Acts of Malice

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  That night, the house rattled and shook with wind, and snow piled up over the front door, making it impassable. Upstairs, underneath the Hudson blanket, they murmured to each other.

  She woke up to the sound of a pinecone hitting the window.

  ‘‘Open up!’’ Bob shouted, ‘‘and bring a shovel! It’s five feet deep out here!’’

  Collier continued to snore. Searching the cold floor with her toe for her slippers, Nina lifted herself off the bed and pulled on a thick robe. Padding over to the window, she lifted back the curtain.

  Morning sun lit the scene below like an Andersen fairy tale.

  Fresh deep snow in drifts, white and regal, reached up to the sky like miniature Alps. No wind stirred the trees. The yard was a still life in white and green and sapphire, every shadow focused and crisp.

  ‘‘Get up!’’ she said to Collier, bending over to let him grab for her and kiss her once before she flew down the stairs. ‘‘And dress warm! Today’s the day we bust out of this place and break in those funny-looking snowshoes you brought over.’’

  ‘‘Are you sure, Nina?’’ he called down. She stopped at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘‘Floyd will be with us. He’s armed,’’ she said. ‘‘What do you think?’’

  ‘‘Bob would love it,’’ Collier said. ‘‘We’ll be fine. I’ll call Barb and let her know where we are.’’

  They took the Bronco on Highway 89 along the west side of the lake, Drummond following in his four-wheel-drive police car. The highway had been groomed, probably early in the morning, but the white of the hillsides made Bob jump with excitement in the back seat. Every spot looked better than the last one. Collier finally pulled over into some National Forest land.

  A wide valley spread before them with a series of gentle slopes. At the far end, a mountain angled up steeply, rising so precipitately that Nina had to bend her head back to see the top. The only marks in the ocean of white were deer prints.

  ‘‘Sunglasses,’’ Nina said to Bob.

  ‘‘Check.’’ He put them on.

  ‘‘Sunscreen.’’ She slathered some on all three faces.

  Bob squirmed with impatience as Collier methodically stacked the snowshoes beside the car and began to dig below some blankets for Bob’s new snowboard. As soon as the snowboard emerged, Bob headed for the nearest hill.

  ‘‘Stay close,’’ Nina called. ‘‘And stay off the mountain slope with that thing.’’

  ‘‘Oh, Mom,’’ he called back cheerfully. ‘‘Nothing I can’t handle.’’

  ‘‘No way,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Fine,’’ he said with practiced disgust. He went off and she watched him trudging up a rise across from the mountain. ‘‘I’ll hang around the truck,’’ Floyd Drummond said. ‘‘This way I’ll be able to keep an eye on all three of you.’’ He was sitting in the Bronco with the heater going.

  ‘‘He’s getting strong,’’ Nina said, watching Bob take his first run down the slope across the way, as Collier fastened his snowshoes.

  ‘‘He’s growing up. Here. I’ll help you.’’

  With dismay she noted a few other cars had pulled up behind them and across the road. Oh, well, she thought. The snow is big enough to hold all of us.

  Why, here they were on the cusp of the wilderness, with miles and miles to go in any direction. Sure enough, within minutes the cars had emptied and the people disappeared into the forests all around.

  ‘‘It’s a beautiful day,’’ she said, straining to put her boot into the snowshoe. ‘‘We’re going to have a blast.’’

  They set off across the snow-covered meadow. Collier led them up a pathway that traversed the valley. From where they were hiking, Nina could watch Bob, who seemed content to snowboard up and down the same hill over and over under Floyd Drummond’s watchful gaze. Drummond could see them, too, as they moved among the trees of the lower elevation of the mountain.

  For an hour, they shoed along what might be a snowed-in trail through blazing sun and into the cold dark swatches cast by tall trees away from the road and into the valley, until they stood in the mountain’s shadow. Collier saw so many things she didn’t notice: the tracks of animals, plants still flourishing in the high bare rocks, sounds of nature.

  Finally, Nina sat down on a log, puffing. ‘‘You didn’t tell me how much work it is to walk around in these things.’’

