist who owned a grist mill was drowned in the Tar River by British soldiers. Before the mill owner died, he warned them they would be haunted by the banshee who floated along the shore of the river.
The banshee was a mythical messenger of death, his nana told him, and since then the entity came every year to warn of someone’s pending demise with her ominous wailing.
That’s what Tucker heard outside his truck now, the banshee wailing, though he knew it was only the fierce wind driving down the highway between the tall pines. But still it gave him chills even though the truck cab offered him plenty of warmth as his engine idled.
Maybe it was because of what he and that other fella saw when they opened the cab of the snowplow up ahead. The younger guy didn’t say a word to Tucker, but their eyes locked. They had both seen the blood on the dashboard, the seat, puddled on the floor mats by the pedals. Something nasty happened in that truck. That was an awful lot of blood to be just some minor mishap the plowman suffered. That wouldn’t have come from some cut on the hand.
And the weird thing, Tucker thought, was there was no sign of blood in the snow outside the plow. If the plowman had been injured and left his truck to find help, why wasn’t there any blood in the snow? If he had gone for help, he was probably buried out there under the snow, because Tucker couldn’t imagine anyone getting far in this storm. Sure, he was from the south, but he had spent enough time trucking throughout the northeast in a lot of miserable winters. This wasn’t a storm to deal with lightly. He wouldn’t dare venture out. Wherever the snowplow man went, he probably hadn’t got far.
Outside, the banshee wailed.
Chapter Fourteen
Clark felt blood flowing back into his toes as he warmed them inside the RV. They started to sting, as if going from frost to fire while he wiggled them, feeling like they might fall off. When he first heard the bugle call, he thought he had succumbed to delirium and the cavalry was coming, like in those westerns he used to watch as a kid with his grandfather. He even thought he saw a cavalry officer in uniform. It wasn’t until Graham grabbed hold of him and dragged him toward the RV, its lights flashing madly, that Clark realized the bugle call was the vehicle’s horn sounding.
An old man helped him, Graham and the uniformed man into the side door near the rear of the camper. Was the man in uniform a policeman, or soldier, Clark wondered, or just a figment of his frozen mind?
Clark had reached the point of wanting to succumb to the cold outside and the numbing pain biting deep into his bones like the jaws of some ferocious beast. Letting it overtake him would have been preferential to the struggle outside. Let the snow bury him and the highway crews could dig out his frozen body in the morning.
He wouldn’t have blamed Graham if his friend had left him out there and saved himself. Clark wasn’t properly dressed for this weather and wouldn’t have lasted. He imagined the naked man hadn’t lasted even that long. What could have possessed the man to remove his clothes and run madly into the night? The storm must have driven him insane. Or was it something else?
Graham and the old couple in the RV were talking about it now. Clark reclined on a cushioned bench on one wall. Across from him, at a seat before a small dining table, the uniformed man sat hunched over, elbows on the table holding him up, water dripping onto the Formica surface from the strands of his long hair dangling past his pointy chin.
A tall white-haired woman brought a steaming mug of something to the table and placed it before the uniformed man, whose hands immediately cupped it. He had removed his soaked cap and set it at the edge of the table. Clark saw the Salvation Army logo on the front of the cap and realized the man wasn’t a policeman or soldier and certainly hadn’t come to rescue them. It appeared they had rescued him.
The old woman brought another mug to Clark and she had to guide his hand to hold it.
“It’s hot cocoa,” she said with a smile.
Clark held it, too exhausted to raise it to his lips for the moment, but satisfied to feel its warmth radiate from his hands through the rest of his body. Across the way, the thin man at the table dug a shaky hand underneath his long coat and pulled out a tin flask. Fingers struggled to unscrew the cap. When he succeeded, he poured liquid from it into his mug.
“The man seemed normal when I talked to him in his car earlier tonight,” Graham said to the old man, also white of hair. The two sat in the front seats of the RV. “I wouldn’t have imagined him running naked into the snow a few hours later.”
The old man cleared his throat. “They say hypothermia can make one feel as if they’re hot instead of cold.”
Graham shook his head. “Have we been out here that long that hypothermia could set in already?”
The old man shrugged.
“We tried to find him,” Graham continued, “but had no luck. That’s when we found this one.” He nodded at the man at the table, who just stared back with glassy eyes, as if they had fogged over in the cold and hadn’t defrosted yet. He looked catatonic.
Graham turned to face Clark. “How you doing, buddy?” his friend asked.
Clark held his mug up in a gesture and tried to smile, but his face was still numb and he couldn’t tell if his expression even moved.
The old couple introduced themselves as Werner and Francine Volkmann. They had been traveling around the country in their RV, visiting relatives with plans to spend Christmas with grandchildren in New Hampshire. They had run behind schedule and got caught in the storm.
Francine had taken Clark’s and Graham’s wet coats and hung them in the bathroom. His pants, which had frozen stiff and felt like cardboard, thawed and were now drenched from the knees down. He was uncomfortable, but the warmth in the heated RV soothed him. He couldn’t believe how close he’d come to just giving it all up out there in the storm. What had gotten into his head? Easy living in California must have softened him too much that a bitter winter storm could drive him to his knees. It was snow and cold, nothing more. He could have died out there, and for what? His mother would not have been able to handle his death. Clark disappointed himself.
He looked across at the Salvation Army man, who still had not spoken a word since they’d got inside the vehicle. Francine had tried to take his wet coat, but he refused to give it up. He sat motionless, clinging to his mug.
Graham let Francine take back the front passenger seat, and he sat across the table from the Salvation Army man. The man glared at Graham.
“What’s your name?” Graham asked.
The man looked like he wasn’t going to answer, instead bringing the mug up to his lips and slurping the cocoa. The Adam’s apple in his scrawny neck bobbed as he swallowed the hot liquid.
“Felker,” he mumbled after setting the mug back down. “Lewis Felker.” His eyes
stayed locked on Graham.
“You said something out there. About not being where we think we are. What did you mean by that?”
The man stared, eyes unblinking. “Nothing,” he finally muttered, glancing down at his mug.
Graham shook his head. “Didn’t sound like nothing to me.”
Clark wasn’t sure what his friend was trying to get at. It was obvious the poor man wanted to be left alone. He looked like he’d been through a lot. They all had.
Felker drew in a deep breath, as if breathing for the first time. His whole body shuddered, maybe from the wet coat, maybe from something else. He leaned forward over the table. “There was no exit back that way.” His voice was almost a whisper.
Graham leaned toward the man. “What do you mean ‘no exit’?”
“I walked quite a ways, trying to get to the last exit I had passed before getting stuck. It ain’t there.” He took out his flask and poured more liquid into his mug.
Maybe the man was drunk, Clark thought. Or maybe he was delirious from his time out in the cold. Clark looked at the faces of the others, and saw confusion and uncertainty.
Volkmann cleared his throat. “It’s blowing so hard out there, you can’t see anything anyway.”
Felker scowled at the old man. “I’m telling you, the exit ain’t there. There’s nothing there. Just snow.”
“Nothing?” Graham sounded skeptical.
“Nothing but snow,” Felker said, eyes dropping down, hands gripping his mug tight.
Clark started to feel chilled again.
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