“We’ve always been poor. No matter how hard we worked, we couldn’t seem to get out of this shit town.”
Cora was unsure why he was sharing all of this with her. But she stayed silent and allowed him to continue nonetheless.
“If you would have asked me ten, twenty years ago if this is what I saw myself doing, breaking into houses and stealing from people, I would have been disgusted. I was a good kid growing up. I always tried to do what I was told. I studied hard in school. I had plans.” Damon hung his head a little. “I used to want to open a restaurant with my mom when I was younger. We’d cook together every night, nothing fancy, but I liked it. It was our thing.” He snapped from his reverie. “But you just keep getting dealt shit card after shit card, and one day you snap.”
She didn’t know if he wanted her to interject or offer some type of encouragement. “So I guess I’m not your first then.”
He tilted his head to the side slightly, perplexed at first by her quip, then ignored it. “Anyways, all that’s to say people like me didn’t dream of the life we have. Or what we’re doing to you right now.”
Instead of putting the book back, he held onto it and went to sit in front of her on the sofa.
He folded his hands on either side of the book, pensively staring at it for an uncomfortably long time, before he finally looked up at her.
“I tell you what…” he said quietly. “If you can tell me a good horror story, and,” his voice got even quieter, “give me the code to that safe, I might just let you go.”
Hope suddenly surged in Cora’s heart. There was a chance she might live to see another day. But Marisa… “Your sister wouldn’t let that happen. She wants to kill me.”
He shook his head. “She’ll be searching that room for a while, thinking there’s some kind of treasure stowed away in there waiting to be discovered. This is just between you and I. My sister doesn’t have to know. I’ll say you escaped.”
Cora’s mind raced as she struggled to find story material when her life was on the line. Horror. He wanted to hear something scary.
She looked outside at the snow falling on the ground, the lights from her tiny Christmas tree sparkling in the reflection of the sliding glass door.
You can do this.
You’re a writer. Storytelling is your thing.
Think, think, think.
Appeal to his empathy; make the story relatable.
“What happens if you hate it?” she asked hesitantly.
“Is it scary?”
“I’ll try.”
He frowned. “Trying isn’t going to get you out of here.”
The harsh reality of his words hung heavily in the air.
“Okay,” she breathed, an idea starting to formulate.
With one last look over his shoulder, Damon set the book on the coffee table and settled back into the couch. He gestured widely. “Whenever you’re ready.”
THE TRACKS IN THE SNOW
Prologue
THE TRACKS IN THE SNOW
Cherryton, San Bordelo Mountain Pass
I n spite of Walt Ackerman’s windshield wipers furiously shifting back and forth on the old cherry picker, the snow was piling up so quickly on the glass that he couldn’t really see more than a few feet in front of him.
“What the hell kind of company sends a man out on Christmas morning?” he grumbled angrily, his eyes narrowed to slits as he tried to navigate through the snow.
The power had gone out in Cherryton and a few of the other neighboring towns, and they wanted him to go and fix it.
Most of the other electrical linemen were away for the holidays this year, just his luck. He was one of three men who were still local, and he happened to draw the shortest proverbial straw, being less senior than the other two.
Walt had just started opening gifts with his wife and children when he got the call about the downed power line. The timing couldn’t have been worse. He and his wife had finally purchased the shiny black bike his son had been begging for over the last eight months, and the boy’s hands were tearing at the awkwardly wrapped Christmas paper when his work phone started to ring.
It wasn’t one of those calls he could ignore or send to voicemail like he did all the time with his pestering mother-in-law. His boss was on the phone, with orders from his boss that people could not be without power for Christmas.
He slowed the truck when he finally spotted it. One telephone pole was resting at an angle, while the one beside it had completely fallen, taking down several power lines with it. Thick black cables dangled precariously from the slanted pole.
Walt groaned. It was much worse than he’d imagined. He wouldn’t be able to fix this by himself.
Knowing his boss would be angry if he left without providing some kind of damage report, Walt sighed and parked the truck as close as he safely could to the downed lines. He pulled on another jacket, his ski mask, and some heavy gloves and climbed out of the truck. After he was in the bucket, he pressed the remote to ascend until he was eye-level with the pole and could see everything else beneath him.
The damage was bad. And it wasn’t just the two poles and fallen lines. A few poles down the road showed the same misfortune.
Walt frowned as he surveyed the disrepair.
There weren’t any downed trees, any sign that the poles had been knocked over from the snowstorm.
What had brought them down if it wasn’t the weather?
Yanking off his right glove with a grimace, Walt snapped photos of the damage with his phone as best he could, the battery nearly empty as the frigid temperatures sucked the life from it, but the images were difficult to see, blurred with the flurry of snow flying past.
Walt scrolled through them hastily, hoping there were a few clear ones so his boss could make out the damage and needed repairs. But an image in one of the photos caught his eye, and he swiped backward to look again.
Wiping at the screen in frustration, he peered closer. There was something out of place in one particular photo that wasn’t in the others.
