by Ilsa J. Bick
They have to get out. They can’t stay here. He has to think. He can’t think. What’s wrong with him? The world has gone a little soft around the edges, a bit out of focus. The cabin’s hot, the air sullen with the stink of rancid beer and fresh blood. Maybe call the police? No, no, they’ll throw him in jail, and he doesn’t deserve that. This isn’t his fault. Big Earl pulled his gun; Big Earl squeezed the trigger.
They have to get out.
Sidestepping the body and a litter of empties scattered around a puke-green Barcalounger, Eric goes to his brother. “Come on, Case,” he says, gently. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“Oh-okay.” Casey’s flop of blond hair is damp with sweat. His eyes, an indefinite storm-cloud gray and now watery and red-rimmed, slide to Big Earl. Casey makes a strangled sound. “I’m going to be sick, I’m going to …”
They get to the kitchen sink just in time. Afterward, Eric turns on the cold water full blast. The cabin has a septic system and no garbage disposal. They’ll probably stop up the pipes. Big Earl always yelled when they clogged the johns: Who the hell used the whole roll on his ass?
“Hang on.” Eric snatches an old dishrag from a towel bar, soaks the cloth in cold water, and wipes his brother’s mouth. “Better?”
“Yeah.” Tears leak over Casey’s cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.” Eric pitches the soiled rag into the garbage can under the sink. “It was an accident.”
Actually, it was self-defense. The sight of Big Earl standing over Casey with that switch of whippy ash; the whickering sound that damn thing made as it cut the air … Something in Eric just broke. Eighteen years of pain and empty promises: God, enough was enough. Two long strides, and then he was wrestling away the switch, snapping it over his knee. Big Earl had turned with a drunken bellow—and that’s when Eric saw the Glock in his father’s fist, the bore larger than the world. Eric ducked as the gun roared. A bullet zinged by his ear, but then the bottle was in Eric’s hand and he swung.
And like that, Eric’s future went poof! Up in smoke.
3
HE WON’T LET Case come along, but tells his brother to find something to replace his ruined clothes—even one of Big Earl’s shirts, if it comes down to it—and be ready to go just as soon as he gets back. Where they would go, how far they ought to run … Eric hopes that works itself out.
The drifts are high. Big Earl is 250 pounds of dead meat, so the ride out on the sled takes time. Four miles from the cabin, Eric squeezes the brake and cuts the engine. He sits a moment, listening to the howl of the wind, the rasp of ice crystals spinning over snow, the dull whump of heavy snow sliding off a drooping evergreen. A hard winter. A lot of animals starving, he bets.
He has to peel out of his gloves to untie Big Earl. His fingers shake and he can’t make them work right, but he finally gets the job done. Then he stands a moment, staring down at the body slumped in the Skandic’s rumble seat. Except for the blood and that dent, Big Earl looks almost normal. Well, for a drunk sleeping it off.
Parents are supposed to take care of their kids. A kid shouldn’t have to join the Marines and risk ending up as roadkill or minus a couple body parts, all so he can scrape together enough money for college and not get the crap beaten out of him by his own dad.
Planting a booted foot, he gives the body a shove. For a long moment, nothing happens. Then his father’s body shifts and slews sideways in a languid swoon, settling to the snow like a sack of dirty laundry.
“I’m not sorry you’re dead,” Eric says as he throttles up the Skandic. He pulls away without a backward glance. “I don’t care.”
Yet when he reaches the cabin and puts a hand to his face, he feels tears there: frozen to his cheeks, hard as diamonds.
4
NOW, BIG EARL was back. Big Earl was right there; had hitched a ride on this lost road to nowhere. His father’s head was lopsided, caved in where the bottle had crushed bone and brain. His wifebeater was a bib of gore, and Big Earl’s brains slopped in a grotesque tangle of moist pink worms.
“NO!” Eric shrieked. His hands clamped down hard on the Skandic’s handlebars, sending him into a sharp turn he didn’t want. The Skandic canted in a scream of snow, first right and then a grinding left as he carved deep, trying to compensate. Casey was yelling something, but Eric didn’t answer, couldn’t. Was that thing still on the sled? No, no, the weight wasn’t right; the weight had never been right; it was never there to begin with. Get control, get control! He felt the sled hit something—a chunk of ice, maybe; a rock; it didn’t matter. The Skandic bounced, and then the runners stuttered as the sled spun.