  Collier pulled out a bottle of water and handed it to her. ‘‘Should I tell you a secret?’’ he asked while she sipped.

  ‘‘What?’’ She wiped the water off her mouth with the rough fabric of her sleeve.

  ‘‘I’ve never done this before.’’

  ‘‘No! But . . . what was that all about back there?’’ She nodded toward their footprints. ‘‘Oh, here’s an excellent spot for schussing. And let’s slog it down this hill. I thought you knew all kinds of lingo. I thought you were such an expert.’’

  He was shaking his head, laughing. ‘‘Just playing it by ear,’’ he said.

  ‘‘Why, you little . . . !’’ She reached down for a handful of snow, balled it up, and smacked him with it on the shoulder.

  ‘‘Don’t get all worked up, now. You had fun, didn’t you?’’

  ‘‘My legs are rubber,’’ she said. ‘‘We came a long way uphill,’’ she added, looking around. It was true. They had climbed quite a bit up the lower, most gentle slope of the mountain. She looked through the trees for Bob, and caught a flash of his yellow hat across the meadow. Good boy, she thought.

  She took off her shoe and shook off the accumulated snow.

  ‘‘Let’s go,’’ Collier said. ‘‘It’s cold in the shade.’’

  ‘‘What’s that?’’ Nina asked, cocking her head. They looked around, but couldn’t see anyone, but it was clear enough what they were hearing. A snowmobile.

  ‘‘Damn,’’ Collier said. ‘‘I hate the noise those things make.’’

  Nina put her shoe on and stood up. ‘‘Which way back?’’

  He led her out of the trees toward the big valley. They were high up the side of the mountain, almost in the middle of the steep slope rising behind them. Here the ground was much steeper. ‘‘Let’s go back the other way,’’ Nina said nervously. ‘‘I’ll fall here.’’

  ‘‘Let’s just cross to the other side. Then we can come through a new way back to the road.’’

  ‘‘Mom! Collier!’’ Bob shouted, spotting them far above him. ‘‘Watch this!’’

  He snowboarded rapidly down a hill in the direction facing the mountain, sliding to a stop at the bottom. Floyd met him there. He looked up and waved.

  ‘‘Wow!’’ they shouted. And that’s when she heard it, the sound of the snowmobile approaching from the far side of the mountain, higher still. It roared into view, close enough for Nina to see the driver’s red and white and black ski parka.

  ‘‘Oh, no,’’ she said. ‘‘C’mon. Let’s go down. Quickly.’’

  Collier looked intently at the snowmobile, which had stopped at the edge of the snowfield above them, as if the man on it was studying them. ‘‘You know who that is?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘Jim Strong.’’

  ‘‘How sure are you?’’

  ‘‘I know that parka.’’ They turned around and began to go back as swiftly as they could the way they had come, clumsy on the snowshoes.

  The snowmobile took off. Angling straight up the mountain, it peaked parallel with the mountain almost directly above them, and roared down the other side to the trees they were heading toward.

  Collier stopped. ‘‘What do you want to do? Now he’s that way. We can’t avoid him, so we’ll confront him. I’m with you. I’ll watch him.’’

  ‘‘Floyd!’’ Nina shouted down the mountain. ‘‘Floyd!’’ Drummond saw her waving to him and saw the snowmobile. He began climbing toward them, but he had a long way to go.

  ‘‘Okay,’’ Nina said, suddenly very, very tired. Her feet felt heavy and awkward as bowling balls and she remem
bered the mountain climbing books she had read all of one winter, how climbers at very high altitudes took eight breaths to make one step. She didn’t want to go toward that revving motor in the trees. But Jim was much faster and could cut them off easily no matter which way they went. She took sharp shallow breaths and tried to prepare herself as they trudged forward.

  Jim Strong gunned the snowmobile and roared away from them, up the mountain.

  ‘‘Thank God,’’ Nina gasped. ‘‘He’s going away.’’

  ‘‘He’s high-marking,’’ Collier remarked, watching him zigzag up the face. Jim handled the snowmobile expertly. It was as if he was showing off for them just how good he was in the snow.

  ‘‘High-marking? Is that more made-up language?’’ Nina asked.

