The branches holding Brian seemed to slither and tighten around him. His mouth worked, but no sound came out of it. His eyes bulged as he stared at his three friends. The ghostly children had arranged themselves in a ring around the tree and were moving around it like dancers in a circle dance, each one reaching out to touch Brian as they passed him. The branches were squeezing him to death. His eyes bulged, and his tongue lolled out of his mouth, but he couldn’t cry out any longer.
Deidre and Becky screamed, and Eddie charged toward the deadly tree. A tree limb hit him hard on his forehead, staggering him. He got to one knee and tried to shake off the pain and dizziness. The branch struck him again, and he sprawled backwards. He tried to crawl toward the tree, but something picked him and hurled him back. He rolled away and saw Deidre running toward the tree. He grabbed her ankle but she twisted out of his grasp. She took two steps and stumbled, crying out as she went down. Eddie heard a rustling sound and saw thick vines entwining around Deidre’s feet. She tried to get up, but the vines held her feet fast, and she sprawled and shrieked as she fell. Other vines were slithering toward her, wrapping around her body.
Suddenly Becky appeared with the axe. She bellowed like a berserker and began hacking at the vines. The vines let go of Deidre and slithered away, and Eddie went to her and helped her get up. Becky was swinging the axe like a madwoman, and a sound like whispered moans filled the woods.
“Come on!” Eddie shouted, and he pulled Becky away from the mayhem. He looked at the tree that had attacked Brian. His friend hung there, lifeless. The ghostly children were gone.
They found a path through the trees and kept going until they reached the lake. They collapsed on the shore, next to a log that looked as if someone had begun hollowing it out to make a canoe.
Eddie stared at the lake, his mind reeling, as Becky tried to comfort Deidre, who was weeping and close to hysteria. Deidre finally stopped crying, and the three friends huddled together, stunned by what had happened and what they had witnessed.
“What do we do now?” Becky finally asked.
“We need to get to the road,” Eddie said. He picked up the axe, which Becky had set down, and gripped it as if their lives depended on it.
The air seemed to shimmer for an instant, and then a shadow passed, as if a quickly moving cloud had crossed in front of the sun. The lake and road had disappeared. Where the lake had been a moment ago, there was a flat, snowy field, an expanse of white that stretched to the horizon.
“No, no, no, this can’t be happening,” Becky said.
“Don’t you see,” Deidre said, her voice preternaturally calm. “It won’t let us leave. It’s forcing us to stay here until it kills us all.”
“That’s not happening,” Eddie said. “We’re getting out of here.”
Eddie stood and began walking, skirting along the edge of the forest, Becky and Deidre following close behind. He was determined to keep going until they found a way out. He cradled the axe, ready to use it to defend himself and his friends from lethal vines, dangerous trees, or phantom children.
They walked for hours, mostly in silence, each occupied by his or her own thoughts. They listened for sounds of danger, looked for changes in scenery. They heard nothing, saw nothing, only trees and snow. There were no birds, no squirrels, no rabbits. Hours passed, morning turned into afternoon, and the afternoon crawled toward twilight. A scarlet sun colored the sky blood-red as it neared the western horizon. Eddie stopped short once, thought he saw a face in a cloud. He could have sworn that the cloud was moving in a different direction from the other clouds, as if it were following them, but he said nothing to the others.
The cold air turned colder. When they stopped for a brief rest, the air seemed to weigh on them like an icy blanket. Their lungs ached with it, and their exhaled breaths were like streams of thick fog.
Eddie started walking again. He knew they had to keep moving or freeze to death. He heard Becky and Deidre moving behind him. His head hurt from the cold, and his eyes stung and kept tearing, sometimes nearly blinding him.
Eddie stopped abruptly and stared, uncomprehending. The log that was being hollowed out for a canoe was sitting there, a few yards in front of him.
“This is where we started,” Deidre said, her voice once again sounding unnaturally calm.
“I don’t believe this,” Becky said. “We’ve walked completely around the hill.” She looked at Eddie. “Now what?”