“Eric!” Casey’s voice now, spiking through Eric’s helmet speaker: “Eric, look out look out look out!”
A sudden wash of silver-blue swept around the curve fifty feet ahead, and then twin shafts of light pinned him like a bug. Above the roar of the storm, he heard the churn of the car’s engine coming on way too fast.
Frantic, Eric jerked the sled hard left. The sled skated, skipped, drifted sideways, the runners skittering, and he felt the machine buck and jump between his thighs. At the same moment, he realized that the car—no, it was a van, big and blocky and still coming—was shrieking into a drunken skid, out of control, grinding right for him.
For one long, nightmarish second, the world slowed down. Eric saw the right rear fender swinging in a wide arc, heard Casey screaming in his helmet, felt the stutter of the Skandic’s engine in his legs, even saw the white blur of a face—a girl—swimming behind frosted glass.
He was going to die. This was what Big Earl wanted; this was his revenge. The van would kill Eric when it hit, or the Skandic would rocket off the road and smash into the guardrail. The snowmobile would stop, but he would not. He would keep going, catapulted like a stone into the black void of the valley, and he would fall a long, long way down to where Big Earl waited.
Only one chance.
He took it.
ERIC
A Gasp in Time
1
ERIC JUMPED—A WILD, desperate leap—hurtling left as the van slewed right. For a second, it felt as if he simply hung there, suspended in midair, like Keanu Reeves dodging a bullet. Through the spume of snow splattered on his faceplate, he saw the massive bulk of the van growing larger and larger, darker than the night. The red eye of the van’s taillight, hot and angry, loomed and became the world, and he thought, I’m dead.
The van sliced by, shaving air less than six inches away: so close he felt the suck as it swept through space. He thudded face-first into the snow, the stiff plastic of his breakaway faceplate jamming hard enough to flip up and click free of its tabs. A bright white pain shot through as his teeth sank into his tongue, and then he was choking, his mouth filling with blood.
Above the roar in his ears came a high shriek of metal—and then, for just an instant, the world seemed to skip: a gasp in time and space, as if the storm had taken a deep breath and held it.
Someone started to scream.
Eric pushed up on trembling arms. His head was swimmy with pain. Panting, he hung on hands and knees like a dog, his brain swirling, coppery blood drizzling from his mouth. Then he dragged his head around, and his breath died somewhere deep.
Oh my God.
2
THE VAN HAD jumped the barrier. It should’ve kept going, tumbling over the lip of the road to crash into the valley below. Instead, the van hung on a ruin of crumpled metal, like the badly balanced plank of a kid’s teeter-totter. The van’s lights were still on, and the engine was running, but just barely, coughing and knocking in hard death rattles bad enough to make the chassis shudder. The air smelled of acrid smoke and hot oil.
In the van, someone was screaming in a long, continuous lash of sound. Eric saw the van bounce and begin to rock up and down, up and—
No, no! “Stop moving, don’t move, don’t move!” Ripping off his helmet, Eric swarmed to his feet and began to run, bawling over his shoulder, “Casey! Get you
r headlight on the van!”
As light flooded over the vehicle, the driver—the girl he’d seen spin by—leapt into being, framed in a rectangle of iced glass, frozen in an instant out of time. In the glare of the headlight, her hair was dark, and her skin, a cold bone-white. For a bizarre moment, Eric thought she looked dead already.
“Listen!” he bellowed over the wind. “The van’s jumped the barrier. The front end’s left the road. Do you understand?” When she nodded, he said, “Okay, unlock the doors, but don’t do anything else. Don’t move!”
There came the thunk of locks being disengaged, and then all the windows buzzed down, and he thought, okay, that was pretty smart. Lowering the windows would allow the wind to flow through the van instead of push against it. She’d already popped her shoulder harness, too, but wasn’t moving otherwise. Very smart.
