A Cold White Fear

by R. J. Harlick

  “It feels okay now. Guess I’d better not cough, eh?” He smiled wanly. Reaching down with shaking hands, he drew the blanket up over his chest as far as his chin, careful to tuck his sides and arms fully under. He looked up at the Serb. “Sure you don’t got any stuff? I could sure use a fix.”

  “You be okay. Jo bring it.”

  “But when’s she coming?” Larry made no attempt to hide the desperation in his voice.

  The man glanced out the window at the howling darkness. “In morning.”

  “That may be difficult with this amount of snow,” I said.

  “When will your road get ploughed?” Professor asked, suddenly taking an interest in the conversation.

  “It doesn’t get done until the main one is cleared, and since Migiskan Road is a dead end, it’s one of the last roads in the municipality to be ploughed.”

  “Fuck,” Professor said, while the Serbian cursed in his own language. Both voiced my sentiments exactly.

  “We have to be able to leave in the morning,” the tattooed man said.

  “Then pray for the snow to stop.” Something I was going to start doing nonstop. I wanted them to be gone as much as they did, if not more so.

  Larry groaned.

  “How bad is this withdrawal going to get? Is there anything we can do to help?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry about him. He’s been through this before,” the tattooed man answered. “We’ve got bigger problems. Slobo, you may have to walk out in the morning to wait for Jo.”

  “No, I no do,” the biker snarled. “You go. You the man they want. I stay here in nice warm house.”

  I didn’t like the sound of this.

  My nose suddenly twitched at a stench I knew all too well. Shoni had left a small brown sausage in the middle of Aunt Aggie’s oriental carpet.

  “Stop!” Slobodan shouted as I scurried toward the kitchen to get something to remove it.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I yelled back. “You’ve got Jid, remember?”

  Nonetheless, he followed me into the kitchen with the boy struggling to get free from his vice-like grip. He smacked him across the face.

  “Leave him alone,” I cried out, pulling Jid toward me. “He’s not going anywhere. He’s already proved that to you. Do you honestly think we’re dumb enough to try to escape in the storm that’s raging out there? We’re miles from safety. We’d freeze to death before we even got halfway there. So quit hovering over us.”

  He stopped in midstride as if taken aback by my sudden boldness. “You got balls, woman. But you already escape. I no trust you. I give you same warning I give boy. You leave, I kill him.” He formed his hand into a mock gun, pointed it at Jid, and fired. “Kerpow. Between the eyes, ne?”

  My stomach clenched tighter. It hadn’t relaxed since these men had pushed their way into my home. “Look, I get the message. I’m not going to do anything, so leave the boy alone. Now let me clean up that mess, otherwise the den is going to stink.”

  He shrugged. “You never smell a prison cell, ne?” He laughed uproariously and then pointed at the empty Scotch bottle lying on its side next to a couple of empty glasses. “You got more? Is very smooth. I like.” He smacked his lips with appreciation.

  I almost considered saying no, but he didn’t appear to be anywhere near close to passing out. Hopefully another bottle would do the trick. “Jid, could you get the last bottle from the dining room?”

  The man started to follow the boy.

  “Leave him alone,” I said. “We have our bargain, okay?”

  “Da, sure.” He sauntered over to the table, slumped down into one of the chairs, and gripped a glass in anticipation. I grabbed a plastic bag, rug-cleaner spray, a sponge, and another cloth to clean the mess in the dining room and then headed back to the den.

  I met Jid coming out of the dining room with another full bottle of Eric’s Lagavulin. I didn’t want him alone with that biker, so I called out, “Slobodan, bring your glass. The Scotch will be waiting for you in the den.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  I hastily wiped up the puppy’s puddle in the dining room before returning to the den to clean up her mess on the carpet. Larry’s eyes were closed, as were Professor’s. His head was slumped awkwardly against the back of the chair. I even detected some sputtered snoring coming from his open mouth. Good. One down. One to go.

