by Hart, Joe
The wind had washed his tracks into mere depressions like some bleached ocean licking at a pale beach. He could see his trail that spanned the gap between where he’d moved the house from its old location and to where it sat now. But that wasn’t what froze him where he stood as if the temperature had suddenly plummeted a hundred degrees.
A second set of tracks lay beside his own, much fresher and more distinct, as if whoever had walked there had done it only seconds ago. The prints came toward him and ended at the door of the fish house in two deeply set holes. There were no tracks leading away.
And it was only after the shock had receded of seeing the prints that he realized whoever had made them was barefoot.
11
The wind shoved at his face, trying to hold him back, to keep him on the lake. Mick struggled against it, his lungs burning, mouth open as he sucked the freezing air in.
The tracks followed alongside his own as if someone had walked next to him, unseen, the entire way. They didn’t deviate where he’d stopped and muddled the snow at the first location of the fish house but instead continued in a straight line to where the hut sat now. He told himself, as he hurried in the direction of the house, that no man could withstand the touch of snow and ice against his bare feet for the length that the tracks stretched. He had repeated this fact over and over as he traced their depressions, clearly seeing the individual toe marks in front of the sole. He had even stopped to call out several times into the frigid tempest, his voice lost in the whirling eddies of snow, drowned out by the storm’s overpowering scream. But when the steps became farther and farther apart, much longer than the stride any man could take, he began to run.
Mick tried not to look at the prints as he rushed toward the nearing bank, its trees emerging from the curtains of snow, their branches shushing in the wind, almost seeming to tell him to quiet his assumptions, to calm his fear, but it did nothing to slow his pace. He pelted onward, not looking down now and running like something pursued him. Maybe something did.
The trees loomed over him, and he jogged past their reaching branches, snow tossing up from his boots as he ran. The hill leading up to the house looked impossibly tall. Adverse to his impression of it when he’d arrived, the slope now seemed to go on forever and he was a child again, dwarfed by the monolithic summit that appeared insurmountable without the help of his father’s hand. Alone in the fury of the storm, childhood fears came rushing back, more powerful than the insistence of the wind. His father was gone, and now there was nothing to keep the monsters at bay anymore. They were free to find him and do with him what they would.
Mick struggled up the hill, cursing his imagination all the while his mind kept returning to the tracks and the inhuman lengths between them. His eyes shot to the side whenever another single track would appear, but their indentations were becoming less and less defined, as were his own boot prints. Soon all that was left were the ghosts of where he’d stepped, their craters barely recognizable beneath the constant worrying of the wind.
The Tahoe came into view and then the house behind it, appearing as if in a fever dream. The snow fell sideways, cutting against gravity and stinging like cold nettles on his exposed skin. He rushed up the last few yards and onto level ground, the endurance of his muscles finally reaching their limits. He slowed and stopped, turning to face the way he’d come, almost expecting to see something huge and indistinguishable rushing toward him.
Only the wind and snow met him as he rotated, searching the late afternoon for the shape of a man or any indication that someone was present besides himself.
There was nothing.
The urge to pile into the Tahoe and simply leave was overwhelming. But that would be giving in to hysteria, letting fear make his decisions. And how would he feel returning to the hotel empty-handed with nothing accomplished? Slowly he turned away from the lake, made his way to the house, and stepped inside.
The relief of being indoors was palpable. He shut the weather out with a snap of the door and leaned against it, his mind running at a frenetic pace to try and explain the footprints on the lake, the length between their strides.
“Someone’s messing with you,” he said, resting his forehead against the back of his hand and closing his eyes. “Some local shithead kids found out about dad and they’re playing a fucking sick joke.”
The explanation held only a small amount of water before collapsing completely. Kids? Playing games in this weather? Not a chance. But what was the alternative? He opened his eyes and stared at the wood grains on the heavy door’s surface. He was too close to see any pictures within their delicate lines, but if he stepped back, he was sure some would appear. Perhaps they would be images of straightjackets and padded rooms. Maybe wrist and ankle restraints or a hypodermic needle filled with something to calm him.
He opened the door again, returning to the storm, but only traveled as far as the porch’s edge. His most recent tracks were almost completely obscured, and when he squinted, he couldn’t make out the other depressions at all.
He had imagined them.
That was the only explanation that made sense. The stress of losing his father combined with Cambri’s remarriage was stripping the layers from his sanity. He shivered, the cold biting through his clothes and gnawing at his skin.
Mick turned and went inside. People saw things sometimes that weren’t there. It was nowhere near perfectly normal but the last twenty-four hours hadn’t been either. He depicted hidden images as art for a living, was it such a stretch for him to see something in the snow that wasn’t there?
He stripped off the soaking coat, hanging it to dry on the clothes rack. Tugging the long boots from his feet, he walked into the kitchen, the sanctity of the house returning somewhat without the tainted sensation of fear from before. The air was much warmer, the woodstove doing its job in the basement. The heat called to him, and he shivered again, moving toward the stairway. He changed direction halfway there and stopped in the office nook looking at the paperwork stacked upon unopened envelopes. Mick sorted through a handful of letters and took a half dozen that looked as if they were bills. The most important documents would be locked away in the safe downstairs, but everything would need to be gone through eventually. He would have to set up payment systems in the meantime while he decided what to do with the house and property.