A giant white blur near the edge of the forest beyond him.
He zoomed in. It looked like it could just be a cluster of snowflakes obscuring part of the lens.
But as the image grew larger, the hairs on the back of Walt’s neck stood up.
The picture wasn’t blurry because of snowflakes, as he’d originally thought.
No, it was unfocused because a figure was moving rapidly past when he snapped the photo.
A monstrous form, beastly and gargantuan in its size and shape.
Walt kept zooming in, beginning to make out the details. Pale fur, gnarled horns…
The truck rattled under him, and the phone slipped from his fingers. He grabbed the rim of the bucket with both hands to steady himself, preparing to lean over the side, trying to see where the phone fell so he could retrieve it.
He was about to look over the edge when the cherry picker violently shook. His eyes widened just in time to see a massive hand with razor-sharp claws swinging toward his face, and before he could gasp in protest, his head was flying through the air, an arc of blood in its wake. It tumbled to the ground, rolling and rolling, until it disappeared beneath the truck.
Chapter I
THE TRACKS IN THE SNOW
“A mber, look! The train’s pulling up!” Nine year-old Cameron “Cam” Danvers called out to his sister, pushing the glasses up on his freckled nose and closing the book he was reading. He rose to his feet from the bench he was sitting on and stood on his tiptoes to peer down the 1racks as the train rounded the bend.
Fourteen year-old Amber looked up from her phone for barely a second, wavy blonde hair falling back from her face, before she slumped her cheek against her hand and buried her face in her phone again.
Cam sighed and sat back down beside her, flipping open his book once more even though he was already bored from reading it; soon it would be too dark to see the pages. Besides, he would have plenty of time on the train to
finish it. They had a solid five-hour train ride through the mountains until they made it home to their parents’.
He didn’t have anything else to do anyways. It wasn’t like his sister was going to hang out with him. He missed those days, when they were each other’s best friend. He wondered what happened to that girl. The days where they’d spend sunrise to sunset playing in their backyard, their imaginations running wild with make-believe adventures, seemed to be over.
Amber was physically there beside him, but it was almost as if she wasn’t. Since she became a teenager, and his parents bought her a phone, she had changed. She’d lost interest in being his big sister, in being one of his only friends.
Snow began to fall, slow at first, then faster and faster.
He dog-eared the page he was on and stared at the snowflakes as they swirled around and blanketed the ground. Cam was hoping this Christmas, he’d get some time with Amber since she wouldn’t have her friends, her laptop, or much reception at their grandparents’. He wasn’t trying to be greedy; he just wanted his sister all to himself. But as soon as they got there, he was crushed to find out that her phone did in fact work, and true to form, she was glued to it like she always was. She didn’t want to go sledding; she didn’t want to make a snowman; and she wasn’t interested in baking Christmas cookies.
Little by little, Cam was learning to accept this new reality.
Whether it was his sister or his parents, Cam felt like no one wanted to spend time with him anymore, and while his grandparents tried their best to do fun things with them, Cam did not like the idea of spending Christmas without their mom and dad. It just wasn’t the same without them, and he fervently hoped this would be the first and last time it ever happened.
Jillian and Peter Danvers both had the misfortune of having to work Christmas this year, each of them high-powered corporate attorneys at the same firm working a complex case that was slated to go before the judge on the second of January. Their grandparents, not wanting the children to miss out on Christmas morning and all the festivities leading up to it, insisted they come out to visit them a few days before Christmas, and then they could take the train back to Piedmont and spend the last vestiges of Christmas Day with their parents. Cam knew his parents felt guilty about missing Christmas with their children, and he tried to be understanding and mature about it. But this type of thing was becoming more and more of a habit now that they were some of the most senior attorneys at the firm, promotions which came with their own sizeable responsibilities and obligations that meant more hours in the office and fewer hours at home.
So here the children were, waiting in near-darkness for a train that would take them back to the city, to a lifestyle that Cam was becoming less and less fond of because he was becoming more and more invisible to everyone around him.
The train rolled to a stop in front of them, and Cam nudged his sister with his foot then stood and grabbed his superhero-themed duffel bag.
He studied the bag for a moment, then looked up at Amber. Maybe if he seemed more grown-up, she would want to spend time with him again because she would view him more as an equal rather than a pesky little brother. His heart sank as he ran his fingers over the Marvel characters, deciding he would get rid of the bag when he got home.
“Which seats did we get?” Amber asked him, finally pocketing her phone as she pulled her bright pink mittens over her hands.
Cam pulled the tickets from his pocket. “Car seven, seats ten and eleven,” he replied. Seeing that he had her attention, he continued, “Hey, we should explore the other cars once we put our stuff away.”
Amber seemed less than enthused. “You can. I’ll watch our bags.”
They started to climb the steps of the train once the other passengers disembarked.