“Hi.” Her voice was shaky, but she wasn’t going to pieces on him either. Smart, cool in a crisis—and she seemed familiar somehow. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. What’s your name?” His drill sergeant said if you called the wounded by name, they wouldn’t die. Probably Marine voodoo, but it couldn’t hurt.
“Emma.”
“I’m Eric.” He saw something flit through her face—surprise?—but then he was arming snow from his face and eyeing the back door on her side. The handle was within reach and tempting, but his angle was off, and he was afraid of unbalancing the van. “Who else is in there?”
“Just Lily.” Emma opened her mouth to say something else, but then a sudden shock of wind grabbed the Dodge, and her eyes went wide.
“Easy.” His heart was jammed into the back of his throat. “It’ll be okay. Take it easy.”
“I’m … I’m trying,” she said in a breathless wheeze. The van creaked, and then it began to rock: up, then down, then up.
“Eric,” Casey said from somewhere behind. His voice rose: “Eric, Eric, the van; the van’s going to …”
There came a scream, short and sharp as a stiletto, and then the other girl was turning around, trying to scramble over the front seat: “What are you waiting for? Get us out, get us out, get us out!”
“Lily!” Emma shouted, and Eric could see from that tight grimace that it took all her self-control not to look around. “Don’t move, Lily, don’t—” There was a loud squall, and Lily screamed again as the van dipped and slipped another inch and then two.
Eric didn’t even think about it. His right hand pistoned out to wrap around the handle on the driver’s side back door. As the van tipped in a drunken sway, Eric backpedaled, but the vehicle outweighed him by nearly two tons, and his heels only scoured troughs from the snow.
“Eric!” Casey shouted. “Eric, let go, let go!”
The van lurched. There came a long grind of metal, a high screech as something tore, and then Eric was choking against the stink of gasoline blooming from the ruptured fuel line. The van’s headlights swung down, the arc lengthening with a rending, gnashing clash of metal against metal.
Inside, Lily was shrieking: “Do something do something do something!”
All of a sudden, the back tipped, and Eric’s feet left the ground. No, no, no! For one dizzying, horrifying instant, Eric saw himself hurtling over the barrier, his arms and legs pin-wheeling through the dark all the way down. Then Eric’s knees banged into the ruined guardrail; a jagged edge ripped through his jeans to slice meat, and he grunted with sudden pain.
“Emma, come on!” Stretching his left hand, Eric leaned so far forward that there was nothing but air beneath his chest, and still he couldn’t bridge the gap. Emma’s hand was maybe four inches away, but those inches might as well have been miles. “Give me your hand, Emma,” he pleaded, desperately. “Give me your hand!”
She tried. He felt her fingers brush his, and he grabbed, fumbled to hang on—and for an instant, he had her, he had her …
Then the van tilted. The front fender chopped air … and Eric slipped. Blame the snow; blame that he was off-balance or the sudden list of the van. Whatever. He just couldn’t hold on. His hand slid away and he thudded to the snow in a heap.
No, no, no, don’t you screw this up! Rolling, he got his boots planted, swarmed back to his feet. Save her, save her, save—
3
THE VAN BELLOWED, loud and long, in a tired, grinding groan. Held up by nothing more than twisted metal hooked under the rear axle, the overbalanced undercarriage hitched, skipping out another sudden, violent half-foot before the rear axle finally snapped.
The van slid away: there one moment and then not. It plunged into the dark, and Emma vanished.
But he heard Lily—all the way down.
RIMA
So Never Digging Around a Goodwill Ghost-Bin
1
IN THE HOUR before dark, the storm came on fast. They spotted just one other vehicle: a truck, judging by those taillights. The truck was perhaps an eighth of a mile ahead, visible only as an intermittent flicker of red, although every now and again, Rima spotted a faint drift of black. Truck was burning oil, probably.
“Man,” Tony said, “I hope this guy knows where he’s going. Otherwise, we are completely screwed.”
“Why?” Rima asked.
“Well, we ought’ve gotten to Merit by now.” Tony said Merit was a dinky little town, which had to be right, because she couldn’t find it, not even in the road atlas. “But the valley’s wrong. This part of Wisconsin’s pretty flat. And those mountains we saw just before dark? They’re not right either.”