  I felt a frisson of hope when I saw the rope lying forgotten on the floor. As the biker was coming into the room, I hastily shoved it under the sofa with my foot. If they didn’t tie me up, we still might be able to leave. With Professor passed out, I was hoping the Serbian would soon join him. Then the three of us could escape without fear of being shot at.

  “Hey, Viper, wake up.” Slobodan kicked the man’s feet.

  When he got no response, he kicked him again several more times. No response. Not even a lifting of an eyelid. Good. He was going to be comatose for a good long while.

  “Stop,” I said. “He’s not going to wake up.”

  “Da. But it feel good.” He grinned and kicked the man’s foot again. “Only time I can do this. When he out cold.” He snickered.

  “I guess you don’t think much of him.”

  “He think he is big shot. He push everyone around in prison. Make people do things for him. And he talk like he better than us.”

  “He does speak well-educated English. Is that why you call him Professor?”

  “He say he go to university. He say he have many what you call ‘degrees.’ Larry tell me he work at university, was Dr. Professor.”

  “Are you sure?” I found this too incredible. With his snakes, he would’ve had the sweet young things trembling in their lululemons. “Do you know where?”

  “Larry know.” He kicked the sofa hard. “Wake up.”

  “Watch out,” I cried out. “You could make his injury worse.”

  “Injun can take it. He is little, but he tough.”

  Larry’s eyes sprang open. “Jeez, I feel awful.” He glanced around as if trying to make out who was in the room. Finally, his eyes landed on his fellow escapee. “That you, Tiger? Ya sure you don’t got any stuff? I sure could use some.” He wiped his nose with the sleeve of Eric’s sweater, making me wince. But it would be a good excuse to finally get rid of this former girlfriend’s gift.

  “Like I tell you, Jo bring it.” The man sank his bulk into the armchair on the other side of the sofa and ran his hands over the leather armrests. “Very nice. Been long time since I sit in chair so nice. Woman, you lucky you got so many nice things.”

  Figuring he was just trying to goad me, I pretended I hadn’t heard.

  “Larry, tell woman name of university where Pro­-f­essor work.”

  “You mean McGill?”

  “Da, big one in Montreal.”

  “Ah … Tiger, I gotta go, eh?” The injured man flicked his eyes in my direction. “Ah … you know what I mean.…” Another glance at me. “Do you think you can help me?” Larry winced as he pushed himself further upright.

  “I don’t know if this is a good idea,” I said. “You’re going to have to climb the stairs. I have a chamber pot. Why don’t you use that?”

  “A bottle more better.” Slobodan guffawed.

  “I’ll get both.”

  “Make sure bottle have big opening,” he called out as I headed out the door. His laughter followed me down the hall.

  The minute I saw Jid in the kitchen, I made a snap decision. “Get your jacket and let’s get out of here.”

  I pushed him through the door into the pantry. I was reaching for my jacket when I heard a click behind me. I turned to see the biker leaning against the kitchen doorjamb. He was pointing his gun straight at me.

  “You go somewhere?” He smirked.

  I lowered my arm. With my heart pounding, I said, “Just getting the chamber pot. Jid, can you squeeze by the tree to get it from the shelf?”

  The boy dropped his jacket onto the floor with a muttered “fuck,” voicing my th
oughts exactly. And he swore again as he pushed his body against the wall to avoid the sharp needles. If looks could kill, I was sure his would as he glared back at the biker.

  “Why tree in house?” the man asked.

  “For Christmas.”

  “Christmas? When?” He seemed surprised. I guessed when you were locked away in prison, you preferred to ignore these kinds of family events that would only remind you of what you were missing.

  “In four days.”

  “Good. I like Christmas. I have proper Serbian Christmas with Jo.” The smile spreading across his face seemed to change him into the kind of man with whom a woman like this Jo could fall in love — as if anyone could fall in love with a thug like him.

  The boy appeared from behind the tree hefting the white porcelain bowl with its dainty blue flowers triumphantly above his head.