  ‘‘No. It’s when they try to go as high as they can on a mountain without tipping over. What’s he up to now?’’

  Jim had gone higher than she would have thought possible. He was about two hundred feet above them, still sitting on the snowmobile. Suddenly, there was silence.

  ‘‘Maybe he stalled,’’ Collier said. ‘‘Anyway, he’s cut the motor.’’

  Anxiously, she scanned the hills below and found Floyd still climbing, far below and to the side.

  Collier was looking up and her eyes too were irresistibly drawn back. ‘‘Collier,’’ she said, pulling at his jacket, feeling very close to tears. ‘‘We have to get out of here quickly!’’

  She felt the cold creeping into the gaps between her gloves, up the legs of her pants. She felt the nose on her face harden and hurt with it.

  Panting with exertion, barely balanced on her snowshoes, she turned once more to look up.

  With a mighty roar, the machine lurched to life. It began cutting back and forth above them as they turned and began struggling down the mountain as fast as they could. They both knew what he was doing now. All that snow, the tons and tons that had dropped from the sky . . .

  The mountain came alive.

  They were moving even though they stood still, Nina’s hand at her throat, Collier reaching toward her, moving downhill, faster and faster.

  They were moving because the huge slab of snow that they were standing on had broken loose above them and was sliding down the mountain toward the valley below.

  For a second that took forever she watched the snow above them break into massive, bricklike slabs accelerating at different speeds down the mountain. They were right in the middle of the face, traveling down with it, with nowhere to go. She saw Jim take off, racing for the side of the mountain.

  They changed direction and began traversing frantically, trying to sidestep it somehow.

  Below, she saw Bob on his snowboard.

  He sees it, she thought, because he was racing for the side of the mountain, racing for the trees at the edge of the slide.

  Jim knew all about snow, she thought. The air around her darkened with snow crystals. Her hair whipped around her face. Something hit her in the back. They were moving faster! She threw herself at Collier, held him desperately, braced herself.

  No sound. No air. She was knocked forward by a wall of snow. She went somersaulting down the mountain, wiping out in a tidal wave.

  She slammed into something, a rock or tree, slid past it and continued her free fall, completely out of control, struck over and over by rocks, conscious in spite of the pain. Just like in the ocean, she tried to swim up, get her head up so she could breathe . . . but the snow was as deep as the sky, and she was drowning. . . .

  27

  SHE AWOKE TO blackness and a dark so smothering, not a glimmer of light penetrated. She remembered blows to her head—something hitting her over and over, until, dazed but relieved, she had slipped into unconsciousness.

  So something had hit her. Good. That was a start. The damage to her head must account for this strange confusion of mind. She did not know where she was. A crushing weight pressed down on her chest.

  Pressed on all sides, enclosed and immobilized, she did not know where she was or why she was there.

  But—why was she so cold? She tried to reach for the covers, but she was not in bed. She knew that. She was crouching, suspended somehow in this icy blackness. Her body was inert, a lump of ice in a frosty cave.

  She tried to breathe. Freezing air sliced into her throat, stale and moist at the same time. Her hands were cupped a few inches from her face, and a pocket of air made it possible for her to take in breaths in slow gasps, which she tried to warm in her mouth before taking into her lungs.

  Because her lungs hurt.

  That was good, wasn’t it, that she could feel her lungs? Somehow, this reality check slowed the rising of her panic. She tried to move, but she could not move. Wedged, she had only the pocket of space in front of her face that contained her air and was formed by her own cupped hands. She licked her lips, tried to shout. Her own voice came back to her, soft, muffled, distant.

  She opened her eyes to the blackness again, but ice drizzled in, so she covered them again like a blanket over her cold pupils. She tried to get a better sense of her body. She wiggled her toes. They were somewhere below her, encased in something, stiffening.

  Snow, not white but black.

  Snow surrounded her. Snow melted in the cracks of her clothing. Snow oozed over and froze on her lips as she breathed in the air that seemed so thin and used up.

  She knew where she was. She remembered her free fall under a great wall of snow, and the surge of fear when she realized they all might die.

