Alice cautiously rolled over onto her back, barely noticing that she was topless. The skin on her back scraped across the—Jesus, a bare mattress?—bed as she turned, causing a flare of pain, but the signal crossed with her intense headache and the former was somehow muted.
Well, she thought, grimacing, whatever I did last night, drinks were involved.
Alice didn’t need to see the rash on her back to tell her that—no, even without seeing the gluten-induced irritation or feeling the fuzz-like coating in her mouth that felt like she had eaten the top of a bulrush, her headache was proof enough that she had indulged.
Alice swore. It had been a good month up until last night, only a few drinks here and there, but now she would have to start all over again.
She felt her nose run and sniffed hard, but when the sensation persisted, she brought a pale finger to her right nostril. When she pulled it away, the pad of her finger came back red.
Great, she thought, drinking wasn’t all I did.
Alice looked around quickly, frowning at the sight of the pale yellow walls that were peeling near the corners of the room, and realized that they were void of paintings, photographs, or even a poster. A poster would have been nice—a poster was all she needed, proof that she wasn’t holed up in some sort of crack house. But the only personal item she saw was a photograph on top of the television of a boy of about ten with a buzz cut and a long pink scar that ran from the outer corner of his right eye and arced down to just below his lips.
She shuddered.
Disgusted with herself on so many levels, Alice sat up and looked around for her shirt. Just when her eyes fell on it at the end of the mattress, all wadded up in a ball, a sound from behind her made her heart leap into her throat. Instinctively, she lay an arm across her bare chest and slowly turned.
A door at the back of the room swung open. As Alice watched with an expression that she knew could only be described as pure horror, a man stepped through the doorway. His eyes were so squinted that they were practically closed, and he didn’t immediately notice Alice.
What the hell?
The man standing before Alice could not have weighed more than a hundred pounds. His thin, pale chest, marked with uneven patches of dark brown hair, was nearly concave, and she could have counted every single one of his ribs had she been so inclined. Below the man’s squinted eyes, which caused a complex network of creases to run from the outer corners before disappearing into his hairline, was a bulbous nose, and below that, chapped lips that could barely be discerned from his scraggly grey beard. Unlike his beard, his hair was a stark black—clearly dyed—and although it was messy, Alice could tell that not long ago he had parted it with what might have been a meat cleaver.
Frozen, unsure of what to do next, Alice’s gaze slowly travelled down his body, something that she immediately regretted. The man’s tight white underwear was stained with brown smudges, and the outline of his semi-erect penis was clearly visible.
Who the fuck?
Desperate now, her eyes drifted back upward, and to her dismay she saw that the man was smiling, revealing a row of thick yellow teeth. His dark, almost black eyes stared directly at her.
“Oh, hi there, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart came out through his mangled teeth like ‘shweehaar’.
Instinctively, Alice’s arm tightened across her chest. The man’s smile grew.
“I—” Alice turned and put her shirt on as quickly as possible, no longing caring if the man caught a glimpse of her breasts. “—I was just leaving.”
She spotted her jeans by the mattress, and in one smooth motion she pulled those on too.
Standing, Alice turned for one last glance and was horrified to see that the bearded man had slipped a hand into his filthy underwear and was fondling himself slowly, rhythmically, as if he were caressing a cat.
“You don’t have to go,” he said, leering at her. “Not just yet.”
Alice backed quickly toward the door.
“Is your boyfriend gone, shweehaaar?”
The man took two deliberate steps toward her.
Boyfriend? Brad was here?
Terrified, Alice continued to back up, all the while reaching behind her. When her fingers blindly closed on the doorknob, she allowed herself another breath of the stale apartment air. She turned and pulled, but the door opened only a few inches before it caught again.
The man laughed and took another step.
“No, not just yet,” he whispered in a horrible, whistling voice. “You don’t have to go just yet.”
Juuuust yeehhhht.
Panic began to fill her, but she willed it away, finally risking a glance behind her.
Chain!
The word split her headache in half. She closed the door, unhooked the chain, and then yanked it wide.
“Aw shucks, shweetie.”
She dared one more glance at the man and was startled by the fact that he had somehow managed to remove his shitty underwear in the two or three seconds it had taken Alice to open the door. He was standing there, about a foot from the bare, stained mattress, knees slightly bent, stroking his fully erect penis with a thin hand adorned with long yellow fingernails.
Alice turned and ran.
A moment later, she heard the man stumble into the hallway, and when he spoke again his tone had changed, his voice now filled with anger.
“Hey! Where is my case?! Where’s my H?! You fucking cunt, come back with my H!”
This time, Alice did not turn.
7.
It Wasn’t Quite Six, yet every member of the Lawrence clan was wide awake. Even little Henrietta, who normally slept in until almost nine, was awake. And she was crying again—wailing.
What’s wrong with you, Henrietta?
But even if his youngest daughter had been acting normally, this wasn’t a normal day, or even a normal Christmas morning, and the mood was tense bordering on unpleasant.
“Did you make some coffee, Ma?” Jared asked.