  “Take bowl to room and get Injun to pee in it. Is big enough. He not miss.” He snorted.

  “Don’t you call him Injun,” Jid shot back. “It’s not nice.”

  “Shut your mouth, Injun,” Slobo sneered. “I say Injun if I want. Now go.” He motioned for me to move too.

  While we waited in the hall outside the door to the den, he fondled the gun as if making up for lost time. I could hear a fair amount of groaning and cursing coming from the room. Finally, it stopped. Jid appeared in the doorway holding the chamber pot as far away as his arms would allow while he squinched up his nose in disgust.

  “Empty it in the toilet,” I said.

  “Kid, you play trick on me and bam, I shoot your aunt,” the Serb called out as Jid started up the stairs.

  He shoved me into the den, almost causing me to trip over the carpet. “Go there.” He pointed to the dining- room chair I used to reach the books on the top shelf. In front of it were piled the boxes of Christmas tree ornaments I’d retrieved from storage a couple of days ago.

  Larry smiled weakly from the couch as I walked past. Professor, on the other hand, still snored. If only the biker would fall into as deep a sleep. But from the way he was jiggling his leg, I’d say he was a long way from passing out.

  Pushing the boxes aside, I stopped when I reached the chair and waited.

  “Sit. I tell you sit.“

  He bend down and retrieved the rope from under the sofa. “I not stupid, ne?” He smirked. “Sit on chair.”

  He began slapping it against his leg while I carefully moved the box containing the most delicate glass balls from the cracked leather seat to an empty shelf and sat down.

  He continued to glare at me while the rope rasped against his knee. Finally he said, “I no trust you. I tie you up.”

  He started striding toward me. But before he reached me, a tremendous jolt screamed through the house, followed by a resounding thump.

  “Shit! What’s that?” I cried out, rising from the chair. “Jid, Jid, are you okay?”

  TWENTY-THREE

  As I ran into the hall, Slobodan fired his gun. My instinctive reaction was to duck, as if one could dodge a bullet. But I wasn’t thinking too clearly.

  “Get fuck back here,” he shouted.

  “What did you do that for?” I yelled, trying to calm my spiking nerves.

  “Fuckin’ cops are here.”

  As much as I wished and prayed they had finally arrived, I had my doubts. “Impossible. The only way they could get here is by Ski-Doo, and we would’ve heard them. I need to check my house.”

  “You stay here.”

  “What was that awful noise?” Jid asked, running into the room. He careened to a stop when he saw the gun.

  “Do you really think it’s the cops?” Larry rasped, bunching the blanket up against his chest as if for protection.

  “It’s not the cops,” I said. “Something’s fallen on the house. I need to check it out.”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  Despite the noise, Professor slept on.

  For what seemed interminable minutes, the three of us remained frozen where we stood. I clutched Jid’s hand in an attempt to reassure him that everything was going to be okay, even if I didn’t believe it myself. He held it for a few seconds and then pulled it free as if to say I’m a big boy. I can hold my own. I strained to hear anything other than the sounds of the storm. But apart from Shoni’s whimpers coming from the kitchen, I heard nothing that suggested a line of policemen were on the verge of storming into my house.

  “Move,” Slobodan ordered and pushed the two of us out into the hall in front of him. “Walk very slow. You run, I shoot.” To emphasize the point, he shoved the barrel of his handgun into my back.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Front of house, where noise is.”

  I held Jid close to me as the three of us walked as one down the hall toward the front door. He stopped us when we reached the archway leading into the living room with its wall of windows. Only opaque blackness stared back at us.

  He shone his headlamp into the room. My heart leapt at a sudden flash from outside.

  “Cops!” he hissed, shoving us into the room. He brought the pistol up beside my head, in full view of anyone who might be watching.

  The flash appeared again.

  Maintaining his position behind us, he stopped us when we reached the window.

  “I shoot hostages,” he shouted.

  Nothing. No response.