Eddie stared out across the field of white. He took a few steps and bent down, cleared away some snow, until he came to solid ground. He ventured several more yards, cleared the snow again, and dug down to the ground. He continued the process until he was a hundred feet from Becky, Deidre, and the edge of the forest.
“It’s safe,” he shouted, motioning the women to join him. “The lake is gone.”
The two women walked out to meet Eddie, but as they approached, they stared past him into the distance.
“What is that?” Becky asked.
“Looks like a light,” Deidre said.
Eddie nodded. “I noticed it when I started working my way out here. We can head there and maybe find shelter for the night. It may be our only hope.”
The three started to walk. After a half hour, the light they were headed toward seemed to be no closer. Only a sliver of sun was visible above the horizon, and the penetrating chill had all three shivering as they walked.
“This is useless,” Becky cried. “Whatever that light is, it’s moving away from us. We’re all going to die out here. If something doesn’t get us first, we’re going to freeze to death.”
“I told you it wasn’t going to let us leave,” Deidre said.
Eddie stopped mid-stride and rounded on them. “Fine, you want to die, go ahead and die. But I plan to keep going. If something wants to kill me, I won’t go down without a fight. And if I freeze to death …”
Suddenly the sound of cracking ice filled the air. They felt the ground shift under their feet and looked down. A network of fine cracks was spreading across the film of white.
“We’re back on the lake! We’re on ice,” Eddie yelled.
He looked back at the forest from which they had just come. The trees seemed to be miles away. The air shimmered, and he felt the ice crack under his feet. “Run!” he yelled.
And so they did.
They heard sounds like muffled gunshots as the ice continued to crack beneath them. They were in a race now, trying to outrun the malevolent force that was fracturing reality out from under them and threatening to splinter their last hold on sanity.
They kept running. But the ice turned wet and slippery, and one by one, they fell, their momentum sending them gliding across the frozen lake like hockey pucks. They scrambled to their feet as the ice continued to crack. Now the network of veins was in front of them, and water was seeping up and pooling on the ice. They stumbled forward, trying to maintain their footing, sliding and staggering like drunks. They had nearly reached the shore and the safety of solid ground. Then the ice gave way, and Deidre slipped into the cold lake.
“Deidre,” Becky screamed as she saw her friend fall through the ice and slip under the surface of the water.
Eddie grabbed Becky and pulled her toward the shore. They slid on the ice and went down on their knees, crawling the final few yards over the ice and onto the shore.
“I’m going in!” Eddie yelled.
The chill took her breath away, but Deidre wasn’t ready to give up on life. She opened her eyes and looked up, saw that the snow that covered the ice was only a few feet above her. Suddenly, she felt a thousand tiny bee stings on her legs. She turned and saw dozens of children. They had her surrounded, their hands outstretched, clutching her, pulling her to the bottom of the lake.
The water felt like instant death as Eddie went in, axe in hand. He saw Deidre sinking toward the bottom like a chunk of granite. Flickering shadows were darting around her legs, pulling her down. Eddie followed, and the shadows resolved. They
turned toward him, staring with dead white eyes. He thrust the axe in front of him and kept swimming downward.
The faces of the children turned fearful, and they let go of Deidre and slipped into the murky depths.
Eddie grabbed one of Deidre’s arms and started swimming back toward the surface of the lake. He resurfaced and tried to lift Deidre onto the ice. Becky scrambled out from the shore and pulled while Eddie pushed.
“She’s not breathing,” Becky cried after they’d gotten Deidre onto dry land.
Eddie pinched Deidre’s nose and lifted her chin and started mouth to mouth resuscitation. His teeth were chattering, and he was shivering with cold, nearly in a state of hypothermia. Deidre convulsed and took a breath, spitting up a stream of water so black it looked like dye. She coughed and gasped as Becky pounded her back with the flat of her hand.
Something in the distance caught Becky’s attention and she stopped slapping Deidre’s back. She pointed into the woods. “The cabin.”