Veronica Lawrence nodded. Even though the power was out, more than three feet of snow had accumulated on the ground, and it was pitch black outside, the woman still felt the need to put rollers in her hair. It looked as if she had showered, too, although Cody couldn’t see how that was possible.
“The pot is almost ready,” she replied.
Veronica Lawrence wasn’t a small woman, but she wasn’t a particularly large one, either. Like an optical illusion, she had an odd thickness about her, as if she had extra layers of skin. Not the kind of sagging flesh that obese people were cursed with following substantial weight loss, but it was if she just had more layers of it.
She was a tough woman, always had been, but Veronica cared. After her husband—the patriarch—had passed, however, her resolve seemed to have softened, for which the Lawrence boys were grateful. But now, given her lack of immediacy, Cody was beginning to wonder if her softening was simply a manifestation of apathy. He took a good look at her face, trying to read the woman. She was pretty, even in her old age, with bright eyes and a small mouth that led to an even smaller cleft in her chin, which all the Lawrence boys shared to some degree or another.
The coffeemaker beeped, distracting Cody.
“Well I made the coffee,” his mother said, “but I am not going to put it in your cup for you.”
Veronica had softened somewhat, but she had not gone all the way soft.
“Who wants some?” Jared asked.
When his eyes fell on Oxford, he made a face and raised one of his slender palms defensively.
“Forget I asked.”
No one spoke until Jared returned with four cups, all jangling together, the black liquid dripping down the sides of the white porcelain.
“I made them the way I like my women,” he offered, with a wry smile. “Hot, black, and bitter.”
It wasn’t the first time he had made this joke, of course, and while it might have been moderately amusing years ago, especially coming from him, no one
was smiling now.
Henrietta suddenly appeared at Cody’s side and gently tugged at his pant leg. He looked down at her, relieved that whatever night terrors had bled into the early morning seemed to have passed. But his relief was short-lived; the toddler had dark circles around her eyes, and red splotches around her nose and mouth. She looked utterly exhausted.
“Come shopping, Daddy,” Henrietta whimpered.
She looked bizarre, dressed in two sweaters and a pair of snow pants, her frizzy blond curls covering her shoulders and part of her face.
“Shopping, Daddy,” she repeated, tugging his pant leg again. Cody offered her a wan smile.
“I can’t, sweetheart, the adults are talking.”
That was it. Any calm that had passed over her broke, and her face shattered into a wail.
Cody looked at Marley, and caught her turning skyward.
“Corina!” she called across the room.
Corina, white headphones once again jammed in her ears, her eyes fixated on her phone, didn’t acknowledge her mother.
“Corina!” Marley shouted again, louder this time, trying to be heard over Henrietta’s cries. Cody cringed.
Corina pulled one of the earbuds out and turned.
“What?”
Pardon, Cody almost said, but decided that tensions were high enough without correcting manners.
“Don’t say what,” Marley said, and Cody smirked despite himself.
Corina stared at her mother with a blank expression.
“Please take your sister shopping.”
“Shopping?” Corina asked, her face twisting. She gestured toward the window. “There is eight feet of snow out there!”
Are, Cody thought, there are eight feet of snow out there.
There was a momentary break in Henrietta’s wails as she turned to look at her sister.
“You take me shopping?” she asked. The toddler was holding two empty grocery bags out to her sister, one in each hand.
Corina rolled her eyes, but she gestured for Henrietta to come to her nevertheless. Marley frowned, but Cody was just grateful that the crying had finally ceased.
“It’s Christmas, Corina,” Cody said. “Why don’t you and Henrietta open a present or two?”
This, at least, seemed to cheer up his eldest daughter.
“Okay, so, what do we do next?” Oxford asked when the children were out of earshot.
The youngest Lawrence brother looked worse than he had the night before, Cody noted, but aside from Mama, they all looked pretty rough.
Before Cody could answer, a groggy voice interrupted them.
“Any extra coffee?”
Cody turned to see Seth, his dark hair a mess atop his head, his eyes red and his thin frame stooped. This was the first time that he had met the man, and he was less than impressed—Seth hadn’t said much at dinner, and had said even less when they had opened the few presents the night prior.
Give him time. He just needs to warm up a bit.
Cody’s eyes flicked from Seth to Oxford and back.
Yes, we definitely all look a little rough, he confirmed.
“Call the sheriff,” Jared offered, holding out his coffee to Seth, who took it without hesitation and gulped the hot liquid.
Cody nodded. “Yep, probably better to call the sheriff than the power company.” He turned his eyes back to the blanket of snow that filled the yard. “Unlikely to get through to anyone there.”
There was so much snow that when the wind relented for a moment and the white landscape was revealed, he found it impossible to interpret distance; everything was just one giant, featureless white void. He couldn’t even make out where the road stopped, the embankment started, or even where the frozen water met the shore. Even the multitude of branches that he had heard come crashing down throughout the night had since been covered with snow. Before Cody could look over at the cars, the wind picked up again, tearing up the newest, lightest layer of snow and tossing it into the air.
“Yeah, call the sheriff,” Oxford concurred.
“Can’t get a signal,” Corina said nonchalantly from somewhere behind them.