Oh, perfect. Rima didn’t want to say, You got us lost? All the umpteen trillion counselors she and Anita had seen said that negative statements weren’t helpful. The problem was the only positive things Rima could think of were along the lines of, Wow, Anita, you only sucked down three pipes instead of four? You go, girl! So she said, “Have we passed any place you recognize?”
“No,” Tony said, after a long moment. “Can’t say we have.”
So they were lost. The thought made her hug herself tighter—and oh boy, big mistake. A jag of bright, splintery pain radiated to her right jaw, and then her cheek exploded: ker-POW! Grimacing, Rima trapped the moan behind her teeth, thought to the kid’s whisper: Calm down, honey, it’ll be okay. In a few seconds, the pain’s grip loosened and she could breathe again.
Idiot. The parka was her fault, a Goodwill refugee with duct tape slapped here and there to mend the holes. The parka’s previous owner had been a little girl, barely twelve, named Taylor. You wouldn’t think that would be a problem, except Taylor’s final moments were a jumble of glassy pain and a single clear thought: Daddy, don’t hurt me; I’ll be good, I promise! The asshole killed her anyway, pitching the kid over a fourth-floor balcony to break on the sidewalk like a raw egg.
To be honest, Rima had nearly tossed the parka back with the other whispers: drug addicts, an old lady murdered by her son, a guy with high blood pressure whose last, very bad decision was to mow the grass on a hundred-degree day. Leaving behind poor little Taylor felt wrong, though; no one but a screwed-up parent could so completely mess with your head. So she took the poor kid.
Swear to God, though, when she grew up and actually had some money? Rima was so never digging around a Goodwill ghost-bin. Like, ever.
2
FATHER PRESTON, THE headmaster at All Souls, called it a gift. Her drug-fogged mother thought she was possessed. Rima just called them whispers, the bloodstains of the dead. Once Rima touched something for long enough—soothing, drawing—the whispers eventually dissipated, like morning mist under a hot sun. Whispers such as Taylor’s, whose death had been violent, took longest and were acid in her veins.
Of course, Rima was to blame for her mother’s drug habit because, oh, the strain of living with a possessed kid. There had been spiritualists, psychics, and so much incense you needed a gas mask. A hatchet-faced voodoo priestess was the worst, graduating from a raw egg squirreled under Rima’s bed to catch the departing demon—Rima
’s room stank like an old fart for a week—to a noxious stew of ammonia, vinegar, and olive oil Rima was supposed to toss back with a smile. Uh … wrong. That voodoo chick was always trying to spill Rima’s blood, too. The crazy bitch never said cut; she always said spill, like Rima was this big glass and whoopsie-daisy, look at that mess. Not a lot of blood, Anita explained: Just a half-cup to feed the spirits.
Oh, well, when you put it like that … If Anita wasn’t so dead serious loopy, the whole thing might’ve been funny. Eventually, the voodoo also went bye-bye, either because Anita got tired of Rima being just so ungrateful, or the priestess thought she was a lost cause. Whatever.
The damage was done, though. Last week, dead of night, her mother got her supplier to pick the lock of Rima’s bedroom. Before Rima knew what was happening, the supplier had pinned her wrists while Anita pressed a very long, wickedly sharp boning knife to Rima’s throat. No spilling, not for Anita, nosirreebob: she was going all the way.
The only reason Rima survived was the supplier got cold feet and booked. After another tense half hour, Anita drifted off from all that meth she’d smoked to work up the nerve and then all the downers she popped to take the edge off. It took Rima what felt like a century to ease out from under, and even then the knife won, the keen edge scoring her flesh with a hot spider’s bite.
That was just too darned close. Stick around, and one morning she’d wake up shish kebab. Forget Child Protective Services; they’d only shuffle her from foster home to foster home for the next two years until she turned eighteen. Then it was a handshake and YOYO, baby.
Why wait?
3
CALIFORNIA OR CANADA, she figured. California had the movies; maybe she could learn makeup or something. Canada … well, everyone in Minnesota who wanted out went to Canada, but only because it was closer than Mexico.