Eddie and Deidre looked. The small cabin they had visited the day before was in the near distance, lit by an ethereal glow, as if it were calling them to safety. A stream of smoke poured from its small chimney.
“We’ve got to reach the cabin, it’s our only hope,” Eddie said.
“What about the trees?” said Becky.
“We’ve got no choice,” Deidre whispered.
“I don’t think they’ll touch us,” Eddie said. “They’re afraid of this axe for some reason.”
“How do you know that?” Becky asked.
“It’s true,” Deidre said.
“I’m afraid,” Becky said.
“We’re all afraid,” Eddie said. “But if we don’t find warmth and shelter, we’ll die out here for sure. At least I can use this to fight the trees and vines if I have to.”
Eddie led the way, brandishing the axe, defying the trees and vines to attack them. No attack came, and minutes later they were standing outside the cabin.
“Someone is trying to help us,” Deidre said. “I can feel it. I think it’s the blind man.”
Eddie turned the doorknob and pushed open the door. They stepped inside and closed the door behind them. A fire was blazing in the small fireplace, and a large pot filled with simmering stew sat atop the cast iron stove, steam rolling off its top.
“Anybody here?” Becky called out.
They searched the bedroom and the closet but found no one. Logs were piled alongside the hearth, enough to keep the fire going for days, and a pile of folded blankets lay on top of the fold-out couch. A makeshift card table in the middle of the room was set for three, with cups, bowls, and silverware. A pitcher of water sat in the center of the table.
The three sat quietly in front of the fire, eventually regaining feeling in their extremities. They listened to the satisfying pops and sizzles emanating from the blaze, even as they listened for any noise from outside. Except for the sound of owls hooting, the world outside seemed calm.
“That stew smells good,” Becky said at length.
Eddie nodded, and the three friends went to the table. Becky ladled stew from the bubbling pot into bowls, and they sat down for their meal. They ate hungrily and drank their fill. When they were finished, they went back to the fire and curled up together on the floor.
Morning light crept in through the windows. Eddie stretched and listened to the sound of his friends breathing. He heard a creaking sound and leaped up, looking around for his axe. Deidre and Becky were stirring, and when they came awake and looked at him, he put a finger to his lips. There was a loud knock on the door, and the two women jumped up.
Eddie hefted the axe and walked to the door. It flew open, and he hurtled through it.
Deidre and Becky screamed his name and ran to the door, but Eddie was gone.
Deidre grabbed Becky and pulled her back inside before she could leave. Becky struggled against her friend, but Deidre found some unknown source of strength and wrestled Becky to the floor.
“Let me go,” Becky yelled.
“Becky, Becky, please, please, please—try to calm yourself,” Deidre said. She was sobbing now, distraught over Becky’s distress and sorry that she’d had to restrain her.
Becky slumped against Deidre, drained of all her strength. “Why did he leave?”
“I don’t know. But we have to stay here. Maybe he’ll come back.”
“He took the axe,” Becky said.
“There’s another one,” said Deidre. “A small one hanging on the wall.”
Becky turned and looked at the wall. She spotted the axe, which was held in place by a couple of nails. “That wasn’t there last night.”
“Are you sure?”
“I swear it wasn’t there last night.”
Deidre got up and took down the axe.
The door burst open, and Deidre spun around and hurled the axe toward it. The axe embedded itself in the door frame, inches from where Eddie stood in the open doorway.
“Oh my god, I could’ve killed you!” Deidre said.
“It’s okay,” Eddie said. “I’m okay.” He pulled the axe loose and shut the door. Then he handed the hatchet back to Deidre.
“What’s out there?” Becky asked.
“Nothing. Everything looks perfectly normal. No weird shadows, no homicidal vines, nothing.”
“What’s that tapping sound?” Deidre asked as the windows began to rattle. It sounded like buckshot was hammering against the cabin.
“Sleet, freezing rain, hail,” Eddie said.
“It sounds like the mother of all ice storms,” Becky said.