Cody looked over at his daughters. Both Henrietta and Corina were picking up coasters off the table, inspecting them, and after Henrietta’s approval, put them in their bags. The toddler was more interested in these than the Christmas presents, it appeared.
“How—?”
Even though he had stopped himself, his daughter, as astute as she was, knew what he was going to ask.
“What do you think I was doing on my phone?”
Facebook? Twitter? Instagram?
Cody turned back to Oxford and the other adults.
“Well, let’s keep trying anyway. Ma, you check the landline as well. Also, let’s turn the heat down a bit; not sure how long the power is going to be out, and the generator won’t last more than a day or so if we leave everything on.”
A day, Cody knew, remembering the half-empty tank, was an exaggeration.
8.
It Probably Wasn’t The best idea to go outside and play in the snow, considering that coming back inside to warm up afterwards was out of the question. But the Lawrence family could only play so many consecutive games of Scrabble before even those blessed with extreme patience started to become short-tempered. And, at this point, Cody would have done nearly anything to get away from Henrietta’s crying—she was incensed.
“Holy shit!” Corina said after taking one step outside the house. The smile on her face was enough for Cody to overlook the curse.
His eldest daughter looked like a newborn penguin transitioning from land to water. The snow was up to her waist, and even though Oxford had carved out a small section directly outside the door, Corina could barely move.
“Go on, Corina!” Jared shouted encouragingly.
Both Jared and Cody were behind her, steeling their nerves to eventually brave the elements. Only Marley, Veronica, and Seth, who was still nursing his hangover in the early afternoon, had declined the offer to play in the snow. Even Henrietta, despite her inconsolable crying, had seemed keen, but Marley had quashed that idea before it had gained any traction.
“I can’t!” Corina squealed. “I’m stuck!”
But she wasn’t stuck, not really, and a couple of breaststroke-style movements later, she was able to walk again, having strayed into where Oxford had displaced some of the snow.
Cody followed his eldest daughter, and almost immediately the cold air caused him to inhale sharply through his nose. Somehow, though, even coming from the now cool interior of the home, this cold air felt refreshing.
Holding his gloved hands out in front of him, it took but a few seconds before the black leather was first speckled and then covered with white. Cody laughed and belly-flopped into the snow. He raised his face slowly, enjoying the tingling cold on his cheeks as the snow melted. Somewhere, he heard Corina laugh and he smiled again.
“Incoming!” someone suddenly shouted, but before he could react, something hit him hard from behind, and a split second later his face was being forced back into the snow.
With a sharp twist of the torso, Cody managed to flip his body over, tossing Jared from his back. Wiping the snow from his eyes with a gloved hand, he growled.
Cody heard more laughter and pivoted, turning away from Jared to face Corina. Eyes narrowing, he growled again, and in one swift motion he scooped up a wad of snow and began packing it between his palms. It was too fluffy to make a real snowball, but Corina’s face elongated in surprise nonetheless.
“Don’t you dare!” she yelled, but when she tried to turn and run, she only managed to move a few feet before Cody launched his ammunition.
The snowball was mostly powder, so when it hit Corina in the shoulder, a white puff billowed up and struck her on the side of her exposed cheek. She screamed again, and reached down to scoop up two handfuls of her own.
Cody was about to dive to his right, maybe preemptively bury himself in the snowbank
, when he heard a snarl from somewhere behind him.
A moment later, Jared was on him again, this time hitting him in the lower back with his shoulder, and they both flew forward several feet. For the third time in less than five minutes, Cody’s face was buried in the snow.
Face wash.
His brother’s hands pushed his face deeper, then moved the back of his head side to side, ensuring that every pore was packed with snow. Cody struggled, trying to flip Jared off as he had done before, but this time his brother was higher up on his back and his efforts were useless. Just as his lungs demanded that he take a breath, his head was lifted, and like a yeti out of hibernation, he gulped hungrily at the air.
Cody blinked rapidly, trying to get the wet snow that hung from both sets of eyelashes to fall.
“Get off me!” he shouted, spitting snow from his mouth and forcing it from his nose.
Jared laughed.
“Want another face wash?”
Cody tried to turn and look at his brother, but with the pressure on his upper back, he was only able to move his head a few inches. He struggled, wriggled his hips, undulated his lower half, trying anything to break free, but it was no use.
“You are about to go under again,” Jared warned, then in a louder voice, “Corina! Get over here and help me bury your father!”
Cody felt hands on the back of his head again and was about to take a deep breath, but as his eyes opened wide in anticipation, the falling snow seemed to part, offering him a clear view across the lawn. Whatever breath he was going to take caught in his throat.
Evidently, Jared had seen it too, as his grip on the back of Cody’s head loosened and he slowly peeled himself off his brother.
“What the—?”
Less than twenty yards away from where the two Lawrence brothers lay, a parade of deer—at least seven, by Cody’s count—were struggling to gallop through the thick snow. There were plenty of deer around the Lawrence home, of course, especially at this time of year. But never had Cody or Jared, in their fifteen years of coming up to this place, seen this many together, and definitely not a group that consisted of two males, their thick, twisted antlers covered in a thin, reflective layer of ice. As they watched in silence, Cody felt his jaw slacken even more.
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