  But she wasn’t dead yet. Instead, she seemed to be slowly suffocating.

  Frantic, she began to push with her hands. If she could enlarge her breathing space, get more oxygen. If she could think . . .

  Nothing budged.

  Weakly, feeling tears freezing on her cheeks, she yelled. Again her soft mewing voice surrounded her. ‘‘Help!’’ She took a deep breath to call louder, but the pressure on her chest made her cough.

  ‘‘Help!’’ she cried as loudly as she could.

  No use. She could hear nothing from above, no birds, no rescuers, no voices.

  No wind or soft sliding sound of skis. Only her ragged breaths, and the thumping of her own heart.

  Underneath her eyelids, inside her mind, her vision returned. Above her, she watched a man cartwheel down the mountain, and below, a snowboard as fragile as a matchstick making a frenzied rush for the trees.

  She had been struggling mindlessly for some time when the thought came that she was using up all her oxygen. She stopped instantly. Yet the panting didn’t stop, but continued and continued, because her heart was overcome with fear. All she could think about was running out of air. Her chest moved up and down.

  After a while she remembered the trick she used to go to sleep on stress-ridden nights, to count her breath down into slowness.

  One two three four five six one two three four five six . . . one . . . two . . . threefourfivesix . . . one . . . two . . . three . . . fourfive . . . six . . .

  She could feel her legs tangled together, immovable in snow. Her right elbow had a couple of inches, and her right hand over her head gave her face four inches or so. The fingers of her left arm could twitch, but the arm itself seemed encased in ice. The air wasn’t clean, it was full of ice crystals. She was coughing intermittently. But she had air.

  She opened her ice-encrusted eyelashes, her eyes, to the terrifying darkness.

  Buried alive.

  She counted to six over and over, thought only of the numbers. And she thought of the Elephant Celebes, the figure of the woman in the painting running panic-stricken from the monster . . .

  Directly above, it seemed to her, the blackness became less black.

  She called again, conserving her energy and her voice. If Bob or Collier had made it, they would get help. ‘‘Hey-y-y! Hey-y-y!’’ It was more of a moaning or keening sound she made, trying to be sharp and high and clear.

  While she called, she thought about her own death. It wouldn’t
matter to her. She would be gone. The dying part would hurt, but it would be over at some point, and she would know while it was happening that she would be relieved soon. She thought of how quiet Hitchcock became when his muzzle was wrapped at the vet’s, of how the gazelle caught in the jaws of the tiger quiets and endures. She, too, was quieting in the face of the much stronger thing that had her in its jaws.

  She kept calling, thinking, Bob would be all right with Matt. She had given him enough love over the years to manage. He would not be destroyed by losing her. Collier—was he buried somewhere near, calling? She stopped and listened.

  A faint voice, calling from far away. Had she really heard it?

  ‘‘Collier . . . Collier . . .’’ she called. Louder voices. The snow above her shifted slightly. Terrified, she screamed, ‘‘No!’’ The movement was causing the snow to press down harder. Ice crystals filled her mouth. Now she couldn’t call, or breathe.

  Voices.

  The snow came down and now she was truly buried and she knew the complete quietness of impending death as her nose and mouth filled with snow.

  A shovel struck her foot. She was sliding down. It wasn’t so bad. She could endure it.

  But now there was pain as desperate hands yanked her by the hair, the shoulders, trying to get a purchase while she suffocated, not caring.

  She was being pulled from her burial place, so roughly, choking and coughing . . .

  Breathing. Someone was holding her in a crouch, beating on her back and making her cough it up, her icy hair clinging to the ground.

  She breathed, mouth open. She turned her head, still crouching, blind in the sunlight.

  Bob was crouched in front of her. She grabbed him and pulled him to her.

  ‘‘Mom,’’ he said. She held him hard enough to break his ribs.

  ‘‘Collier?’’ she said, her voice gritty. She turned to face Floyd Drummond and two other men she had never seen before. Bob was brushing snow off her.

  ‘‘Bob. Where’s Collier?’’

  ‘‘They’re looking for him, Mom.’’

  ‘‘Oh, no! No!’’