He paused in his sifting and glanced around the office. The notion to leave Chicago and move here came and went in a fleeting thought that resembled the twisting flakes outside. He couldn’t leave Aaron, and there was no way Cambri and her new husband would want to relocate simply because his dad was gone. He would have to sell the place, there would be no question. The vile portion of his mind that was composed of all the selfishness and greed he possessed began to calculate the worth of the property and what the subsequent profit could do for him and Aaron. He batted the thoughts down, sickened and angered at even thinking along those lines. Now was the time to grieve and not ponder what would come to him. What would be, would be.
Mick made to turn toward the stairs, but a colorful drawing in an ebony picture frame caught his eye. He moved around the desk and picked it up, recognizing it before his fingers touched it.
It was a drawing Aaron had done for his father. They had created it in crayon together nearly six months ago when he’d had Aaron for a long weekend. It was a badly drawn image of the property, the lake represented by a rounded squiggle of blue, and the slope leading up to the house was a slashing of green. The house itself consisted of a brown stack of horizontal lines that made up the logs along with an un-proportional pickup truck the same blue as his father’s Chevy that now sat in the dark garage. Aaron had drawn a stick figure with a smile that stretched beyond his face and Mick had helped him label it ‘Grandpa’ in bright yellow. Aaron hadn’t wanted any assistance, but he had guided his hand when it became too unstable to remain on the paper. They’d mailed it to his father and received a phone call from him after he’d received it. Mick st
ill recalled how Aaron’s face had lit up when he’d held the phone to his ear so his father could say thank you directly to him.
Mick studied the frame around the picture. It was fit together with the flawless precision his father imbued in all his work. The wood was stained almost black and sanded so smooth a blind man would not be able to distinguish between its surface and glass. The place where the picture sat on the desk was cleared of paperwork so that anyone sitting in the chair could easily see it.
Mick’s face crumpled, and a ball of heat rose up in his chest, choking him again with tears. He set the frame back where it had been and swiped at his eyes, suddenly missing his son almost as much as his father. He turned, clutching the envelopes and made his way down the steps to the basement.
The fire still blazed behind the grate, and it threw jittering shadows across the floor. The air smelled slightly of wood smoke, and Mick inhaled it, letting all the memories of time spent in the room flow into him like oxygen. He flipped on a standing lamp in one corner and paused a moment considering the chairs beside the stove. After a time, he sat in his father’s, letting the warm fabric, heated by the fire, soak into him, loosen the rust of his cramped muscles. The house groaned above like a dying man, and the wood popped and snapped as the fire chewed into its heart.
Mick began to open the mail, setting aside the letters that looked to be advertisements instead of actual bills. He came across a phone record, an electric bill that was unbelievably low, and a single statement that he realized was a receipt. The letterhead was an elegant curve of gold embossing at its top that read Diamond Point Recovery Center. Beneath it was a brief thanks for payment in full signed by the management. Mick read over the receipt and blinked at the amount marked “paid in full.”
It was over ten thousand dollars.
He stared at the numbers, trying to see if he’d made a mistake, his eyes again playing tricks on him as they had on the lake. The amount was correct. His father had paid the bill in full early last month, and the only other information concerning the services rendered was a check-in and check-out date of exactly one month to the day prior to Christmas.
Mick let the paper drop into his lap and cover the other subsequent bills. His eyes roamed the cement walls and traced the movement of a single silky spider web dancing in the drafts created by the heated air. His father had paid a high-priced treatment facility over ten thousand dollars. The reality of it refused to sink in, mostly because he was sure his father hadn’t had ten thousand dollars. The property and house he sat in now had been paid for by his mother’s life insurance. His father had told him when he was a teenager that his pension from the mill had been a pittance for retiring early and that almost all of their money came from his woodworking and the little interest the leftover insurance money earned each quarter. Besides, his father didn’t have a drinking problem and never had, as far as he knew. Yes, there was always beer in the fridge and at least one liter of whisky in the pantry for the coldest winter nights, but in no way had his father ever been addicted.
Mick stopped and frowned, the realization hitting him like a slap to the face. His father hadn’t paid for himself to go to treatment; he’d paid for Gary. He lifted the paper again and looked at the dates. He’d heard once that the most depressing time of the year was the holidays and thus the worst time to come out of rehab. Obviously, going by Gary’s state at the bar this morning, the timing for treatment had not only been bad but also a catastrophic failure. He had never seen his uncle drunk that early before.
“Damn it, Dad,” he whispered, and refolded the paper into its envelope.