“There’s something about this cabin, isn’t there?” Deidre asked as she stared at the wall and then looked at the axe in her hand. Eddie nodded as he looked at the axe clasped in his own grip.
“Maybe there’s something to that old man’s ravings,” Becky said. “Maybe there’s an answer here in the cabin.”
They glanced around the cabin as if they were searching for something, but they didn’t know what.
“What about those news clippings and obituaries?” Becky asked.
Eddie shrugged and went to the wooden table where they’d found the newspaper articles and death notices. He opened a drawer and found the clippings and then rummaged through the drawer to see what else he could find.
“Well, look at this,” he said after he was finished with the drawer.
“What did you find?” Becky asked.
He held up an old manifest. “I found a couple of books too.”
He took the discoveries to the table where they had eaten the night before and spread out the material. They sat down, and Eddie examined the old manifest, while Becky checked the news clippings and Deidre thumbed through the books.
“Didn’t you say those clippings referred to the Atherton Airline deaths?” Eddie asked.
Becky nodded.
“Well, you aren’t going to believe this, but this manifest is a record of lodge visitors. Some of the names are highlighted, including a Loth, a Tulgrin, and a Sully. Any of those match any of the clippings?”
Becky shuffled through the clippings and then looked at Eddie. “There are obits here for all three.”
They searched the cabin and found a couple of cardboard boxes filled with more newspaper clippings. They spread the clippings on the floor, and Eddie continued to scrutinize the manifest. He counted 666 names that were highlighted. Of those 666 names, Becky found obituaries for 665 of them.
“Who are we missing?” Becky asked.
“Graybeard,” Eddie said, pointing to a circled name on the last page of the manifest. “He isn’t listed as a guest, yet his name was written in on the back page, highlighted, and circled. I think he was a local.”
“I think he was the groundskeeper,” Deidre said, as she pulled an old picture from between the pages of a tattered paperback novel. “Look.”
She set a photograph on the table, and Eddie and Becky looked at it.
“The groundskeeper and the old bl
ind guy, Lou Graybeard, are one and the same,” Eddie said.
“No, that doesn’t make sense, that doesn’t make any sense,” Deidre said. “We saw that ghost on the lake, and even the groundskeeper talked about him, saying it was his brother.”
“No, he didn’t call him his brother, he said he was his twin, the good part of him,” Becky said.
“I think they tried their experiments on him, maybe even drove him mad, but he was onto them, so they snuffed him out,” Deidre said.
Becky stared into the mirror that hung on the wall above the dresser as Eddie and Deidre continued to talk. Fear had overcome her so profoundly that she felt paralyzed. Suddenly, her chair flew backward and clattered to the floor as she leaped up, a horrified look on her face.
“Becky, what’s wrong?” Deidre said.
Becky pointed at the mirror. In the glass was the reflected image of Lou Graybeard, the quirky old groundskeeper. The image showed him standing next to them, gazing at them.
Eddie spun around to look at the spot where Graybeard should have been standing, but he wasn’t in the room. Eddie looked back at the mirror. Lou Graybeard was pointing at a dusty hearth rug in the corner of the room. Eddie walked to the rug and moved it aside. There were hairline cracks in the wooden floor. He pulled up a loose floorboard and saw the old diary that was hidden there. When they looked in the mirror again, the image of Graybeard was gone.
They took turns reading from the diary, learning the dark secrets of the lodge and its original master. According to the notes and entries of the man known as Lou Graybeard, that original master—the man in the portrait above the lodge’s hearth—was a psychiatrist, and the lodge had once been his private mental hospital. Most of his patients were prisoners from local prisons or juvenile delinquents from local reform schools. The doctor claimed he could rehabilitate them all, through his own unique treatment method, a combination of ancient folk traditions—what some people might call black magic—and prefrontal lobotomy. When the medical board and state inspected the facility after deaths were reported, they shut him down. The doctor’s family turned the hospital into a resort, and the doctor disappeared shortly after.
Long, Cold Winter Page 4