Frustrated with himself for offering such a lame suggestion, Cam frowned. Was it actually that lame? They would have done that before. But cool kids had better things to do than explore trains. Then his expression brightened when he remembered what his grandma had packed away for them. “Are you hungry? Grandma made us some awesome snacks. She put a ton of those cookies in there for us.”
She trudged ahead of him, carefully making her way past the many rows of seats until she found theirs. After she tossed her bag into the compartment above their heads, helping him do the same with his bag, she slouched into the worn seat and pulled out her phone once more. “You can have mine. I ate way too many this weekend. I don’t want to get fat.”
Cam felt the tears burn in his eyes. He pulled out his asthma inhaler and sprayed it while taking a deep breath. He knew he shouldn’t be upset over this, but deep down, he wondered if he and Amber would ever have a reason to hang out again, or if the next three years before she left for college would go by, and they would be no more than ghosts living in the same house.
Chapter II
THE TRACKS IN THE SNOW
A mber unlocked her phone, subconsciously needing to check her newsfeed for the second time in the last ten minutes. It was almost as though her fingertips automatically knew where to tap on the screen, opening those notoriously familiar apps, like muscle memory. She was bored, and the urge to mindlessly entertain herself on social media was too tempting to resist.
For the next twenty minutes, she scrolled through her phone robotically, her eyes glazed over as she scanned past the photos of her friends. She saw countless pictures of her girlfriends sharing photos of their Christmas celebrations, smiling brightly, their outfits stylish, their hair perfectly sleek and straight.
She ran her fingers through her hair self-consciously, trying to detangle the knots that had ensnared themselves in her blonde locks, so that she would be photo-ready.
Smile. Look like you’re having fun.
Milliseconds before she snapped the selfie, Cam popped into the photo with her, opening his mouth wide and making a ridiculously silly face.
As she compulsively went back to check it, she groaned.
“Ugh, Cam. You ruined it.”
He leaned in to look at it with her. “Keep it! I like it!”
She rolled her eyes. “No, I’m not posting this. I’m cropping you out.” His face fell, and he suddenly looked like the saddest kid in the world.
He turned away from her and looked out the window again.
She saw this and paused before finalizing the cropped version of the picture. And then, as if she changed her mind, reverted the photo back to the version with her brother still in it and started to upload the picture to her profile. Amber waited impatiently while the blue download bar moved incrementally, then stopped moving altogether.
She glowered at the screen petulantly, knowing as long as they were in the mountains suffering through this snowstorm, the photo would never load.
Her friends would have all of these phenomenal pictures where they looked happy and were having fun, and she was stuck for the next five hours on a train.
Amber settled back in her seat, resting her head against the shabby material. She knew her frustration was absurd and misplaced. Why was she so obsessed to see what her friends were doing every minute of every day? Seeing what they wore, what they did, what they ate? Why did any of it matter?
The train lurched slightly as it slithered along the tracks like a giant silver serpent, and Amber turned to Cam. His face was inches from the glass as he stared out the window, captivated by the snow as it blew over the train.
Her stomach growled, and he looked up at her. He reached into his backpack and pulled out one of their grandmother’s freshly baked cookies, offering it up to her.
“Cookie?” he asked.
She took it from him. “Thanks.”
“Want to get some real food? There’s a food car a few cars down.”
His blue eyes were big and hopeful, and even though Amber didn’t feel like getting up and was still annoyed that her picture never loaded, she knew her brother needed more than just sugar in his system.
“Yeah, I guess.”
; His face lit up like a firefly at this.
She shouldered her pink purse and got up. Cam led the way, happily swinging between the seats every so often and looking back at her with a huge smile on his face. She hadn’t seen him this excited in a long time.
“Try it!” he exclaimed. “It’s fun!”
She pushed her hair behind her ear and quickly looked around in embarrassment. “Not a chance.”
But even though she was way too grown-up to do the same thing, seeing him so happy was infectious, and in spite of herself, she smiled, too.
Chapter III
THE TRACKS IN THE SNOW
T he dining car was lined on both sides with small two- and four-person tables covered in red and green polyester tablecloths and adorned with fake holly berries in little glass vases.
There were big windows that allowed passengers to see more of the outdoors while they ate, but since it was now dark outside, thin panels of lights running along the ceiling illuminated the car.
Only two people were there, a young cashier standing behind the counter and a man in his mid-thirties with curly, unruly brown hair, thin lips, and glasses sitting low on the bridge of his nose. He was avidly chatting with the cashier who didn’t really seem to be following what he was saying, but still nodded politely all the same.
Cam ran up to the counter and began browsing the sandwiches and snacks on display.
“I want a pretzel with nacho cheese dipping sauce.”
Amber’s stomach rumbled again. “I think I’ll have one of those pizzas,” she replied. “We should get some Sour Patch Kids, too.”
Cam grinned. Some of his favorite memories were the nights he and Amber spent alone, where their parents would leave them money for a pizza, and they’d walk to the nearest gas station and pick up all the candy they could buy with the leftover change from the pizza.
And Soon Comes the Darkness Page 3