He wondered then what his father had forgone or made due with to help his souse of a brother. How much harder had he worked for the money that was now spent, blown on a futile attempt to save an addict from himself? Anger rose within him, and he stood, moving to the wood box, stoking the fire with several more logs. The flames seethed in the stove’s belly as did the rage at his uncle. If he saw him again before leaving for Chicago, he would say something; he had to. There was no way he was going to let Gary get away without at least knowing that he knew. His father had worked hard for the money he spent trying to help his brother, and Gary had squandered it and now disgraced his memory as well.
“Fucking drunk,” Mick said between clenched teeth.
He sat again in the chair but set the unopened envelopes aside, no longer able to focus. The firelight danced on the floor, dispelling and embracing the darkness. His mind tried to return to the wasted money but each time the thoughts fell short, hindered by a solid wall of exhaustion. He was warm now, comfortable, and the chair was so soft. How much sleep had he gotten in the last day? He couldn’t remember. His eyes closed and opened in one long blink then closed again. The fatigue rolled over him and pulled him down, swirling like a sink draining. Turning and sliding until the crackle of the stove slipped away into nothing.
He was in the morgue again.
The cold tile infused with a freezing, aquamarine light so that each individual square glowed. There were windows cut into the walls now, and they looked outside to the storm even though he knew he was underground. The dissection table was gone from the center of the room, and a song played on a tinny radio somewhere, its melody familiar and haunting, but its title fled from him like a lithe and feral cat each time he reached for it. A sound came from the farthest wall, where the long drawers were.
It was a susurration, not quite a whisper of words but of flesh. Something was moving inside the center drawer.
Mick found himself standing over a big drain in the middle of the floor. The grates were six inches apart, and a fire burned below him, the heat rising up in gentle drafts. He moved forward, pulled by the sound that beckoned. As he neared the wall, he saw the occupancy indicator moved back and forth from red to gray, flicking between the two as if turned from inside.
Mickey.
His name floated out through the drawer’s enclosure, and the indicator quit moving and stayed red. But the word hadn’t only come from the drawer; it had appeared in his head also, growing there like some uninhibited mold.
Who’s there? His mouth moved, but the words came after, delayed in the strange air as if encountering resistance. The drawer thumped again, and now he could see it moving, the door bumping open and then shut.
The ones who know can’t see. They’re blind and you don’t know.
Mick stopped before the drawer and put his fingers on the handle. Instead of the cold touch he expected, the steel was almost too hot to hold, but he did, gripping harder instead of pulling away.
Who knows? I don’t understand.
He waited, the music coming from somewhere, scratching like it was a phonograph playing the tune instead of beaming in through the airwaves. With a grimace, he began to open the door, the darkness within its widening mouth as black as oil. A putrid odor came from inside. It wafted to him and invaded his nostrils, turning his stomach in a free-falling somersault.
They can’t see, but you can.
The voice was his father’s, and he stopped opening the small door, knowing he couldn’t face what was inside. Not again. Not ever. Because it was death. That which comes for everything that lives. It was the midnight mirror waiting to be looked into, to be gazed upon with the utter clarity of one’s own abysmal mortality.
The scratching of the song became a soft clicking that drowned out the music completely. It was the sound of some insect scurrying across the floor, its heavy carapace ticking as it hurried toward the smell that came from the morgue drawer.
Something moved in the darkness of the drawer, and he stepped back, wanting to slam the little door shut, wanting to be out of the morgue even if it was to run into the storm and freeze there. Anything but to see what was coming out of the darkness.
The clicking continued, and he turned to see what was making the sound, turned his head as movement caught his eye coming out of the drawer. Blackened and decayed fingers tipped with exposed bone, reaching, hol
ding out a hand for him to take. Mick lunged away, fleeing from the thing that might’ve been his father and could never have been. He tripped and fell toward the grate with its teeth of licking flame, fell until—
—he connected with the basement floor.
His hand shot out and stopped his fall as he slid from the chair. His breath heaved in and out of him like something alive. There was no oxygen, and there was too much. His head swam. He blinked and stared around the room.
The fire still burned, but it was lower now, its flames languid behind the grate. Less light fell down the stairs, but it still had the gray quality of late afternoon. He hadn’t been asleep very long. As his breathing slowly calmed, the images of the dream spooled out in his mind, replaying the most disturbing portions in utter clarity. He could almost taste the stink that had invaded his nose, could almost hear the soft clicking of the phonograph sliding off the center of a record. Mick started to rise from the floor, a tingling surge of blood returning to his sleeping legs, when he realized he could still hear the ticking. It was coming from the far end of the room where a swath of shadows hung in the corner. He squinted toward its source and froze, his insides shriveling in on themselves.
The dial set within the safe’s heavy door was turning.
He could barely make out the movement, but it was there, the clicking in time with its slow and calculated spinning. The dial paused and then spun back the other direction before coming to a stop.
His mouth was a desert, his tongue a baked rock. He wavered on the spot meaning to rush forward and fly up the stairs as fast as he could while at the same time staying rooted where he was. The dial had moved; he’d seen it moving, spun by an unseen hand. No, there was another explanation, there had to be.