  The beam of his headlamp lit up the inside of the screened porch and the snow on the floor. It came to rest on the wind chime, a present from Eric that he’d hung from a rafter to catch the breeze. The wind catcher was dancing. With each flutter it exploded with another burst of silvery light.

  “No cops,” I said, feeling the chill of disappointment.

  “Good,” Slobo grunted. He thrust us back into the hall. “We go to door.”

  The gun barrel pressed farther into my ribs.

  He halted us just short of the door. “Boy, look outside.”

  Jid started to open the door.

  “No! Use window.” He added a few choice Serbian swear words.

  Jid jumped back. But in the beam of my headlamp, I saw more stubborn defiance in his eyes than fear.

  “Look through the window next to the door,” I said. “And tell us what you see.”

  By now I was convinced he wouldn’t see any police here either. It was too black out there. If they had somehow managed to track down these escaped convicts to my house, they would have it lit up in an orgy of light. And they would be shouting through a megaphone, demanding these guys come out with their hands up.

  I had a fairly good idea of what Jid would see.

  He moved the curtain aside and tried to shine the beam through the window. But its brilliance bounced off the glass, obscuring any view.

  “Take off your headlamp and use it like a flashlight,” I said.

  Jid pressed his face against the glass and directed the beam outside. “I can’t see anything. Looks like something’s in the way.”

  More concerned about my house than the gun, I wrenched open the door.

  Instead of wind and snow blowing through the opening, there was just an eerie, creaking stillness. At first I couldn’t see anything other than what looked to be a jumble of wood, and then I realized the porch roof had caved in. Sandwiched in with the broken planks were disembodied pine branches.

  “Like I tried to tell you, a tree has fallen against the house.”

  It would be the lone pine on the other side of the driveway, the one I’d stopped Eric from cutting down. A good two hundred years old or more, I was hoping it would live another two hundred years. But Eric had suspected the high number of dead branches meant it was dying and was in danger of falling. I should’ve listened.

  The caved-in roof made it impossible to tell if there was damage to the outside wall. But I suspected if there were any, it would be minimal. It would take more than a tree to dent the foot-thick timbers. On the other hand, the windows weren’t quite so impenetrable. I headed back into the living room.<
br />
  “Hey you, come back,” Slobodan shouted.

  I ignored him. “Come on, Jid. Let’s check out the windows.”

  Fortunately, the windows overlooking this section of the porch were intact, although I could see that the sharp end of a broken branch had barely missed the pane of one of the windows. Because the tree had fallen perpendicular to the house, I started to worry about the upstairs windows, even the main roof.

  Propelling Jid in front of me, I hastened upstairs. I could hear Slobodan stomping up behind me.

  I felt the cold draft long before my light lit up the shattered window. Shards of glass, pine needles, and broken twigs littered the hall floor. Wind and snow rushed in through the gap.

  “Fuck,” the Serb said, coming up behind me.

  “We’ve got to cover this up, otherwise the house will become a freezer in no time.” The snow that was piling up on the floor beneath the broken window was no longer melting.

  “Jid, run downstairs and get some large nails and a hammer. I’ll grab a couple of blankets from one of the bedrooms.”

  “How about some plywood? My aunt uses it for her broken windows,” he suggested. “I saw some in the woodshed.”

  “Great idea. Slobodan, could you help Jid?”

  The man started to refuse, but, concluding I wasn’t going anywhere, he followed the boy’s retreating back.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I listened to their footsteps patter down the stairs. I was scared, really scared. Jid and I had to find a way to deal with these men. But short of getting the hell out of here, I had no idea what else we could do to save ourselves.

  Eric wouldn’t hesitate to use his hunting rifles. But even if he kept a duplicate key to the gun cabinet somewhere in the house, I would only rouse suspicions searching for it. So far neither man had discovered the cabinet tucked away in a dark corner of his ground floor office. I thought it best to keep it that way. The last thing I wanted was for them to add his three rifles to their arsenal.